The doorbell used to be a very different thing. When I was little, I remember hearing it a lot, and I remember feeling a sense of expectation every time it rang: it could be anybody! A friend, a relative, a salesperson, a neighbor needing to borrow something or wanting to say “hi” – it could even be your minister. I remember ringing other people’s doorbells a lot: we dropped by to see our playmates, or we dropped in on our elders in the neighborhood, who gave us cookies and let us sit on their ‘good sofas’ in their ‘nice’ living rooms. We sold things door-to-door for choir and Girl Scouts. Doorbells were like instant messaging: they summoned people up, connected people, provided access to people you wanted to see. And homes were like public spaces that represented a person to the community and vice versa.
There are a lot of folks who still use their homes this way, and are really generous and open with guests and neighbors – even spontaneously. But we’re not a drop-in culture anymore. We’re in touch in other, more controllable, mobile ways, and our homes have become like havens: more private, more private, more private. In many homes now when the doorbell rings unexpectedly, people look up from what they’re doing and start asking questions: “Do you know who that could be? Have you ordered something? Check your cell phone - see if anyone’s called you.” I was at my parents’ home recently – the same people who had one of these open thresholds when I was a kid – when the doorbell rang and we all went off in our twenty-first century way, asking “Can you see whose car that is? Who would drop by at this time?” So I wondered out loud, “Could it be Mrs. Rosenfeld?” (she’s the elderly woman who lives next door) and my mom answered, “No, no - Mrs. Rosenfeld always texts before she comes over.”
I bet Mary would have liked to have gotten a text from this angel – just a little warning that he was on his way to her house. She would have seen some sort of suspicious, unidentifiable area code or a blocked number, and the message, “Greetings, favored 1! B there in 2 min 4 Annunciation.” Just enough time for this poor girl to bar the door, turn off all the lights, and jump under the covers, hoping that whoever this unidentified messenger was wouldn’t have any super-celestial way of getting inside. Forewarning cannot, however, stave off super-celestial powers and no sooner does Mary plunge beneath her blanket than she sees and feels light glowing through its threads. She senses the presence of something huge and terrifying in the room with her and she emerges, incrementally, from her shelter to find an awe-filled thing standing before her. A big humanish being. Not quite like a man or a woman. Luminescent. Whether the angel speaks out loud or speaks in Mary’s heart, its voice is clear, resonant, and fills her ears, leaving no room for thought with its message: “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”
The angel is irresistibly holy and magnificent. It’s also frightful, bossy, and intrusive. It hasn’t called ahead of time. It hasn’t asked to come – it hasn’t even rung that iconic doorbell and here it is, not on Mary’s porch, not waiting on her “good sofa” in her “nice” living room, but right there in the middle of her space, messing up her house with its news of “favor” and “kingdoms” and “overshadowing.” The angel isn’t selling Mary something, it’s telling her something, whether she wants to hear it or not, and it represents a world totally outside of her comfort zone – the angel represents the world of God’s own being, which has a nice religious sound to it, but is, in fact, an overwhelming place. When we say “God’s own being,” we’re talking about the creative center of the cosmos, the power of everything that lives, the source of blinding light, the place from which the ground beneath our feet exploded, and now this huge, glowing thing wants to take Mary by the elbow and usher her into all that fire and wind and spirit and creative, redemptive, chaos. More than this, even – this huge glowing thing has come into Mary’s house to make of Mary a house for God, to house the creative power of the universe inside of her, despite all consequences. The Eastern churches use the word “God-bearer” to talk about what the angel is asking Mary to be. And what that means, essentially, is that Mary is being asked to be a universe-bearer. The angel is asking Mary to carry the heart of the world underneath her own heart.
This may have something to do with why we guard our own doors so closely. We’re not an inhospitable culture, but we have become a careful culture. The world is very, very big now, and we know it. Like Mary, we have a lot to be afraid of. When the doorbell rings, what could be on the other side of it? Could it be violence? Some person or some institution seeking to harm you, moving in darkness, operating out of hopelessness? Could it be need? Deprivation and inequity of material, emotional, and cognitive resources so profound it seems there is nothing one person could ever do to help? Could it be sickness? Entities making bodies and systems fight for integrity in ways that hurt? Maybe it’s this ambient anxiety that seems to be part and parcel of life these days, where markets and nations and parents perch on the edges of chairs, ready to react to any rumor, all suggestions, every possibility of conflict, loss, or concern.
Or maybe …it’s somebody who wants to love you, which can be just as threatening as violence, illness, or instability. Maybe outside of your door is another human being who wants to share part of herself with you in genuine friendship, romantic love, true neighborliness, or ministry. Maybe there’s a relationship outside your door that would require hard work, risk, and personal transformation. Maybe there’s an idea or new opportunity outside your door that would require you to stretch, to see the world differently, to change your mind and your perspective. It could be God outside of your door, present in any one of the scenarios we’ve just listed, with a message for you: “Greetings, favored one! Will you let me, and everything I love, into your home?”
Outside of your door, then, is the universe – with all its uncertainty, all its pain, all its baffling capacity for good and for evil – and like Mary, with each chime, each knock, each encounter between us and what is not us, we are being asked to bear it. There’s a temptation, therefore, to “hole up” and isolate ourselves from its assaults: the assault of information, noise, of other people and their needs, of global issues and back-yard issues. We try to create in our private space a peace that surpasses all else, and it’s not that we don’t want to share our peace with others – it’s just that we want to get a handle on things. We want to be able to expect or control our encounters with violence, illness, love, opportunity, even God. I can understand King David’s impulse in our reading from Samuel, this impulse to build a house to contain the thing out there: a prison for offenders, a hospital for the sick, a school for ideas and experiments, a church or a temple for God. But if none of those things will stay in their places – if we’re forced to live with the unexpected effects of instability, the discomfort of illness, the challenge of new ideas, the risks of love and opportunity, and the authentic engagement with all of these things that God wants us to have, we at least want to know when they’re coming. We want to know when the angel is going to show up, what he’s bringing with him, and how long he’s going to stay.
It certainly makes sense why the angel didn’t text, and didn’t ring Mary’s doorbell. He has brought the universe – all time, history, and place – to her house and placed it in her lap. He’s brought the reality of sin and the power of redemption to her house and placed it in her lap. He has brought the complete joy of birth and resurrection and the utter pain of death and crucifixion into her house and placed it in her lap. Many people would have found somewhere else to be, and quick.
Mary’s response is this: she opens her home. She may not understand exactly what the angel is telling her, but she accepts the promise of his greeting: first, that the message is a sign that she is favored, and second that God is with her. And Mary begins to embody the power of God made flesh. Mary becomes a house for God – and as a house, she ceases to be private, but becomes more than a public space: she becomes the center of the universe, and a threshold opening earth onto heaven.
And so heaven’s door is thrown wide open for us. God’s private space, God’s haven and sanctuary do not exist, and we are free to pass back and forth, with the angels, like children in the neighborhoods we remember. How vulnerable God is in this exchange – and how available to us is God’s strength … how complete is God’s presence with us, giving us everything we need to open our own doors and answer the call of all that awaits us on the other side of them. Jesus is the openness of God and he has come to unlock us and set us free.
You were ushered into God’s own being long ago with this young, confused and courageous mother of God. You are a favored one, the recipient of a message that you don’t have to fear because God is with you – both ringing and answering your doorbell. Everything you need to face the universe and to bear it – everything you need to heal it and to be healed – is sitting right in your lap, placed there by the One who created it all. And the house that God desires, the temple where God dwells, is in your very own heart.
