Annunciation behind bars

Tomorrow I’m going to preach at two services in the prison in Alphen aan den Rijn. The topic will be this Sunday’s Gospel reading – the story about the Annunciation. And this is what I want to say:

Nothing depends on me. Almost all decisions are taken for me, I have hardly anything to say or to add.

Do you know that feeling? Do you think like that sometimes too? I do. And if I have this feeling from time to time, how about you: here, in prison. Here decisions are taken all the time that you have no impact on, but they do have on you – as orders you have to obey. It is so, isn’t it?

You do hear, I suppose, that you should take your life into your own hands, get your life in order, that already now you should be thinking about how it will be when you are free again. Of course, you should! But how do you go about it when you aren’t free!

In the story we just heard an angel from God comes to a girl. An angel, it’s already strange enough. Have you ever seen an angel? What is actually even more strange, however, is that he comes to her, and not for example to her father or future husband. For in that time girls didn’t have a say about anything. They were actually a kind of “prisoners” of their fathers. They had to do everything their father or brother told them to do… What does this angel want then? He says something like this: “Mary! God needs you, in order to realize his plan for the world. Not your father, not your brother. Not all those mighty, clever, rich and influential people, but only you… Do you want to take part in this?”.

Last week I already preached on that story: in a church. After the service a boy approached me and asked: “What do you think, could Mary say ‘No’ to the angel?”. Yes, I answered, I think she could say ‘No’. And then nothing would happen. There would be no Christmas! Jesus wouldn’t be born! So everything depended on that one word. On the answer of a young girl.

I think this is what God wants to tell us this morning: “Perhaps you think that your opinion doesn’t count, but I think otherwise. I’m sending an angel to you”. That angel doesn’t have to have a pair of wings. It can be also an ordinary man: someone who will take you seriously, who wants to talk with you, listen to you. Someone who wants to help you. Do you know someone like that? Have you ever met someone like that? Everything depends then on your reaction. You can say ‘Yes’, like Mary, but also ‘No’. For in the end it’s about your life and the life of the people you love: for example your family, perhaps your mother and father, who are waiting for your return, your girlfriend, your child. Your future together. And even if you don’t have anyone who is waiting for you, in any case it’s about yourself, your life, which is precious and important in God’s eyes…

Perhaps the last days before Christmas and Christmas itself will be a good time to think about it…