Lent and the Annunciation
This piece is the third in a five-part Lenten reflection series written by the staff of CTA. In Part 3, Revalon Wesson reflects on Lent, the Annunciation, and COVID-19.
Yesterday was the Feast of the Annunciation, which celebrates the angel Gabriel’s announcement to a young Virgin Mary that God had blessed her and she would give birth to the Son of the Most High. After Mary receives this message in fear and confusion, she visits her cousin Elizabeth to tell her the news. Mary’s song that follows is a powerfully-expressed moment of joy that I am celebrating and finding hope in amidst the somber Lenten season.
I’m sure many of you would agree that this season of Lent has been particularly stressful and full of fear and confusion. COVID-19 has disrupted our daily lives, our communities, and our world. Personally, I am finding it hard to concentrate on nearly everything, from my work to my hobbies. I just want things to go back to normal. To echo the words of Abby Rampone in CTA’s first Lenten reflection, I want Ordinary Time. I believe this is a sentiment that many of us are feeling at the moment.
But what is Ordinary Time? What is normal?
When I say I want things to go back to normal, I mean I want to be able to hug my friends again. I want to be able to go out when I want and where I want. I want churches and libraries and schools and community centers to be open again. I want this threat of inadvertently getting a loved one critically ill to be gone. But with all of this, other less desirable things would go back to normal as well.
Our current normal also includes an ever-widening wealth gap. Normal is a healthcare system that fails the most vulnerable among us. It is turning on the television and having news of the pandemic replaced with the headline of the latest mass shooting. Normal is poor kids and kids of color being left behind by the school system time and time again.
Returning to normal would be going back to our inherently discriminatory systems despite months of implementing equitable services and realizing compassion and relief is attainable. As Zach Johnson wrote in last week’s Lenten reflection, normal would be staying in empty time—a time when transformation is not possible—after we’ve had a taste of what messianic time could offer. Going back to where we were would be purposefully choosing a path of destruction.
This Lent, I’ve been reminded of a verse in the book of Isaiah where God proclaims, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” When I think of the Annunciation occurring during Lent, I see God breaking into the scene and disrupting our 40 day ritual with a new thing. After the announcement, Mary rejoices in God’s transformational power through the Magnificat. She boldly sings, “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
What I find so beautiful about this song is that she declares how God has flipped things on their head. God desires this change, do we not perceive it? The Magnificat breaks through the despair we often feel when we encounter these broken systems, and reveals God’s heart for a reorganized community.
Walter Brueggemann, in his book The Prophetic Imagination, invites us to visualize what the beloved community—in other words, a consciousness ruptured by messianic time—would look like. But how often do we discount our visions for a better, more just community because we can’t see how we’ll get there? Brueggemann encourages us, “We need to ask not whether it is realistic or practical or viable but whether it is imaginable.”
We need to stimulate our imagination, especially during this season of reflection. Mary’s initial reaction of fear and confusion to the angel’s message was absolutely reasonable. The news to her was unrealistic and biologically impossible. However, Gabriel activates her imagination with the words, “With God everything is possible.” Her response thereafter is a joyful demonstration of faith and willingness to participate in God’s radical plan even though it didn’t make sense.
Do I still want things to go back to normal? Yes. But I want to go back to a rebuilt normalcy: a better normalcy, a New Ordinary Time. I want a type of New Ordinary Time during which, at even the slightest hint of return to homogenous empty time, messianic time would instantaneously break through.
During Lent, a solemn period of fasting and abstaining, we often let ourselves go without, to the point of running dry. Can we empty ourselves of the things that are not God, and instead of being an empty well, emulate Mary and allow ourselves to be filled with joy and imagination?
Lastly, I want us as a community to find comfort in some of the first words the angel Gabriel said to Mary: “The Lord is with you.” Remember that the Divine is in us, and that God is with us in solidarity and hope, doing new things and constantly inviting us to join in the ways that justice and mercy is unveiling and announcing itself. Knowing that, Church, what will our response be?
