Annunciation

Gospel reading: Luke 18.9-14
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There's a world of difference between "How will I know this is true?" and "How can this be?" Both questions are reasonable responses to an angel's annunciation of an unexpected pregnancy. But one seeks to close off a mystery. The other seeks to open one up.

The first question is Zechariah's after he is told that his wife will bear a child. The second is Mary's when she is told that she is pregnant as well.

"How will I know this is true?" has served humanity well in many ways. Disproving what is false in the realm of science or theology is important enough. But sometimes we're lulled into thinking that if something can't be proven, it can't be important.

Robert Capon has said just the opposite. He says that the provable things in our faith are those that matter least. Philosophers and theologians like Thomas Aquinas have offered some fairly elegant proofs of the existence of God. But learning what God is like and why God might matter to the likes of us is a subtler affair.

Human analogies are useful here. There is no single, definitive proof of one person's love for another. Every action, or word, or gesture is open to suspicion. Asked to prove our love for another, we never get to don a white lab coat and offer up DNA evidence in our defense. No, love always depends on the trust of the beloved for its proof. Love is never received by one asking "How will I know?" It needs at least the space of "How can this be?"

An appreciation of mystery is essential to love. And banishing space for mystery in our lives shuts us off from too much of the world. Kathleen Norris points out that Zechariah went mute after his response. Mary delivered the Magnificat.

For much of my life I thought faith should not be spared the hard, "How will I know?" questions. I thought conversion was about being convinced beyond a reasonable doubt by a preponderance of evidence for things like annunciations and resurrections and transfigurations. But I've come to believe that true faith asks "How can this be?" Faith is that humble delight in the possibility of grace. Nothing has been proven. But perhaps we move only from a fearful "What if it's false?" to a hopeful "What if it's true?" And everything shifts. Energy dissipates around the fearful first quesiton. Life and energy gather around the second.

In our gospel lesson from Sunday we can assume that we're meant to feel sorry for the poor tax collector whose world seems to have crumbled thoroughly enough for him to cry to God for mercy. But the Pharisee's world makes sense and is all the sadder for it. He can comprehend quite easily why God might be pleased with him. But a comprehensible world is too small. Jesus seems to be telling us that something crucial opens up in the tax collector's plea for mercy, and maybe he leaves asking "How can this be?"

When we think the Christian faith makes perfect sense we should beware. Not because its truths are absurd or patently false. But because we're probably not asking the questions it is meant to address. We're not changed by the fact of God or the fact of redemption. We're changed by our encounters with God. We're changed by our experiences of redemption. We're changed in ways mostly small, ways we mostly don't understand. And maybe we only see these changes looking back. But when we do, we're likely to ask, "How can this be?"

We won't get an answer. But we'll know we're in good company. Which may be all we ever really get to know anyway. And somehow it's enough.