Like many people one of my most favorite movies is The Princess Bride, it is very funny and easy to enjoy. I notice that it is frequently quoted. At wedding rehearsals I frequently quote the Bishop with the speech impediment when he says, “Have you the wing?”
In that movie there is this crazy little Sicilian who whenever something unexpected happens he says over and over, “Inconceivable.” Eventually Andre the Giant responds to the little Sicilian, “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”
The angel Gabriel has a similar message in the Annunciation story we hear today from Luke. Inconceivable and impossible do not mean what we think they mean, “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
A virgin will conceive. Inconceivable!
God will be joined to our humanity. Impossible!
The Gospel today challenges us to rethink what those words mean.
Gabriel’s announcement to Mary carries with it the message that God’s love of creation is deep, abiding and uncompromising.
It means that humanity participates with God in the work of redemption.
Some people even call Mary the Co-redeemer.
The Ancient Christians called her Theotokos, the God bearer.
Some people disagree with the virgin birth story because they think it implies that sex is bad and that Jesus should not be contaminated by association. They think it is prudish.
Some people disagree with the virgin birth story because it somehow contaminates God by becoming too mixed up with the stinky trash of creation.
Some people disagree because it is meant to be metaphor not literal and rational people cannot believe the impossible, miracles are a purely literary phenomenon.
I think the Good News of the Virgin Birth challenges our assumptions of what is possible and impossible, of what is acceptable and unacceptable.
It means that God’s love of creation and especially humanity is disturbingly intimate and that we are joined to God in a way that is hard to tell where one begins and the other ends.
Hail Mary full of grace, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb Jesus.
Pregnant with God.
Like Mary we are pregnant with the Body of Christ, bearing God’s grace in the world.
Mary said yes to being the vessel of God’s presence.
What are the ways that we can say yes?
What are we calling impossible? Where are we stuck?
Where do we deny God being all mixed up in the stuff of creation?
We limit ourselves and we limit God with our limited experience and perceptions of what is possible. Of what is conceivable. Of what can be born in this world.
The Annunciation.
Inconceivable does not mean what we think it means.
For nothing will be impossible with God.