Luke 1. 38: ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’
Mary’s obedience to her spiritual superior has been commended as an example to us all ever since, especially by those in positions of spiritual superiority. But she was, we are told, assured of what God wanted by the appearance of that heavenly messenger. We would have fewer difficulties if we could be so convinced of his will. One problem is that angels seem to be scarce these days, so that we lack that certainty. My subject today is therefore obedience to the will of God.
People have asked me whether it was by the will of God that so many children have died in the past twelve months from natural disasters, and in particular from the tsunami and the earthquake in Kashmir. I have replied that God did not want the children, or the adults for that matter, to die, but that the disasters were part of the mechanism of the universe and that God does not intervene to upset the laws by which the world is governed. You may ask whether it would not be more loving of him to intervene to stop the upheavals in the depths of the earth which cause these disasters; alternatively, whether God would not have been wiser to create a world in which they did not occur. To this, one answer is that God, knowing what is to follow this life, does not think that death matters much. In any case, he must consider Nature, as at present constituted, with all its defects, the best that could be managed now. If the law of gravity were suspended every time a child was about to fall over we would live in a world full of random events in which we could not be sure what would happen next. But the fact that such laws are not suspended to save us from disaster does not mean that God wills the disaster, any more than he wants me to have bad legs; they just happen to people of my age. Against this view, you may quote the Lord’s Prayer; if we are supposed to ask for our daily bread then you can argue that God must be ready to intervene in the material world; but you also have to ask why God lets millions starve.
In contrast, if God is not responsible for the bad things that happen, can he really be responsible for the good things that happen? It does not seem to me that God is in day-to-day charge of the physical world at all. Is God, then, simply the clockmaker, envisaged by Enlightenment Deists, who just wound the Universe up, or, in terms of modern science, who started the Big Bang, and then let it run? In no way. I am not in any doubt of his continual loving concern for us. I believe he sent his Son into the world, by the motherhood of the Blessed Virgin, in order to express that concern in an unmistakable fashion. Incarnation, the belief that God has intervened in this world by his birth as a man, is at the heart of Christianity; God has not just walked away and left us to it.
I also believe that God is very active in the personal world, in our minds and spirits. It is in that world that we can know his will and should try to be obedient to it. It is the sphere, not of natural law, but of the law of love.
One of the most remarkable features of the disasters I am discussing is the way in which tiny children can survive total deprivation, buried under rubble, for days, far longer than adults. Is this not the fruit of spiritual comfort which grown-ups may sometimes be too preoccupied to share? In ordinary life is it not that kind of comfort which we seek and can receive from God? I am suggesting that we are mistaken if we hope that God will interfere day by day in the laws of nature, but there are no such laws that we know of to exclude him from our minds, or the minds of those we love. Rowan Williams has suggested that we are constantly under his attentive gaze. This does not mean that God will normally tell us what to do, though I am not saying that he never does so; the obedience we should strive for is not as specific as that; it is a matter of conforming ourselves in general terms to what we understand of his law of love. We know what that law is because Jesus told us about it and showed us its working in his life and in his death, resurrection, and ascension. That is the revelation of Christianity. Those are our instructions. We need to treat others as people whom God loves, and to treat ourselves too, with disciplined consideration. We need to love one another as he has loved us. Of course we may get things wrong at times, because we are too weak, not thinking clearly or imaginative enough, or because we are reluctant to consider other people rather than ourselves, or because we make a mistake in guessing their needs. It may be that if we had relied more on God things would have gone better, so that next time we should pray about it rather more. Perhaps, if we asked God what he wanted more often, we would find out a bit more of his will.
Of course, what was asked of Mary was not some act of love towards her fellow creatures, but love of God. And, of course, it was the greatest of acts of love toward her fellow-creatures, because God does not distinguish between his interests and ours. What he wants is our good. In his will is our peace. There is no difference between the will of God in the world and the good of us all. If we start from that understanding we may be better able to discern what he expects of us.
I am not asserting that Mary would have expressed her obedience in these terms. She was very young and unsophisticated. That was one of her strengths; that is why she could bear the presence of a messenger from God without getting upset and hear what she was told without asking unnecessary questions. She did not doubt the rightness of what was happening to her. If only we could imitate her holy simplicity!
Amen
Alan Goodison