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Invitations come in all shapes and sizes. You and I may be expecting them, or else they may come as a complete surprise.
Can you think of any examples of invitations we might give or receive ?
An invitation needs to be received by the person to whom it is addressed. And then that person - including you and me - needs to decide how to respond. Some invitations encourage us to RSVP, and can tell us who we need to respond to and how.
Sometimes it depends on who gives the invitation. Sometimes it depends on what the invitation is - whether it asks us to do something that we think is fun, or something that is hard work.
Yet when you think about it, every invitation has a cost and contains a potential blessing if we choose to respond with a yes.
Today is Response Sunday. It follows on from last Sunday, when we were thinking about our stewardship at the Priory. If you weren't there, this yellow leaflet provides the information about our finances, as well as a response slip. All those who sees themselves as belonging to the Priory are being invited to review our financial giving, and then to present the response slip in the offertory collection, either today or soon after.
Like any invitation, this one asks something of us. It has a cost and contains a potential blessing, if we choose to respond. And the way we respond says something about our priorities - about how important you and I see that invitation as being for us.
God is the Great Inviter. From the dawn of creation, God has invited us to recognize His handiwork, and to respond to His lifegiving invitation to live in communion with Him, with one another, and with this world. And God has also chosen to invite certain people to do certain things which communicate His loving will to the world around.
Let's now consider some of the folk in the Old Testament who God invited to do certain things for Him:
In Genesis, Abraham and Sarah were an elderly couple God called to leave their homeland and go to an unknown place.
In Exodus, Moses was a middle aged man who God spoke to from within a burning bush and called to lead His people to freedom.
In Judges, Deborah was a prophetess who was a God-anointed leader of Israel.
In the first book of Samuel, a young boy who the Lord addressed by name, as he slept in the Temple,was called to be a prophet.
Jonah was someone God called to give a message to Nineveh, but who instead tried to run away from the Lord.
God called these people to follow Him. Their response involved a cost. It also led to a far greater blessing, when they said yes.
In the New Testament we are not told what Mary was doing when the angel appeared to her. It is most likely that this ordinary teenage girl was going about her ordinary domestic duties. She was engaged to be married to Joseph the carpenter, and Mary's future seemed settled and secure.
Yet out of the blue she was met by the angel Gabriel, who greeted her, and then spoke God's amazing Word to her: "Greetings you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you. … You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; his kingdom will never end."
No wonder Luke tells us that Mary was "greatly troubled at his words." The invitation God was giving to Mary was about letting something happen, something which would change her life forever. Receiving a gift of new life, which would bring the fullness of God's blessing to the world, but which would also cost her so much. In his book on Mary, Ponder These Things Archbishop Rowan Williams puts it like this: "Mary is summoned by God to a role that could only .. have marked her as more intensely a failure and an outcast - a woman with an unexplained pregnancy, an embarrassment to her fiancé …"
Yet Mary still chose to say yes: "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me according to your word." And her yes opened the way to the wonder and mystery of what followed - the conception, gestation, and birth of Jesus, the Son of the Most High. Jesus, the fruit of Mary's womb, who was born into this world to save it. God invited Mary to let His Word bear fruit from within her, and Mary's response enabled this to happen.
Today we thank God for Mary, one of our two Priory Patrons. As we do so, may we also remember this: The Lord also invites you and me to let His Word bear fruit within our lives. For, as the 13th century German mystic Meister Eckhart put it, "What good is it if Mary gave birth to the Son of God … and I also do not give birth to the Son of God in my own time and culture?"
When you and I respond to God's invitation and say yes, then we also allow the seed of His Word to be fertilised by the Holy Spirit - the Spirit who grows the life of Christ within us, and enables us to bear the fruit of God's Kingdom. However such fruit is not borne without cost. Just as Mary discovered, so all those who say yes to God's invitation in Jesus Christ find that their life is never the same again. For the life of God which seeks to grow within us is not content with a halfhearted yes or a lukewarm love. Mary shows us that - with our consent - nothing is impossible with God. Yet she also shows us that the way to life in all its fullness is a cross-shaped way.
So what is the Word of the Lord to you and me, and to the Priory here and now? What is God inviting us to be, to do, to become for Him? And how are we going to respond? In his book Prayers of Life Michel Quoist expresses the honest hesitation many of us may have in responding with a wholehearted unconditional yes to God: "I am afraid of saying 'yes,' Lord. Where will you take me? I am afraid of signing my name to an unread agreement, I am afraid of the 'yes' that entails other 'yeses.' I am afraid of putting my hand in yours, for you hold on to it."
Yet the wonderful thing is this: the One who calls us in Jesus, also gives us the grace to respond, and to bear the fruit of His Kingdom. So may you and I, like Mary, be those who hear these words : "Do not be afraid .. you have found favour with God." And also be those who are willing and able to say: "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me according to your word."
John Barr
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