ATTEND THE MISFIT

The parish where I first served as a newly ordained priest was the Church of the Assumption in Richfield. The building itself was constructed in the early 1950’s (it was the second structure, after the first one had been there for decades but had become too small to accommodate that growing suburb).

And it has the look of a 1950’s modern church. Notably, the roof is flat and slanted from one side to the other, which creates this very large space on one side for beautiful stained glass windows way up high by the ceiling. And they are beautiful, each one featuring the Blessed Virgin Mary under one of her traditional titles.

The glass is mostly blue, with large swirls of other colors that dance around the images of Mary. As I say, it’s a very 1950’s version of stained glass. And the windows are large enough that each one consists of several different panels, which had to be installed correctly so that the swirls of color all made for one coherent movement from one pane of glass to the next.

All of which is simply to say that I noticed almost immediately upon my arrival that in one of the windows that a single pane of glass had been installed incorrectly nearly 70 years ago. And it’s still that way today. I can’t decide if that section is upside down or inside out, but it’s obviously not in keeping with the bigger image in the window.

My first reaction to that was, “How can a professional glass installer not have noticed the mistake he was making?” This piece obviously didn’t fit in the bigger picture. My second reaction was, “How can a community of Catholics not have seen this error for decades, and said something about it? And fixed it?”

And my third, more theological reaction is, “Well maybe this wasn’t really a mistake at all.” In the architectural sense it surely was and is, but perhaps that pane of glass – so evidently out of place – has something to teach me about how God works, especially as it relates to Mary, the mother of Jesus. And especially in Advent.

When we think about God it can seem pretty natural to think only of the very big picture. We want to understand God as that Loving Creator who has a logic to His activity which corresponds to just exactly what we would expect God to be and do. All the panes of glass have to fit together, and when they don’t we first presume that either God has made a mistake or that we have not understood. But there’s nothing very biblical about the God part of that. And there’s no greater example of that than today’s gospel of Luke. Without meaning any disrespect to Mary, it is fair to say that in her time and place she was about as close to a “nobody” as she could be, when the angel Gabriel arrived. An unwed young woman in a tiny town that was of little importance.

Surely God was making a mistake here in inviting this unknown person to be the one to change the world forever. After all, as we all know, God doesn’t’ work that way.

Or does he? This pane of glass doesn’t fit the big image in the window, but does that mean it’s wrong? We’d better not be too quick to decide that. Especially since God already had, from the very beginning of creation, a history of choosing the so-called wrong people to be his agents of salvation in this world.

• Shall we begin with Adam and Eve, disobedient in the Garden?
• Or with Moses, who was the discarded alien in Egypt at his birth and who went on to murder a man before being called by God?
• Or with King David, a lowly shepherd boy who also had a man murdered? Or King Saul the insane? Or King Solomon the heretic?
• Or with any of the prophets, who all told God to choose someone else because they were too inexperienced or afraid for the task?

God was always choosing the “wrong” people. He chose Elizabeth, the old lady who couldn’t bear children, to be the mother of John the Baptist.

Mary fit right in with this crowd, this sacred tradition. God works most often, most amazingly, through the things and people that we are tempted to regard as mistakes, or not fitting in with the grand scheme of things. Those schemes are of our making, not God’s. That pane of glass has quite a bit to teach me about how God truly chooses to notice those who are evidently “out of place,” and to privilege them with a mission to change the world – and to change us.

To hear again today of Mary’s consent to the angel is to allow us to consider who and what in our own lives could “never” be a way for God to attempt to reach us. Mary’s first reactions to the Annunciation were fear and confusion. “How can this be,” she asked?

God can handle our own fears and confusion if we will allow Him to… If we will but notice that odd piece in the picture that just might be the most precious one of all. Advent is our summons to notice.