Abandonment. This is probably one of our greatest fears. As children, we don’t want to be abandoned by our parents. As adults, we fear that we’ll be abandoned by our spouses or our friends. And, in our old age, we fear we’ll be abandoned on our deathbed, dying all alone. This fear may cause us distress, anger, or even shame. But today’s feast is the reversal of this abandonment. It’s the announcement that God lives within us. (Reflections on the 5th Sunday of Lent – Annunciation)
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We all have a sense of abandonment. No one wants to be alone in the world. After all, the world is a scary and dangerous place to be. We all need a friend to walk with us. Ideally, we all have a soul mate to whom we can tell our inner fears; someone who can then give us the security we all desire.
But it’s not always so easy. Sometimes, our own insecurities get in the way. After all, we are not like the Borg from Star Trek who have a collective mind. We live individual lives, isolated in our own mind, heart, and body.
Sensing Abandonment
For “head” heavy people – like myself – abandonment can cause a lot of distress and anxiety. Thinking you’re all alone, you believe you can overcome your isolation through competency. You try to master your environment, analyze the facts, and predict the future. The fear of abandonment is so painful that it’s easy to shut off your emotions in order to try to find inner peace and security.
Or, you may be more sensitive to feeling abandonment; being out of touch with your own feelings, you may seek emotional needs through others. However, this can quickly become a comparison between you and others. If it seems others are loved more than you’re loved, you can be overcome with profound shame – a fear that you are unworthy to experience your own needs – leaving you abandoned.
Or perhaps, you’re instinctual or prefer tactile engagement – a person of the “gut” experiencing the world through activity. In this case, abandonment can cause you to suppress and disassociate from your emotions. Constantly frustrated by this experience, anger boils to the surface giving the allusion of control. But the constant static noise in your head reminds you that the world isn’t perfect, and you’re all alone.
However you operate, abandonment is a reality of the human experience. It reminds us of our sinfulness. It reminds us of our fallenness, which keeps us separated from God, the one with whom we truly seek a connection.
God and Us: Hand-in-Hand
But this isn’t how we were meant to live. This wasn’t God’s plan for humanity. In fact, creation was supposed to be God’s temple – the place where he resided. The world was created so that God could walk with us, not abandon us.
Genesis tells us that on the 7th day of creation God rested. As 21st-century people, very much disconnected from the ancient world, we hear: God did nothing that day. He, somehow, we think, wore himself out creating and now it’s time for a bit of vacation.
Yet, that’s not what “rest” means in this case. Originally, it meant that God came to take up residence within creation. He made Eden his home and walked with Adam and Eve. This sense is preserved by the Psalmist.
For the LORD has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his habitation: “This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it.” (Psalm 132:13-14 RSV)
From this perspective, the rest of scripture is about how God undoes our sin so that he can take up residence among us again. It’s about how he undoes our abandonment – that exile in which we now find ourselves.
In the Old Testament, the Exodus story starts to put things right. After freeing the Hebrews from the abandonment of slavery, he declares:
“And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them forth out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them; I am the LORD their God.” (Exodus 29:46 RSV)
And, then, after the Hebrews completed the tabernacle, the “tent temple,” God does precisely what he said he would do. He dwells among them.
Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. (Exodus 40:34 RSV)
God was, once again, living with his people. And, when Solomon finally builds the temple in Jerusalem, God takes up residence there as well. It seems all is going well – heaven and earth are coming together and Eden is being rebuilt.
Then the priests brought the ark of the covenant of the LORD to its place [in the Jerusalem temple], in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the most holy place, underneath the wings of the cherubim. … And when the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the LORD… Then Solomon said, “…I have built thee an exalted house, a place for thee to dwell in forever.” (1 Kings 8:6, 10, 12-13 RSV)
But, the sins of the Israelite kings and of the people force God out of their midst, and they are abandoned again, cast of out the land, and subjected to foreign powers.
But, in the midst of this desertion, comes hope. The prophet Ezekiel has a vision that God is still with his people. God’s plan for creation will be fulfilled and accomplished. Heaven and earth will meet, and God will walk among us.
As the glory of the LORD entered the temple by the gate facing east, the Spirit lifted me up, and brought me into the inner court; and behold, the glory of the LORD filled the temple. While the man was standing beside me, I heard one speaking to me out of the temple; and he said to me, “Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the people of Israel forever. And the house of Israel shall no more defile my holy name, neither they, nor their kings, by their harlotry, and by the dead bodies of their kings…” (Ezekiel 43:4-7 RSV)
For Ezekiel, this was a future hope. But for us, it’s a reality.
God Returns Home
Brothers and sisters, this is what the feast of Annunciation is all about: God taking up residence within creation and dwelling among us. But, he does it in a surprising way! He makes human flesh his new temple.
In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee… to a virgin… [and her] name was Mary. …And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And see: You will conceive in your womb and will bear a son, and you shall declare his name to be Jesus. …A Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; hence the offspring will be called also, a Son of God.” (Luke 1: 26-27, 30-31, 35 DBH)
Does that image remind you of anything?
It should remind you of the visions of God’s glory coming dwell in the Holy of Holies: first the tabernacle and then the temple. This is why the Virgin Mary – in many Orthodox hymns including the Akathist – is called the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant, or the Temple. She becomes the place where heaven and earth meet, how God resides among his people.
In this feast (March 25th), we learn that God has done a wondrous thing and, in nine months’ time (December 25th), we’ll greet the God-Man with hymns of joy.
In the feast of Pascha, in two weeks’ time, we’ll see that we aren’t abandoned even in death; Christ has destroyed even that stingy enemy and led us to freedom. He brings us up from our demise by holding our hand and showing us a beautiful way.
We have a God we can identify with. We have a God who understands our sense of abandonment; while hanging on the cross, he cried, “My God, my God, why did you forsake me?” But through his suffering, he has claimed creation as his own. It has become his residence, his dwelling place.
The joy of this feast turns our distress and anxiety into peace and stillness. It turns our fear and shame into courage and pride. And, it turns our frustration and anger into success and joy.
It’s for this reason that we, together, cry out: “Hail, of full of grace, the Lord is with you.”
P.S. Come, Be With God!
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