Everything which is human and healthy is well-grounded and balanced in how we perceive reality. Christians engage reality in such healthy and balanced ways with an appreciation of God’s life-giving goodness (which we call “grace”), human evil (e.g., lies, greed, hatred, revenge, envy, etc., which we call “sin”), and natural evil (e.g., earthquakes, illness and mortality) .  Today’s scripture texts ask us to consider the superiority of God’s salvation over sinfulness by considering the earliest of the personalities of both the Old and New Testament writings, and how it is that when we genuinely know and engage the reality of good and evil we are elevated by God’s grace to become ever more responsible and moral creatures.

Adam and Eve, the mythic ancestors of the entire human race, created in the divine image and likeness by God’s most profound love and generosity, are also the mythic door through which moral evil entered creation.  Among the most famous of the Old Testament stories of ancient explanation for the problem of evil, the details in this narrative are also very distracting from the simple insight that humans are fundamentally responsible for human evil.  Their story of sin, often entitled “The Fall,” was an ancient understanding of how human knowledge and power made us each responsible for our own actions and omissions, in a word, “moral.”  We thoughtful Christians (and Jews and others of any healthy religious and healthy non-religious persuasion) are at our moral best when we embrace reality and engage life fully and responsibly.  In the USA this year (2010) we have just completed a political campaign season (How long, Oh, Lord!).  It is amazing how, having watched or read numerous political advertisements, there has been so little if any post-election conversation about the political “spin” and the blatant inaccuracies and non-truths put forth to the public by political ads.  There is not any other way to say it other than much (not merely “some”) of the political ads to which we’ve been subjected were deliberately constructed lies to promote fear and anger at the political opposition.  Such ads were examples of existential human evil and sinfulness in the USA just as bribery and graft are said to be cultural realities inherent in cultures in other parts of the world.  The Gospel expects us to discuss and to pro-actively work to critique and correct these realities.  Candidates who won their races using these ads have won by means of fraud, deceit and fear.  Candidates who lost their races in spite of using such ads advocated lies as well. Sin imbues our political reality.  The silence of church and religious leaders makes them complicite in such sin.  The gullibility of the electorate makes us accomplices if we accepted the lies.  All candidates who made use of these ads are less than virtuous and have hugged immorality close to their hearts.  So, how do we Christians admit to our sinfulness?  How do Christians prophetically critique human sinfulness, including when sin is fundamental in our accepted societal practices?  In the story of The Fall, Adam and Eve are the ancestors of human sinfulness for each and every one of us.  They had accepted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:17).  To the ancient mentality, the act of disobedience to God’s prohibition of touching that tree of knowledge was the cause for sinfulness.  For us moderns, the sin is more complicated, less black and white.  From the intelligent modern frame of reference, sin is essentially a necessary risk of engaging reality.  When ever one decides to engage the messiness of real life, grace and sin are both present.  To the extent that we try to make the best of an imperfect world, we are accepting and using divine grace for the redemption of the world.  When we embrace the evil and destructive behaviors around us (“everyone was doing it,” or “all’s fair in love and war”), then we reject God’s goodness and hug evil tightly to ourselves.  But, our hope is from St. Paul, for “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more” (Romans 5:20).

The personality of Mary in Luke’s Gospel narrative is the literary antidote to Adam and Eve.  From the ancient perspective, one individual’s acceptance of God’s Will is enough to make a profound difference in this world.  Mary’s commission by God, “to conceive and bear a child and name him Jesus” (the very word “Jesus” means “God Saves!”) is her humble and courageous cooperative participation in God’s redemptive power, countering the Fall of humanity in the Adam and Eve narrative.  That she had “no relations with a man” is a faith assertion that she was miraculously outside of the chain of human sinfulness, that she was and remained sinless from the moment of her conception in her mother’s womb.  This belief is held so that her own womb would be considered a worthy vessel in which to carry the infant Savior, himself one who “knew not sin” (Ephesians 2:1).  And, in the nearly the same passage, it was God’s own hope that we (believers) would be “holy and without blemish before him” (in today’s 2^nd reading).  Mary was indeed the great heroine of the Gospel narrative in that it was through her free cooperation with God that salvific redemption was able to enter this messy world of ours.  Since the apostolic Pentecost experience, the Gospel message which lead to our own baptisms has commissioned each of us to be Gospel heroes.  It is through us, in this divine hope, that we try our best to live lives which are “holy and without blemish.”  Adam and Eve thus, have become paradigms of healthy, if flawed, realism.  In fact, to live well, it is essential to risk encountering sin in the reality of a sinful world.  Just as Mary’s “yes” was brave, so has she become an example which encourages us modern believers to thoughtfully and wisely engage our own modern, sinful and messy world trusting in God’s ever-present salvation.  That we are willing to try does not insulate us from sin, but it makes us more willing and able to receive God’s grace by which to wrestle with life.

Today’s feast is one nearly impossible to comprehend unless we accept that Mary’s sinlessness has a purpose: our inspiration.  Hers was not merely a status of sinlessness and, thus, of untouchable sanctity.  No, hers was the classic act of obedience (from the Latin ob audire i.e., “to hear from above” with profound attention).  She listened so fully as to not only cooperate for the moment, but for a lifetime, and an eternity.  Her “yes” has become a model for the whole Church through the ages.  The Spirit by which she conceived the Savior is nothing less that God’s Holy Spirit, also known as the Spirit of Wisdom or Holy Wisdom.  Such was what Adam and Eve probably thought they were receiving when they ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  They simply had no idea of the consequences of knowledge and insight.  They became “responsible” and thus, obligated to be moral, almost by a necessary sinfulness (remember the Exultet of the Great Vigil of Easter, “Oh, happy fault!  Oh, necessary sin of Adam!).  We must be thankful and ever-more appreciative of our human imperfection, for through this reality, we also are saved incessantly by God’s ever-present and never-failing grace!  Our purpose in life is to live as examples of God’s grace always present!  We are redeemed and our sins are forgiven!  Deo gratias!