"find in us a mansion prepared"

It is Advent 4. The awaited time is very near. And so we make final preparations. Losing no time, we ask in our opening collect pointed, direct requests: purify, visit, find us. Find us, how? A mansion prepared for God's very presence dwelling in us.

Mansions and houses are a predominant allegory throughout our Advent 4 collect and lessons. David has the idea to build a house for the Lord. In reply, God vows a covenant with David and the people of Israel - they will be built into an everlasting house (2 Samuel 7:11) for God. It is a house that will have a new king, and through whom a new kingdom will come.

Understandably so, while languishing in Babylon exile, the people of Israel doubt the faithfulness of God in keeping these covenant promises. The house of David has been decimated. They cry out to God in Psalm 89. The poem reads like a prosecutor in court who rehearses before God the perceived failure to fulfill the covenant promises. Oh yes, they remember the covenant promises (Psalm 89:1-4), but only as a form of accusatory lament. The promised mansion, the everlasting house, seems lost forever, and all hope is lost.

But, the story doesn't end there. In a backwater town, in an out-of-the-way region of northern Judea, a young woman, of the house of David, receives a strange greeting. She hears that she will have a son who will reign over the house of Jacob (another name for Israel), and that his kingdom will have no end (Luke 1:33). Through the Gift soon housed in her womb (the Theotokos -God-bearer), the kingdom will come.

God is faithful. God has kept the covenant promises of old. And in keeping them, we discover it is not only for the house of Israel, but for the entire house of humanity (Romans 16:26). This mansion that God is building in us is for all - Jews and Gentiles alike. The story of God's faithfulness continues onward in us, all who are welcomed in (whose number is as countless as the stars - see Genesis 15:5).

Through a great mystery we are about to crossover into the very day that God entered into humanity ( "born this day" BCP, pg 213). In love for all creation, God chooses to enflesh our humanity. Faithfully committed to seeing humans fulfill their created purpose, God chooses to reveal himself to and through Mary. She moves from perplexed ponderer, to a strong faith-filled woman who cries out, "let it be with me according to your word." And the Word was housed (tented, tabernacled) in her to be born for the all of humanity.

The mystery of our salvation is glorious beyond measure; it is beyond us. We are about to celebrate the hope of humanity that we have long expected. And so in final preparation on this Fourth Sunday of Advent we pray boldly with Mary: purify us, visit us, find in us a mansion prepared.

The Annunciation - Window by Edward Burne-Jones in the Chapel, Castle Howard, Yorkshire, England: 1874.

"A richly-robed angel makes the sign of the blessing, while a haloed white dove (symbolizing the Holy Spirit), a coronet of fire around the throat, flies towards Mary. The shrub represent the Tree of Life; down its stem a human-headed serpent, Satan, falls." From The Bible in Stained Glass, Hallinday and Lushington ( Morehouse: 1990).