It was a beautiful spring morning, not a cloud in the sky and Mary was about her normal tasks, helping her mother, Anne, to look after the home whilst her father, Joachim, went about his business. There was one well in Nazareth and so that was where everyone gathered – or at least the women did – at various times in the day. It was Mary’s task to go early, to get water so that the work of the day around the house could begin. So, empty water jar in hand, she made the journey from their house to the place where the well had been dug. There was not a cloud in the sky and Mary’s heart thrilled as she looked up and saw the deep blue of a spring morning in Palestine.
There were not many women at the well when she arrived, it was still early, and so Mary took a moment to sit and to pray. Her mother had taught her about the great matriarchs of the faith Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, Ruth amongst others, and how they had lived out their faith in hard times when the children of Israel were moving from place to place, seeking a homeland. Mary had herself moved, but she had been too young to really remember it. She was born in Jerusalem, the capital city, the focal point of her religion, the place of the Temple and the place where God abided with his people. She was born close to the Pools of Bethesda, close to the Lion Gate in the city wall and on the edge of the Mount of Olives. Her mother had relatives just over those hills in Bethany. But the need to find work had forced her family to move and Mary, as a child in her mother’s arms, had been taken from Judea to Galilee, from Jerusalem to Nazareth, a well trodden path.
Mary at the well from the mosaics in St Mark’s Venice
She had a vague memory of those pools and those hills as she rose to draw water from the well. There was not a cloud in the sky but all of a sudden she felt, overshadowed, there was no other word for it. She had not felt empty but now she felt filled; she had not felt dead but now she felt alive. She knew without doubt that she was to bear a son, a special son, that she was to be a mother to a child like no other. There was no cloud to overshadow her but she felt overshadowed. There was no doubt, just faith that what God had whispered to her would be fulfilled.
Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ (Luke 1.28)
Pilgrims to the Holy Land will visit the Church of St Anne, a most beautiful crusader building by the remains of the Pools of Bethesda and near to a less visited church which just says outside ‘The Birthplace of the Blessed Virgin Mary’. They will also travel to Nazareth and perhaps their coach driver will drop them off just a mile of so from the Basilica of the Annunciation, at Mary’s Well, where they will be told by their guide that for the Orthodox community this is the place of the annunciation and not where most pilgrims remember it. I love the idea that it happened outside by living water, perhaps under that cloudless sky, Mary, like her predecessors and like the woman at Jacob’s Well in St John’s Gospel, having significant encounters where water was drawn.
Susie MacMurray’s installation ‘Doubt’ has been part of our Lenten journey this year, overshadowing the choir of Southwark Cathedral, a dark cloud. But Mary’s overshadowing that Luke refers to in his gospel was different. Not the shadow of dark clouds but of gentle wings as she received the angelic message.
It was a beautiful spring morning, not a cloud in the sky and people were about their normal tasks. But the stillness was broken by the sound of voices, the sound of singing, even the rocks on the hillside seemed to vibrate with the sound. Then the crowd came over the crown of the hill and the full force of the noise was experienced. Down the Mount of Olives came this band of people surrounding a man on a donkey. They were waving branches they had torn from the trees, they were creating a carpet with their own clothes for the donkey to walk over. And when in full sight of the city the procession halted. And they looked.
Jesus enters Jerusalem
Spread before them was the city and the Temple, gleaming in the sunshine on this cloudless day. The man got off the donkey and wept, Jesus wept. Out of joy, out of sorrow, out of love – out of all of these and more besides. But the crowd were not for stopping and he remounted the donkey and they continued towards their destination. They could have taken the Lion Gate, which would have passed by his grandparents house, where his mother, Mary, had been born, but that would have led them straight to the Antonia Fortress where the Governor, Pontius Pilate, was based – and he had no desire to encounter him. So they headed for the way in for all the pilgrims, to the place where the mikvehs were located, the Jewish ritual baths for purification, before they climbed the steps into the Temple courts.
The whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,
‘Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!’
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, order your disciples to stop.’ He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’ (Luke 19.37-40)
They were in no doubt, these followers who proclaimed him as the awaited king and nor was he, it was a cloudless sky. Washed clean for entry, with confidence, Jesus and his friends entered the Temple.
This year Palm Sunday falls on what would be the Feast of the Annunciation. The passion of Jesus is inextricably linked to the incarnation and it is a good reminder of that fact and both divine events, it seems to me, are cloudless. There’s an American comedy that we can still find on the TV, ‘It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’ and both these events, the annunciation and the triumphal entry, seem to be like that, events played out in the clear sunshine. But clouds are bubbling up below the horizon. As John Donne reminds us in his sonnet, ‘Annunciation’
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo ! faithful Virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb.
We must watch the sky.
Lord, as I enter with you
this Holy Week,
may I watch with you
as the clouds descend.
Amen.
LIVING GOD 
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