Back to the Garden

  Introduction: Let it be with me according to your word                 We’re almost there. Here on this 4 th week of Advent we stand on the very precipice of the changing seasons, from fall to winter, Advent to Christmas, 2020 to 2021. On Wednesday we watched as Manitoba front-line workers received the first dose of the new Covid-19 vaccine and felt, for perhaps the first time since March, that there just might be an end to this time of pandemic after all. The time we are in is pregnant with anticipation, so it is fitting that our gospel reading today should rest on the story of Mary and the pregnancy that would forever change the world. The  Annunciation   by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1898                At the beginning of Advent, I pointed us to our end, to death, and here at the end, I point to our beginning. We stand with our neighbours, with our city, with Mary, with all Israel; here at the end on the precipice of life. But we stand on this precipice with a good deal of uncerta