Session 1- The Annunciation to Mary

About the Facilitator: The most important element needed for the success of this class is a facilitator who is at ease with open-minded, sometimes rambling discussion. The job might rotate among several people, or one person could lead all four discussions.

Preparation: The job is the same for each meeting. Find below the list of questions and quotations that amplify the theme of the week. The facilitator’s first work is to prepare the materials: simply print off the list, cut the paper into slips so that there is one question or quotation on each slip, and put the slips into a bowl. Participants will draw a slip randomly. The facilitator moderates by inviting someone to read a slip then opening discussion, encouraging others to contribute, suggesting alternate points of view, inviting participants to ground discussion in examples and personal stories, and deciding when it’s time to move to a new topic.

Structure of the Class: The structure for each meeting is the same: after a few minutes for greetings, the facilitator will open with prayer (suggested prayers are included), lead the group in reflecting on the week’s readings from The Upper Room magazine, read the week’s scripture passage, facilitate the discussion, and close with prayer (guidelines included). If there are carryover ideas from the previous week, the facilitator can attend to those before starting the current week’s discussion.

Other Materials:

• Provide an appropriate and attractive focal point if your room allows. This can be as simple as a purple cloth and a candle, perhaps with a manger to remind participants of the Mystery at the heart of the season. You can invite different participants to set this up each week.
• To encourage fellowship and foster a livelier conversation, you might provide light refreshments and music at the beginning of each meeting. After a few minutes, invite participants to bring their food to their seats and begin the session.
• The first night, there’s a suggested art website to view: if you have an LCD projector to hook up to your laptop, that would certainly add some interest to the discussion. This will take a little effort to set up, but will be well worth it.
• Ask participants to bring their Bibles and provide a few in the room.
• Provide index cards and pens/pencils each session.
• You will need copies of The Upper Room daily devotional guide each week.

WEEK 1: November 26-December 2

Note: It would add greatly to the discussion to have some images of the Annunciation to share with the group. Unfortunately, because of copyright and permission issues, we cannot reproduce and display art images here. But good sources to find them include the public or church library, private libraries of art enthusiasts you might know, and Google Images, which has an extensive gallery of Annunciation paintings online (www.google.com, then click on Images and type “Annunciation” into the search box). If your church has an LCD projector, use it with your laptop to display the images to the whole group.

Introduction to the Advent Series:

Remind group members that their preparation for each week’s session is reading at home each day’s Upper Room meditation and its suggested-scripture reading. They should bring their copies of the magazine with them each week, since you will refer to them in the sessions. (Repeat this reminder at the end of this meeting and at the end of each week’s session.) Encourage families to read the meditations together and to talk about them. Direct group members to the four-page center insert in the November-December issue of the magazine and point out the suggestions it offers for having a devotional time. Even if the group members live alone, encourage them to try just one of the guide’s suggestions in the coming week — perhaps the one about copying a phrase from each day’s meditation onto a card to carry with them as a reminder of God’s message to them that day.

Direct the group members to gather in threes or fours and to pull out their copies of the November-December issue of The Upper Room. (Have some extra copies available each week so each person has a copy to use for this exercise.) Invite group members to glance back over the week’s meditations and think about how God spoke to them through one or more of the daily readings. Then direct them to speak within their group of three or four about one “message” or idea they heard from God in the week’s readings.

Move to the next part of the session.

Leader says: “Each week, we will operate as a conversation group. The general topic is “annunciation” — what it means, how one responds, how annunciations changed the people in the Christmas story, and how they change us. Questions, doubts, conflicting ideas, and wild ideas are welcome. After the opening prayer and the scripture that grounds our discussion for the week, I’ll ask each of you to take a question or quote from the bowl. We’ll take one question as far as it seems helpful. Then we will ask another person to read a new question/quote and go from there. The point is not to get through all the questions. The point is to explore the powerful, transforming presence of God through the annunciations surrounding the birth of Christ and to anticipate the coming of Christ in our own hearts this Advent season.”

Opening Prayer: “God of impossible situations, be with us tonight as we hear again how your amazing presence, power, and love took human shape in this world. Open our ears to hear the new word you speak to us. Open our hearts to your Christ as you reveal Christ to us in each other. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

Scripture: Luke 1:26-38 The Annunciation to Mary

Quotes and Questions:

• In the meditation for Sunday, November 26th, Raymond Hawkins writes, “Being with the people of God is an oasis.” When does your work environment seem like a spiritual desert? How does worshipping with God’s people restore your spirit?
• Upper Room author Shane Stanford writes, “Sent to minister to Bill, I found instead that God used Bill to speak to me about faith, struggle, and grace in difficult times.” When have you reached out to someone else only to find that person ministering to you? (See meditation for Monday, November 27th).
• In the meditation for Tuesday, November 28th, Shirley Brosius writes, “We discover God’s power within us as we step out in faith.” Describe an example — in your own life or someone else’s — when you found this to be true.
• In the meditation for Thursday, November 30th, Douglas Brown writes, “God works through each trial and enables us to persevere and develop further spiritual strength.” Describe a crisis or tragedy and the way God matured you through that trial.
• “Keeping our eyes focused on Christ can steady us when life is turbulent,” writes Susan Hibbins (Upper Room meditation for Friday, December 1st). What people, events, situations, etc. tend to distract you from Christ? How do you restore your focus on him?
• In the meditation for Saturday, December 2nd, John E. Pugh writes, “Voices and sounds call us in many directions. Some call us to pain and others, to life.” Describe a “call to pain” that you answered. Are you still struggling with this situation? If not, describe when and how the pain stopped.
• What is an annunciation? Do you think it is any different from a call, a dream or vision, a prophecy or epiphany? For the purposes of this group, do you want to differentiate or not between these words?
• The angel Gabriel says, “Nothing is impossible with God.” Do you believe this? Are there “impossible” things that have happened to you or someone you know? Share doubts and assurances.
• What “impossible” things should we be praying for?
• When do you let go of a prayer about something that seems impossible?
• How does the church encourage or hinder your desire to believe that all is possible with God?
• Mary is “overshadowed” by the power of the Most High and thus conceives the Christ child. Talk about this word overshadowed. Almost every current English translation of the Bible uses it. What comes to mind when you think of the experience of being “overshadowed?” Where else in the Bible do you remember someone or something being overshadowed by the creative Spirit of God?
• Many people who have had a deeply significant encounter with God express both terror and awe. This is what’s generally meant by “the fear of the Lord.” When the angel Gabriel appears, Mary is, according to various translations, “greatly troubled,” “much perplexed,” and “thoroughly shaken.” How does your church point to and honor this very disturbing state of being? (art, music, liturgy, etc.?) Or is it seldom acknowledged?
• If Mary took the Myers-Briggs personality assessment, what do you think her profile would be?
• Can your group come up with some of the Old Testament prophecies related to the coming of Christ?
• What is the essence of Mary’s response to the angel’s message? Do you feel led to this same response in any area of your life right now?
• Long ago, Meister Eckhart asked, “What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago and I do not also give birth to the son of God in my time and in my culture?” What is your response?
• If you have pictures of the Annunciation to Mary, study the faces of Mary in several of these pictures. Who is she? What is she feeling and thinking?
• Choose a few particular pictures. What do the artists want us to see, feel, and think about in each of them?
• Does your family or church do anything particular to honor Mary during the Advent or Christmas seasons?

Leader says (directions in parentheses): “Review the week's meditations in The Upper Room. Are there any impossible situations that stand out? What happens? (See Bill's cancer on November 27 and baby's brain tumor on November 30.)

Leader says (directions in brackets): Mary has a divine messenger. In the week's readings from The Upper Room, who or what bears divine tidings for the writers?

[Some examples include scripture (November 26); a powerful witness (November 27); falling acorn (November 28) and sounds from the neighborhood (December 2)]

Closing: (Pass around the index cards.) “Think about a particular issue or image raised tonight that seems important for you to keep in mind. Write it down, take it home, and use it in prayer this week.” (Give participants a little time to do this.)

Prayer: “Lord, we ask for the grace to turn, like Mary, toward you. In the name of Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.”

Copyright © 2006 by The Upper Room. Permission is given for copies of this study to be reproduced for your group.