Once someone asked Martin Luther, the great Reformation theologian, what God was doing before God created the universe. Luther, never one to mince words, answered, “Making switches for people like you who ask questions like that.”

So, it is with some concern that I’ll be attacked by switch-wielding Lutherans that I’m going to guess that before God created people, God didn’t have any problems. But once God created human beings, and loved us, God had problems aplenty.

First of all, it turned out that we are hard creatures to love. If you don’t believe that, just try loving one of us. Loving somebody for a little while, it’s pretty easy. Committing to loving another human being for the long haul — you’d better buckle up.

But perhaps more importantly for God, creating people and loving them presented another problem, a problem that must have been, and must still be every day, an extraordinary adjustment for the Creator of the Universe. That problem is: God is no longer in control. Here’s how that works. God created people. God wants a loving relationship with these creatures. In order to have a loving relationship, the people have to have the ability to say, “No.” You can’t have a loving relationship with someone who can’t refuse. Love can’t be demanded or required. You have to know that the other’s love is freely given. If you program your computer to say it loves you, you aren’t going to feel loved. If someone says they love you out of fear, you won’t feel loved. That’s not real love.

So, in order to create the possibility for real love, God has to do something pretty amazing for the all-powerful Creator of the Universe. God has to self-limit. God has to give the power to say, “No” to these creatures, and when God does that, God has entered into a partnership. God is no longer in control. Because the goal of this partnership is love, God absolutely will not coerce — by power or by fear — God will not coerce. And now God has to depend on these notoriously undependable creatures.

One day God gets this idea about coming into the world as one of these creatures. So we get the story of the Annunciation. It’s kind of a woman’s story, really. It’s what they now call, “Chick lit,” a story for the ladies. I mean, here’s this young girl meeting an angel and talking about getting pregnant. Not a lot in there that I can relate to.

So, the Annunciation, a story for the ladies. Actually, I want to argue with both those things: the name of the story and the assertion (which I just made!) that it’s for the ladies.

First, the name. “The Annunciation” literally means, “The Announcement.” Announcement. You try being in a loving partnership and making “announcements.” I’ve made a few announcements and I’ve been the recipient of a few announcements, and I can tell you, in neither case did it go well. To announce something that you need the other to freely agree to is not the way to go. And I don’t think it was the way God went.

I think we need another name for this story. The first thing that came to my mind was that instead of calling it “The Annunciation,” we should call it “The Interrogation.” Literally, that means “The Questioning.” The problem, of course, is that it makes it sound like Mary has been arrested.

So maybe we should just call it, “The Question.” The Angel Gabriel comes to this young girl who has never known a man and tells her she will conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit and bear the Son of God. Do not miss the fact that this is going to totally wreck this girl’s life. She will become pregnant out of wedlock. She’s engaged, and she has every reason to believe that her fiancÈe will never believe this outrageous story and will put her out in disgrace.

So, it’s not a foregone conclusion that she’ll say, “Yes.” And, how hugely important it is that for this to work, she has to say, “Yes.” Of her own free will, she has to say, “Yes,” or God will just have to do something else. It is not an Annunciation, an announcement; it is a question from one partner to another, from the Creator of the Universe to a girl from Galilee.

“Will you?” “Will you be an agent for God to come into the world?” Gabriel asks her, “Will you, Mary, will you do this?” And the universe holds its breath and stands a tippie-toe waiting for this peasant girl’s response.

And Mary, of course, becomes one of our great heroes when she replies, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

I don’t think this is Chick Lit, a story for the ladies. Jesus has come into this world. And left again. If Jesus is to be alive in the world now, it must be through the Holy Spirit — working through us. Through you, and through me. Through God’s partners.

This isn’t a story just for the ladies. Because it’s the story of the Question, and, with different variations, the same Question is posed to all of us, all of us: “Will you?” “Will you be an agent, a vessel, for God to come into the world?” “Even if it disrupts your life, will you?”

As you prepare for Christmas, the fruit of Mary’s answer, remember that in your life and mine, there won’t be annunciations, but, in many ways and in many times, there will be the question asked by our loving partner: “Will you?”

And, unbeknownst to you, unseen by me, the universe will hold its breath — and stand— a tippie-toe— waiting —for your reply.

Will you?

The Rev. James H. Pritchett, Jr. St. John’s Episcopal Church, College Park, GA.