Advent 4B

 Obedience, courage, and defiance.

 

One of my favorite games to play in the car is one in which I offer a word, and one of my kids responds with the first word that comes to mind. In fact, we played last night. “Mary”, I offered; “Christmas”, Peter replied; “presents”, I shot back; “Christmas tree” came next; then woods, wolves, wild, animals…so on and so forth. 

 

It is always fascinating to me what comes to mind. I say “Church”; Peter says, “Saint Clement’s”; I picture our pine and respond with “tree”; Peter adds a “forest”…

 

And, I find myself thinking of the cathedral of trees of John Muir and the redwoods. I consider the sacred we have found outside of our beloved church building and the yearning we share for a return. 

 

And, I think of the hope. The hope that has accompanied us through Advent and brought us here. To the now of Mary and her words. Words enriched by the lectionaries pairing…annunciation and magnificat

 

A courageous “yes” and defiant song. The ode of Theotokos, the God bearer, a powerful reclamation of a woman’s power. 

 

A woman’s ability to speak truth to power, a woman’s ability to do hard things, a woman’s ability to change the world. 

 

Through a yes that becomes embodied power.

 

My soul magnifies the Lord! 

 

My soul, a woman’s soul, magnifies the Lord. 

 

My soul magnifies the Lord, she cries out. 

 

And I meet the word with another. 

 

Magnificat.

 

Magnify.

 

Magnifies.

 

And, the word becomes a story…

 

I remember playing with a magnifying glass when I was little. Using it to look more closely at objects that interested me. A blade of grass, a flower, an insect, even the dirt—brought closer, made larger, and clarified through a simple lens. A simple lens, magnifying a simple object. Magnifying it so that I could appreciate its complexity and its beauty in a way that I could not have seen on my own. 

 

It is her body that magnified the Lord. It is her lungs that leant power to her words. Her yes. Her courage. 

 

And through her magnification, she shows us something new. Something, that  we might never have seen without her vision. Something that we might never have uttered without her breath. 

 

An apocalyptic vision of a world upended by the might of God. God who will tear down the mighty and send the rich away empty. God who will destroy the systems and structures that oppress in favor of a new life that liberates. These are radical words, these are occupy Wall Street sentiments, these are raised fists and peaceful protest, and these are the words that scripture has given us. Words from the mouth of a poor, young, woman, who knew full well the power of a woman’s song—Miriam, Ruth, Esther, Judith. One name prompts another and then another, a powerful and prophetic lineage for the Theotokos, God bearer, we call Mary. These were her ancestors in the faith and in this moment she assumes their mantle. Assumes the mantle of women who spoke truth to power, prophesied greatly, and served God from outside the traditional structures of power. 

 

The forces Mary confronted were formidable. Roman rule, temple abuses, and the peasants of Palestine could expect more than 55% of their income to be taken in tithe and tax. In Mary’s time it is estimated that 2-3% of the population possessed the vast majority of the wealth. Mary was not part of this elite and her ode, this Magnificat, comes from the mouth of a peasant girl, a girl like hundreds of others, who lived in a society in which the rich had gotten richer and trickle down economics could more accurately be described as trickle up—as the Roman Empire leaned on the provinces for steady revenue. In fact, “the census that appears prominently in the Gospels during the reign of Augustus is fundamentally a tool of taxation: tying people to their land and counting them for purposes of tax collection.” https://www.elca.org/JLE/Articles/605 

How do her words preach now? How do they preach now, during the reign of the current president, in the midst of a pandemic, when the top 1% of Minnesotans account for 16.3% of all income in the state? (USA Today, “How much do you need to be in the top 1% in every state?”, July 1^st, 2020) How do her words preach now? When 8 months rent comes due, a years’ worth of student loan interest, suspended payroll taxes are collected, and those whose doubts led to deaths are first in line for vaccination. 

 

What do you hear in the Magnificat? Is it ominous warning or liberation from death, debt and despair? What do you hear in these words? Pastoral romanticism or the first steps towards a new creation?

 

During the reign of Emperor Quirinius…

 

Joseph harnesses the donkey.

 

And step by step, they make their way towards Bethlehem. 

 

Annunciation, Magnificat, magnify, see, apocalypse, liberation, women, empowerment, economy, Palestine, taxes, injustice, Mary, birth, hope, Christmas…

 

What word comes next? 

 

I invite you to reflect on this question as you listen to Dan Forrest’s choral setting of the Howard Thurman poem, “The Work of Christmas”. 

 

Mark, will you take us there?

 

Light

One of the stranger aspects of this "clerical" life is that I live a church season or two ahead. So, I am currently deep in the depths of Advent preparation (altho' I'm not entirely sure that's why the Christmas displays are encroaching on the Halloween displays at most of the department stores). This Advent, my colleague and I will be compiling a blog of reflections (both visual and written). In the process of preparing a portion of the written reflections, and in the midst of the ever shorter days this time of year, I find myself pondering light.

The light of Christ most obviously...but what happens when this metaphor is sought out in the day to day? Where is it that we find that light of life and love--

Is it the light flickering through autumn leaves?
Is it the glow of the nightlight in the darkest of the wee small hours?
Is it the stars in their courses?
Is it the smell of beeswax?
Is it reflected in the sanguine pools of your love's eyes?
Is it the porch light beaming as you pull in late from work?
Is it the satellite blinking overhead?
Is it the moment when you turn off the bedside lamp and sink into the pillow?

Sometimes we need the metaphorical and abstract to be made concrete. Where do you find light in your life?

Advent, the f-bomb and me...

So, I've been contemplating the propers for this coming Sunday (the third Sunday in Advent). And, in the Gospel we have good ol' John the Baptist calling the crowd a "brood of vipers!". It's a rather abrupt start to the good news on a wintry Sunday and it leads to some unusual homiletical cud...

When my sister and I were teens (13 and 16) my mother began to use swear words in addressing us. And, it wasn't just mild swears--she used the f-bomb with frequency and sort of evolved from there. When I complained about her language she claimed that nothing else worked to "get our attention". While I'm still traumatized by the amount of cussing my mother continues to engage in (having gotten into the habit) I am also intrigued at the idea of how she felt that she needed to go to this extreme to get us to listen to her. So as I contemplate John's fiery language it occurs to me that it is, perhaps, a rhetorical device used to get their, and our, attention.

Was this device effective? Was cursing the crowd the best way to begin the relationship and spread the good news? Perhaps, perhaps not. And, as scripture tells us, they didn't actually start to wonder if he was the messiah until he enjoined them to live with justice, mercy and compassion. So, it wasn't the anger or cursing that kept them engaged and made them wonder if the world was on the brink of being transformed. Rather, it was his emphasis on the need for change and transformation as they prepared for the arrival of the true messiah.

But, his opening curses are still ringing in our ears and we find ourselves listening--reading on to see what this emphatic and unusual man is about. God does go to such extremes to get our attention, no?

Where is God trying to get our attention this Advent season? Where are we finding ourselves brought up short by unexpected encounters with truth? Where has the miraculous been brought to our attention?

For me, it's the movement within and the combined joy and fear I experience as I contemplate the baby on the way It's a glaringly obvious, for me, experience of the fear/joy that Mary must have experienced with her own pending birth. And this pregnancy serves as a reminder of the depth of love God has for all of us in God's willingness to become vulnerable to the reality of human suffering.

It's a season of already but not yet incarnation. And, I am in the thick of it.

(completely unrelated...who on earth thinks it's okay to tell a pregnant woman that she's looking "fat"! I'm just kind of wondering what planet I was on when I was told this by someone who knows that I am pregnant!!!)

Winter Evensong

Today is a day of sharp contrasts--of light and dark, warmth and cold, of stillness and wind. The sense of change in the air has made the dog nervous and he licks his lips as the wind howls through the trees. I brace myself in case of tree and limb fall—the wind carries with it the possibility for destruction at the same time I nudge the thermostat up a degree and curl my toes beneath me. The puddles ripple in the wind and I know that, come night, they will turn to ice. I dread the coming cold and the already cold. The cold that penetrates through to the bones and the night that seems to come earlier and earlier each day. Yet, the sun broke through the clouds and I remember last year and the year before—all years in which I began to believe that I would never be warm again. Years in which the dying grasses and fallen leaves seem to possess an unrepentant barrenness. New life seems impossibly far off and the storm perches like the silhouetted cormorant above the water. The contrast of life and death is suddenly all too real. Winter has come.

Advent Paradox

God we cry out to you
For love
For redemption
And that is the promise you have given

We didn’t take into account
Reality.
Love and redemption
Do not eliminate suffering.

Rather, they accompany it.
And in the midst of suffering,
We find that you are there
The weeping, suffering Christ/Spirit/God

Whose love can only witness
To the true hope
That awaits us only
In death.

"The Womb of Advent"

Last year, at this time, I was angrily putting away the book The Womb of Advent written by Mark Bozutti-Jones in which we uses his own family’s pregnancy and impending birth as a foil for reflecting upon each day of Advent. I just couldn’t do it, I couldn’t read about the joy (and fear) of pregnancy and child birth when my own heart was so broken and my own womb so empty.

What a difference a year makes…and now I get it. Now I understand what I didn’t last year (altho’, for no good reason, I’m still a bit angry at the aforementioned author!) that anticipating this baby is like anticipating Christ--terrifying and joyful—fearfully and wonderfully made—within but not without, yet. But, I am sensitive to the reality that my own joy is another's pain and was once my own. So this Advent I pray for those who long to become parents yet find themselves still waiting, watching and hoping.

At the same time, this joy that was so (seemingly) long denied brings me full circle. This new awareness of Advent is rather like my first spring after my first long, cold winter. When I saw the first snow drops bloom I accepted that it would (despite all evidence to the contrary) be warm again and that life would return to the landscape. With that realization everything I’d ever intellectualized about the resurrection burst open. I suddenly felt the resurrection with a sharp awareness of grace that I still cling to each February/March when I begin to feel the despair of the coldness clinging to my bones.
And, now, I feel the impending birth in a way that goes beyond the ability of the mind to comprehend. Preparing a place for this baby in our lives and our home consumes us—much as I am sure the impending birth of the baby Jesus consumed his young mother.

I did not and do not want this to be a “pregnancy blog”, yet perhaps I need to accept that in the midst of pregnancy there is little else it can be. Perhaps this peculiar consumption is what I need to get my head around the reality that things that once were are no more and things that are not will be? Attempts at rational thought may occur—but realize that they are mere attempts—for the irrational part of me is contemplating the kicks felt yet unseen and pondering what motherhood will mean for us both.

For, just as Advent warns…this is truly the end of all that we have known and the beginning of a new life for us all.

The Pregnant Priest

Now that I am 13 weeks and 4 days pregnant (yes, we know the EXACT day!) I think it's safe to tell you that the major project I'm working on has been a new human being! It has been a delicate dance these past months as we've told family and our close friends while still feeling that it was not yet time to tell the parish. So, we announced to the congregation today which was a wonderful thing--what a loving and dear group of people attend Church of Our Saviour! I can tell already that this is going to be a church baby...

That said, we do ask for prayers for a safe and healthy pregnancy and the safe arrival of baby C around his or her due date--April 21st. We by no means assume that all will be well (too much time in a children's hospital will do that to a person), but since all signs would indicate that all is currently well we are working to trust that this baby will really share our lives (plus the obstetrician thinks he/she looks great and tells us that everything is as it should be--so maybe I should trust her?).

I reflected with some musings on all of this a couple of weeks ago and wanted to share them here...

It's a strange longing, for the abstract in both cases, for the oft' times surreal presence of a loving God and the equally surreal presence of the small being who shares my body. My love for both feels all encompassing yet I have it only on faith that I will someday dwell in the loving arms of God or hold my babe within my own loving arms.

At the very tail of the first trimester I have seen the child kicking and waving in the grainy screen of the ultrasound machine while the cool gel coated wand glides over my abdomen. Yet, like the remembrance of the Christmas child in the last weeks of Pentecost, I begin to wonder--was it real, is it real, will it be? It's a strange realization that my hunger for a God who can be so difficult to see from day to day is matched only by my hunger for the child who is, just as much as God, a member of a world filled with the already but not yet of all that is promised.

So, I pray for my baby and for my God. I pray the prayer of a woman who is already a mother but has not yet held her child; and that of a child of God who finds it easy to forget that I have always been held by God. Telling the world of the baby in my womb and the God who fills my heart demands a leap of a faith that can be frightening--yet keeping the secret of this love troubles my soul and as my heart and head become encompassed in anticipation, love and fear, it becomes more difficult to hide the reality that I have indeed been transformed.

It is a miracle. Truly.

sweet week of Advent 4

This is a chocolate interlude in the Christmas preparations.

6 ounces of bittersweet chocolate; 3/4 cup of heavy cream; 3 T of butter; 3 T of light corn syrup; a pinch of salt and dash of vanilla.

And, in light of my reference in yesterday's sermon to children's stories and the truth they often hold regarding life's hardship and beauty:

"She gazed and gazed through her tears, and so mounted the stairs sorrowfully back to her own chamber. On reaching it she felt herself oppressed with sleepiness, for she had passed the night without undressing, and, moreover, for a month past her sleep had been broken and haunted with terrors. So, having nothing better to do, she went to bed, and was nestling down in the perfumed sheets when her eyes fell on the little table by the bedside. Some one had set a cup of hot chocolate there, and half asleep, she reached out her hand for it and drank it; whereupon her eyes closed and she fell into a delicious slumber, such as she had not known since the day when her father brought home the fatal rose." (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944). "Beauty and the Beast" The Sleeping Beauty and other Fairy Tales. 1910)

An Icon

I like the knowing look both Jesus and Mary have in this image. I also feel like Mary looks a bit world weary--a given granted all that she has gone through as she holds the toddler messiah.

Sermon notes for Advent 4B, 08

some resources:
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Schniedewind.shtml
-good critical/historical analysis of the 2 Samuel reading
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2632
-Stendahl's article

And, I'm looking at the Magnificat as the option in place of the psalm
“My soul magnifies the Lord, 47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

And, hoping to address the challenge of saying "yes"...for Mary saying "yes" as a young teen (in her culture old enough to marry and bear children, in our culture not old enough to drive or use the oven without some measure of supervision) meant being unwed and pregnant in a society in which the punishment for adultery (in this case a woman getting pregnant and therefore bringing shame upon her family and in a society where women are a commodity reducing her value) is being stoned to death. What then ran through her mind in those moments of saying yes, did she realize what she was agreeing to? Did the full impact of her decision hit her in those initial moments of encounter with Gabriel? So, I look to the Magnificat--a prayer spoken at a time when she had already begun to feel the movement of her child within her. A prayer spoken at a time when maternal death was an all too likely possibility in childbirth. In some ways then the prayer is an act of defiance against her culture and times--she is claiming God's mercy, she declares herself lifted up, she has been filled with good things. SHE is claiming the promise that is made in Samuel for HERSELF! I don't know if her community would have called this "obedience of faith"--I would call it "defiance in accordance with her faith!" And, in an androcentric text (which arguably the Bible is, I don't think most of us can argue that women are often an afterthought in our tradition...much as I love our tradition--I mean we have to verbally add women to the printed texts of a good chunk of the BCP "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob") it is remarkable that the entire world hangs on the tip of the tongue of a young woman living in what is arguably the Middle Eastern equivalent of the middle of nowhere. I mean, her town was nowhere near "mainstreet" and hers is not a voice we hear at the inauguration of presidents--or even in the pageants depicting the birth of her son. I mean, when was the last time you saw a nativity that included Mary's Magnificat?

So, what does that mean to us, now. What radical reality do we dare say yes to? When we are "learning how to say no" what does it mean to embrace the "yes" to God? What dangerous declaration are we making? In my life I can think of two--"yes, I'm gay" and "yes, I'll be a priest". When have your yesses both condemned and liberated you?