6 April 2008

Dear Readers (if indeed you are out there),

With this sermon begins a series based on chapters from the book "Christianity for the Rest of Us" by Diana Butler Bass. Because we are discussing the topics along with a sermon, my sermons are much shorter. Hope you enjoy.

Gerry

Hospitality
Romans 12:9-21

When I was younger, which of course is any time so far but the present but I’m talking much younger at the moment, I remember seeing signs in the front windows of houses in one of the communities near where I lived in Pennsylvania. This was one of the “city” communities; not the more rural one like mine was. The signs said “SAFE HOUSE.” I initially didn’t know what this meant but it was explained to me that these were homes that kids as they walked to or from school could go to if they felt threatened in any way. (As a more rural community, most of the students in my school district were bussed, so there really wasn’t a need for such a program. Plus, we liked to think, we didn’t have problems such as this like those city areas had.)

The memory of these “SAFE HOUSE” signs came back to me as I thought about today’s chapter on hospitality from our book, “Christianity for the Rest of Us” by Diana Butler Bass, as we embark on this study of her 10 signposts for renewal. For the next several months, we’ll be taking a closer look at each signpost in some depth; thinking about them in terms of our life here at Chalice. How do we measure up in regards to them; how we could do better on them; when we can pat ourselves on the back; what they mean to us as we seek to transform ourselves into a vital and viable community of the people of God.
SAFE HOUSE does suggest some sort of hospitality. It says, “come here when you are threatened or abused or frightened, and we will take care of you.” Safety is definitely a part of hospitality, but clearly, it involves more.

Early Christians practiced hospitality; as did Jesus, when he knelt to wash the disciples feet. Hospitality implies care of the other; seeing to the other’s needs; providing not just safety, but comfort and warmth. As Butler Bass points out, it is more than a church program. It is an essential Christian spiritual discipline and an end unto itself. We’re missing the point of hospitality if we are doing it to gain new members. And it’s not really hospitality when we only provide it for those who are like us, those who fit our own mold. The hospitality that we provide should be modeled after God’s radically inclusive welcome, the same welcome that is extended to each of us.

I liked the verse from Romans that we just heard. In it, Paul is writing to the wildly diverse congregation in Rome and is really giving instructions about how to live; how to respond to this wild idea of God’s grace. And I like the phrase that was in the midst of it all in verse 13 about hospitality: “be inventive in hospitality.” The NRSV, the version I usually read up here, just says “extend hospitality to strangers,” which is all fine and good. But I like to think that the version I read from, The Message, really gets to the heart of what Paul was on about. “Be inventive in hospitality.” Don’t just practice everyday, ho-hum, run-of-the mill hospitality! Anyone can do that. Be inventive. Extend yourself when you extend hospitality. Reach out, yes, to the stranger to be sure, but reach out to that stranger who is so unlike you and so foreign to everything you know.

When you can extend hospitality…real inventive, from-the-heart hospitality…to that person

--to the goth teenager,
--to the mentally ill homeless person,
--to the bisexual, sado-masochistic Republican (or Democrat, depending on your point of view)

—then indeed you are following the call that God issues to us to practice hospitality.

Palm Sunday, 16 March 2008

Matthew 21:1-11

I got an email from my brother, Dave, this past week. Dave, you might remember, is ordained also and is the pastor of Second Presbyterian Church, in Pittston, PA, not far from where we grew up. He wrote this piece as a Lenten devotion and, since we are still in Lent, I’d like to read it to you:

“How many of us would rather just skip over Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, give passing regard to Good Friday and move from Palm Sunday right to Easter? Who needs the morbid and depressing thoughts of "ashes to ashes and dust to dust"? Or the thought of picking up our crosses and journeying to Jerusalem makes us want to go in the other direction? We believe that our crosses are the sum of our worries like rising gas prices, who to vote for and if our pants are too tight. And the prosperity preachers have us believing that the path to new life isn’t one that must first go by the way of death.

“This is not only true for us as individuals, but it is also true for us as churches. Our crosses in the church tend to be about financial concerns, grumpy members, and "what hymn will the minister pick this week that we don’t know!" Or we think that to solve the church’s problems, to remove our crosses that we bear as a community all we have to do is follow this plan, or reach out to those young people, or maybe sing the old time hymns. And through it all, we never think or believe that for the miracle of new life to happen, something must die.

“We in the church hold onto old patterns of doing, ways of thinking, and relating with each other out of comfort, control and power. The Holy Spirit isn’t allowed to move, let alone breathe new breath into us. As I have seen old patterns and ways of thinking and relating die, God has raised to new life people and possibilities in the churches I’ve served and worshiped with over the years. Folks have stepped forward to lead worship or teach Sunday School or serve that wouldn’t have if something hadn’t died. As old patterns of comfort, control and power have died, God has provided new life. We’ve tended to forget that God is the giver of life, new life, and that the church is God’s.

“I sometimes make the mistake of referring to Second PC as ‘my church.’ Usually shortly there after a humbling experience occurs and I am reminded that this is God’s church, not mine or even the folks who worship here. God is the one who is the author and giver of life, new life. But to experience the new life that God offers, death must come first. May your time of Lent as a church be one of bearing our crosses, going to Calvary, and then know the resurrection life of Easter.”


This is Palm Sunday, the end of Lent, the day we remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem…on the back of a donkey. It’s the day that begins Holy Week for us; that week which commemorates Jesus’ last days on earth before his crucifixion and death. We see the approach of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. The shadows of crosses darken our paths. We know what awaits in the coming days.

Jesus entered into Jerusalem on a donkey: a simple beast of burden; not the great steed of a conquering warrior returning to the adulation of the crowds. His entry was, though, in its own way, triumphant. Followers welcomed him in a procession in which they laid their garments on the road before him and waved tree branches. It must have indeed been quite a spectacle.

How we’d like to stay here. How we’d like to remain with the cheering crowds and remember the Jesus who heals those who need healing; the Jesus who associates with outsiders and outcasts; the Jesus who feeds huge crowds; the Jesus we’ve come to know and love.

But as my wise brother points out, we can’t. We have to face the events of this coming week, remembering with joy that entry into Jerusalem. For it is the start of the new life of which Dave wrote; the triumph, not dimmed by the events of this week, shines brightly, guiding us on.

The deaths we face--of Jesus, of things the way we like them, of our own ways of doing things, of oh so many things--are all necessary. For in those deaths there is new life. In Jesus’ death, we know we find the resurrection on the other side, though that is for next week. Don’t jump ahead too fast. We must go through this death thing first. Ignoring it will only leave us empty and with a feeling of shallowness inside.

As much as we might want to jump from Palm Sunday to Easter, we can’t and we shouldn’t even try. For the struggle involved in coming to terms with the events of this coming week are important to our faith. And in like manner, the struggles involved in becoming a new church, in transforming ourselves, are just as important. Some things must change. Some old ways of being have to go.

We may see light ahead, but we’re not there yet. We’re still up on this triumphal energy, much as some of us have become energized about Chalice over the past several weeks. We have to stay with it though and see it through, maintaining this energy in spite of what may change as we grow and become more faithful.

The events to come may want to sap us of energy. No doubt Jesus felt that way as his last week unfolded. Betrayed, denied, flogged, humiliated. That’s more than just flagging energy. We certainly won’t face such things in our lives. But we shall have things to overcome and work through. And it may not be easy.

Through it all, we know that God remains with us. Through it all, as we move towards new life, we will have the Spirit accompanying us on our journeys. And that will be a very good thing to keep in mind.

24 February 2008

Exodus 17:1-7

We’ve been to the desert before during this Lent. It was just two weeks ago, in fact at the start of Lent, that we encountered Jesus in the desert during his 40 days there. Why would I choose to bring you back to it again through our Hebrew Bible reading this morning? Haven’t we had enough of this dry, arid land? Can’t we move on to oases and life?

That’s a tempting proposition. Let’s just ignore the desert and the wilderness experience. Let’s spend our time talking about life and refreshment. But we too often ignore the desert and the desert experiences we may encounter in our lives. And so, once again, we trek back to the desert. This time though with Moses and the Hebrew people.

We all know the story of the exodus. How the Hebrew people had become slaves in Egypt and Moses was called by God to lead them out. How Moses struck the Red Sea with his staff, allowing the Hebrew people to escape from Egypt as the Egyptian army followed close at their heals. How they came to be a wandering, nomadic people as they waited to find themselves in the land promised to them by God.

You know, we’ve all heard how dense Jesus’ disciples can be at times. I’ve even preached on it myself on occasion. Well, I think that they’re not the only group in the Bible who are portrayed as not getting it. As a whole, the wandering Hebrew people are often just as dense and just as often don’t get it.

Today’s reading from Exodus is the third time that the Hebrew people complain to Moses and to God about their conditions. They complain first, in chapter 15, about water. At that point, Moses turns bitter water into sweet drinkable water. Then, in chapter 16, God provides quail and manna for the hungry hoard. Finally, here in chapter 17, they’re once again thirsty.

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m really on their side. I understand that water is essential to life as much as they did. I’ve been in the physical desert myself. I lived for a time on the driest continent on the earth, Australia. In the desert there, there are rivers that run less than once a year; sometimes only a few times in a century. The Aboriginal people who inhabited that parched, dry land passed from generation to generation songs that told where water could be found, so that their people could continue to survive. It’s a harsh, unforgiving land, that, though beautiful, can kill easily, all for the lack of water. Without water, life ends. It’s that simple.

We all hate to be thirsty. It’s a simple fact. Our bodies are set up to remind us that it needs a drink. In the outback of Australia, where conditions are drier than anywhere else on earth, the need for water is essential. And so it was for the Hebrew people. Knowing that death would come quickly without it, they cried out for water.

But they did more than cry out. They quarreled. They fought against Moses. They quarreled against God. They were a quarreling, bickering lot. Even with the past two times that Moses and God had taken care of them, even with the miraculous exit from Egypt behind them, even though the chains of slavery had been removed from them, they bickered and quarreled. Because they were thirsty and didn’t want their children and themselves to die.

And once again, through Moses, God provided. There in front of the elders of Israel, Moses did as he was told. We went to the rock at Horeb and struck it with his staff; the very same staff with which he struck the Red Sea previously. And there, in front of the gathered elders, water came forth. In that dry, arid, dusty place, water poured forth. And once again the Hebrew people were cared for; once again they drank deeply and revived their strength.


So why is it that we are in the desert again this week? Why do we return here for a word that will spur us to go on? Why do we have to be cognizant of our thirsting, aching souls in the midst of spiritual aridness?

I would bet that most of us, at some time or other, have experienced a spiritual desert in our lives. Times when prayer seemed like a joke and God was distant, if that close. There may be some who never experience that. For them, their faith is a lovely picnic beside an ever-flowing stream. There may be people like that, for sure.

They may make you feel a little jealous perhaps; a little less than faithful, in your desert experience. They, who don’t know the parched feeling of needing a drink, may wonder what you’re talking with your desert experience.

Those of us who do have these desert experiences in our soul, know them too well. They may go on for days, or weeks, or months, or even years. We feel disconnected and empty. And we wonder how we can go on.


The same may be true for our church at the moment. We are thirsty and needing a drink of water, perhaps. We are in a desert experience. We’ve left Egypt, sometimes known as First Christian Church of San Mateo, and we find ourselves wandering toward something promised. But along the way we become thirsty. We yearn for some refreshment. We need water. Perhaps for us, that water takes the form of someone who will take on an empty leadership position. Perhaps, it’s someone who brings special skills that we need. Perhaps, the drink of refreshing water is not a someone but a something; an idea or a plan or a thought.

But we are yearning, gasping, aching for that drink. We wonder if God has really brought us out of our particular land of oppression, simply to die. We find it hard to believe that, but the aridness which surrounds us tells us otherwise. And so we feel like quarreling; quarreling with God. Wondering what sort of God it is that would do this to us. Even challenging God; defying God.

We want results and we want them, oh so badly, now, if not sooner. We want our thirst quenched and our souls revived.


You know, if I were in the desert, and I were searching for water, I would probably bypass tons of rocks. I know that water doesn’t come out of a rock. It wouldn’t make sense. So I would just pass them by; rock after rock. I wouldn’t even try striking them with a stick. I would sensibly be searching for a water hole, or an oasis, or a well, or something. Something that looks like water.

But that’s not God’s way. And we have to remember that. We have to keep in mind that the water that’s going to refresh us may come from the most unexpected of places; the most unlikely of sources. We can’t think about this logically or normally, perhaps. We have to try to find the way that God thinks about this and act like that’s going to happen.

10 February 2008

Matthew 4:1-11

I‘m going to begin this sermon by quoting two somewhat longish paragraphs from a website I visit frequently when preparing sermons. They’re from the United Church of Christ website one page of which gives some starting points or ideas for sermons based on the lectionary. I felt they were so appropriate for today that I would just quote them directly.


In "Lenten Discipline," her sermon on Luke's version of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, Barbara Brown Taylor gives a wonderful description of how Lent came to be (after all, it's not in the Bible). Many years after Jesus had not returned as quickly as expected, church folks "decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian, and before long it was hard to pick them out from among the population at large. They no longer distinguished themselves by their bold love for one another. They did not get arrested for championing the poor. They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy and God moaned out loud" (Home by Another Way).

The church dug deep into its faith story, recalling the time (always with the number forty involved) that Israel, Elijah, and Jesus each spent in the desert, wandering and suffering, longing and learning: hungry. "So the church announced a season of Lent…an invitation to a springtime of the soul," Taylor writes, "Forty days to cleanse the system and open the eyes to what remains when all comfort is gone…to remember what it is like to live by the grace of God alone and not by what we can supply ourselves." Then as now, folks had their "pacifiers," as Taylor calls them, all the things and ways that we keep ourselves from feeling what it means to be human, even if that means being in pain or being afraid. Our pacifiers can convince us that we don't really need God. In fact, Taylor believes that just about all of us struggle with an addiction, "anything we use to fill the empty place inside of us that belongs to God alone. That hollowness we sometimes feel is not a sign of something gone wrong. It is the holy of holies inside of us, the uncluttered room of the Lord our God. Nothing on earth can fill it, but that does not stop us from trying" (Home by Another Way). (http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/february-10-2008-first.html)


So here we are, friends. At the beginning of another Lent; the start of another wilderness experience in the spiritual seasons of our lives. Of course Lent began last Wednesday and some of us began our observances at the Ash Wednesday service at which we were marked with ashes and reminded that we have come from dust and to dust we shall return. We face our very mortality this time of year. We face the desert. We face the dry empty feeling inside us that, as Barbara Brown Taylor observed, only God can fill.

Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, we’re told in today’s gospel. Sometimes we hear that he was driven there by the Spirit. What comes directly before this event is his baptism in the Jordan. Combined, it’s a narrative of contrasts: the wetness of the river with the arid dryness of the wilderness to which he was led; the crowds who witnessed his baptism versus the solitude in which he found himself there; the voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s son against the deafening quiet of the desert.

For forty days, we’re told, he was there in the wilderness; alone and fasting. Certainly by the end of that time he would be famished, as our translation puts it; famished not only for food but for companionship; for relief from the unending landscape of the barren land in which he secluded himself. And that’s, of course, when temptation enters in. That’s when we find Satan coming to him. The devil seeks out Jesus and tempts him three times. Jesus resists these pulls, even in the midst of his emptiness and hunger.

So here we are at the start of our 40 days of Lent this year, 2008. What wilderness experience do we expect to be driven into? It’s easy to ignore it, what with the busy lives we each lead: I’ll get to the wilderness later, you might think. I’ll face the deprivation of being mortal later.

But we lose out if we take that attitude. We miss something valuable. Because, as Barbara Brown Taylor has pointed out, there is an emptiness within each of us that is there just for God. We seek to fill it, and thus avoid the wilderness, with worldly things: money, tv, the internet…things. But it is God-shaped and only God will fill it. It’s a God-shaped emptiness that each of us carries around. And Lent is a time to discover that emptiness; to go to that emptiness, that wilderness which is within each of us sitting here.

Avoiding the wilderness won’t hurt you. You’ll be comfortable, after all. You won’t know the emptiness. But you’ll be foiled if you try to fill it with anything but God. The world will seduce you into thinking that it can fill it. Our culture is good at finding things that look like they will fill that emptiness. But it’s all chimera; fantasies that may work for a while and then will disappear and eventually leave us with that empty feeling again.

We as a congregation observe Lent together, which is good. For Chalice is entering its own period of Lent. Our congregation finds itself in the wilderness experience right now. We find ourselves, much like our spiritual ancestors the Hebrew people, in the desert, wandering, unsure of home, not certain to where we’re headed.

What is the emptiness within us corporately that we are trying to fill? With what are we being enticed? How are we being seduced? Who or what is extending a long slender arm and slowly crooking its finger at us, luring us to try to fill our empty place?


The desert is an interesting place. Its beauty is often hard to see; the dangers are hidden. But we are called there, both individually and corporately. We are called there to find those empty places; to seek out the emptiness within us. We are called there to be away from the inducements of our world, of our culture. We seek out God there in the deprivations we find all around us.

Empty yourself. Here at the start of Lent, empty yourself and find the place for God at the very center of your being. Turn away from the inducements that are lures. It’s not easy; no one ever said it was. Live your life, at least over the next six weeks, as though you were trying to fill that God-shaped emptiness within you with only God.

May God bless us all on this Lenten journey.

23 December 2007

Matthew 1:18-25

Our journey through Advent with Mary has almost come to an end. But not before we let Joseph enter the picture. This week, after 3 weeks of reading Luke’s lead up to the nativity story, Matthew comes in with his precise recounting of the events.
Not in Matthew are the stories of Mary meeting the angel Gabriel and rushing off to see her cousin and singing her song. No, Matthew is more concerned about giving credence to this whole birth story through Joseph.
Last week, you might remember that I went on some about Mary having little to say in the Bible. While Joseph has even less to say! In fact, I read this week about a church putting on a Christmas pageant. Just a day before the pageant, the boy who was supposed to play Joseph came down with a fever. The mother called the director of the pageant, who decided that it was too late to replace the boy with another and just wrote him out of the script. No Joseph in the Christmas pageant. The worst part is that no one noticed!
But Joseph is important to the story. We may not think so, but according to Matthew’s account, he is, because he brings legitimacy to the whole affair. In fact, it is through Joseph that Matthew traces Jesus’ lineage. The first verses of Matthew’s gospel are spent listing out the ancestors of Jesus through Matthew; back to David, back to Abraham. These are the “begats” using the language of the King James Bible that most of us grew up with. According to Matthew, Jesus legitimacy as a ruler of Israel goes back to the fact that Joseph is a descendent of David, the great ruler some 1,000 years earlier. And Matthew doesn’t really pull any punches in this genealogy. He includes the good with the bad: the adulterers, the cheats, the prostitutes and probably a horse thief or two. They’re all there.
Let’s recap the story from Matthew. Joseph and Mary are betrothed; which is an old way to say sort of that they were engaged to be married. Being betrothed then though, carried much more weight than does engagement these days. It’s a legal standing. The two people are bound to each other legally. Of course, it meant that the woman was the man’s property. It’s not a nice way to think about it, but there you have it.
Before they lived together though, Mary gets pregnant; by the Holy Spirit, Matthew is quick to tell us. Joseph is a righteous man; someone who follows the laws of his faith and keeps to Jewish rules. He can’t marry Mary, not in her, as we say, condition. But he’s also a good man who doesn’t want her unnecessarily disgraced. He plans “to dismiss her quietly” whatever that means. It doesn’t mean that he make a public disgrace of her and, at worst, have her stoned to death. Joseph, in his righteousness, is going to follow the rules but he’s not going to go the whole public route.
But just as he’s decided that, one of God’s angels, an unnamed one, but I like to think it was Gabriel again, comes to him; this angel comes to him in a dream and tells Joseph that he should indeed go ahead and take Mary as his wife. The angel explains the whole thing: how Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit and that this child will grow up to be a savior of the people. In fact, the angel tells Joseph what he should name the child: Jesus. Jesus which is the Greek version of Joshua which is an old Hebrew name meaning God saves.
Then Matthew does an interesting thing. He reaches back into Hebrew history again to quote Isaiah; the Hebrew Bible reading that we heard this morning in fact. Matthew uses this quote to bring legitimacy once again to the whole proceedings. Matthew’s book was written around the years 80-90. He has a Jewish audience; those early followers of the Way, as early Christians were called, who had come into the faith from Judaism, as opposed to those who were gentiles. The readers and hearers of Matthew’s gospel would know Isaiah and would get it.
But back to our story. Joseph, awaking from this incredible dream and being a faithful believer, does as he is told: he marries Mary. He takes her as his wife, pregnant as she is and even does name the child Jesus.
And that’s it. That’s the whole of the birth narrative from Matthew. Sure, the visit of the Wise Ones from the East, astrologers likely, not kings as we’ve come to call them, follows in Matthew’s story. But that could have been years later and is for Epiphany Sunday a few weeks from now.
But Matthew begins his Gospel with the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, this brief birth narrative and then the visit by the Wise Ones from the East. It’s terse and not filled with the emotions of the Luke version that we all know and love.
Matthew’s point is to give authenticity to a Jewish audience of Jesus’ place as a ruler; some 60 years after Jesus was crucified. By that point it was obvious that Jesus had not become the earthly ruler who would overthrow the Roman Empire that everyone had hoped for and expected. Instead, Jesus was born to be a different kind of ruler. And that’s the point that Matthew is making. Jesus rules a heavenly realm; one in which earthly matters aren’t a concern.
On this final Sunday of Advent, when all our candles save the Christ candle are aglow on our wreath, we are called to remember the couple who thousands of years ago were faithful & obedient to their God. We are called to remember Mary and Joseph, who met with angels and became the parents of the one who would grow to be our savior.
As we plunge headlong into Christmas, it is right that we should pause before that happens to remember those who allowed the birth stories to happen. Those who through their willingness to follow God into new and strange territories of their faith can teach us about being faithful.
Both Mary and Joseph were called to do things beyond their faith; they were called to do new things and they did so willingly and unquestioningly. Will we, now and throughout the year, be so willing and unquestioning? Will we, in our attempts to be God’s people, be open to new and different ways of being? With God’s help, I think each of us can.

16 December 2007

Luke 1:46-55

Growing up as I did in the Methodist and Presbyterian churches, I didn’t get much information about Mary. She showed up around this time of the year in the Christmas pageant and that was about all. She sat there, silently behind the manger, never a word crossing her lips.
In fact, throughout the New Testament, she doesn’t say much. In John she has some things to say. In Mark, though, where there is no nativity story, she’s barely mentioned, and she doesn’t utter a single word in Matthew. Paul refers to her as Jesus’ mother but never gives her name. But in Luke, ah in Luke, we have some remarkable words from Mary. Words that have gone done through millennia to provide prophetic hope to millions, by now billions, of believers. I’m talking about those words that were heard this morning known by most Christians as the Magnificat. The word “Magnificat” by the way is the Latin word that begins Mary’s song and has come to identify it.
Remember the sequence here now. First we have the angel Gabriel arriving to announce to Mary that she will carry God’s only child. Then we have the meeting between Mary and her relative Elizabeth who is carrying John the Baptist. Elizabeth’s words, if you remember from last week’s reading, upon seeing Mary were: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” (NRSV)
Immediately, Mary goes into her song: her song of praise and thanksgiving to God. Now, Mary is not necessarily in what we would call “a good space” to be singing praises and thanksgiving. She’s dirt poor, even according to her own song, and here she is, unmarried and pregnant. She comes from nowhere…Nazareth, a Podunk if there ever was one. Nazareth isn’t mentioned in the Hebrew Bible at all; neither is it mentioned in the Jewish writings nor by the historian, Josephus. Mary is a nobody from nowheresville: a pregnant, unmarried nobody from nowheresville!
So why should such a person sing? What would possess this young woman, in one of the most frightening situations of her life, to come out in song? Well, she knows something that we’ve also been let in on: that God has favored her. God has lifted her up and given her a special status. Her song rings out as she’s standing there with her old cousin Elizabeth, the both of them with child and rejoicing in their state.
These words of Mary’s which come down to us thanks to the foresight of Luke, are indeed important. As Protestants, we’ve lost much of the feeling for Mary that our Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters have. The Eastern Orthodox, in fact, have a special name for her: Theotokos which means “God-bearer.” But we have much to reclaim if we let Mary into our lives.
Luke reminds us, from the very start of his gospel, through Mary’s song, that God roots for the lesser-thans. First, God picked Mary as the bearer of God’s son. But secondly, the words of Mary’s song remind us of this fact. She sings that God “has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly,” among others.
Mary’s song goes from the personal to the political. She recognizes the extreme favor God has shown her at the beginning and moves to how, through this child whom she is carrying, the status quo will be upended. No more will the powerful reign and the rich control everything. The coming of this child marks the start of a new realm; an everlasting realm that raises up the lowly and sends the rich away hungry.
But wait, you might say, the powerful reign and the rich control everything now. What good is this 2,000-year old song if none of it happens? Why should we listen to Mary now?
Because we all need hope. Because we all need to believe that the status quo is upended in God’s commonwealth. Because we all need to be reminded that God does not operate the way we do.
Mary sings not only for herself but also for all the poor and lowly and meek of all the centuries, of all the places. Mary sings out a warning to rulers and potentates and rich people everywhere. Mary reminds all of us, rich and poor, mighty and lowly, powerful and powerless, that God selects whom God will for God’s work on this earth. And God’s selects in a way that humanity might not understand.
Is Mary’s song our song? Do we sing along with Mary these radical words of justice? Or do the words stick in our throats, maybe just a bit, as we choke out our faint echo of Mary’s soaring descant?
We want our Advent to be soft and easy; like the wrappings on the presents under the Christmas tree. But Mary doesn’t let us off. Mary’s acclamation of God and her praise to the one whose child she is bearing is not the easy carols we love to sing this time of year. Instead, we are dealing with tough issues that unsettle us. Advent is not necessarily all twinkly and bright. Advent can be just as challenging as Lent, that other time of preparation.
Mary sings out from a place of emptiness and, likely, fearfulness. She knows only one thing: that God has chosen her. And that is enough to make her sing; enough to make the song rise and soar from her lips to the heavens.
We are not in such places for the most part. Most of us are safe and secure and not considered among the lowliest of our society. That is why that song might cause us to stumble a bit as we try to sing along with Mary. We don’t know on which side of the dichotomy we fall as Mary sings. We’re not sure whether we’re rich or poor; powerful or powerless. But the important question is whether we are going to join in on God’s side; whether we’ll take up the cause of the poor and powerless, even if we aren’t necessarily counted among them.
Sing out, Mary, continue your song! Sing out across the miles and the centuries. Sing out for the poor and the lowly of every age and place. Sing out for God has chosen you for important work. Sing out your song of joy and hope. Sing out and lead us to the manger where you will bear a savior. Sing out and urge us to join in the song.

9 December 2007

Luke 1:39-45

We are spending Advent here at Chalice with Mary, the Mother of Jesus. There are few chances, in our male-dominated scriptures, for a female figure to shine as Mary does, especially during this season. Last week we heard, and saw, the Annunciation; the communication between Gabriel, the angel, & Mary informing her that she would become the mother of God’s child.

This week we get the next installment of Mary’s pregnancy; the visit that Mary makes to Elizabeth. Mary and Elizabeth are kinswomen; relatives in some way. Mary has been sent by Gabriel, you might remember from last week’s reading, to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth has her own story to tell, which Luke does recount to us earlier in his gospel account, prior to the annunciation. Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah are childless and beyond normal childbearing years, which makes this meeting all the more poignant.

Zechariah, Luke tells us, is a priest and while he was serving in the Temple had his own visit from the angel Gabriel. Gabriel came to tell him that he and Elizabeth would have a child whom they would name John. Zechariah at first doesn’t believe Gabriel and, in consequence, is made mute for the duration of the pregnancy. And indeed, Elizabeth and Zechariah did conceive. And it was in the midst of this pregnancy, six months into it in fact, that Mary came to visit.

So our actors today are these two women: one the young girl, just of marrying age, which was apparently pretty young in those days, and the elderly woman who should be past her child bearing years. Both are miraculously pregnant: Mary by God Godself and Elizabeth in her old age.

It’s interesting to note how this story is recounted. Both Elizabeth and her in-womb child react to Mary upon her arrival, without knowing yet Mary’s miraculous story. Elizabeth, we are told, in fact was filled with the Holy Spirit when Mary greets her.

Now, Elizabeth, we know is carrying John: John who would become known as John the Baptist. He, the one who would prepare the way for Jesus with his calls for repentance in the desert, is being carried by Elizabeth. He would have his own disciples and followers and make enough of a fuss to cause him to be jailed and executed by Herod. But that’s a story for another time in the year.

Right now we’re focused on Mary and Elizabeth, meeting in that small hill town in Judea. What can this meeting mean to us, some 2,000 years later? Why should we bother with these two women, both probably poor and insignificant in their own culture?

Well, because God has made them significant. God has come into their lives and raised them up. God doesn’t care about their cultural standing. God has special jobs just for them and cares not one whit about their social standing. God did not pick out a queen to bear either Jesus or John. God did not go to the wealthiest class to find women to be the mothers of these two important figures.


The General Minister and President of our denomination, Sharon Watkins, in the video we just watched, spoke of hope in the Middle East. Hope for a brighter future; hope for peace and an end to strife. In many ways, today’s story is similar. For what is a more hopeful time than pregnancy? During this time, one hopes for the future in a personal way: will my baby be a boy or a girl; will it be healthy; how will she or he grow up?

In much the same way, we are in the same situation. I know of a minister several years ago, who got in trouble by getting up in the pulpit during Advent and proclaiming, “People of God, we’re pregnant.” I doubt that I would get into the same trouble as she did for making such a proclamation here. But it’s true; we are pregnant as God’s people; pregnant with the hope of which Rev. Watkins spoke. Pregnant with anticipation of the way things will turn out in our world.

As someone said to Rev. Watkins during her trip to the Holy Land, we don’t have the luxury of losing hoping. It’s as true for us, as Christians awaiting the coming of our savior, as it is for those who deal daily with the violence of the Middle East. As we await, we do not have the luxury of losing hope. We must hold onto hope, as do those in Israel and Palestine, as do those who are pregnant carrying new life in their bodies.

People of God, we are indeed pregnant. And our pregnancy is one in which we shall wait, hopeful for the outcome and for God’s realm on our earth. Mary and Elizabeth knew of that hope. Both were graced by God and knew that they had hope not just for their family but for all of humanity.

As we remember Mary and Elizabeth meeting in that small hillside village all those years ago, let us live in the hope in which they did and watch for the Holy Spirit to come over us and lead us to leap with joy for the coming of the one who will save us.