The Power of Yes: Sermon for the 4th Sunday in Advent B

A couple of years ago, a sweet little film about family life was released called Yes Day. I loved the opening of the movie. It mused upon the way that we often change through the stages of our lives. The Mom character reflects upon, in her young adulthood, how she lived a life of adventure, saying yes to, say backpacking through India and hitchhiking with Buddhist monks, going rock climbing on a whim, meeting and marrying her future husband. Their lives revolved around saying “yes” to all the adventures and opportunities life has to offer.

Then came the kids. And suddenly yes becomes foolhardy, especially around things like playing near power outlets, beating up your kid sister, jumping off of roofs, and strapping rockets to your back to try to fly. Just for starters. And like in many families, Mom ends up being the Mean Baddy while Dad too often opts for “Fun Daddy.”

I don’t want to spoil the movie. Let’s just say that the family bonds through the experience, even when things go wrong. There are some challenges, and in the end the kids learn that sometimes yes comes from a place of love, and no comes from a place of love.

But it got me thinking. We live in a strange time—one in which we supposedly have a plethora of choices, but in which we feel ever more powerless to change the most important things about our lives. We have fifty-seven different kinds of laundry detergent, but if we want to have better roads without potholes or cleaner water or our children to be able to go to school and feel safe, we are often told it can’t be done.

We DO live in a time when “No” too often takes precedence over “yes.” Too often cynicism takes precedence over hope. We are told we are powerless, we are told to hate anyone different from us, we are told to look out for ourselves no matter how much that might hurt others. Too often, “no” is a substitute for not having to try, for not challenging ourselves, for not having faith in ourselves and each other and our collective power if we work together.

Our Gospel today opens with the Archangel Gabriel appearing in Galilee to a virgin named Mary. This scene is beautifully depicted in numerous pieces of art throughout the centuries, and they all usually share certain images and symbols. There’s a lily, symbol of purity somewhere near the young woman. She is often shown with a book of devotions or of Isaiah’s prophecies. The Holy Spirit, depicted as a dove, hovers just above them on the edge of the picture, awaiting the young woman’s answer, waiting for welcome. It’s a beautiful and imaginative depiction of the ways that Mary has inspired artists, poets, and musicians for centuries.

In reality, Luke’s gospel makes it clear that Mary is not a person of high position—far from it. She is a teenaged peasant girl in an obscure, dusty corner of a mighty empire. She is a person that in every way is hemmed in by “no.” She has no power, no position, no wealth. Her marriage to Joseph has probably been arranged by her parents and his parents. Everything she has ever done has been without her consent. She is a young woman in an occupied country under the thumb of a despotic empire. No one takes any account of her.

Yet suddenly one day, an angel of God appears before her and treats her like-- somebody. Gabriel greets her as “O favored one,” and says that the Lord is with her. When Mary was declared to be God’s “favored one” one wonders if she did not have to fight off the urge to look behind her to see if the angel was talking to someone else.

In the face of this messenger from God, she’s not afraid, but rather is perplexed and puzzled. Prophecies are then made about the child she is going to have, with even more amazing titles being used to describe the child. Mary responds, “How can this be?” and Gabriel explains to her the miraculous things in store for her.

She could have run. Heck, she SHOULD have run. But instead, the beginning of our clue that she is tougher than she appears begins right here.

She considers. And she says yes.

This is an important point. Mary agrees to bear this child of God of her own volition. Mary had the freedom to say “No,” but the courage and the faith to say “Yes.”

Mary had the freedom to say “No,” but models for us the courage and the faith to say “Yes.”

And her yes has consequences that she herself witnesses—she is the only person in scripture to be present at Jesus’s birth, obviously, as well as at his crucifixion (John 19:25), and on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 1:15). In her Magnificat we hear her thunder with a prophetic voice a very specific vision of the justice and economy of God’s kingdom—a vision that undoubtedly resonates with the message her son himself will embody.

God’s call to Mary is an invitation, not a command. It seems impossible. And yet, “Nothing is impossible with God” Gabriel reminds her—and us. As crazy as this all sounds, Mary ponders… and says “Yes,” even though her entire world will be changed in unimaginable ways. In giving her assent, with faith, hope, and heart, Mary is one of the most astounding examples of human free will joyfully and humbly collaborating with God.

What would it be like if WE decided to say yes to God? Because saying yes to God may be the only thing that will ever change the world for the better. Saying no sure doesn’t seem to have worked, you know? God doesn’t call us to sit on the sidelines. God calls us to believe—to believe in God, and more immediately to believe in each other—in the power of good in the face of evil. What if we said yes to acting in the power of love, to allow that power to change and empower us, even when it is risky. Maybe especially if it is risky.

Can we share in Mary’s courage and faith? Can we say yes to God, and allow God to work through us to transform us each and every day, and therefore to transform and restore the world?

Can we say yes to bearing Jesus within our very selves, to making ourselves a home in which Christ can dwell? Can we say yes to acting as Christ’s hands and feet into the world in ways great and small?

Can we say yes to Christ’s enduring gifts to us- faith, hope, and charity- and receive them abundantly?

Can we say yes to testifying to who Jesus is in our lives, to the thousand ways he is present to us and alive in us today, in faces both beloved and unknown to us?

Can we say yes, and let that yes change us?

To remember that in working with us and through us, Christ’s healing power helps gather up the shattered places within ourselves and repairs them so that we can have new life and hope, living lives of purpose and meaning far beyond our imaginations?

To remember that God became human so that humans could know and embody the healing love of the Holy One of God?

God became human so that humans could know and ourselves embody the healing love of the Holy One of God.

Even now, at this moment before Christmas comes, God invites us to carry Christ out into the world, every day. Mary is a model to all of us who seek to follow in the Way of Jesus. Her story reminds us that we all have the choice as to whether we will bear Christ into the world—or not.

It's important to remember that the full name for Christmas Day is “The Feast of the Incarnation.” This is the season we remember that God became human and lived among us. That’s what Incarnation means. with all its rich meaning for us in the holy way we are called to live our lives is why I hope you make a point of worshiping at either the 505 on Saturday or on Sunday at 10:30. The gospel text for Advent 4 contains one of the most awe-inspiring encounters in the gospels: the Annunciation of Gabriel to Mary, followed by Mary’s stirring song of faith and praise known as the Magnificat. It’s fitting that the season of Advent this year reminds us that Jesus, as revolutionary as he was, was his mother’s son. As God in human flesh, Jesus came by his faithfulness, and his boldness naturally.

Why is this important? Because, as Jesus reminds us repeatedly throughout the gospels, Jesus does not come to live among us solely to be worshipped, but rather, and more importantly to be the exemplar of how we are called to live and act. Jesus lives among us as fully human and fully God to open to each of us the way to live a God-centered life. And God is alongside us, to help us, as we affirm in our baptismal covenant’s promises.

The Incarnation reminds us: We are not called to be spectators. We are called to be participants in God’s divine plan for human flourishing. That’s true worship—a way of living that changes the world, with God’s help.

That’s why Mary is asked, rather than commanded, to participate in her role as the Mother of God. Her own Magnificat is a full-throated celebration of how she sees God’s dream for the human family, and how her participation is a blessing. This is why it is so useful to pray the O Antiphons in the week leading up to Christmas Eve, by the way.

The Incarnation is the counterpoint to the death-dealing systems that spring forth whenever humanity forgets that it is called into partnership with God, starting from being made in the image of God and through the yearly celebration of God coming to live among us as one of us so that we may be inspired to join in God’s saving work on earth.

Mary’s courage can be our own. This year, may we all live so that our souls proclaim the greatness of the Lord, and our spirits rejoice in God, our Savior, who has looked with favor on us, his lowly servants. May we say "Yes" to God, and be blessed.

Amen.

Readings:

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Romans 16:25-27

Canticle 15

Luke 1:26-38

Preached at the 505 on December 23 and the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist on December 24 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Two Prophets, Two Songs, One Revolution: Sermon for Advent 4C

The domesticity of this scene is striking. Women are the main characters, the bold actors, the righteous proclaimers of truths their menfolk either greeted with silence or shied away from, or both. As soon as Mary offers her assent to God via God’s heavenly messenger, Gabriel, she sprints to her kinswoman Elizabeth’s house.

Both of these women are bearing children whose very coming into existence could be fuel for gossip and scandal. Elizabeth’s pregnancy stands out because she has been childless so long that she undoubtedly had been written off as forgotten by God and forgotten by a society that prized a woman’s fertility as her main contribution. Mary’s pregnancy, once it becomes obvious, puts her at the risk of losing the only thing she had as a poor peasant girl, and that was her good name—even though that also was more the property of her father than a possession she herself could benefit from.

Elizabeth also has embraced a future that includes raising up a prophetic rebel who will sneer at the powerful and taunt the complacent with the vision of restored divine justice that makes a mockery of preference and privilege for those who deck themselves in finery and claim the best places and the softest garments.

And Mary herself? She is often portrayed in art as a twenty-something, fair-haired, cool and collected like Grace Kelly. Yet the truth is undoubtedly less comfortable. She is probably in her middle teens. She is poor, ragged, uneducated, powerless by society’s standards.

But Mary’s family is left unmentioned probably because they didn’t bear mentioning, day laborers from peasant stock living from hand to hand—the reason why Jesus’s prayer later asks God to provide the daily bread. She was betrothed to a probably much older man. This arrangement was made by her father, probably and decreed by a society that saw this alignment of circumstances as optimal by maximizing a bride’s child-bearing years with a man’s ability to be established and support a family. Her yes to that probably didn’t exist. She was probably told what would happen after her father and Joseph concluded negotiations.

But then along comes the messenger of God before her, which is the first stunning development in her role in this drama.

The next stunning developments come the minute the angel opens its mouth: First, the angel calls her “favored one,” and from everything she has probably experienced until this time in her life, that probably had not been an adjective she would have used to describe her circumstances. However, in the Greek, there is a pun here: the root for the word “greetings” also means “grace” or “favor.” And it states that right then she is perplexed. The angel points out the previously childless Elizabeth’s good fortune—and that her pregnancy is well advanced. The miracle part is made explicit—this has all been God’s doing. That’s good salesmanship, there, for the next step.

Then the angel puts before a proposal, and contrary to what some people still claim today, God never forces us to obedience or belief, not even through fear or threat of smiting or awe or might. There is ALWAYS a choice—that’s what having the free will as part of our inheritance from God is all about. So Mary gets a choice.

That means we can’t take for granted the cost of that choice. Her yes comes with staggering potential for her own destruction. Unmarried, but engaged to another man, her pregnancy will condemn her in the eyes of the world—and if it is known that the child is not Joseph’s, death by stoning. She could be thrown out by her parents, denounced by Joseph, and killed.

But there is one thing she DOES have in abundance—and that is trust. So she assents—and the scene makes her sound meek and mild like the carol says. “Let it be with me according to what you say,” she says, with eyes lowered, we think. Yet what if her reply is also asserting that her only master is God, not any of the other people who might think they control her destiny as a teenaged Jewish peasant girl in occupied Roman territory. Perhaps not so meek, after all.

The angel leaves, and she hotfoots it to her kinswoman Elizabeth’s house. And as Elizabeth sees her approaching, her child leaps inside her so hard it takes her breath away.

Elizabeth at this moment becomes not just the mother of a prophet, but a prophet herself: she knows Mary’s news even before a word is spoken. Elizabeth bursts into a brief song of triumph, speaking with awe about her younger relative that already shows the reversal in their hierarchical status. Elizabeth’s song has traditionally been mixed together with the words of Gabriel to Mary to create the opening to what is known to our Roman Catholic kindred as the “Ave Maria:”

“Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you,”
the angel intones, and Elizabeth expands and makes specific the observation:
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.”

Two things arise here: first, Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah may be a priest, but his silencing has caused a reversal, for this is a priestly blessing if ever there was one. Elizabeth finishes her thought with saying WHY she knows Mary is blessed, even before Mary has had the chance to tell her story. And then she blesses her kinswoman with a blessing that lies underneath the text of the Hail Mary: “Blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by God.”

Mary is blessed and favored and filled with grace by her trust in God. Because trust is really what belief as a theological term means. It doesn’t mean simply intellectual assent. It means being able to lean in and upon the promises of God. That promise called grace—the idea, as Nadia Bolz-Weber says, that God has said yes to us first, always.

Elizabeth continues in astonishment and prophecy, for both she and her unborn child know that the Mother of God, and the savior she will bear, have drawn near, bringing also nearer the kingdom of God.

Two women, so different in age and status in life, are nonetheless bound together by their willingness to cling to God’s promises, both astonished and joyful at the changes that will present themselves in their lives. Both are willing to have their lives be completely upended and transfigured by faith that God’s promises will be fulfilled within them. They are transformed by anticipation of a re-ordering of justice based on trust in the tandem qualities of God’s strength and mercy in both their own lives and in the life of their community.

Mary responds to Elizabeth’s song with one of her own, and it is a song of Joy, yes—but more importantly of power and of revolution. And so we are reminded, again, what cannot be repeated enough, and that the Rev. Shug has been exploring with parishioners during our Sunday adult forum on spirituals the last several weeks: Singing is not just an act of joy. Singing itself is often an act of resistance.

The victory songs we hear in our readings today predict a re-ordering of life from human injustice to God’s justice, the approaching triumphant flourishing of shalom foretold in prophets such as Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Deborah. And the important part for us, the challenging and yet also good news for us is this: WE are the agents of that revolution. Wanna change the world? Pray, sing—then ACT.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God calls us to serve as slaves to the causes of justice and peace that was woven into the very fabric of creation itself, yet derailed by humanity’s omnipresent arrogance and willfulness. As the outbursts of joy coming from Elizabeth and Mary at their greeting make clear, the approaching Spirit calls us back to the beginning. As God sang creation into being, so too the response elicited by new life and new creation experienced by Elizabeth and Mary is a powerful exclamation of anticipation, hope, and fulfillment. These are hopes that we ourselves cling to in the times in which we struggle against despair and strife in our own lives, and in our own communities.

How often do we grope and grasp for some reassurance of God’s presence in our lives, and struggle to hold on to hope when the anxieties and pressures of life seem to crush in upon us? The life-giving presence of the Spirit as manifested in the visitation between Mary and Elizabeth reminds us that God’s power breaks loose in the most unexpected times and ways. In response to the in-breaking of God’s Spirit into these women’s lives, they are given a vision of a new triumph of peace; structures of injustice and weapons of war have been shattered; the hungry are satisfied and at peace; the oppressed are lifted up and exalted, while the oppressors are humbled and crumbled. In times of struggle, hopefulness itself is an act of rebellion and resistance. Those who have been empty, without hope, have been, and will be, filled.

Mary shows us the pattern for our own journey of faith. Mary responds with trust and power, but never surrender. With a crown of stars swirling around her head, she responds:

Let it be for me as you have said. And let me play my part in turning the world upside down, in resisting the powers of oppression and inhumanity.

Preached at the 505 on December 18 and at the 10:30 Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

• Micah 5:2-5a
• Hebrews 10:5-10
• Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)
• Canticle 15 (or 3)

From Yes to Witness: Sermon for Advent 4B

The angel rode a rope of light down through the stars, and landed lighter than a dust mote right behind the old priest.

Gabriel, whose name means “God is my strength,” watches old Zechariah fussing about with a light in the Holy of Holies in the Temple, glides in behind him and down like a feather and promptly startles a year off the old priest’s life. The angel loomed up out of the shadows like a gargoyle for an instant, but then the radiance that rolled off Gabriel like as an afterglow from the heavenly courts lodged behind the old priest’s left eye and began to grow like a rising moon on the horizon.

The angel told the priest to not be afraid, calling him by name, Zachariah, as if that would reassure the old man that she was friendly, but you might as well tell someone to decide not to breathe. Gabriel relays the message, a prophecy about a child, complete with child’s name, and what the child will mean to the people of Israel. Now other people, when they’ve gotten the full treatment—spotted the wings, the glory, the rising light in the eye—they’ve gone straight to laughing, or singing, or both. Not Zechariah. Despite his fear, Zechariah doubts the words of Gabriel. In return, Gabriel gives Zechariah an affronted version of “Do you know who I am?’ and as a lesson, Zechariah is struck mute for nine months.

Six months later, Gabriel slides down that rope of light again, but this time to Galilee. The angel expects to see a slight young woman, this Mary, gown and hair making her seem larger than she is, near a locked garden to remind us of how pure she is. Gabriel touches down lightly, like a dancer, a dancer who spends most of her time in the air and not earth-bound.

Gabriel takes a step back at the determined light coming from Mary’s eyes as she looks up from her book. A stem of lilies appears in Gabriel’s hand—trumpets to announce that the walls of sin and death will fall before the power of Love Incarnate. Lilies offered-- offered and accepted, and at the moment Mary touches them they become brighter white, and a sweet scent twines itself around the room.

The angel greets her as “O favored one,” and says that the Lord is with her. Although she’s a very young woman, her response is interesting: she’s not afraid, but rather is perplexed and puzzled. When Mary was declared to be God’s “favored one” one wonders if she did not have to fight off the urge to look behind her to see if the angel was talking to someone else. Where are all those signs of “favor?” Is she rich, well-connected?

Yet just as with Zechariah, Gabriel assures her that she shouldn’t be afraid and addresses her by name. In place of being told her prayers are being answered, she is assured once again that she has the favor of God.

And so in these verses we hear in our gospel are the seeds of the so-called “Angelic Salutation,” the Ave Maria, or “Hail Mary:”

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners now,
And at the hour of our death. Amen.


And Mary considers this. That same light that filled Zechariah’s eye blooms within Mary’s dark gaze, and begins to glow.

But Gabriel explains to her exactly how it’s going to happen—that she will bear her own child. To give credence to this prediction, Gabriel references Mary’s kinswoman Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Where Zechariah scoffed and was made mute, Mary ponders, and gets the last word: Yes. At the moment Mary declares herself a servant of the Lord, violets spring up outside the window where angel and maiden meet.

You would think that she would be the one who would refuse to believe that she had found favor with God, given her lowly station as a probably barely-teenaged peasant girl living literally in the middle of nowhere. God’s call to Mary is an invitation, not a command. It seems impossible. And yet, “Nothing is impossible with God.” As crazy as this all sounds, Mary ponders… and says “Yes,” even though her entire world will be changed in unimaginable ways. In giving her assent, she is the supreme example of cooperation and collaboration with God and human free will.

This is an important point. Mary agrees to do this absolutely of her own volition—she had the ability to say “No,” but the courage and the faith to say “Yes.” Her choice. Her song. Calling us to our own witness.

And yet this week’s gospel reading leaves us hanging. Puzzlingly, in this year we don’t get the record of the longest conversation between two women in the entire New Testament—Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth, and Mary’s resulting prophetic shout of liberation, The Magnificat. Luckily, the Magnificat is today’s canticle.

It is clear the two prayers—the Hail Mary and the Magnificat—are meant to be considered together. At the Annunciation Mary says yes to God. In the Magnificat she explains why she said yes. She moves for yes to the angel, to joy and proclamation with Elizabeth. She says yes so God’s economy, God’s reign, God’s household, God’s justice can be brought to life and embodied amongst us, starting with Mary. Yes to love, yes to mercy, yes to restoration and stretching all the way to dusty roads running to and from Jerusalem and back again.

The Magnificat erupts from Mary’s throat as a song of joy and triumph the moment Elizabeth and Mary see each other. One young, one old, but these two women share the longest conversation between two women in the New Testament, reveling in a bond not just of kinship or shared expectancy, but of two people who know the power of God in their lives.

And Mary’s song moves from joy to power, from being full of grace to being full of fire. Mary goes from the Mother of God to God’s disciples with a full-throated roar that would make Elijah, Isaiah, or Jonah weep for envy. Mary creates a song so powerful that its singing has been banned on slave plantations, in India under the British raj. In Argentina during the reign of the dictator Pinochet, mothers of the disappeared were banned from singing the Magnificat as a protest against government terror on its own citizens.

The Magnificat is a threat to unjust regimes everywhere, for it clearly realigns the world and names the work of a God who is not waiting until tomorrow to act. Mary speaks with certainty from the other side of oppression. God HAS pulled down the corrupt mighty from their thrones. God HAS filled the bellies of the hungry. God HAS lifted up the lowly—starting with Mary herself. And God asks us, like Mary, to join in that work, and against injustice anywhere.

As a prophet, as a freedom fighter, Mary herself is suffused with light. After that assent to God’s holy messenger, with the acceptance of the offered lily, Mary is no mere vessel. She offers her very being to God—and to the raising of her son. She says yes, not because she expects that being “favored” bit to translate into being blessed by wealth or renown. She says yes, and then in the Magnificat waves the banner of true equality which is justice and God’s real reign set into motion.

Mary says yes, because she knows that when King David wanted to build a palace for God, David was also trying to domesticate God—to place God within a gilded cage, rather than in the human heart and as the center of the human community, where God longed to reign. With Mary’s yes, God is restored to live among us and within our hearts again. To live as one of us to show us that we can live by not the iron law of devouring each other but in compassion, amity and justice.

She says yes to show us the courage we are given when we say yes to God, when we consent to raise our field of vision from our own navels to the horizons of hope that is God’s invitation to live in a different better way than by our own blindness, brokenness, and prejudice. She says yes to encourage us all to allow the Son of God to grow. Within us, under our hearts, and to bear him forth into a world that STILL does not know the beauty of his gospel. We are all called to give birth to Christ in the world, and mother his gospel to those who need his good news the most.

Mary is a model to all of us who seek to follow in the Way of Jesus. Her story reminds us that we all have the choice to say yes and to see what HAS already happened by the hand of God in our lives. It is up to us to choose to assent—or not. To lift our eyes from our own feet to the horizon of God’s grace that. is waiting to fill us up to overflowing as well.

Our choice is this: will we bear Christ into the world—or not? Do we want to unlock the chains of fear, hopelessness and distrust that bind us to the ways of fear, or do we want to be free-- Free to offer our opened spirits like a bowl to be filled with the promise of salvation, to respond in faith and courage to God’s plea to live not in wood or stone building where human hands can keep God safely locked away, but within our hearts?

How would it change our perspective and our lives to go from confining Jesus inside a box of our own making, and instead to make Mary’s song our own:

My soul overflows with the greatness of God,
My spirit sings unending praise to One Who Saves,
the One who lifts up the lowly servant
who dares to be the instrument of God Most High.
Surely, from now to time unending
All generations will see that I have been blessed.

What would it be like to allow the power of hope and assurance of God’s steadfast presence to make its home with our spirits? What could we do? What could prevail against us?

May we have the courage to say yes. Yes to bearing Jesus in our hearts, and in our lives, in our words, and in our deeds. Yes to our souls magnifying the greatness of our God in our life and in our work. Yes to making ourselves a true home and witness for God, forgiven, healed, and renewed.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am online worship service in Coronatide from St. Marin's Episcopal.  Church, Ellisville, MO. 

Readings:

Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Romans 16:25-27

Luke 1:26-38

Canticle 15

Prayer, day 2886: The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Almighty God, we sing your glory,
joining the joyful song of creation
as our souls sing out your greatness!
How beautiful upon the treetops
is the rising light of morning:
O God, you bless us beyond measure with beauty
and our hearts kneel before you in praise!

Give us your favor, O Redeemer,
in leading us to consent to your will in our lives,
that we may join our hands in unity
in the pursuit of justice and peace,
pulling down oppression from its throne,
filling the hungry with good things from the bounty we have.

Strengthen us to bear you into the world, Blessed Jesus,
as a mother carries her child
close to her heart.

Holy One, place the protection
of your mighty arm and heart
over us this day,
and guide us in paths of gentleness and compassion.
Stretch out the awning of your mercy, Beloved Savior,
over all who rest in your care.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2680

Holy One,
I lift my heart before You
and amplify the proclamation of your glory.

May I proclaim your greatness, O God,
from the depths of my soul
with a shout of joy and victory.
May I give thanks, Lord,
for your manifold blessings and great mercy
that maintain my life and my spirit.

Your love, O Almighty One, forever will I sing
joining the chorus of generations in praise.
May I walk in paths of justice and mercy
that my life may testify to the power of the Holy One.

For You, O Sustainer,
call us to stand alongside the oppressed
and fill the hungry with good things.
You, O Mighty One,
cast down the oppressor
and scatter the schemes of the powerful.
You, O Savior,
have lifted up the humble
and exalted the ordinary,
but chasten the tyrants
and call them to justice.

Your promises are our foundation and hope, O God:
we appeal to You in trust and faith as we pray.

Amen.

Mary the Rebellious One: Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, Year C

I have always harbored a favoritism for Luke’s gospel, because it is the most musical of all the gospels. In addition to poetic prophecies and beautiful imagery, there are several songs in the opening chapters. A majority of the words to the Ave Maria, one of my favorite hymns as well as prayers, is found here, and indeed we hear a part of it today.

As we heard previously, the priest Zechariah is released from silence and burst forth in song when his longed-for son John is born, even though he and his wife were supposedly beyond child-bearing age. Angels will burst forth from heaven in song above the heads of shepherds at Jesus’s birth. When the baby Jesus is brought to the Temple, the old man Simeon will sing a song when he is allowed to take the infant into his arms, a song of gratitude for allowing him to live long enough to see such a day. But the greatest song in Luke is the first song: the Song of Mary, what we call the Magnificat.

And these songs are not ordinary songs. They are as much acts of resistance as they are outpourings of joy. They remind us that joy and rebellion can both be testimony of what God is doing in our lives. Resistance and glorious visions of justice for the oppressed ring throughout our gospel today.

First, there is Elizabeth’s resistance. Elizabeth is granted a child of promise, foretold to be a longed-for prophet for the people of Israel, late in her life, and the gospel tells us she not only secludes herself for the pregnancy, but apparently she keeps her condition a secret, perhaps not wanting to be turned into a side-show, perhaps to make sure nothing goes wrong in what is undoubtedly a high-risk pregnancy. Mary thus only finds out about Elizabeth’s pregnancy when the angel Gabriel tells her as part of the news of Mary’s own chosen status to be the mother of the Son of God.

Mary responds to this news by wanting to go and see her kinswoman herself, undoubtedly out of joy for Elizabeth’s coming miracle. Perhaps a small part of her wanted to see if what the angel said was true. Nonetheless, Mary goes to be with someone who will truly understand and support her in the incredible work she has just consented to do. And once she gets there, we get an idea of where Mary gets her bravery, where she gets her boldness, her insight, her resistance against oppression. Elizabeth doesn’t just respond with gladness to see her young kinswoman. She responds with a triumphant song of power. The strength, resilience and rugged faithfulness in these women runs in the family.

Once Mary arrives, it is clear that Elizabeth doesn’t just become the mother of a prophet. She becomes a prophet herself. When Mary crosses her threshold, we are told the unborn John leaps in her womb, and Elizabeth is given the gift of prophecy herself. She immediately identifies Mary as “the mother of her Lord.” She immediately praises Mary for her courageous assent to the invitation of God to be a vital, brave, bold part of the work of God’s redemption in the world.

Elizabeth knows that Mary is not yet married to Joseph, and so might be expected to shun her—yet she welcomes Mary into her home anyway. She resists all social demands that would have otherwise led her to reject her young kinswoman, and instead, reacts with joy and prophetic exclamation. “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” she exclaims, completing Gabriel’s greeting of Mary in the previous scene we don’t get to hear today. And Mary responds with her own resistance song.

Thus we are reminded: Singing is not just an act of joy. Singing itself is often an act of resistance. Think of it: in the years before the Civil War, slaves often sang hymns in their worship, one of the few times they were able to gather together away from their toil, songs rooted in justice for the oppressed, for the enslaved—songs of liberation such as “Go Down, Moses,” used by Harriet Tubman as a signal as she was a conductor on the Underground Railroad; “A Balm in Gilead,” often quoted by our own Presiding Bishop Michael Curry; “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot;” or “Steal Away to Jesus," which obviously also could be used to communicate about escape from slavery.

Singing was an act of resistance a hundred years later, when our faithful elders in the Civil Rights Movement sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the so-called Black National Anthem included in our own hymnal, or joined hands together across racial and religious divisions and sang “Etta’s Tune,” or “We Shall Overcome.” These songs were not songs of fear, or of mourning, but songs of something that is far too rare but also necessary in our world today: they were songs of hope. Not some mushy kind of making a wish kind of hope. No, the hope in these songs dares to imagine and voice NOW what has yet to be. They are an affirmation of faith in God’s promises, God’s fidelity, especially to those who are oppressed, who are poor, who seek refuge or asylum, who hunger for bread AND justice in equal measure.

In year C, Advent is filled with people speaking truth to power. Last Sunday, John was a thundering prophetic preacher, fulfilling his own father’s prophecy that he would shine a light into the dark corners of the souls of the people, preparing the way in the wilderness. This Sunday, at long last, Mary gets her say. And she’s fierce.

This is not the meek and mild Mary we often see portrayed, the one who is throbbingly questioned in that pop song played in every mall in the land right now-- you know the one: “Mary, Did You Know?” The song that quaveringly asks if Mary knew that her baby boy was God, the one who would heal the deaf and blind and walk on water. If you listen to the Magnificat, you know this song is utterly unnecessary. Mary knew all these things, and stepped unafraid toward this miracle she was called to embody.

We’ve seen stories throughout scripture of women who have spent their lives longing for a child, whose prayers are answered with a son, taking away their shame in a culture where a woman’s worth was often measured by who her husband was and how many children she could bear for him. Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Samson’s unnamed mother, Hannah, and Elizabeth. Their responses varied when given the news that they were going to bear a child that was a particular gift from God:

Sarah laughed.

Hannah sang a song of victory.

Mary, though, hasn’t experienced a long period of childlessness—as a young girl, her entire life lies before her. Yet she is plucked from invisibility, is invited to embrace an unimaginable future, and responds with a battle cry of justice. Here she is, a teenaged mother, a peasant girl in a backwater of the margin of the Roman Empire, and yet she knows who she is, and that she had a choice that was hers alone. Mary responds with trust and power, but never surrender. With a crown of stars swirling around her head, she responds:

Let it be for me as you have said. And let me play my part in turning the world upside down, in resisting the powers of oppression and inhumanity.

Today, Mary goes to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth, and the power that passes between these two women and the miracles they bear inside them produces a war-cry from this young girl, the first woman to preach in the Gospel of Luke. What bursts from her but power from the powerless, hope from the whirlwind, empowerment that bursts every boundary? What does she sing out in wonder and exultation, as she places herself in the hands of Holy Spirit?

A vision of a world turned upside down, where the oppressors are thrown down, and the lowly are lifted up and exalted. A world in which the mighty arm of God sweeps away injustice and oppression, where those who serve themselves will be spilled from their empty thrones. A banquet where those who hunger are satisfied, and those who have gorged themselves depart bearing the clinking chains of their insatiable greed. This God remains faithful and merciful to those who call upon the Holy Name, and will reclaim the lost in answer to promises whose memory still burns with power across generations and time, to deliver the oppressed from systems of injustice and the void of abandonment.

Mary the rebel, the righteous warrior with peace as her shield, sings a song of defiance, liberation, and deliverance. She lifts her hands and heart to God, and calls us to join in, too. Free to sing out with her our hopes for a world remade and repaired by justice. Free to offer our emptied spirits like a bowl to be filled with the promise of salvation, to respond in faith and courage with this anthem of expectation:

My soul overflows with the greatness of God,
My spirit sings unending praise to One Who Saves,
the One who lifts up the lowly servant
who dares to be the handmaiden of God Most High.
Surely, from now to time unending
All generations will see that I have been blessed.

We too can share in Mary’s courage and faith. We too can say yes to God, and allow God to work through us to transform us each and every day, and therefore to transform and restore the world. We too can bear Christ into the world.

We can sing out our yes. Mary shows us the way.

Amen.




Preached at the 505 on December 22, and at 8:00 and 10:15 am on December 23, 2018, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:
Micah 5:2-5a
Canticle 15
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-55

Prayer, day 2156: The Fourth Sunday of Advent

O God, Our Rock and Our Savior,
You have done great things for us,
and we praise and bless your Holy Name.

Come, Holy Spirit,
and awaken our souls to magnify the Lord;
let us praise our God unceasingly.
Most Merciful One,
let it be for us according to your will:
may the joy of Christ leap within our hearts.
Help us to bear Christ into the world,
and testify to the power of his love in our lives.

Holy One, grant your mercy upon all who seek your help:
satisfy the poor and oppressed with justice.
Look with favor upon us as your servants, O Holy One,
and preserve in hope all those who call upon You.

Amen.

Prayer 1903: On the Annunciation

Almighty God, we sing your glory,
joining the joyful song of creation
as our souls sing out your greatness!
How beautiful upon the treetops
is the rising light of morning:
O God, you bless us beyond measure with beauty
and our hearts kneel before you in praise!

Give us your favor, O Redeemer,
in leading us to consent to your will in our lives,
that we may join our hands in unity
in the pursuit of justice and peace,
pulling down oppression from its throne,
filling the hungry with good things from the bounty we have.

Strengthen us to bear you into the world, Blessed Jesus,
as a mother carries her child
close to her heart.

Holy One, place the protection
of your mighty arm and heart
over us this day,
and guide us in paths of gentleness and compassion.
Stretch out the awning of your mercy, Beloved Savior,
over all who rest in your care.

Amen.

Based on Luke 1:26-38

Images: (top) Father John Giuliani, Annunciation (Lakota); (bottom) Janet McKenzie, Annunciation.

Saying Yes: Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, Year B

Our Gospel today opens with the Archangel Gabriel appearing in Galilee to a virgin named Mary. This scene is beautifully depicted as one of three scenes at the bottom of our high altar. There,  Gabriel stands with a lily, symbol of purity, in one hand, and with another reaches toward the young woman, who turns from a book of devotions resting upon a prayer desk, a popular image in medieval piety. The Holy Spirit, depicted as a dove, hovers just above them on the edge of the picture, awaiting the young woman’s answer, waiting for welcome. It’s a beautiful and imaginative depiction of the ways that Mary has inspired artists, poets, and musicians for centuries.

In reality, Luke’s gospel makes it clear that Mary is not a person of high position—far from it. She is a teenaged peasant girl in an obscure, dusty corner of a mighty empire. Yet Gabriel greets her as “O favored one,” and says that the Lord is with her. When Mary was declared to be God’s “favored one” one wonders if she did not have to fight off the urge to look behind her to see if the angel was talking to someone else.

Although she’s a very young woman, her response is interesting: in the face of this messenger from God, she’s not afraid, but rather is perplexed and puzzled. Prophecies are then made about the child she is going to have, with even more amazing titles being used to describe the child. Mary responds, “How can this be since I am a virgin?” and Gabriel explains to her exactly how it’s going to happen. 

To give credence to this prediction, Gabriel references Mary’s kinswoman Elizabeth’s miraculous pregnancy. Yet, there are some fascinating differences between the stories of the birth of John and the birth of Jesus. When, earlier in Luke’s gospel, Gabriel tells Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah he is going to have a son named John after years of childlessness, Zechariah scoffs, and then is deprived of his ability to speak. Where Zachariah was made mute, Mary reacts not with doubt but with wonder, and then she gets the last word: Yes.

This is an important point. Mary agrees to bear this child of God of her own volition. Mary had the freedom to say “No,” but the courage and the faith to say “Yes.”

Mary had the freedom to say “No,” but models for us the courage and the faith to say “Yes.”

And her yes has consequences that she herself witnesses—she is the only person in scripture to be present at Jesus’s birth, obviously, as well as at his crucifixion (John 19:25), and on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 1:15). In her Magnificat we hear her thunder with a prophetic voice a very specific vision of the justice and economy of God’s kingdom—a vision that undoubtedly resonates with the message her son himself will embody.

God’s call to Mary is an invitation, not a command. It seems impossible. And yet, “Nothing is impossible with God” Gabriel reminds her—and us. As crazy as this all sounds, Mary ponders… and says “Yes,” even though her entire world will be changed in unimaginable ways. In giving her assent, with faith, hope, and heart, Mary is one of the most astounding examples of human free will joyfully and humbly collaborating with God.

The poet Denise Levertov described the incredible strength and audacity of Mary in her poem, “Annunciation,” which I want to share with you today.

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.

       Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.

       The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.

         God waited.

She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.

                  ____________________

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?

         Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.

More often
those moments
      when roads of light and storm
      open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
                                 God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

                  ____________________

She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child–but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,

  only asked

a simple, ‘How can this be?’
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power–
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.

                     Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love–

but who was God. 

This was the moment no one speaks of,

when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed,

                                Spirit,

                                          suspended,

                                                            waiting.

                  ____________________

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’

Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’

She did not submit with gritted teeth,

                                                       raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans,

                                  consent illumined her.

The room filled with its light,

the lily glowed in it,

                               and the iridescent wings.

Consent,

              courage unparalleled,

opened her utterly.

Can we share in Mary’s courage and faith? Can we say yes to God, and allow God to work through us to transform us each and every day, and therefore to transform and restore the world?

Can we say yes to bearing Jesus within our very selves, to making ourselves a home in which Christ can dwell? Can we say yes to acting as Christ’s hands and feet into the world in ways great and small?

Can we say yes to Christ’s enduring gifts to us- faith, hope, and charity- and receive them abundantly?

Can we say yes to testifying to who Jesus is in our lives, to the thousand ways he is present to us and alive in us today, in faces both beloved and unknown to us?

Can we say yes, and let that yes change us?

To remember that in working with us and through us, Christ’s healing power helps gather up the shattered places within ourselves and repairs them so that we can have new life and hope, living lives of purpose and meaning far beyond our imaginations?

To remember that God became human so that humans could know and embody the healing love of the Holy One of God?

God became human
so that humans could know
and ourselves embody
the healing love of the Holy One of God.

Can we respond to God’s invitation to us with joy, and make an imaginative leap of hope and light that endures even in darkness?

Even now, at this moment before Christmas comes, God invites us to carry Christ out into the world, every day. Mary is a model to all of us who seek to follow in the Way of Jesus. Her story reminds us that we all have the choice as to whether we will bear Christ into the world—or not.

The greatest gift of this season is love, and love waits to overshadow us. All we have to say is yes. Come, Lord Jesus, and fill our hearts to overflowing. Alleluia!

Readings: 
2 Samuel 7:1-11,16
Canticle 15
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38

Preached at 10 am, December 24, 2017, at Christ Church Cathedral, St. Louis, MO.

Photographs: The Annunciation, carving on the High Altar at Christ Church Cathedral, St. Louis- my photo.
Robert Campin, the Annunciation from the Merode Altarpiece, 1425.
John Collier, The Annunciation (commissioned for St. Gabriel's Church in McKinney, Texas), 2000.