Scripture: Luke 1:39-55
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel and move us from this world-ly spell. Our spirits cry in ex-ile here until the song of lo-ve appears. Rejoice, rejoice, Em-man-u-el for Love is com-ing no-w to dwell.
I have to admit that I am feeling like I’m swinging from emotion to emotion these days. On the one hand, even though we are in the midst of Advent, it feels a lot like Holy Week, when the power of crucifixion is palpably close. Every day seems to bring the news about another dangerous cabinet secretary nomination. Or plans for mass deportation targeting Minnesota and California. Or another doctor has been restricted in what they can do to provide health care to their patients who are trans* or can get pregnant.
It feels a lot like Holy Week to me.
But at the very same time, I’m feeling like it’s Christmas Eve. I’m feeling like it’s a time of quiet darkness lit by candles with beauty and poignant love being born. I’ve found myself listening to a lot of recordings of For Good from Wicked. One in particular has about a dozen pairs of women who played Elphaba and Glinda on Broadway through the years. Each pair takes a small portion of the song and then they collectively soar together… “because I knew you, I have been changed for good” with the sound rising and reverberating and resonating with my heart.
And I’ve been watching Alok Vaid-Menon, the transgender poet, stand-up comic, and public intellectual. Alok wears bright, brilliant dresses with amazing platform boots, often wears pink lipstick, multicolored eye shadow, and a beautifully manicured beard. They are vivacious and hilarious. One video clip I heard was them saying, “Why would I deny the world my beauty, and why would I deny myself my beauty? Because when I am here in this form, it’s how I’m able to speak the truth. How could I come and speak about healing in an unhealed version of myself. We have to live the things that we believe… I have no choice but to gift the world my fullness… from my earliest memories, I knew that I wanted to share my art with the world… I wanted to be a performer…it’s like telling the sky not to be blue… it’s like telling the wind to be still…you can’t invisibilize what I’m here to do.”
A couple of weeks ago, I dressed my mom up in her winter coat with her leopard patterned blanket and her fabulous sunglasses and rolled her the block to Pizza Luce. Someone coming out of the restaurant held the door for us. And when it came to pay the bill, our waiter told us that a man who comes in every six months or so and who always chooses someone whose bill he will pay had chosen us. When I asked if I could thank him, the waiter said that he had already left. I started to cry when I asked the waiter to thank him for us the next time he was in.
It feels like I’m teary a lot lately—tears of grief and tears of joy. I guess that’s real life: this chaos and sorrow, this joy and hope, this death-dealing and Incarnation all mixed together. It feels very much the lived reality into which Mary’s Magnificat comes and into which each of us and all of us are called.
And it raises the question of how are each of us, as Christians, to live in the mix of it all? How are we as a faith community to act? How are we to ground ourselves in the hope and the joy, even, as we grieve?
I am particularly grateful that those who wrote the lectionary (that three-year cycle that assigns biblical readings to every Sunday), have chosen to include readings about chaos and apocalyptic visions to the Advent lectionary. For me, it is really important that the heart of the Christian story is God who is intimately connected to us. God loves us extravagantly and specifically. And God understands what we are going through, particularly those who experience oppression and suffering. And God is always looking for ways to be with us and for us.
A couple of weeks ago, Andy Momont said in Adult Ed how extraordinary it is that at the heart of our Christian tradition is that God’s response to Empire is to be born as an infant.
As we mark this fourth Sunday in Advent, we have the privilege to hear again the story of Mary’s Magnificat. Mary is a young, unmarried Jewish woman living under the Domination System of Roman military occupation with all the violence, economic hardship, and indignities that brings. There have been recent Jewish movements against the Roman Empire that have been violently put down. It is into this context of chaos and the Domination system of Roman Empire that God is seeking to be born.
I’ve been reading a fair amount of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian who helped found the Confessing Church under Nazism and who was executed for his role in trying to assassinate Hitler. In a collection of his writings from Advent, he makes a lot of comparisons of Advent and Christmas on the one hand, and Good Friday and Easter on the other. In both instances, God chooses radical solidarity with those people and places who are vulnerable and in pain. In being born to Mary, God takes on human form. But it isn’t just any human form, God chooses to be born into the life of a poor, Jewish family under Roman occupation. And in the crucifixion, Jesus is executed because he has spent his life healing, teaching, liberating those whom religious authorities and the Roman Empire had deemed less than. The resurrection, then, is God’s magnificent answer to all that domination and violence and suffering… Life and love, vulnerability and power-with, justice and joy will have the final say, says God.
Emmanuel, God-with-Us-with-the-most-radical-of-solidarities… the Incarnation of THIS kind of a God… this is what we are waiting for during Advent.
When Mary hears from Gabriel and consents to be a partner with God in the birth of Jesus, I imagine her to be a bit overwhelmed. And even as I hear her say, yes. I don’t hear it as a resounding yes. And I think it’s important that between her visitation from Gabriel and her Magnificat, Mary travels to her cousin Elizabeth’s house. I think she needs to be held and reminded of her belovedness before she can sing out. Before she can embody her prophetic partnership with God, which is admittedly pretty dangerous- because being unmarried and pregnant could be punishable by death in her culture- she needs the love and support of Elizabeth who greets her and loves on her. It is then that Mary is able to sing her song. And what a song it is!
My soul magnifies my God
and my spirit rejoices in God my Liberator,
for God has looked with favor on the lowly state of God’s servant.
Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is God’s name;
indeed, God’s mercy is for those who fear God
from generation to generation.
The Holy One has shown strength with God’s arm;
God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty.
God has come to the aid of God’s child Israel,
in remembrance of God’s mercy,
according to the promise God made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and Sarah and Hagar and to their descendants forever.
And what about us? One of the other promises of Advent, especially in northern climes, is that this period of holy darkness is a time for all of us to gestate what God has planted in each of our hearts and minds and bodies. Each of us is invited to give birth to God’s presence anew. For us, this isn’t a physical pregnancy but rather a sacred birthing of the creativity that each of us is called to incarnate.
What has God given to you to give birth to in this season? In the midst of the Domination System under which we are living?
You will see in your bulletins that I’ve included the Building Movement Project’s Social Change Ecosystem Map. At the center are the words Equity, Liberation, Justice, Solidarity. I hear Mary’s song in these words. I feel the power of the empty tomb in these words. They are the shared vision of which Mary sings and toward which we are called to minister.
But even as we have a shared vision and call of discipleship, even as we are working together, each of us is called in particular and specific ways. Where do you find yourself on this map? Are you a storyteller or a healer? Are you a disruptor or a caregiver or a builder?
A critical part of Advent is listening for the Gabriels in our lives who come and visit us in our dreams, and in quiet times, and in people who come up to us on the street and remind us that God is seeking our partnership to be born in particular and specific ways in the world.
Another important part of Advent is finding the Elizabeths in our lives who can wholeheartedly greet us… especially when we’re feeling overwhelmed or scared by what our dreams or the quiet is telling us. We need those people who can say, blessed are you among people and blessed is the gift you are called to bring forth.
And then the third part of Advent is the invitation to sing forth your Magnificat. How is your soul making God’s presence in the world bigger and louder? How is the part of God that you are giving birth to going to help topple the domination system and bring about joy and justice?
To adapt Alok, “because when we are here in this form, it’s how we’re able to speak the truth. How could we come and speak about healing in an unhealed version of ourselves. We have to live the things that we believe… We have no choice but to gift the world our fullness…”
Amen.
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