Layers of a Life with God:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

Now the silence.  Now the peace.  Now the time for pondering.  Now.  Now.  Now.

The baby sleeping.  The shepherds long departed.  Finally a moment for Mary to catch her breath.  Finally a chance to let it all sink in.  That strange encounter with the angel Gabriel.  A holy child born to her barely out of childhood herself?  Surely she must have wondered.  The baby growing in her womb—evidence to support the angel’s strange claim.   And yet I bet she still had her doubts and fears.  Her rushed trip to old Elizabeth.  The welcome she received there and the amazing song that sprang up from deep within her heart.  Joseph welcoming her into his household, keeping his promise even though she came to him pregnant with a baby not of his making.  Who could ever make sense of all of this?

The long trip to Bethlehem.  Each step she took the baby shifting in her womb.  His weight almost too much for her to bear.  The fruitless search for a place to spend the night.  Collapsing in a corner of a stable.  The labor pains.   The baby and his cries. Shepherds rushing in.  Their wild tale of angels’ songs, a baby born in Bethlehem, a savior for the world.  No wonder she treasured their words.  No wonder she pondered them in her heart.  The shepherds’ words confirmed what God had promised at the get-go.

I love this story—this story of a young girl caught up in something much bigger than herself; this story of God seeking out someone so far from the centers of power to bear and birth God into the world; this story of a baby born in Bethlehem, of shepherds and angels and a manger for a crib.  This deep layering of a young girl’s encounter with God.

It's a story. A lovely story. A part of our story.  But still a story.   It’s not history.  There’s no supporting evidence.  We don't really know about any of it.  And yet I think this story points to some important truths about God and us and God and us together.   

For there it is—God coming into the world through the womb of teenager pregnant and unmarried.  God born in a stable far from the centers of power.  God, child of a couple turned out in the cold.  God made known in the most unlikely of people and places.

Mary, the God bearer and God birther, in fits and starts coming to an understanding of God’s role in all of this—sometimes stunned, sometimes taken aback, sometimes more than a little afraid of what is going on in her and through her.  

Isn’t that the way of it?  Isn’t that the nature of our oh-so-human dance with God?  A surprise encounter, a dawning awareness, the pain and fear and wondering that accompany birthings of God in us and our birthings of God?  Maybe even some distancing and backing off.  Understanding deepening in fits and starts.  And then a deep centeredness in God and the peace that comes from  groundedness in God.  The peace that comes through pondering—pondering the arc of God’s love in our lives and in our world.  

In the silence and the quiet of this day, we join with Mary turning over the treasures in our hearts.  Taking them out, one by one, bringing to mind the role they played and play today in our on-going life with God.  The fat times and the lean ones. The barren places where God somehow broke in.  The lush fields and green valleys of our lives.  The times of hopes fulfilled.  The times of fears relieved and unrelieved.  The angels in our midst declaring God’s glory.  Shepherds leaving their fields confirming for us the deep truths of our lives.  Through it all the thread of God’s life and love in our lives.

Now’s the time for pondering.  Now.  Now.  Now.

Sermon Luke 1:47-55

One of the problems with the Christmas story is that we have heard it so many times that we know how it turns out. It is hard to capture the initial shock. As the familiar words are read, it is easy to tune them out because we know what comes next. It is sad that a story as profound as this one becomes ho-hum. Our ability to take it all in stride is strange to people of other faiths. NPR ran a segment several years ago with some Muslims wondering why Christians celebrate Christmas by opening gifts under a tree. Why don’t we observe Christmas by saying a prayer or going to church? Many years ago British writer Dorothy Sayers rebuked Christians by saying, “You have the greatest news on earth—the incarnation of God in human life—and you treat it as an insignificant news item fit for page 14 of the chronicle of daily events.” (Homiletics 1999, p.59)

Perhaps we need to be reminded that this is no ordinary story we are dealing with—it is a story of God turning creation upside down. We know Mary went along with the angel, but do we remember that she had a choice? Frederick Buechner gives us a glimpse into the weight of this choice as he describes the angel Gabriel:
“’You mustn’t be afraid, Mary,’ he said. As he said it, he only hoped she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great, golden wings he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation now hung on the answer of a girl.” (Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who p. 44)

Do you realize that God placed the future of the world into the hands of someone we don’t think is old enough to drive? It is enough to make us question God’s judgment. How could God stake so much on a young girl? It’s crazy until you look around and see who God is counting on today.

Mary agrees to take her place in God’s plan and the next thing we know she is on a journey to visit her cousin Elizabeth who has just experienced an amazing, unexpected pregnancy herself. We don’t know what Mary was thinking. We miss all the fear, the questions that ask why me and “are you kidding?” She must have been overwhelmed beyond belief, but we don’t hear about that in scripture. She arrives at Elizabeth’s home and rather than comparing notes on pregnancy, morning sickness, preparing the nursery, or wondering how it will all work out, Elizabeth greets her with a blessing. The scripture we heard this morning is Mary’s response. She sings. Does that strike you as strange? She is poor, pregnant, and unmarried. She sings a song of freedom on behalf of all who are poor. Her song says that God will make a way where there is no way. The song seems to come from deep within her. It is as if she can do nothing else.

Mary sings in the midst of uncertainty with only the words of an angel—a promise to keep her going. It reminds me of the traditional Shaker Hymn:
    My life goes on in endless song
    Above earth’s lamentation,
    I hear the sweet, though far-off hymn
    That hails a new creation.

    Through all the tumult and the strife
    I hear its music ringing,
    It sounds an echo in my soul.
    How can I keep from singing?

We call Mary’s song Magnificat. It is a powerful song that begins by acknowledging the blessing and quickly turns to what God’s coming will mean for all people. If you are an editor or an English scholar, you may want to look more carefully at her words. She’s gotten her tenses mixed up. The angel has just spoken, the baby is not yet born and yet she sings as if the poor have already been lifted up and the hungry fed. Barbara Brown Taylor says “prophets almost never get their verb tenses straight, because part of their gift is being able to see the world as God sees it.” (Home by Another Way, p. 18)
 Prophets aren’t concerned with distinctions between things that have happened and things that have not yet happened. They are content to allow the mystery to unfold. She praises God for what God has done as an expression of confidence. Her song is a profound declaration of praise and trust in God’s promise. Can you imagine? This is not a sweet lullaby like Away in a Manger; it is a radical song like “We Shall Overcome”. Music is powerful—it brings hope to the most hopeless of situations, it reminds us of God’s amazing acts of redemption and salvation, it proclaims freedom in the midst of oppression. Remember the spirituals from those enduring slavery? What about Paul and Silas who sang from prison until an earthquake shook the foundations, opened the doors, and unfastened the chains of the prisoners? (Acts 16:16-34)

Several years ago, the government of Pretoria banned the lighting of candles and singing of Christmas carols in Soweto. When asked why by the press, the spokesperson replied, “You know how emotional black women are. Christmas carols have an emotional effect on them.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 27, 1985) You let a poor Jewish woman like Mary or a black mother in Soweto sing, and you better hang on because you don’t know where it might lead.

My friend Jan Richardson wrote a beautiful book called Night Visions and in her book, she describes Mary’s song:
“Mary knows in her soul, in her womb, that radical hope is found at the boundary where the outrageous gives way to the possible…Mary knows that some things are so outrageous that sometimes we have to talk about them as if they have already happened in order to believe that they could ever come about…Hope starts small, even as a seed in the womb, but it feeds on outrageous possibilities.” (pp. 56-57)

This story is not ordinary. It is as radical as they come. The overthrow of the powerful has not come through the mounting up of the weak in rebellion, but through the coming of God in the weakness of a child. (New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX, p. 55) Many years ago, I saw a plaque that said, “When God wants something great done in this world, God doesn’t send an army…God sends a baby and then waits.” How do we respond to a God like that? It is just too much. The profound truth of this story should have us shaking in our pews—God entrusted a child to us. God sent a baby to bring freedom to those who are oppressed, to feed those who are hungry, to bring justice to our world. A baby?! That’s it? There are no words for a God like this. What can we do, but sing?

    While though the tempest loudly roars,
    I hear the truth, it liveth.
    And though the darkness ‘round me close,
    Songs in the night it giveth.

    No storm can shake my inmost calm,
    While to that rock I’m clinging.
    Since love is lord of heaven and earth
    How can I keep from singing?

Music is the song of our souls. It tells our stories. It shapes us and gives expression to our deepest longings, to our praise, to our pain, to our joy; to our awe at this amazing mystery we call God. We can work hard to explain the virgin birth. We can attempt to take away all the mystery, but there are pieces of the story that are beyond explanation. There are pieces of the story that can only be sung. It is through music that we teach the faith to our children. Throughout our lives, music marks significant events.

My earliest church memory is singing in the children’s cantata 100% Chance of Rain! When I was in college, I was in a program that profoundly shaped my identity as a person and as a minister. Our theme song was “We are going; heaven knows where we are going. We’ll know we’re there. We will get there; heaven knows how we will get there. We know we will.” After I finished seminary in Atlanta, I hoped to move west where I could complete the ordination process in a church that was open to all people. While in a worship service on a retreat, we sang “Here I am Lord, is it I Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.” I knew it was time to move. A week later, the way opened and soon I moved to Oregon where I was ordained.

Singing is essential to our faith. We sing when we want to express the inexpressible. We sing before we know what the outcome will be. “All Mary has is her unreasonable willingness to believe that God who has chosen her will be part of whatever happens next—and that, apparently, is enough to make her burst into song. She does not wait to see how things will turn out first. She sings ahead of time, and all the angels with her.” (Home by Another Way, p. 18) God has done great things for us. God has blessed us mightily. We know how this part of the story comes out, but there is more to come. All we can do is wait, and sing while we wait:

    I lift my eyes, the cloud grows thin;
    I see the blue above it;
    And day by day this pathway smooths,
    Since I first learned to love it.

    The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,
    A fountain ever springing;
    All things are mine since I am Christ’s--
    How can I keep from singing?

Sing it again, Mary. Sing to us of your God. Sing on, Mary; sing on, until your song becomes ours. Sing, until the entire world hears you and makes your song its own.


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Bibliography


Buechner, Frederick. Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who. New York:
    HarperCollins, 1979.

Culpepper, R. Alan. New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX. Nashville: Abingdon
    Press, 1995.

Richardson, Jan. Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and
    Christmas. Cleveland: United Church Press, 1998.

Taylor, Barbara Brown. Home By Another Way. Boston: Cowley, 1999.

*How Can I Keep From Singing? Author unknown. Attributed to Robert Lowry.

December 11, 2011
The Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Today we join with millions throughout the Americas who honor Our Lady of Guadalupe. You know her - she appears everywhere: on cars, store signs, decals, and tattoos. Our image of her is on the outside wall of our parish hall, made of tile in Puebla, Mexico.

You probably know the basics of her story. Only 10 years after the conquest of the Aztecs, she appeared miraculously to a native convert whose Christian name was Juan Diego. She sent him to tell the bishop that a temple should be built in her honor. The bishop didn’t believe Juan Diego until he returned with a cloak full of roses - impossible because it was December - and an image of the Virgin imprinted on Juan’s cloak.

Skeptics question this story, of course. They say the Spanish made it up in order to further their conquest, by appropriating an Aztec goddess and making her Catholic. Who knows, maybe they’re right. But to the millions who have been devoted to her for these 480 years, she has come to mean far more than conquest.

For some, she is the feminine face of God, offering motherly divine love. It is said that she told Juan Diego that her temple would be a place where she would offer all [her] compassion, help and protection to the people. At times this motherly love has otherwise been difficult to find in a church that has been male-dominated, demanding, even cruel. The kindness and mercy that Our Lady of Guadalupe brought were in short supply, and so God - or the people -  had to create her.

To a lesser degree, you could say the same about our church today. We’re still fairly male-dominated. That’s why we need new rites such as Enriching our Worship, with phrases like these:

You laid the foundations of the world and enclosed the sea when it burst out from the womb; You brought forth all creatures of the earth and gave breath to humankind.

As a mother cares for her children, you would not forget us. Time and again you called us to live in the fullness of your love.

For others, the Virgin of Guadalupe is a sign that miracles do happen, and they can happen for us, too. She appeared miraculously. She healed Juan Diego’s father. Inexplicably, the image on the cloak has not deteriorated in nearly 5 centuries, despite extreme changes in temperature and humidity, candle smoke, the kisses and touches of thousands of devotees, and a bomb thrown at it by an anarchist. Some inspectors claim that in her eyes, one can see the inverted image of Juan Diego, as if in a camera lens.

I know that there’s a lot of wacky stuff out there about miracles: television quacks who close their eyes, extend their hands, and claim to be healing someone of lung cancer who is watching the show as he sits alone in a hotel room in Des Moines.

But I also know that perfectly sane human beings can experience visions and miracles. Weird stuff does happen. Anything is possible if respected physicists can talk about the possibility of the world we live in being a projected hologram of things existing on the spherical skin of a distant black hole...(I’m not making this up!)

We are rationalist fools if we don’t recognize that the world is a mystical place. So who’s to say that a young Jewish woman from 1st-century Israel couldn’t appear in a parallel time and place? And who’s to say that something supernatural couldn’t appear to help you in your life?

But there is another meaning to the Virgin of Guadalupe, perhaps the most radical one of all. She came as a mestizo, a brown-skinned, mixed-race person. She appeared to a poor Aztec and spoke his language, Nahuatl.
She imprinted her image on a rough-woven cloak made from cactus. In the Virgin of Guadalupe, God was identifying with the poor.

More significantly, she didn’t appear to the Spanish bishop in his opulent residence. By sending a campesino with the roses, she was getting in the face of the bishop. Hey, Prince of the Church! You think my son was kidding when he said that the last would be first and the first - namely you - would be last? Blessed are the poor, you schmuck!

And so the Virgin of Guadalupe became the property of the people. For in her, God had become one of them. The skeptical bishop couldn’t suppress her, and neither could the Vatican, once they got wind of a movement that had taken on a life of its own. She continues to be fiercely held by the people, and they don’t really care whether some worry that they are idolatrous. They know she is Emmanuel, “God with us.”

This is the message that the liberation theologians so controversially taught in the 1970’s: God’s preferential option for the poor. Now this doesn’t mean that God loves poor people more than the rich, only that the most vulnerable hold a special place in the heart of God.

They hold a special place in the hearts of those who love God, too. After all, we are God’s children, made in God’s image. And so if we are in touch with our Creator, we will naturally care, as God does, for those who are mentally ill, for children and the frail elderly, for the homeless and addicted, for the depressed and lonely, for those without access to medical care or education. We are made to be like the Virgin of Guadalupe, offering our compassion, help and protection to the people.

If we have no soft spot in our heart for the most vulnerable, if we do nothing to help them in their weakness, we do not have within us the Spirit of the One who does. And it may be time to get reconnected with that Spirit.

One good way to do that is to reconnect with our own poverty, our own vulnerability. It was the gospel of Matthew that changed Luke’s Blessed are the poor to Blessed are the poor in spirit,  and those two words brought in all of us. As the Buddha said, Life is suffering. B.B. King put it in his own way: Everybody’s had the blues.  

You may have an persistent medical condition or feel stuck in a deadening job. You may struggle with alcohol, depression, or an unhappy relationship with your partner or child. You may feel a creeping angst now and then, wondering what’s the point. Whatever it is, we all have some kind of poverty of spirit.

We can make the mistake of seeing our vulnerability as the enemy, something to be gotten rid of, fixed, or transcended. Why, I’d be happy if only...

But what if that is one of the primary places where God tends to appear? In your poverty? We certainly meet God in gratitude and satisfaction, but we sometimes overlook how accessible God can be when we are empty. It is in these times that dependence upon God can become a matter of survival - when we know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves.

In this place we surrender; we give up on the exhausting effort to make ourselves full and rich. We humbly accept our emptiness. Not wishing or pleading anymore for something particular to happen - because we’ve already asked too many times, and it hasn’t - we nevertheless remain open, trusting. Not expecting a specific outcome, we dare to remain expectant.  Something will shift. Something or someone will come. We say to ourselves I don’t have to do this alone. And we don’t.

The Virgin of Guadalupe came to the Aztecs in their defeat. And she comes to us in our defeat, our poverty of spirit, offering to us, as she did in 1531 to all the Americas, God’s compassion, help, and protection.  

This is the spirit of Advent. For in this season that moves inevitably towards the darkness of the solstice, we watch for the coming of the light. And God’s light appears in the darkness, not instead of it. It will appear in our poverty of spirit, if we will but pray, watch, and wait.

Advent 2B
Mark 1:1-8, Isaiah 40:1-11, 2 Peter 3:8-14

John the Baptist joins us each year on the second Sunday of Advent to beckon us more deeply into this journey toward Christ’s birth. It is clear that he never learned how to win friends and influence people. He has a habit of calling people a brood of vipers which makes it tempting to ignore John and light another candle on the wreath. We are never quite sure what to do with this wild person with a strange sense of fashion and very undiscriminating taste buds. In Mark we encounter a kinder, gentler John. He is still calling people to repent and confess, but he isn’t calling them names.

None of us would suggest that repentance and confession are crowd pleasers, and yet people are coming from all over the countryside to hear him. Clearly, John is tapping into some deep longing in people. Somehow in the quiet, darkness of the season, we begin to encounter some of the deep longings we carry within us. I appreciate the invitation in Advent to grow deep. I am always eager to enter the season in a way that is meaningful, hoping that I will be ready for Christ to come into my life in a powerful new way.

But I noticed something different this year as I sat with these texts. First, I imagined the people gathering to hear John’s message. It reminded me a bit of us gathering for worship each week. We need individual spiritual practices to sustain us and help us grow, but we were created to be a body and to share this journey with one another. The people came together and they came from all over the place. I wonder if they were empowered and encouraged by the community. Maybe the message about repentance and confession was intended for them as a body rather than just their individual sins.

Isaiah was speaking to the people of Israel who had lost so much – their homes, their city, their security. He brought wisdom and hope to them collectively. Hope was rooted in God’s goodness and it would bring healing to all. “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all people shall see it together.” (Isaiah 40:5)

Did you hear the words from 2nd Peter “The Lord is…patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” The good news isn’t for a few individuals, but for all. Who we are in the waiting impacts others.

It really isn’t news to anybody that Christmas isn’t about us. People are more generous this time of year. But what if Advent isn’t meant to be a private experience? What if we are called to prepare for Christ’s coming as a body rather than just giving more attention to our individual prayer practices?

I am struck by the message in all three of these passages that we are all in this together.
How do we wait collectively for Christ to come in our midst? How do we tap into our communal longing for incarnation? I am not suggesting that we can clearly articulate our yearning as a community of faith as much as I am inviting us to come together and make room for Christ to be born among us.

The Called Back to the Well Living Water program finished this week. You may know that Living Water is a spiritual deepening program for congregations and part of its richness is in the way relationships are built between people from different churches in the community. The Disciples, Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians openly shared their lives over the last year and as they did so, they realized that together they are the body of Christ that Paul talks about in Corinthians. When one congregation suffered, all suffered. When one rejoiced, all rejoiced. Out of that sharing, a wonderful community was born.

We simply cannot call ourselves Christian and live as if others don’t matter. All of us are connected (whether we realize it or not). Do we know how the churches in our neighborhood are doing? What about the folks in the other services here each Sunday? Are we aware of the people who are sharing our pews? A real community is tuned in to one another and feels the impact of our shared life together.

Here we are in Advent once again and we are called to make room for Christ to be born among us. How do we do that? It seems to me that we come together as the early church community did. We pray, we care for those in need, we come to the table Christ has set for us and then we go forth to feed others. I believe we glimpse it every time we share our lives together.

One of the most beautiful things I saw this week was the food pantry in action on Tuesday morning. A large group of volunteers came together and worked in tandem to make food available for the community. There was a wonderful spirit in the group and I was very impressed at all they offered in terms of food and hospitality. Before they began serving people, Bill Hoezel prayed that they would see Christ in each person they met and it seems to me that they did. Part of the beauty for me was seeing how many people it took to pull off this ministry and how happy people were to be serving together. The people coming to get food seemed to feel that warmth and kindness.

Each week, we come to the table to receive sustenance at the hand of a God whose generosity is shocking over and over again. As we walk away from the table and out of the sanctuary, I begin wondering about how we will feed the world. I know that the food was not intended for us alone, but for all and it is our job to make sure everyone receives goodness from God’s gracious hand.

Fred Craddock tells about going to the University of Winnipeg in Canada to give two lectures in October one year.  “As we left the lecture hall after the first lecture, it was beginning to spit a little snow.  I was surprised, and my host was surprised because he had written, “It’s too early for the cold weather, but you might bring a little windbreaker, a little light jacket.”

The next morning when I got up, two or three feet of snow pressed against the door.  The phone rang, and my host said, “We’re all surprised by this.  In fact, I can’t come and get you to take you to the breakfast, the lecture this morning has been cancelled, and the airport is closed.  If you can make your way down the block and around the corner, there is a little depot, a bus depot, and it has a café.  I’m sorry.”  I said, “I’ll get around.  I put on that little light jacket; it was nothing.  I got my little cap and put it on; it didn’t even help me in the room.  I went into the bathroom and unrolled long sheets of toilet paper and made a nest in the cap so that it would protect my head against that icy wind.

I went outside, shivering.  The wind was cold, the snow was deep.  I slid and bumped and finally made it around the corner into the bus station.  Every stranded traveler in western Canada was in there, strangers to each other and to me, pressing and pushing and loud.  I finally found a place to sit, and after a lengthy time a man in a greasy apron came over and said, “What’ll you have?”  I said, “May I see a menu?” He said, “What do you want a menu for?  We have soup.”  I said, “What kind of soup do you have?”  And he said, “Soup.  You want some soup?”  I said, “That was what I was going to order – soup.”  

He brought the soup, and I put the spoon to it – Yuck!  It was the awfulest.  It was kind of gray looking; it was so bad I couldn’t eat it, but I sat there and put my hands around it.  It was warm, and so I sat there with my head down, my head wrapped in toilet paper, bemoaning my outcast state with the horrible soup.  But it was warm, so I clutched it and stayed bent over my soup stove.

The door opened again.  The wind was icy, and somebody yelled, “Close the door!”  In came this woman clutching her little coat.  She found a place, not far from me.  The greasy apron came and asked, “What do you want?”  She said, “A glass of water.”  He brought her a glass of water, took out his tablet and said, “Now what’ll you have?”  She said, “Just the water.”  He said, “You have to order, lady.”  “Well, I just want a glass of water.”  “Look.  I have customers that pay – what do you think this is, a church or something?  Now what do you want?”  She said, “Just a glass of water and some time to get warm.”

“Look, there are people that are paying here.  If you’re not going to order, you’ve got to leave!”  And he got real loud about it, so that everyone there could hear him.

So she got up to leave.  And almost as if rehearsed, everyone in that café got up and headed to the door.  If she was going to have to leave, they were as well.  And the man in the greasy apron saw this happening and blurted out, “All right, all right, she can stay.”  Everyone sat down, and he brought her a bowl of soup.

I said to the person sitting there by me, I said, “Who is she?”  He said, “I’ve never seen her before.” The place grew quiet, but I heard the sipping of that awful soup.  I said, “I’m going to try that soup again.”  I put my spoon to the soup – you know, it was not bad soup.  Everybody was eating this soup.  I started eating the soup, and it was pretty good soup.  I have no idea what kind of soup it was.  I don’t know what was in it, but I do recall when I was eating it, it tasted a little bit like bread and wine.  Just a little bit like bread and wine.” (from the book Craddock Stories by Fred Craddock, Chalice Press, 2001 pp. 83-84)

In this season, we prepare ourselves for the one who comes among us. We do this as Christ’s body because we know that the gift of Christ was not intended for us alone. The invitation is for us as a body to make room so that Christ may be born in us and together we may bring healing and hope to the whole world.