4 Advent

Dec. 19, 2021

 Luke 1:39-49 (50-56)

 + A few weeks ago, our very own Jean Sando preached a sermon about the Blessed Virgin Mary at one of our Wednesday evening Advent Masses.  

 It was a wonderfully defiant sermon (I don’t know if Jean viewed it as defiant, but it was).

 In it, she addressed some very important issues regarding Mary, especially the Church’s continued view of her as “meek and mild.”

 We are definitely being inundated by “meek and mild” Marys right now!

 Jean also preached about the view of Mary as some perfected virginal being that is held as an unattainable ideal of what good Christian women should be.

 I agreed entirely with Jean’s sermon because she and I shared many of the same frustrations about Mary.

But I do have to say that my frustrations might even be deeper, especially since, as you all know, I have a very deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

She has always been a major presence in my spiritual life.

And I know the psychologists here will have a field day with this, but since my mother died, my devotion to Mary has definitely deepened.

In fact, for me, Mary has always represented much, much more than just the meek and mild image the Church sometimes saddles upon her.  

For me, I think my devotion and love for Mary actually encompasses seeing her as a symbol of feminine aspects of divinity—of God.

Which I think is also very much a reason the Church does the whitewash they sometimes like doing on Mary.

 To approach the feminine aspects of divinity is frightening to the Church.

 As you know, I have been studying Judaism for the last several years, and for my it has definitely deepened my own Christian faith.

 I have found that to truly understand the Gospels and the life of Jesus, I need to sometimes to see what was happening not through Greek, Hellenistic eye (which we as Westerners tends to do all the time), but rather to look at all scripture through a Hebrew lens.

 At times it’s hard to do so.

 But it has also been revolutionary for me, as a Christian and as a priest. 

 Seeing the Gospel stories through a Hebrew lens is sometimes difficult.

 But one aspect of doing so has been the approach to the scriptures we find about viewing representatives of God as divine beings.

 For early Hebrews people it was not uncommon for them to see the people who they believed were sent to them from God as being divine.

 We find this most profoundly in the story of Jacob and the Angel.

 The angel, of course, is not God, but God’s representative.

 But for Jacob, as he wrestled with angel, he felt he was truly wrestling with God.

 Certainly, for the followers of Jesus, who saw him as a very unique representative of God, they saw him as divine.

 And in him, they saw God.

 More importantly, they saw in Jesus a loving, compassionate and wildly inclusive God.  

 It did not take much of a leap for the Greeks to take this Hebrew view of God’s representative and formulate something as complex and mysterious as the Trinity.

 We’re not going to get into all of that today.

 But we can see God’s divinity in other people in scripture as well.

 And when we start seeing that divinity in someone like Mary, we are offered a glimpse of something particularly unique.

 We are offered a glimpse of the feminine aspects of God, which we find in the story of Mary. 

 This is important, because, as Jean pointed out in her sermon, there are not many opportunities in scripture for women to act in the capacity of representative of God.

 But we do see it uniquely in Mary.

 Bear with me.

 In our Gospel reading for today, we find Mary and Elizabeth rejoicing in the ways in which God was working their lives.

 Mary, carrying within her flesh God’s very Son—the Messiah made flesh, this very unique representative of God—carrying divinity within her— and Elizabeth, carrying within her flesh John, who would later be the Baptist calling to us from the Jordan River (and also, might I add, a representative of God to many people as well), meet and there is a spark between them.

 What is that spark?

 That spark is God’s energy at work in them.

 What I have always loved about this story from scripture is that neither Mary nor Elizabeth probably can fully comprehend what is going on within them.

 How could they?

 How could any of us?

 But what they do know is that something strange and wonderful and HOLY has happened.

 God is happening. And in a big way!

 Mary, the young virgin, has conceived under mysterious and certainly scandalous circumstances and is about to give birth.

 And Elizabeth, the barren elderly woman, also is also about to give birth.

 Neither should be having a child.

 Yet, somehow, they both are.

 These sort of things don’t happen in ordinary life.

 Certainly nothing even remotely like this happened before in the lives of these two  Jewish women.

 But now, here they were, greeting each other, both of them pregnant with children that came to them by miraculous means.

 And, although they might not fully understand why or how, they feel real hope and joy at what has happened to them.

 The full expression of this hope and joy finds it voice in the words of Mary’s song.

 “My soul glorifies the LORD

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

 And in doing so, Mary truly does embody God.

 The divine dwells within her in a very unique and beautiful way.

 And because God does, she becomes something more.

 She becomes a unique representative of God.

 Certainly she is a representative of God to Elizabeth.

 And certainly she continues to be to many of us even today.

 But, of course, it can’t just end there.

 It is isn’t enough that we simply look to others a representatives of God.

 Essentially this is our goal as well.

 It is our goal to embody God’s Light and Love and Presence within each of us as well. 

We are—each of us—called to be unique representatives of God in this world.

 We, like Mary, we are called to carry within us Jesus.

 Wherever we go, we should bear Jesus within us.

 Like Mary, God’s own gift to us dwells within us.

 Like Mary, God’s very Word dwells within us!

 And like Mary, we should be able to rejoice as well, at this fact that Jesus dwells within us.

 We too should sing to God, in joy and hope:

 “My soul glorifies the LORD

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

 Now, we have been hearing the Magnificat quite a bit this morning, as we should.

 This “Song of Mary” is one of my beautiful scriptures we have.

 But before we think this is some nice little song to God from innocent teenage girl, I would like you to remember how radical it really is.

 How defiant it is.

 And how political it is.

 Oh, you didn’t catch Mary’s political jab?

 It’s right there:

 “…[God] has scattered the proud in their conceit.

[God] has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *
and has lifted up the lowly.”

 This is no meek and mild teenager!

 For her, living there, in that time, that says a lot.

 And it’s echoing pretty loudly for us here and now.

 God, we realize from this Song of Mary, does not let the “proud” in their conceit last long in that place.

 We know that God has no problem casting down the mighty from their thrones.

 Mary’s song of defiance is our song of defiance today as well.

 And that, even in our defiance, we are full of hope in a God truly does do these things.

 Like both Mary and Elizabeth, this hope and joy we are experiencing later this week should be coming up from our very centers.

 This is really how we should approach the miracle that we commemorate on Friday evening and Saturday.

 Like Mary and Elizabeth, we will never fully understand how or why Jesus—God’s very Son made flesh, Gods divinity—has come to us as this little child in a dark stable in the Middle East, but it has happened and, because it happened, we are a different people.

 Our lives are different because of what happened that evening.

 That is how God works.

 God loves us enough that everything we have feared will be taken from us.

 And that is what we are rejoicing in, along with Mary and Elizabeth, this morning.

 Our true hope and joy is not in brightly colored lights and a pile of presents until a decorated tree.

 Our true hope and joy is not found in the malls or the stores.

 Our hope and  joy is not found in Amazon or Etsy (though I really love both Amazon and Etsy)

 Our true hope and joy does not come to us with things that will, a week from now, be a fading memory.

 Our hope and joy is in that Baby who, as he draws near, causes us to leap up with joy at his very presence.

 Our hope and joy is in that almighty and incredible God has send us the Messiah, the anointed One, the One promised in the prophecies of scripture, in this innocent child, born to a defiant teenager in a dusty distant land.

 Our hope and joy is in a God who send us this amazing gift—who has sent us LOVE—real and abiding LOVE--with a face like our face and flesh like our flesh.

 LOVE embodied.

 This is the real reason why we are joyful and hopeful on this beautiful winter morning—on this last Sunday of Advent.

 This is why we are feeling within us a strange leaping.

 This is why we rushing toward God’s very Messiah who has come to visit us in what we once thought was our barrenness.

 Let the hope we feel today as Jesus draws close to us stay with us now and always.

 Let the joy we feel today as Jesus comes to us in love be the motivating force in how we live our lives throughout this coming year.

  Let us greet God’s chosen One with all that we have within us and let us welcome him into the shelter of our hearts.

 And, with Mary, let us sing to the God who sends Jesus to us with all our hearts,

 “My soul glorifies in you, O Lord,

and my spirit truly rejoices in you, O God, my Savior.”

 Let us pray.

 Our souls glorify you, O God. Our spirits truly do rejoice in you. Visit us, here in this place in which we dwell, and live within us. Let us carry your Presence with us wherever we may go. And go with us wherever we may go. Let us be your representatives to those who need your love, your light, your radical, all-inclusive love, now and always. We ask this in the Name of Jesus our Messiah who is about to dawn like the Sun into the night of our souls. Amen. 

3 Advent

 Gaudete

 December 12, 2021

 

Zephaniah 3.14-20; Philippians 4.4-7; Luke 3.7-18

 

 

+ In the name of God, Creator+ Redeemer and Sanctifier. Amen.

 You know what day it is…

 It’s one of those rose Sundays of the Church year.

 And you all  know: I love the rose Sundays.

 And I really LOVE Gaudete Sunday!

 Today, of course, we light our pink candle on the Advent wreath

 We bedeck the church—and your priest and deacon—in rosy pink.

 It’s so called because in our reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, we hear this:

  “Rejoice in the Lord always; I will say rejoice”

 That word, “Rejoice,” in Latin is Gaudete.

 As we draw closer and closer to Jesus’ birth, we find ourselves with that strange, wonderful emotion in our hearts—joy.

 It is a time to rejoice.

 It is a time to be anxious and excited over the fact that, in just a few weeks time, that Messiah, God’s chosen One, will come to us.

 “Rejoice” is our word for the day today.

 We are joyful because, as Paul says today, “the Lord is near”

 

Or, in Latin (since we’re on kind of a Latin kick this Gaudete Sunday) Dominus propus est.

 

Now that scripture that we just hear from Paul in his letter to the Philippians is just chock full of Gaudete goodness.

 

Doesn’t that sound like a great vegan candy bar – Gaudete Goodness?  

 

Every line of that reading is filled with joy and hope.

 

“Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication let your request be made known to God.”

 

When I was teenager, my mother gave me as a present a leather scroll with this scripture from Philippians chapter 4 written on it.

 

Now, not a lot of people know this about me, but I was a worry wart as a kid—a fact that, in turn, worried by mother tremendously.

 

I have shared with some of you how even as an 8 year old, I had terrible stomach ulcers.

 

Well, that’s what worrying does to people, even 8 year olds.  

 

Actually, I think, it wasn’t so much the worrying that was the issue.

 

It was the anxiety, which is all bound up in that whole sense of worrying.

 

And anxiety, as I have shared with many of you, is still an issue in my life.

 

Any of you who served with me as a Warden know firsthand the strange world of Fr. Jamie’s Anxiety.

 

So, back then, my mother chose this scroll specifically for me.

 

Do not worry, that scroll reminded me over and over again.

 

I still have that scroll on my wall.

 

And every time I read the scroll, and as I pondered it again for today, I realize how powerful this scripture really is:

 

Do not worry about anything.

 

But pray.

 

And if we do, if we release all our anxieties to God, God will reward us with a peace beyond all understanding.

 

Now that sounds very easy.

 

That sounds wonderful.

 

But let me tell you; it’s a harder than you think.

 

A LOT harder than it seems.

 

To live into that sense of trust of God takes hard, hard work.

 

And it takes a lot of hard personal work to get beyond one’s own anxiety and worry.

 

But we can do it.

 

The problem with most of us however is that we hear this scripture so much that we forget it’s real meaning.

 

But it IS powerful.

 

And important.

 

And if we truly take it to heart, if we truly live it out, we realize it captures incredibly the spirit of this Sunday.

 

Don’t worry.

 

God is in control.

 

God is here, with us.

 

All will be well.

 

Or as Blessed Julian of Norwich tells us again and again,

 

“All will be well and all will be well and all manner of things will be well.”

 

Now, of course, we love Advent.

 

Everybody seems to love Advent.

 

But, today, we get something just a bit different.

 

Advent is a time for us to slow down, to ponder, to think.

 

And… to wait.

 

It is a time to be introspective, as well—to think about who are and where we are in our lives.

 

So, in the midst of pondering and waiting and introspection, we also find ourselves looking forward.

 

Now, for some of us, that doesn’t seem all that exciting.

 

The future can be a scary place.

 

And what it holds may not be some wonderfully hopeful thing.

 

Many people have a real fear of the future.

 

Yesterday, my dear friend Leslie Rorabeck was ordained to the Priesthood at St. Andrew’s-on-the-Sound Episcopal Church in Wilmington, NC.

 

And this morning she is celebrating her first Mass.

 

I was supposed to be there as a presenter, but of course I’m grounded due to my perforated lung (thanks, Covid).

 

But 20 or so years ago, when I was enduring a very difficult time in my life, when I had just been laid off from a job and was about diagnosed with cancer, Leslie was there for me.

 

And one thing we often did as we ate lunch together at the Plains Art Museum (remember the great cafeteria they had back in the day?)  or at the Radisson,  was look forward.  

 

I was not yet ordained, and when I was sick there were many moments when I was not sure I would be a priest.

 

But Leslie and I would talk hopefully about the future even despite the present ugliness of life, and look forward to the days when those current issues would be behind us.

 

I looked forward in those days to being a priest.

 

And Leslie too often talked about one day becoming a priest.

 

At the time she had two small girls (she would later have a son too) and the priesthood for her seemed like some very distant mirage.

 

She too would endure some very difficult situations in the years to come.

 

But here we are, 20 years later, being the priests we imagined ourselves being way back in those seemingly endlessly dark days.

 

That is how God works in our lives sometimes.

 

It is important to remember that, as followers of Jesus, that in doing such introspection, in looking forward, we do not despair.

 

We do not lose heart.

 

To go back to what Paul says to us today in our Epistle reading:

 

“Do not worry about anything…”

 

And in that incredible reading we hear this morning from the Hebrew scriptures, we hear so many truly wonderful and hopeful things from the prophet Zephaniah.

 

“Do not fear, O Zion [we are Zion];

Do not let your hands grow weak.”

 

Why should we not fear?

 

Because, according the prophet, God is in our midst.

 

God is with us.

 

And God “will rejoice over you with gladness,

[God] will renew you with [God’s] love.”

 

But God is even clearer in this reading about how well cared for we are by God.

 

God exults over us “with loud singing.”

 

God will “remove every disaster” from us, so that we will not bear reproach.

 

God will deal with all our oppressors, and the lame will saved and the outcast gathered in.

 

God will change whatever shame we have to praise

 

These words of God are being spoken to each of us today:

 

God says, “I will bring you home at the time when I gather you:

for I will make you renowned and praised

among all the peoples of the earth

when I restore your fortunes

before your eyes, says the Lord. “

 

Those words are being spoken to us this morning, by the God who loves us and cares for us.

 

We are well taken care of by our God.

 

And if that doesn’t give you a true reason to rejoice today, I hate to say it: nothing will.

 

So, rejoice today.

 

God loves you.

 

God cares for you.

 

God exults in you with loud singing and rejoices over you with gladness.

 

This is why we rejoice today.

 

See, the  future is nothing to fear.

 

Our future in God is a future of joy.

 

Joy in the simple fact that God really does love us and delights in us and rejoices as well in us.  

 

That real and beautiful joy is why we are decorated in rose this morning.

 

That is why, in our pondering, we are pondering joy—even joy in the midst of sadness or loneliness or depression, or pandemics.

 

That is why, even despite all that happened in our lives, all that is happening at the moment and that will happen, we can still rejoice.

 

Gaudete.

 

So, do not fear but do good in this world, even if you’re depressed or lonely or sad or not feeling well.

 

Do good in this world even if you have a perforated lung.

 

Do good even if the world does not, at times, do good to us.

 

Do good always.

 

Because in doing good, we are doing what God wants us to do in this world. 

 

In doing good, we embody true joy.

 

This is what Gaudete Sunday is all about—rejoicing.

 

Living in joy.

 

Letting joy reign supreme in us.

 

Letting joy win out over fear and uncertainty.

 

Being joyful in our love for God and for others.

 

We—followers and disciples of Jesus—bear good fruit when we are joyful in our God.

 

How can’t we?

 

That joy that we carry within us fertilizes the good things we do.

 

It motivates us.

 

It compels us.

 

It gives us purpose and meaning in our lives.

 

We, as Christians, must embody that joy.

 

We must live that joy in all we do and say and are.

 

Today, we must, in all honesty, proclaim:

 

“Gaudete!”

 

Rejoice.

 

And live that Gaudete out in our very existence, in the ministries we do, in how we deal with others.

 

So, let Gaudete be more than just what we say or do one Sunday a year.

 

Let it be our way of life as we await the Messiah’s presence coming to us.

 

St. John and St. Paul are both right:

 

The Lord is near!

 

The Lord is near.

 

God has sent the Messiah to us to redeem us.

 

 So…let us do good.

 

And when we do we will truly know that “peace of God which surpasses all understanding….”

 

We too, as embodied joy, will be bearing good fruits.

 

Let us pray.

 

Holy God of promise, God of expectation and longing, we look forward with expectation to your coming among us. We look forward to your presence in our midst. Help us in our loving. Help us as we anxiously await you so that we do not fall victim to anxiety and worry.  Remind us again and again in our lives that we ultimately have nothing to fear or to worry about for you are in control and your goodness, in the end, is always triumphant. Help us as we joyously  wait, and reward us well for our loving; in Jesus’ Name we pray.