In the infant Christ, God is so powerless that Jesus cannot even name himself. The name that is above every name must be breathed into being by someone else. Christ became helpless for us, and meets us in our places of greatest weakness.

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Feast of the Name of Jesus
Texts: Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 2:15-21 

The Apostle Paul was in prison when he wrote his letter to the church in Philippi. He had crossed the wrong people as he shared the gospel, and now he was in chains, waiting to learn his fate. He didn’t know if he would live or die – and the traditions of the church say that the epistle to the Philippians was the last letter that Paul wrote before his execution in Rome. The words in this letter may come from the apostle’s last days on earth. He is completely at the mercy of others. But in spite of his captivity and his helplessness, Paul writes about gratitude and joy. Philippians is his happiest letter. He is thankful for all that he has experienced in witnessing to Christ, and he has made his peace with whatever happens to him next. Either he will die for his faith and join Christ in heaven, or he will walk free and continue his work. Whatever is coming, whatever relief or whatever suffering, it will be for the glory of God, and so he can write about joy from a jail cell.

It’s an amazing attitude for him to have, but Paul doesn’t have to find this peace for himself. He says that he has learned it by following the example of Jesus. And he finds strength in that example by recalling the words of a familiar song. That’s what we read from Philippians today. It’s called the Christ hymn, and it may well be one of the very first statements of the Christian faith. Paul is quoting it, and Paul’s letters are the oldest writings in the New Testament, so these words have to be one of the very earliest Christian documents that we have. It’s not long, but it says what it needs to say. It tells of Christ’s preexistence with God, his birth as a human being, his death on a cross, his exaltation from the grave, and his glorious reign over all creation. It’s a familiar story. But the first stanza uses some compelling language that didn’t make it into any of our creeds. It says that although Christ Jesus “was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” Before entering this earth, Christ had all the power in the universe. All things were his to command. All mysteries were his to know. He could have held fast to this power, could have used it for his own advantage, could have forced all of creation to bow before him. But the hymn tells us that’s not how God views power. The misuse of power belongs to humans, not to God.

We all know how naturally we human beings exploit power. In the public realm and in our private lives, we have all seen people pursue power just for the sake of being powerful. And the state of our world testifies to how rarely that power is used wisely. All of us could easily name people who we’ve seen misusing their status to benefit themselves and hurt those below them – but we can’t just point fingers at others. It’s safe to say that all of us have, at some moment, abused power ourselves, even if it was a just childish impulse like laughing at a less popular kid on the playground or bossing around a younger sibling. Our world is full of hierarchies, and we are so anxious to protect our place within them. Falling down a pecking order is embarrassing at best and dangerous at worst, and so we cling to what we have.

Even the gospel can be a means by which we try to set ourselves above one another. As Paul writes to the Philippians, “Some proclaim Christ from envy, rivalry, and selfish ambition, not sincerely or out of love.” In our grasping hands, even the good news can be a tool for declaring who’s in and who’s out, who’s righteous and who’s sinful, who wins and who loses. We can use Christ to try to get ahead, to prove that we are better than others, to show that we and those who think like us are the real Christians. That’s obviously missing the point, but the church has long demonstrated how easily we turn the gospel into a cudgel for beating others into line. If we can gain advantage from something, our instinct is to take advantage of that thing, and the gospel is no exception.

It’s all because we’re afraid. Life is so tenuous. Everything we know can be upended in a single moment. Power is how we try to run from our frailty. We flee helplessness with everything we have. We run from the thought that our fate could be outside our control. But we all know that’s how it really works. All of us are under the control of countless forces that give us little say in how we live our lives. We’re subject to the demands of our fragile bodies. We’re enmeshed in economic systems that dictate our fortunes. We live under the authority of the planet, and geopolitical powers, and social trends, and the whims of the people around us. So little about our lives is truly under our control. And we hate that. We want to be autonomous, invulnerable, free. So we strive and strive to hold on to something that will make us the masters of our own destiny. For some of us, that thing is the pursuit of physical fitness. For others, it’s money. It might be influence, or knowledge, or professional success, or the perfect family – whatever it is that makes us feel like we’re in control of our lives. But nothing can free us from our vulnerability. Nothing can free us from our mortality. So we keep on trying, and are never satisfied.

But Paul shows us that we can be free of all this anxiety. We all know that Paul wasn’t a perfect man, but when push came to shove, when his life was on the line, he found peace. Remembering that Christ made himself helpless, even to death on a cross, he discovered the grace of helplessness for himself. Because helplessness is where we find Christ. Paired with this letter written by a man in prison, we read a story about Christ being named and circumcised as a tiny infant. We think of the newborn Jesus as sweet and beautiful, and of course those things were true of him as they are true of all babies, but here we are called to witness his absolute vulnerability, his absolute dependence on others. The second person of the Trinity, the living Word who existed before time itself and through whom all things came into being – that God made flesh has given up the ability to even name himself. It’s absurd. The Word cannot say his own name. The name that is above every name must be breathed into being by someone else. This is how God chose to come to us. This is how we meet Christ, and how Christ meets us: weak, fragile, human.

Christ was equal with God, but he poured himself out and became equal with us. He embraced our weakness for himself. He experienced our birth and our life and our death for himself. And then, when God raised him up from death, Jesus lifted up the rest of us with him. It is in Christ that our human weakness is known and loved, and it is in Christ alone that our human weakness is overcome. The way out of our fear is not in grasping for power that can hold our weakness at bay, but in following the path of Christ and choosing to embrace our vulnerability. We want flee from our frailty, our vulnerability, our mortality – but we don’t need to run away, because our helplessness is where God knows us best. We have to open ourselves to weakness, even to death, to feel Christ at our side. But when we learn to humble ourselves is when we can sing for joy in spite of our frailty, in spite of our fear, in spite of our chains. That’s when we know Christ is right there with us, holding us in love, and promising us that weakness is the way to God’s true power, and that the way of the cross is the way to eternal life.

The only time we have to live is right now, in this present moment, where God comes and fills the time with grace and love; so will we be kind, will we love, will we be Christ, today, right now?

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The First Sunday of Christmas, year B
Texts: Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:21-40

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

It’s December 31^st, Two thousand seventeen. What direction are you looking?

Are you looking to the past today? It’s the day to do it. Websites, news organizations, magazines, everyone does their lists this time of year. The best and the worst of 2017 are chronicled and numbered for our entertainment, and sometimes our depression.

But are you also doing a list for 2017? Regrets, loesses, bad decisions? Remembrance of loved ones? Joys, love found, moments of happiness?

It’s December 31^st, Two thousand seventeen. Are you looking forward?

That’s usually tomorrow’s job, January 1st. Are you joining millions of others making resolutions for 2018, plans for being a different person this time? Are you looking forward with dread over impending personal crises or what might happen in the world?

Or are you looking forward in hope? Are there things planned you can’t wait for, coming events that will bring you joy?

Time is tricky.

We think we live time in one direction, past to present to future. But often we get trapped outside of our present moment. We linger on the past, or dwell on the future, and don’t live in our present. So on this arbitrary day that someone decided ended our 365 day trip around the sun, we’re either focused backward or forward. But it’s often how we live our whole lives.

What if we learned to really live in the present?

In the fullness of time, Paul says, God was born among us.

Actually, Paul says “When the fullness of time had come,” so he’s saying the birth of Jesus happened at just the right time in world history, when everything was ready, at exactly the right moment for God’s Incarnation among us.

But maybe there’s more we can see here. Maybe “the fullness of time” isn’t just a question of a moment in history.

What if Paul is saying that God fills time by coming? That is, the timeless God from before even the birth of the universe enters our time, our history, in this moment, and fills it with God?

Time itself would be transformed. There’d be no past, no future, there’d just be now, filled with God.

We know a little about this, because we find that fullness here.

There is a mystery about our worship here. Externally, there’s a certain amount of time it takes. We rarely finish Eucharist before one hour and fifteen minutes. This is longer than a lot of other Christians, and some wonder why we do this.

Because: when we’re in here we lose track of time. That is, we lose track of the chronology of time. In this place, we live in time that is filled with God, and we don’t perceive how the clock is running. We don’t check our watches, we don’t drum our fingers on the pews. (Well, maybe once in a while some of us do; we’re human.)

But in this place when we worship, we are here. We’re not living in the past. We’re not living in the future. In this moment we are simply here.

In this place, for this time, we are filled with God. It is the fullness of time here. It is all the time we need. It is outside of chronological time. And in this space, opened up by God in our midst, we meet God’s fullness. God is born among us. We receive God Incarnate in Word and Meal, in each other, in prayer and song. We are filled.

But if God comes to us in the fullness of time here, could we experience this outside of these walls, too? Simeon must have.

Simeon lived with a promise that transformed every moment of his life.

However old he was when he heard it, he lived confident that he would not die until he saw God’s Messiah.

Think of that. Every day might be the day. For however many years, however many decades, this day might be the one. Every day he’d look into each face, treat everyone with grace and compassion because, who knows, this could be the Messiah.

Imagine what a full life that would be for us!

Every day you get up with joy, because this could be the day. Every person you see, you love and respect, because this could be the one. Every moment you are aware of who you are, where you are, what you are, because you don’t want to miss the coming of God’s Christ in the world.

There’s no time to regret the past. No time to worry about the future. Just the joy of being in a world where God is coming to bring life and love, and knowing you’ve been promised to see that coming.

What do we miss when we don’t live such a life?

If we spend our days living in the past, dwelling on past losses or victories, fretting about past actions or missed opportunities, what are we missing in the fullness of the moment we actually are living in?

If we spend our days anxious about what is to come, or anticipating a good thing, or wishing we could become someone we aren’t, what are we missing in the fullness of the moment we are actually living in?

If we spend our days in a present that isn’t really present, distracted by entertainment or news or whatever else we’re chasing, what are we missing in the fullness of the moment we are actually living in?

And not just what. Who are we missing? Who are we not listening to, or loving, or being kind to, or simply being with, when we’re not “here” in our present? Are we missing Christ?

It’s December 31^st, Two thousand seventeen. Today, right now, is the fullness of time.

And we are promised what Simeon was, that we will see God-with-us.

Today, right now, this is the day that the Lord has made. In this moment, in this fullness of time, God is here, blessing us with hope and life and light.

The past can teach. We learn from mistakes, remember loved ones, recall graces. But we can’t live there. The future can direct. We hope for good, plan to grow and change, look forward to what God is doing. We can’t live there, either.

But we can be Simeon today, right now, and watch every moment for Christ’s coming. We can be love right now. We can show compassion and do kindness, right now. We can look in every face for the face of God’s Christ, right now.

Today, in the fullness of time, is all the time we know we have. And here, filled with God, right now, is the only time we can really know what it is to live.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

When we open the door of our heart to God, we make an opening in the world for God’s light; we also are changed forever.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Nativity of Our Lord (Christmas Day)
Texts: John 1:1-14 (adding 15-18), with reference to Luke 9:58

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

“Mary’s consent opens the door of created nature, of time, of history, to the Word of God,” Thomas Merton writes. [1]

God’s Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth, because Mary opened the door. The light shines in the darkness and cannot be overcome, because Mary said “yes.” Her son Jesus, the Word of God from before time itself, “was in the world” because of Mary.

But ponder this troubling thought: Mary opens the door. And we slam it shut.

Merton’s poem continues: “Mary sends the infinitely Rich and Powerful One forth as poor and helpless . . . A vagrant, a destitute wanderer with dusty feet, finds his way down a new road. A homeless God, lost in the night, without papers, without identification, without even a number, a frail expendable exile.” [2]

John says, “The world came into being through this Word, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own did not accept him.” Jesus said: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Luke 9:58)

God-with-us, Emmanuel, for whose coming just yesterday morning we sang our longing, does come to ransom captive Israel. Does come to join life with all peoples and tribes. Does come to restore the whole creation by entering into it in person. Does come to reveal God’s eternal love for the creation and for all creatures in it.

But this timeless Word of God arrives and walks down a dusty road homeless, without identification or papers, “a frail expendable exile.” And this homeless God is sent to a cross.

For two thousand years, people have claimed to receive God’s Word-made-flesh. But for two thousand years the Church has also done many horrible things, caused pain and suffering. For two thousand years, people have claimed to follow this Christ, but have done wickedness and evil in that name.

For two thousand years, people have claimed to accept God-with-us, but have lived lives of selfishness and neglect, have oppressed and harmed others, have tried to hold salvation as our possession, not live into it as a new way of life. For two thousand years, Christ’s followers have not followed Christ. We recognize this in ourselves, too.

The Word came to what was his own, and his own did not accept him.

This is the paradox of the Incarnation and of this day: we want God with us. But we’re not prepared to accept God with us.

John declares that in Jesus of Nazareth we see the face of God, the Son who reveals God’s heart to us. God’s Word, God’s Logos, God’s Blueprint for the whole universe, present at the creation itself, the Son of God, one with the Spirit and the Father, this “infinitely Rich and Powerful One,” now enters our life as a poor and helpless baby of a poor and willing young mother.

When we see who this baby becomes, hear him proclaim God’s love and God’s reign, hear him invite us to follow his path, when we see him die and then rise from the dead, we know John speaks truth. Jesus is God-with-us, the face of the Triune God for us, a face that radiates undying love. In Jesus we see the heart of God we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to see.

But accepting God’s Word, receiving Jesus as God-with-us, means being changed. And that’s where we hesitate.

Too often we act as if faith is just thinking and believing the right things.

We tend to keep faith in our heads, a matter of right teachings, because that keeps God at arm’s length. Talking about God, talking about doctrine, talking about faith, as if they’re objects for our consideration. Then we don’t have to be changed.

“Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of God has no place to lay his head.” When faith doesn’t reach the heart, when we shut that door to God’s making a home in us, that’s when believers do horrible things. That’s when we kill, and when we persecute those who disagree. That’s when we ignore the poor, the hungry, the sick, the dying. That’s when we don’t live lives shaped by God’s love. That’s when we become a force of darkness instead of light. And God remains homeless.

“Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of God has no place to lay his head.” When we want God-with-us only on our terms, standing in the background like a good butler until we need something, and then send God back into the shadows, God remains homeless.

We keep God at arm’s length because John this morning promises a great but terrifying wonder: “To all who received this Word, who believed in his name, the Word gave power to become children of God, who were born not of human things, not of flesh, but of God.”

That’s why we intellectualize our faith, keep God on the sidelines of our lives. Because the alternative is standing in front of Gabriel like Mary, in that heartbeat where we have to decide: do I let God into my life and be changed forever? The alternative is God growing inside us, like Mary. The alternative is God taking the Blueprint of the universe enfleshed in Jesus and re-writing us to that Blueprint, making us children of God who look like God.

All who receive Christ are given power to become new beings. Children of God.

Mary’s whole life is transformed. She becomes the one who embraces, loves, shapes, and nurtures God in the world. Family, disciples, friends, many who meet Jesus also receive him into their lives. It takes time for some of them, but they are transformed, too.

And as much as we can see when Christians have not received Christ and have done evil, as much as we see where we have failed, John’s truth is also visible throughout these two thousand years: year after year, century after century, people’s receiving Christ into their lives transformed them into Christ in the world, children of God who, knowing the heart of God in Jesus, became that heart in the world.

For century after century, year after year, people’s consent opened the door of created nature, of time, of history, to the Word of God, to God’s Blueprint, and they were changed into Christ in the world, children of God who, seeing the face of God in Jesus, became that face in the world.

Now we hear Gabriel’s invitation ourselves.

To accept this Word among us, to receive this God-with-us as our own. We need to be as aware as Mary was of what this will mean for us. We will be changed. We will let go of lots of things we cling to. We will start on a new path, where we are God’s children, made in God’s image, where our lives no longer are our own.

But when we do, when we’re made into the pattern of God’s divine Blueprint, what happened with Mary will also happen with us. Others will meet God through us. Others will find hope through us. Others will see God’s glory, full of grace and truth, through us. Others will know the heart of God’s love, through us.

Mary’s consent opens the door to the Word of God. Our consent keeps it open, so that God’s Word can keep creating life and justice and light in this world that so desperately needs it.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

[1] Thomas Merton, “Hagia Sophia: IV. Sunset. The Hour of Compline. Salve Regina”, from In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, (New Directions Publishing Corp, New York, 2005), p. 71

[2] Merton, ibid

 

It is in the ordinary, tired, everyday life of this world – even this child we celebrate tonight – that God is truly found. And God’s transforming light and life finds room in everything ordinary, even us. Until all is made new.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Eve of the Nativity of Our Lord
Texts: Luke 2:1-20

Sisters and brothers in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

“Let’s go to Bethlehem now and see this thing that’s happened, which the Lord told us about.”

This is pretty remarkable, actually. Whatever they saw and heard on that Bethlehem hillside, afterward the shepherds didn’t shrug it off as a dream. They didn’t stay frozen in fear. They looked at each other and said, “Let’s go see.”

But what did they see when they got there? We know what Christmas cards and movies and carols say. They found a barn or cave, a soft light rising up from a manger. Cow and donkey placidly lie on either side. A holy couple sits demurely beside the glow, and a silent, beatific God-child looks up in wisdom and peace. Soft heavenly background music completes the scene.

But that’s nothing like what greeted the shepherds when they got to town.

We tend to take this moment of God’s coming into the world and wash it in sentiment and light.

We clean the whole picture up so it looks like it’s supposed to. All is calm, all is bright round yon virgin. The little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes. Love’s pure light, radiant, beams from the child’s holy face. Beautiful.

Many of our carols go this way, and we’re good with that. We love this irenic picture to complete a night of perfection in a world of brokenness and pain. On my vicar year, the high school shop teacher helped me build a stable for our Nativity figures. It’s beautiful. Since then I’ve often dreamed about figuring out a way of installing a warm spotlight on the ceiling that would wash the manger in a glow, only the manger. Because no matter where we put candles, Jesus is always in the dark.

But that perfect scene isn’t what the shepherds saw. And as long as we insist on perfection tonight – in our Nativity scenes, in our carols, even in our families – as long as we insist on bathing everything in a warm glow, we miss what’s really important. What the shepherds actually saw is what gives us life. Gives us hope that cannot be quenched, even by imperfection, suffering, pain, loss, or whatever else we try to shoehorn out of this night.

Seeing Jesus in the dark, that’s what we need to see. That’s what the shepherds help us see.

Because what the shepherds saw was utterly ordinary.

They didn’t find a barn, or a cave. Luke says there was a manger. But Luke’s Greek is good, and he never says there was no room in the “inn.” He uses the Greek word for “inn” in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Here he uses a word better translated “guest room.”

In a culture of hospitality, it’s unthinkable that this couple would have been turned away, especially by relatives. But if cousin Betty and her whole family were already in the one upper room on the roof, Joseph and Mary would have been welcomed into the main room where everyone else slept. Including one or two animals the house owned, brought inside for the evening for warmth and security. Put the baby in the manger so he doesn’t roll around on the floor with the others.

So in a dark house lighted by a couple oil lamps, the shepherds see an exhausted mother, without a chance to freshen up, a tiny baby wrapped in cloth, sometimes screaming like all babies do. An extended group of folks hovering around. A family probably short on patience, now greeting a bunch of rubes from the hills.

So how did these shepherds believe this was the Messiah the angels told them about? A newborn is beautiful, even miraculous. But also ordinary. Without the spotlight and background music and beatific mother and child, what did they see in this utterly ordinary scene?

When we start asking this, we realize it’s always the question with Jesus.

We imagine a practically perfect Jesus as a boy, but Mary must have had hundreds of ordinary moments with a boy who sometimes smelled bad, who skinned his knee, who had to learn to behave. How did she see God’s Son in this ordinary kid?

As an adult, Jesus was a gifted teacher, and attracted followers. But it’s pretty clear from the Gospels that they saw him in mostly human terms, until the end.

And the end: that’s the big question, isn’t it? How did they look at a man hanging on a cross, humiliated as a criminal, and say, “Yes, there’s God-with-us. That’s the one.”

We start asking the question tonight, with the shepherds, because this question’s never going away. How do we see God in this ordinary baby? In Jesus, who looks like us, talks like us, is like us?

Luke says we hear as well as see. That helps.

The shepherds left the family apparently satisfied they’d seen what was advertised. But what they went and proclaimed was “what had been told them about this child,” the same thing that led them to the baby.

Mary “treasured all these words” she heard from the shepherds, and “pondered them in her heart.”

The disciples heard Jesus speak about God’s reign, about God’s love, heard his invitation to follow in God’s way. Slowly they figured out who he was. The acts of power helped, but what they heard opened them to see what they needed to see.

And they probably didn’t see God on that cross. Only failure and disaster and the end of all their hopes. But then they saw Jesus alive on Sunday, and heard, heard, him say “Peace be with you,” and, “woman, why are you weeping?,” and they could see. When he broke the ordinary bread in that ordinary little house in Emmaus, and spoke, their eyes were opened.

When we strip away the sentimentality to see the ordinariness of this birth, we might be afraid we can’t see God on this night anymore.

But the opposite is true. Like the shepherds, and Mary, and the disciples, we, too, have heard. And we need to see what God’s doing as clearly as we can if we’re going to find God’s life in this child, whom we’ve been told is God’s Son.

When we look with clear and open eyes what we see is this wonder: God comes into human life in the most ordinary of ways. In a simple, ordinary birth of a child. In the growing life of a young boy. In the teaching life of an obscure rabbi. Isaiah says, “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” (Isaiah 53:2)

But in this ordinary life, in an ordinary world, God has come. Into an ordinary baby, born in difficult, harsh, threatening times. Just like every baby born tonight in hospitals or shacks all over this difficult, harsh, threatening planet. This we have heard, and this we now see. God has come to restore all the creation by imbuing God’s own self into the creation.

We’ve already known this, already heard this, if we’ve forgotten.

Tonight we will gather once again at the Table this ordinary rabbi sets before us, and eat a small piece of bread, sip a little wine. But in this ordinary bread, in this ordinary wine, grown from the earth itself, made into nourishment in the same way for thousands of years, we have heard, yes, we have even seen for ourselves, God is present. We taste the death and resurrection of this ordinary one, this Jesus, in this ordinary meal. And we know Christ has come to us.

And if Christ can inhabit ordinary bread and wine, can inhabit this ordinary baby born long ago, then here is our Christmas wonder:
Christ can inhabit us.

Because there’s nothing more ordinary than we who are gathered here. We know our failures and flaws, our weaknesses and doubts, our brokenness and pain. If God can only be seen in the perfection of a photo-shopped picture, there’s no room for us in God, and no room in us for God. If God can only come into a perfect family, perfect relationships, a Christmas out of the storybooks, then how could God come to us?

But the shepherds heard and saw and proclaimed God in the ordinary of this world, bringing healing and restoration from within. We might not be much to look at, either. But in us, as in the whole of this ordinary world, God is transforming the whole creation.

So let’s go to Bethlehem now and see this thing that’s happened, which God told us about.

There is no place in the whole creation where God is not, so all the creation will be healed. That’s what we see on this holy night.

There’s nothing so ordinary that God is not there, so everywhere God makes newness of life. That’s what we see on this holy night.

An ordinary baby. A tired set of parents. Strange shepherds. A humiliating death. See, God is there! And God’s life cannot be stopped.

A morsel of bread. A sip of wine. Ordinary people trying their best but feeling that’s not enough. See, God is here! And God’s life cannot be stopped.

It’s a lot to process. So let’s not only go see. Let’s also take a seat beside Mary and ponder in our heart these things we’ve seen and heard. Until we can see God and God’s healing in all things, making ordinary extraordinary, making wholeness out of brokenness, even life out of death.

Good news of great joy indeed!

In the name of Jesus.  Amen

 

When the angel calls Mary God’s favored one, she’s rightfully confused and afraid about what this greeting will mean for the life she has known. With Mary, we must decide: will we throw up our defenses when we feel uncertain, or will we stay open to God?

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Second Sunday of Advent, year B
Texts: Luke 1:26-38; Luke 1:46b-55

She had a plan for her life. Whether or not Mary was excited about her path, she knew what it was going to be. She was about to be married, with children soon to follow, just like generations of mothers before her, and generations of mothers to come. It wasn’t going to be anything special – she calls herself lowly, this world rarely lets lowly people live extraordinary lives – but at least it was a familiar story.

But then the angel tells this ordinary woman that she is God’s favored one, and her familiar world spins off its axis. Is there anything so terrifying as hearing that you have found God’s favor? God’s favor might sound nice in theory, but most of us just want to live in quiet control of our lives, making our humble contributions to our world. How many of us want to be swept up in something greater than ourselves, something vast and wild and overwhelming? Because that’s what God’s favor really is. As Mary’s people had long known, God’s favor isn’t innocuous. You can’t passively receive it, then go on your way. God’s favor makes terrible and wonderful demands of God’s chosen servants. God’s favor kept Noah and his family safe in the ark while the world flooded around them. God’s favor carried Joseph from his home to a prison cell to a king’s right hand. God’s favor raised up Moses to lead his people out of Egypt and into a new land, a new law, a new way of being. God’s favor never lets people stay put.

And so when Mary hears the angel call her favored, we read that she is much perplexed. That’s the nice way of putting it. We could also translate that word, “perplexed,” as troubled, agitated, distressed. She’s worried, deeply worried about what this greeting is going to do to her life. She’s conflicted about what it means to hear God calling her. And it’s not because she’s a coward, or weak in faith. It’s because she knows her people’s story, and she knows her God. She knows that God’s favor means that nothing is ever going to be the same. What is God’s favor going to demand of her? Where is it going to take her, and how is it going to change her? Gabriel’s encouragement not to be afraid isn’t coming out of nowhere – the angel knows that he bears unsettling news. God wants to overturn everything that Mary has ever expected from the world. Her entire story could be rewritten. That would be enough to worry anyone.

When we have our understanding of our place in the world challenged, our instinct is to defend ourselves. We naturally pull back and close ourselves off to the threat. That’s why it’s so difficult for us to talk meaningfully with people who hold opposing views, why it’s so much easier for us to shout at each other than it is to listen. It’s hard for us to take in information that challenges our worldview, and so easy to discount different perspectives as falsehoods. We don’t want to consider the possibility that we could be wrong. We don’t like to change our minds, and we definitely don’t like to change our plans. When we’re unsure and nervous, we often just want to retreat to a place of certainty and safety. We throw up our walls to protect what we know and love.

And that’s just the effect that other people have on us. If we seek safety and certainty in our human relationships, then how much more do we long for those things from God! We want to be certain about how God is acting in our lives, to point to the clear and confident movement of the spirit through history. We want God’s plan to be transparent. But that’s not how God works. God’s story brings us down long and dangerous paths through the wilderness before we see the Promised Land. We encounter God’s grace in turmoil and overturning, in difficult transformations and times of trial. In the Magnificat, Mary sings that God’s promises are kept when God upends the world, casting down the proud and mighty and lifting up the weak. When the spirit collides with history, it shakes things up. It shakes us up. Salvation is not serene, and it’s not safe. We say we want God in our lives, but we can be quick to shut ourselves off to the work of the spirit, because God wants to change us, and we rarely want to be changed.

I confess I have felt this in my own life in recent weeks. I know what it means to celebrate the movement of the Magnificat – to rejoice at the casting down of the mighty – until it suddenly hits too close to home. When the comic Louis CK was taken down by allegations of sexual misconduct, I cheered. I’d seen the rumors online for years, so when all those whispers grew into a shout that could topple a giant, it felt like such a victory. I thought of all those stories in scripture that tell of God rising up to create justice where it looked like justice was impossible, and it felt like I was watching one of those amazing moments where God was breaking into history to set things right. When the same thing happened to Al Franken, I cried. It was so confusing, and so sad, to watch this movement I believed in turn its wrath on a person I admired. And as I watched other people on the political left also go through this confusion, I saw their defenses fly up. People who had days before proclaimed, “believe women,” were now calling Franken’s accusers lying right-wing operatives…and other, far worse insults. They were happy to see powerful men being taken down, so long as it didn’t make them lose anyone they cherished. When I read and heard these kinds of comments, I was sickened their hypocrisy – but there was a part of me that also found them satisfying. I wanted to believe that they were right. They opened the tempting possibility that nothing about my world would have to change, that God’s unsettling of history would only touch other people. When the world felt fearful and perplexing, there was something in me that just wanted to retreat to the safety of the way things used to be.

But Mary, she stays open. When the angel greets her and calls her favored, she’s confused. She’s scared. She’s not sure she’s ready for whatever God is going to ask of her. But she keeps listening. She pushes back, asks questions, but she doesn’t close herself off to God’s possibilities. She doesn’t retreat, and she doesn’t shut down. And in the end, in spite of her perplexity and fear, Mary says yes. She wants to be a part of God’s plan because she knows that, whatever turmoil she is going to experience, whatever pain and loss and fear, whatever uncertainty about what God is doing – God has something better in store on the other side. God’s favor is going to take her from her ordinary life to the foot of the cross where she will watch her son die in agony, but that same favor will bring her to the empty tomb, and to a place of glory among the saints. God’s path for her and her son leads through fear and hurt and despair, but in the end, it saves us all. Mary doesn’t know what’s in store for her, but she is certain in the faith that God is transforming the world, and her, for the better.

What awaits us on the other side of our fears is better than anything we could build on our own. The world that God wants for us is more wonderful than the world we have, more wonderful than even the world we could imagine. Life in the resurrection is fuller than the life we could make for ourselves. God peace is more complete than the peace this world offers – but the uneasy compromises that we call peace must be shaken up for the peace of Christ to break through. It’s hard to let go of the things we know, so that we might live into the things that God has planned for us. Until our new world takes shape, we will be perplexed, much perplexed about where God is. We’ll question if and how God plans are possible. We will fearfully wonder at our place in God’s work. But with Mary, we can hold all these things in our heart, and still say, “Here am I, a servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” And in that moment, Christ will grow within us, and nothing will ever be the same.

Amen.