December 22, 2024 - The Fourth Sunday of Advent
Grace to you and peace from the God of all creation and from Christ Jesus who, in the spirit of our baptismal covenant, invite us to live wet. Amen.
I'm honored this day to celebrate the baptism of our grandson, Eero Benjamin, with that cool white lid over there, and to do so in a gathering of family and friends at the Church of the Epiphany. In this liturgy, we will commend Ben and Emily, Eero's parents, to raise their child wet. That the grace-filled blessings pronounced this morning at the font lead to a vocation of such blessings, lifelong grace.
And friends in Christ, we are all invited to embrace a calling to live wet, making manifest the love and the mercy, the justice-seeking and extravagant love that comes with our faith journey in the path of Christ, that comes with the covenant of baptism.
I'm grateful to Father John for the invitation to share Eero's baptism in this gathering of soggy worshipers.
We also gather at the Winter Solstice, observing just yesterday the longest night and the shortest day in the Northern Hemisphere. Do you feel it yet? Historians and anthropologists track solstice celebrations back at least 30,000 years. Some of our ancient ancestors built bonfires on the Winter Solstice. It is said they did so to lure back the sun after many months of waning light. Or, if not to lure it back, at least to participate in the sun's return.
The ancients possessed a wisdom that we don't. A wisdom that did not separate natural phenomena from their religious or mystical yearnings. As the days grew shorter and colder, and the sun threatened to abandon the earth, their solution was to bring all ordinary action and daily routine to a halt. They gave in to the nature of winter. They put away their tools and left their fields. And we're told that in the northern European areas, they would remove the wheels from their wagons and carts, and festoon them with greens and candles.
From those newly-purposed wagon wheels hung in their halls, they marked a different time, a time to stop, a time to turn inward. And slowly they wooed the sun god back, and their solstice festivals announced the return of hope after their time of primal darkness.
The symbolic energy of wagon wheels made sacred bearers of light has mostly escaped us. We're not very good at stopping our daily routines. We're not very good at looking inward. Our Advent wreaths are LED lights; they're mostly quaint, or they're considered pretty decorations.
But hauling back the sun! Think of that. Hauling back the sun, returning the light of hope can only fully occur when we've had the courage to stop and wait and engage fully in the winter of our dark longing.
Gertrude Mueller Nelson wrote that perhaps what we 21st-century people need to do is dramatically remove the right front tire from our vehicles and festoon the tire with greens and candles and bring it into the house. Our daily routines would stop, and we would have the leisure to incubate and to attend to our precarious pregnancy and look after ourselves. Such intentionality would be a counternarrative to the circus of this season.
So at this midpoint of the sermon, you have been admonished to live wet and to disable your vehicles to vanquish busyness and distractions.
On to the Gospel.
In some traditions, including the one here, the fourth candle of the Advent wreath is lit to recall a love lit against the shadow of hate. And in this light, this light of love, Mary's visit to Elizabeth is cast by Luke the gospel writer as a story of God working through loving relationships. At the same time, love is cast as an unfolding force in history, taking shape through generations of ordinary, unexpected, often vulnerable people.
The angel Gabriel has just delivered astonishing news to young Mary, and Mary has delivered her world-changing song, "Let It Be.” "Let it be with me according to your word," she intoned.
And we're told that immediately and with haste, Mary makes her way to Elizabeth's house in Judea for an extended stay. Now, it should be noted that rarely are women presented in the Bible as protagonists with no men present. But Luke strikingly bookends the life of Jesus with two such scenes. Here at the beginning, it's pregnant Mary and her relative, Elizabeth. And at the end, with the discovery of the empty tomb, a group of women are there to bring the good news to the world.
The marginalization of women is turned on its head here in the Gospel of Luke, because they are present at birth and at death, they are present at womb and tomb. It's women who are at the center of the story. And Mary's song, you heard Henry bring us to it, that extraordinary Magnifact. Mary's song suggests the joyful mystery of God's love cannot be contained by prose alone. The power and poetry of music helps it break through.
We don't know why Mary left her home and her fiancé in Nazareth for an extended stay with Elizabeth. We do know that she was vulnerable as a young, pregnant, unmarried woman in first-century Palestine. She would still be vulnerable in our day.
Perhaps she needed the time and space to process what was happening. Perhaps Elizabeth was to Mary an older, trusted relative offering a sanctuary of inspiring solidarity and support. Whatever motivated this holy reunion, the God of love is lifting up the lowly and working deeds of power through the supposedly powerless people and places.
Elizabeth greets Mary, "Blessed are you among women!" And Mary is framed, friends, as a liberator, and as anticipatory joy is expressed, celebrating what has secretly been done but not yet come fully into view. The "already now and not yet" that you've heard Father John referring to in recent weeks.
Mary and Elizabeth joyfully believe, and testify, and sing. And, friends in Christ, take note of Luke's portrayal of Mary. She's strong, and she's poised, and she's educated, and she's insightful. Her eloquent hymn evoking Israel's long-standing relationship with God indicates that she is deeply framed in the Jewish tradition. Mary was likely the one who instilled in her son the love of scripture and the love of its interpretation.
And Luke's point is clear. Mary is a young woman of vision and learning and artistry, and if you will, chutzpah. She interprets life according to the ancient patterns of divine love and action, and her song encourages us to do the same. On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we're invited to reflect on what love really is, all of God's love and ours.
It's the story of God coming to be with us through prestigious prophets, yes, but also through nowhere towns and through young women like Mary and old women like Elizabeth and through stars and shepherds and scripture and song.
This beautiful, ancient story of Christmas insists that God's love is a force that remakes the world.
This week we take this story upon ourselves and take it in. We are wise to follow Mary's example and seek out allies. Forming sanctuaries of love and mutual support, together we raise our voices to sing that God's love is remaking the world.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote in The Divine Milieu, "By virtue of the creation, and still more by virtue of the incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see."
My sisters and brothers, may we see that which is sacred in our world. May we see in the waters of baptism the renewing miracle of the covenant of grace. May we see in darkness and absence the renewing power and the potential for a new dawn and a hope. May we see in our vulnerability and our common humanity vessels for God's revolutionary love. And in so doing, let us set aside once and for all the imagery of Mary as meek and mild. Seeing her as the first disciple, a force to be reckoned with, a young woman of vision and learning and artistry and chutzpah, one who proclaims that God's love even now is making all things new.
I close with the word of blessing and commendation from the writings of Susan Palo Cherwien entitled, God is Praised in Hope.
"God is praised in hope. God is praised in those who do not succumb to sarcasm and despair, those who find a song in the cold night and the beauty in each day survive, are not cast down, are not crushed. Suffering is a pregnant night and hope brings us to the dawn. Hope shines our way through wilderness to the new, the unexpected, the longed for. In hope we find the beauty of each moment, the song in the night, the possible behind the pain, the dawn behind the darkness, the surprise behind the numbing cold, the beloved behind the empty embrace, the coming behind the absence."
God is praised in hope. Amen.
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