Mary: Bold, Eager, Confident, Revolutionary

 Luke 1:26-38  Advent 4 12-24-17

 

Mother and Child
Pablo Picasso

The words we usually hear to describe Mary are “meek and mild”

I’m sure people mean it as a compliment,

but if you called me “meek and mild”,

I think I might wonder what you meant by that,

and then stew over it for the rest of the day.

The classic image of Mary

(the woman who gave birth and raised Jesus)

is of a silent, obedient woman who passively

allows herself to be used without objection.

Who cowers quietly and accepts her fate.

And this has been put forward to many Christian girls

as the perfect example of what to be:

Obedient, quiet, submissive.

But is that who God would have chosen

for this awesome and difficult task of raising the savior?

And is this what we find in the little story that we have?

Not really.

First off, earlier in the Gospel,

the angel Gabriel comes to Mary.

Seemingly out of nowhere.

Now I’m not meek or mild but

I’m not sure I could get through that experience

without hiding under my bed.

But Mary really takes the whole encounter in stride,

with a calmness and self-control.

 

And then the Angel tells her some pretty heavy news,

that she will be pregnant, and she will have

an enormously important child.

And that child is the one that everyone is waiting for, the Messiah.

 

And not only is Mary not hiding under the bed,

but she has the presence of mind to think the situation through

and she actually comes up with a sensible question,

“How are you going to work this out?

Exactly how am I going to get pregnant?”

And she gets a sensible answer.

 

And another thing about Mary’s conversation here,

the question that I think a lot of less self-assured

people might ask, “Why me, Lord?

Why are you asking ME to do this thing?”

Some of us might stammer through our short comings.

“Oh no, not me. I’m not worthy.”

All the male prophets before her like

Moses , Jeremiah and Isaiah did that when

they were called, they all said things like

“I can’t do this important job, why don’t you pick someone else?”

 

But Mary doesn’t. She doesn’t question her favor.

She accepts it. It’s almost like she had been waiting for it.

She tells Gabriel in a short, succinct, very positive  tone,

“Here I am, the servant of the Lord, let’s do this.”

I wouldn’t call her meek and mild,

I would call her confident and ready.

 

And then, to top it all off,

when she goes to visit her relative Elizabeth,

who is also pregnant with the child who would be John the Baptist,

Mary breaks out in song,

(like many of the people in Luke’s gospel do)

and her song is not meek or mild at all

It’s frankly kind of un-mild, it’s actually revolutionary:

 

In it, she summarizes the whole of God’s mission:

My soul magnifies the Lord,
⁴⁷     and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

⁵⁰ His mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.
⁵¹ He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
⁵² He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
    and lifted up the lowly;
⁵³ he has filled the hungry with good things,
    and sent the rich away empty.

 

These are not mild images, these are challenging images.

The hope of a God who favors the poor,

and who will overturn the strong and rich,

and scatter the proud.

It’s not the song of a nice, gentle,

submissive, ethereal salvation.

This is about a real-life hard transformation and change.

 

The Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutierrez argued

 that any reading of Mary’s song is just wrong if it

"attempts to tone down what Mary's song tells us about the preferential love of God for the lowly and the abused, and about the transformation of history that God's loving will implies."

 

And other people can hear it too:

During the 1980’s, the corrupt government of Guatemala

banned the public recitation of Mary’s song

knowing how strong and powerful it was.

 

Bearing God in the flesh is not for the meek or mild.

And Mary, despite what popular culture has told is,

was never meek and mild.

She was bold, eager, confident, revolutionary,

and ready to do the work God called her to.

 

So Mary is a good example for girls,

and for boys, and for women and for men.

Be like Mary:

trust in God’s presence with you,

Accept God’s favor for you,

jump eagerly into God’s plan,

anticipate God’s transformation,

be part of the change God has in store.

 

Advent is a time of waiting.

We are waiting for God’s reign on this earth.

Waiting for God’s plan to become truth.

Waiting for new life and transformation.

Waiting for God’s mercy, and strength.

Ready for the proud to be scattered,

for the powerful to be brought down

the lowly lifted up and the hungry filled with good things.

This is not a meek and mild waiting.

We are waiting with Mary and Elizabeth

for God to turn this world around.

 

Bad News to Good News

 Advent 3, 12-12-21  Luke 3:7-18

 

So this is the good news, huh?

You know I don’t choose these readings, right?

They were chosen by a series of committees

and most mainline protestant and Catholic

churches use these readings.

So many people are celebrating this Advent

by being called Brood of Vipers by John the Baptist.

So welcome, Brood of Vipers!

 

You know there are restaurants

whose whole thing is having the waiters and waitresses

insult the customers, Like at Harold’s Diner.

Apparently there is a market for this kind of thing since there are

more than one of these places.

John the Baptist could have worked

at one of these restaurants.

 

Because by the looks of it, people seemed to like being

insulted by John the Baptist.

The restaurants do it in the name of fun and a good time.

But it’s hard to tell where John is coming from. He asks them:

“Why did you come out here?”

“What are you looking at me for?”

Then he calls them a “Brood of vipers”

Children of snakes in other words.

He isn’t nice, or polite, he doesn’t  nurture them

or make them feel good.

And yet they come to him.

They seem fascinated by him.

They still want to be baptized by him.

 

Maybe John seems like

the answer they’ve been waiting for.

The new life they had imagined.

The change that they had hoped for a long time.

was coming to the world.

 

He tells them to repent. To change.

Not to rest on their laurels.

Not to simply rely on their heritage and birth-right

but to conduct their lives in a different and better way.

He told them to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

Don’t just say that you love God,

make your life show that you love God’s ways.

 

So they asked him “What exactly do we do?”

“How do we do that”,

“what kind of things are you talking about?”

 

After hearing last week about the mountains

being laid low and the valleys raised and

and the crooked roads made straight

We might think that John the Baptists’

advice to them  would be pretty dramatic.

It might seem like he would tell them to leave their homes

and live in the wilderness, and eat locusts and wild honey

like John the Baptist did. But that was just John’s thing apparently.

 

John tells them this is the way to change the mountains:

(And he sounds not as wild as he did in the beginning)

“If you have two coats, share one with someone who has none.

If you have any extra food, share that too.”

 

He’s not telling them leave their lives and

go into the wilderness,

but to go back to their cities and villages

and their families and the people they know

and treat them with kindness.

Make sure that other people are taken care of.

Don’t just think about their own well-being.

 

For tax collectors he tells them:

“Collect no more than what you’re supposed to collect.”

 

Tax collectors were apparently pretty

notorious for being unethical.

It was so bad that people were upset when

Jesus even ate with them – and

tax collector and sinner are almost synonymous

in the new testament.

 

But John didn’t tell them to leave tax collecting,

he just tells them to do it morally and ethically.

To be an example to other tax collectors.

This might be pretty radical for a tax collector.

 

And soldiers apparently used their authority

to take advantage of other people.

But John the Baptist doesn’t tell them to

get out of the military, just do it without

extorting other people.

To be satisfied with what they were paid.

 

To prepare the way for the one who would baptize us

with the Holy Spirit and fire,

John didn’t tell everyone to drop everything

and go into the wilderness to meditate

or for everyone to join monastery and being a hermit.

or even to quit what they were doing and go to seminary.

 

To prepare for the kingdom of God,

John doesn’t suggest leaving our world

in order to bear the fruits worthy of repentance.

He sends us back into our world,

to do what we’re doing,

but to do it in a different way.

To change the world from inside our worlds.

Here’s one example of that.

 

Most people wouldn’t put sports stars on

a list of people who are building the Kingdom.

I am not a big sports fan, and

I have never watched a whole basketball game,

but I know who Lebron James is. SLIDE

He was born in Akron, Oh. Apparently he’s pretty good,

and he has gotten paid handsomely for it.

 

But I am impressed with how much he gives back to the

community that he came from. SLIDE

He was born in Akron to a young, single mother

and he knows his life could have gone in a very different

direction if he didn’t have adults who cared for him.

 

So in response, he gives his money and his effort to help children in Akron, 

and other places, to have a better future.

He has given millions to  the Boys and Girls Club,

he has given millions to the Children’s Defense Fund,

And he started the Lebron James Family Foundation,

that has done so much for Akron.

He started the “I Promise” School for underprivileged children

and the “I Promise” program which helps young people

all over Akron. He’s started housing for at risk kids,

And he’s opening this crazily ambitious SLIDE

Why is Pr. June talking about Lebron James?!

community center in Akron called House Three Thirty

that is a resource center and a hub for job training and experience, 

financial education. Really impressive.

 

Now he has extreme wealth and a grand platform

to work from, and he has used it well.

He didn’t need to leave basketball, he’s still playing,

he’s still making an incredible amount of money.

And I don’t know what his religious beliefs are,

but he is bearing good fruit for the kingdom of God.

And what an example for other players

and sports stars and celebrities to aspire to.

 
 

Preparing the way for Jesus in the future means

acting like we know Jesus did in the past.

Jesus didn’t retreat from the world, he was a part of it.

And like Jesus, we are asked to do what we do with a care

for all people, especially those who don’t have what we have.

And like Jesus, we act this way consistently

no matter what the world throws at us.

 

Even when others are extorting and stealing

we respond with honesty and integrity.

Even when the world is filled with terror and fear,

we respond with welcome and peace.

Even when everyone is keeping everything for themselves

and watching out for number one,

we act with compassion and share what we have.

 

These aren’t passive things.

These actions can be radical.

They interrupt the way things are.

They affect other people.

They can inspire, and they can  even outrage.

 

But this is how we live out our baptism

We change the world from the inside,

starting with our inside –  our minds and our hearts.

 

This is how John and Jesus will change the world.

He tells us to go back to our own lives and

let God’s grace and Christ’s love come out of us.

This is how bad news becomes Good News,

And how Broods of Vipers become Children of God.

Be Prepared

 
Advent 2

December 5, 2021

Malachi & Luke 3

 

Malachi, the first reading we heard this morning,

is the last book of the Hebrew scriptures.

The book that comes right before the gospels.

Malachi means “messenger”.

We don’t know if that’s the writer’s name

or if that’s  their title, kind of like John is “messenger” too.

 

Malachi warns the people about many of the same things that

the other prophets did: straying from God, corruption, greed,

political leaders who don’t care about the people,

and religious leaders selling out to political leaders.

 

Malachi says that God is coming into the world

and God will send another messenger first,

who will get things straightened out.

This messenger, Malachi says, will not be sweet and mild,

their message will be painful and uncomfortable.

It will be like a refiners fire or a fuller’s soap.

I had to look those two things up.

 

When you get silver it’s combined with lead and other metals.

The refiner will heat it to a very high temperature, making it liquid.

And then the bad metal rises to the top, and then

the refiner would scrape the impurities, or the dross, off

and discard it. Ouch.

 

And the fuller was the one who would clean the wool

after it was sheared from the sheep to prepare it for dying different colors.

Sheep aren’t clean animals, and they aren’t completely white,

so the soap was caustic. It was so caustic

that they made the fullers do their washing

outside of the city limits because of the smell. Ouch.

 

Refiner’s fire, fuller’s soap.

Not comfortable images, especially since

we’re the silver and the wool. Ouch.

 

The messenger says, The Lord is coming.

God is coming into the world and Malachi

asks of us: “can you stand it?”

Will you be able to take it when it happens?

 

Again, not exactly images of presents and gifts and sugar plumb fairies

from these Advent readings here.

But this jarring imagery is there to get our attention.

It’s not there to tell us we’re dispensable and will be thrown away,

although many people interpret it that way.

But it’s there to tell us that we must change our ways.

 

God has a vision for God’s people. For all of humanity.

For the whole of God’s creation.

That vision is all the things we know about and hear about

justice, peace, forgiveness, abundance, life-giving.

But our ways are not like that.

 

We tend to like privilege, fighting, holding grudges, keeping things for

ourselves. We are attracted to the ways of death like moths to a light bulb.

God is always forgiving, God is good at improvising, and God is patient.

But God will not budge on those things until God’s vision is reality.

So the messenger says we better get used to changing our ways.

When God comes, can we stand it?

 

That’s what John the Baptist was there to do.

He was there to tell people to repent and prepare the way.

Change our ways to get ready for God’s arrival.

He was Jesus’s messenger before him.

 

John’s message was to repent and change

That means changing the way we live, the way we spend money,

the way we interact with those we love,

the way we interact with those we hate,

the way we treat others with less power and privilege,

the way we conduct our business . . .

John wanted us to change our ways to be different.

To align ourselves with God’s vision now,

so that when God does come, so that we have

more silver in our lives than dross

before that refiner’s fire comes.

Who can stand it?

 

Preparing the path towards God’s way means transforming the

Mt. Seolak
Kim Yungzai

world as we know it: valleys filled, mountains laid low,

crooked things made straight.

That all sounds terrific in theory.

Until we remember that we enjoy those valleys,

we live on those mountains,

we are part of what’s making the roads crooked.

 

Sin isn’t just a few isolated choices we make in our lives,

our lives are embroiled in sin,

we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.

We work in it, we watch it happen, we turn the other way,

we are consumers of it, we benefit from it, we enjoy it regularly,

it’s part of our wants and even our needs.

All the things wrong with the world today are not outside of us,

they are a part of us, a part of the world that we like and love.

Who can stand it?

 

And those messengers are not just talking about regular people like you and me.

The introduction of the gospel today lists leaders:

Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, and Herod, Philip Lysanias

All corrupt leaders who tried to stop Jesus,

and who tried to stand in the way of God’s vision in a variety of other ways.

None of them stood. They’re only remembered for

how they tried to stand in God’s way and failed.

How they were washed out of the wool by the fullers soap.

 

When John says prepare the way of the Lord,

he really means prepare. Mountains, valleys, major projects.

Make a mess and bring it back into God’s vision.

It means letting go of many things that we have liked

and become accustomed to and even loved.

It means changing who and what we are.

Who can stand it?

  

Now this might all sound like some bad news.

But maybe it’s not all bad.

God vision of peace and justice will be a reality.

God COULD do it all by God’s self. We know that.

But for some reason God doesn’t want to do it alone.

The calls for repentance and change from the messengers

aren’t just there to tell us how bad we are.

They tell us that God wants us to be involved.

As a great theologian John Dominic Crossan said:

"We're waiting for an intervention

 and God is waiting for collaboration."

 

You see, even when we have doubt in ourselves,

God still has hope in us.

God chooses us: flawed normal sinners

God chooses the wild man in the wilderness,

the unwed young girl in Galilee, and all of us sinners as we are,

and has great expectations for us.

 

God doesn’t have another back up plan,

God’s plan is us -- humanity,

the people and things of this earth.

God wants to use us, our skills, and gifts

ingenuity to make that road

to move the mountains and raise the valleys.

 

God knows that we won’t change all of it

right now, but God needs us to be open to change.

To be ready for change, to have our hearts

and minds softened and not so stubborn,

God wants our help to fill those valleys

and lay those mountains low

Make the crooked straight and the rough ways smooth.

 

Christ is coming.

God wants our help.

Can we stand it?

Apocalyptic Thinking

Luke 21:25-36  
Advent 1  
November 28, 2021

 

I read an article written in the past year that said

that with the pandemic and with other things happening

in this country and in this world, that a lot of people

are experiencing Post Traumatic Stress and anxiety.

 

And it said that one of the ways that we can alleviate that

is by stopping our “apocalyptic thinking” it used those words.

To keep our sanity, and our heads about us

we need to stop thinking that every moment

is the beginning of the end of the world.

 

This kind of thinking actually re-traumatizes us, it prevents us from

thinking and acting rationally, it justifies bad behavior.

In apocalyptic thinking, the candidate we oppose

is not just “the one we wouldn’t choose”

or even a “bad candidate”,  apocalyptic thinking says that

“they mean to end democracy and our way of life as we know it.”

Drama.

 

When we raise everything to the level of apocalypse,

then we live in a constant state of reactivity and emergency.

The article said we have to stop thinking that everything that happens

is a sign of the end of everything we know and love.

I thought that had a lot of wisdom in it.

Stop the apocalyptic thinking.

 

Apparently, Jesus has some other thoughts on that.

This chapter in Luke is called a “little apocalypse”.

Every first Sunday in Advent, we read these little apocalypses.

It doesn’t seem very Christmassy really.

 

Each of the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark & Luke)

has these little apocalypses.

They all start out with things that we fear:

Terrible suffering, wars, hatred, persecution,

vitriol from family, natural disasters.

And then, after that, things don’t get much better,

the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give out light

the stars will fall, and the powers of the heaven will be shaken

Very scary indeed.

And they’re all punctuated by Jesus plea to “Keep Awake”

And keep alert, stay on guard to watch out

for the signs that others might be ignoring.

Look at the signs and be alert to all of them.

In other words, to have apocalyptic thinking.

Apparently, Jesus and the Gospel writers have not read

Psychology Today or whatever I was reading.

 

Jesus wants us to keep awake during all this and notice the signs.

But what for? Why should we keep awake?

Does Jesus want us scared and nervous all the time?

Does Jesus enjoy our anxiety?

Is this a way to scare us and to control our behavior?

No, I don’t think Jesus is telling us this to raise our

anxiety, Jesus actually wants to lower it.

Advent is not just about waiting for Christmas

and waiting for the baby Jesus.

It’s about waiting for Jesus to come again.

When we hear that, waiting for Jesus to come again,

it probably fills us with dread, and who can blame us?

 

These snapshots of stars falling and the powers of heaven

being shaken are scary, combined with the weird imagery

from Daniel and Revelation, have fueled imaginations

over the last century or so and people have developed elaborate

fictions about how all this will all go.

I mean these fictions are terrible and people

can’t seem to do anything about thwarting it

because it’s “God’s will”.

It’s like we’re pawns caught in a battle between good and evil

That does sound terrible. More anxiety and worry.

More throwing up of hands and giving up,

Starry Night
Vincent Van Gogh

more reactivity, more bad behavior.

 

But the truth is, we don’t know what the end will look like

I mean there were times in 2020 when I was waiting

in line to get into a grocery store at 6:30 in the morning

that I was sure the end was upon us,

but it turns out I was wrong about that.

 

Maybe the problems is our problem stems from

our understanding of what an apocalypse is.

The word apocalypse is from the Greek

and it means “uncovering”, “revealing”, “revelation”

not necessarily the end of the world,

but the revealing of God’s presence.

 

All of these little apocalypses in scripture end in the same way:

there is fear, there is suffering, and then there is Jesus.

The suffering and fear are just a preamble to God’s presence with us.

They are an assurance to us that God is near.

When the sun is darkened and the stars are falling,

and things seem to be getting seriously worse for all involved,

that is the time that Jesus will be there and we will truly know God’s power.

Jesus says in this Little Apocalypse:

“Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads,

because your redemption is drawing near.”

 
Our expectations about Jesus second Advent

should be shaped by what we know about Jesus first Advent:

 

When Jesus came to us. he came as a child, he lived and suffered with us,

he taught about God’s love, he taught us about love for one

another, about God’s abundance, and about forgiveness.

And finally Jesus poured out his love for all creation on the cross.

Then the sun was darkened then and the powers of heaven were shaken,

but when humanity gave Jesus the worst it could in the crucifixion,

God gave us the best in the resurrection.

The second coming of Christ should be a welcome presence,

the arrival of our dearest friend.

It is the beginning of our salvation.

 

Back in Texas, I went camping in Big Bend

right on the Mexican border with a group of people from church.

The sky there is beautiful at night because it’s so dark

you can see more stars there than I have ever seen.

And one of the nights that we were there,

There were a lot of shooting stars.

 

Most of the people had gone into their tents

and the few of us were sleeping outside and we started to notice them.

We spent the next couple of hours lying there on our cots

in our sleeping bags monitoring different parts of the sky and saying,

“to the right, to the left, down, up.”

And everyone would look to catch a glimpse.

 

Even though I was ready for bed before we saw them,

I was wide awake looking at them.

My eyes were open and I was super-alert.

I didn’t want to miss any of them,

and I was responsible for looking at my part of the sky.

I didn’t want to let anyone down.

I saw about five shooting stars myself,

but all of us must have seen around thirty shooting stars together.

I felt the excitement of them, even if I didn’t see them with my eyes.

 

This is the attentiveness that Jesus is calling us to.

To wait with one another in hope and awe, not dread.

to keep each other alert, to be aware.

To look not with anxiety, but with hopeful anticipation.

To raise our heads because our redemption is drawing near.

 

Jesus is asking us to wait and watch for God’s presence.

Keep awake and alert.

And to do that together, so we can point these signs out to one another

like shooting stars in our field of vision,

and when we fall asleep, or get cynical or exasperated,

or too anxious, or crazy, or just plain tired,

someone else will be there to keep watch and remind us.

We can see God much more together than we can alone.

 

There is suffering in every time, in every era,

in every community, in every life.

Jesus tells us to not look at those

moments with hopelessness and fear.

But to look at them with anticipation.

To look at them and wait for God to be revealed.

 

So let’s have those apocalyptic thoughts,

But we should not believe that it’s the end of the world,

but that it’s the beginning of everything.