Advent 4 -- Song of Praise -- December 21

[guest blogger: Lori Sbordone]
The woman
She is a teenager - an oppressed member of an oppressed people. Like most teenagers, people can’t seem to figure out what she’s good for. And she’s a woman. She has heard how men pray, “Thank you God, that I am not a woman.” If she were a mule, at least she’d be good for pulling wagons and plowing fields. She is a nobody. She’s an orphan. According to tradition, her parents both died when she was young. The closest thing she knew to a home was the Temple in Jerusalem, but she is a teenager now and there are things happening in her body which makes her “unclean” once a month. It’s time that she be married, although she has no father for young men to approach asking for her hand. A local rabbi makes the arrangements, and she is betrothed to a good man, an older man with children of his own to raise. It’s time to grow-up, leave her childhood behind and care for other children now.

She is waking up to discover the world about her is not kind. She has experienced the capricious violence of the Roman soldiers, and she has watched the tax collectors snatch the few coins from the poor who were clinging to that money to feed their children. She has watched the older people in her village hang their heads, sit on their anger, clench their fists around their frustration until their nails tore holes in their palms. She has watched hot tears fall from their faces when the rabbi read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, “Arise. Shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has arisen upon you…for the LORD will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in His people. No more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it or the cry of distress…They shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity…before they call, He will answer; while they are yet speaking, He will hear. (60:1; 65:19, 23-24) The cry now leaps from her own heart, “When! When will you fulfill the promises? When will you send another to march up to the throne of Pharaoh and demand, “Let my people go!”?

The rabbis say that when God appeared to Moses, He chose an ordinary bush, not a useful tree such as the olive or the fig, put a plant of no account so that His glory might be revealed within it. So Mary comes before the God of her people; “LORD, I am a useless bush. Be it done unto me according to your word.” And so it is done. In the dark of the night, an angel appears to her and announces that she will bear a son who will be called great – the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to Him the throne of His ancestor David, and of His kingdom there will be no end. For nothing is impossible with God.”

I imagine Mary sitting up all night, watching the sunrise, still shaking her head and wondering, “How can this be?” Life in her village cannot seem much different to her this morning; still the mothers will wake to feed their hungry children, and the fathers go out to tend their fields; still the merchants will drag their goods to the market and Herod’s agents will stand by the fishermen’s boats to take their cut of their labor. Nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed, and she is the only one who knows this. But how can it be? Perhaps she was just dreaming. God, in His wisdom and mercy, gave her something to hold onto, something concrete. She rises and heads toward the house of her aunt, Elizabeth, who the angel said was now in her third month of pregnancy. Elizabeth who is old, and to this moment has been childless, is singing a song of miraculous pregnancy as her ancestor Hannah had. If Elizabeth is singing when she sees her, then she will know that the angel was indeed a messenger sent from God, and all he said was true. Mary greets Elizabeth, and at the sound of her voice, both she and the child within her leap for joy. Everything has changed. God has heard the cry of His people.

Her Song of Praise
The Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) is a song of revolutionary victory. As a revolutionary I think of the surrender of Kerensky to the Bolsheviks in Russia, the fall of the Batista government in Cuba or Somosa in Nicaragua, the end of apartheid in South Africa, people streaming into the streets to discover that Pharaoh’s army has been drowned in the Red Sea. They breathe for the first time, the sweet air of freedom. Mary’s song is at least as big as this. Bigger, because “of His kingdom, there will be no end.” This revolution is God’s doing, so there will be no undoing.

3 Advent 2008 -- John The Baptist "Stir Up" Sunday

[guest blogger: Joe Occhiuto]
The mission before us is Continuity and Change.
When times are tough, many tend to dwell on the past. Many also tend to fill themselves with comfort food.
However, it must be noted that living in the past can stunt your growth. Too much comfort food can make you fat!
Living without change that is driven by the Holy Spirit will stunt your growth and make you fat.

This coming Sunday (Dec. 14th), Advent 3, is often referred to as "John the Baptist Sunday" because the Gospel message is the preaching of John, the last prophet. In the preaching of John the Baptist there is no room for dwelling on the past, or seeking any kind of comfort. Recall that John was the man who wore only camels fur and ate bugs and honey. John proclaims not what was, but what is and what is to come. John proclaims the Light - a new and improved Light. You cannot turn on a light in the past. But you can turn on a light in the present, and you can prepare or make ready to turn on a light in the future.

To be sure, there is much that can be learned from the past (Continuity) - not everything done in the dark was bad, But something new is about to dawn. Don't you want to be in on it? It's going to be good!

Come - let's talk
Sunday Dec 14th - Noon - in the Church

Our study of Change Continues - Advent 2

[guest blog: Joyce Egginton]
Last week we focused on Change-- the ways in which the Divine does not stay in one place or time; the ways in which Change, or the prospect of change, can produce anxiety. Yet, this week's scripture readings begins with Isaiah 40:1-11. The prophet's words, rather than warning about change, announce a promise of comfort for a people who have been buffeted about. The compassionate comforting that God brings is heralded, just as the herald of change, John the Baptist, shows up on the scene in Mark 1:1-8.

Join presenter Joyce Egginton following the 10:30 liturgy on Sunday as we continue to ponder the reality that we are in for a change.