hope beyond hope

 A long time ago a friend of mine from the church we attended in Manhattan, St Clement's off Broadway, developed a one-man show he called The Reverend Billy Show. It later developed into a full choir revival tour style revue, in which his character, cracked street preacher Reverend Billy, would deliver two or three raving sermons - that were actually pretty good. 

But at first it was a one man show with just his character, Reverend Billy, in a clerical dicky, a white suit, fabulous hair, a bull horn, and an imaginary online congregation. He would stand at the pulpit and rave about commercialism, egregious bombing of innocents, and other apparently Quixotic concerns of the time. And he had a creed, which we repeated: 

We believe in the god that people that don't believe in god believe in. Chant that.

Reverend Billy's creed came to mind as Sarah and I read about mid-century German theologians, including Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, and especially Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 

At that time the world was plunging into despair, desperation, cynicism: no hope. There was no hope, but as some of those brave theologians put it, there was hope beyond hope. Beyond despair. 

It sounds absurd. But this is a time when absurdities are not unfamiliar, either. Hope beyond hope.

The times of the mid-twentieth century in places like Germany were times of extreme, of government unleashed upon the innocent, of babies born in the face of fear. Of families torn apart by arbitrary detention. Of executions personally authorized by the head of state. Of exile. Of famine. Of despair.

And of hope beyond hope.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, her cousin Elizabeth, her husband-to-be Joseph, and the children that came to them, lived also in a time of uncertainty, despair, and precarious hope. 

The world hinged upon a word. "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb," the angel greeted Mary. She could have said no. Angels held their breath. And then she said, "yes."

Yes, to the improbably babyish salvation of the world. An innocent, among many born that year, was to survive the massacre of its age-mates - ordered by the king - and become ... the hope of the world.

It seems impossible but it was so. Is so. In the small room at the back of a home in Bethlehem, and in the small home the family returned to in Nazareth - but not yet - a child arrived, was welcomed, and grew. 

But not yet: first the child and his parents fled by night from Palestine through Gaza into Egypt, there to remain until the implacable search blew over and it appeared to be safe to return home. 

We here may not know, or may not have known, what it meant to be nearly hopeless, in a village surrounded by an imperial enemy, with disciplined troops nearby, always vigilant for signs of resistance.

We may know, through our own experience or that of family members or refugees we have encountered, or aid workers we have known, just exactly what that was like.

There is fear. But there is always hope. There is darkness. And-- there is light. 

And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not - cannot - put it out. For in him was life, and this life is the light of all people. Merry Christmas, once again. 

December 29, 2024. Lessons & Carols. Episcopal Church of Saint Matthew, Tucson. 8 & 10:30am

Annunciation

 Fra Angelico

Angelico, fra, approximately 1400-1455. Annunciation, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=47865 [retrieved December 8, 2021]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Angelico,_prado.jpg. 

In terms of social unrest today or 2000 years ago what happens to a young Palestinian woman unmarried who turns up pregnant? How can she safely carry the child to term? And then what happens to them? 

In Bethlehem a few years ago I listened to a French speaking nun from Lydda tell a group of us North American pilgrims what happens there at the orphanage where she serves.  They take in orphans, and raise them through their first school years. 

An 18-year-old man came to their door one day with a gift. It was a thank you gift: his first paycheck. Years before he was born and cared for and raised to school-age there at la Crèche de Bethléem. Kids grow up there, up to first grade, then go to foster programs and schools until they are full grown. 

Where did these kids come from? Some are children found abandoned, or placed temporarily by social services due to serious social unrest or problems within their families. And others? Their mothers were young unmarried women from villages in Palestine who became pregnant. 

A scandal, possibly fatal, would erupt if their pregnancy was discovered or they had a child in their hometown. So on the quiet they are brought to Bethlehem where the child is born and the mother is cared for. Then the mother returns to her village. Crisis averted: the child lives, the mother lives, violence is not done to either one. 

How different it was for Mary who knew her husband but not yet intimately. Customarily he would have severed the relationship if she were pregnant by another man, wouldn’t he? But he protects her and raises the child with her and so the holy family begins its journey. 

Pregnancy is risky, always risky when the child is unwanted, and if the child is wanted by a jealous king its peril is increased. Mary took on the risk, as did Joseph, and what we see in Mary is more than courage: it is humility and obedience. She sees herself as of lowly estate, as a simple daughter of a village family. 

She is not the daughter of the king, not a daughter of Herod and certainly not the child of Caesar Augustus who was called “son of God, King of Kings.”  (Read or watch “I Claudius'' and you’ll see just how wildly different two young women can be.) 

Mary is a woman of honor and great strength. To say, “Let it be done to me according to thy word,” is to take on a great burden and a great responsibility. 

Mary Holmes, art history teacher at Cowell College, said that the virtue our society needs now is obedience – and I think she meant it in the Marian sense of docility: accepting the reign of God and the power of the spirit is not passivity. 

“Docility is to have reverence and acceptance of God’s plan for our lives in order to experience fulfillment, true happiness and closeness to God.”

(https://ct.dio.org/item/4903-docility-to-the-holy-spirit.html) 

Mary is already empowered by her creator’s love and her sacrificial response. She will now know no ordinary life nor will her son. All that is changed now and forever. She is a woman clothed with the sun: made shining and glorious by her simplicity and her humility, her obedience and her courageous response: “Here I am, Lord.” 

And so that was an ordinary extraordinary young woman, two thousand years ago. Obedience, docility, not passivity, but openness to the leading of God and the power of the Spirit at work. 

How are we nowadays to accept the gift and the call of God? What extraordinary ordinary thing awaits us this coming Christmas season? 

Mary responded to the news from God’s messenger with more than simple acquiescence. She went on to sing: My soul proclaims the greatness of God. 

And God comes to humankind to liberate them from what en-toils them. 

500 years ago it was the oppression that came with occupation and an imposed cultural hegemony. On top of the good news they carried as if it were pollen on their clothes, the people of Spain arrived in the new world with a desire for gold and conquest. 

This included spiritual conquest as if the local people had nothing to add or to offer but simple passive submission to the foreign message. But one day not long after the conquest came a second change, a revolution in spirituality. 

Juan Diego encountered a vision of the Mother of God atop a hill that had been sacred for centuries. On it he saw not a nature goddess but the Queen of Heaven. 

He told the bishop. The bishop did not believe him. In that cold gray time of year roses should not bloom, but bloom they did, that day. Open your tilma and gather them in, she instructed. 

He took the cloak to the bishop and opened it. Flowers fell on the ground. What remained was an image of a dark-skinned Mary, an indigenous Mary, resplendent, on its inner surface. 

That became the sign that showed the way. God was not to stop at human borders or inhabit human prejudices. The way was open and all were welcome.

The point was not, she is ours. She is one of us. The point was, we are hers. We are hers. And she and we belong to God. Wherever we travel, God is with us. Emmanuel.

How will we now, 2000 years after Mary, and 500 after the vision of Guadalupe, receive the Christ child and the message of angels? What are we doing, called to do? 

Venture forth into the night bearing a small burden to a foreign land? It’s being done, now, across our own desert. Are we to welcome the stranger into the inn, and make room where none was found? It’s being done, here in our own town. 

Are we to follow the words of an extraordinary messenger to an unknown land, as so many patriarchs and matriarchs did, in Old Testament days? 

And perhaps it is the simple things, the daily things, that we do, to follow God’s pathway in our hearts, as best we may. To show kindness to strangers, sympathy to the distressed, tolerance to the uneasy, support to the weary, joy to the glad, and all this, to the end that God’s purpose on earth be known.

Perhaps it is just to stand still, upon a hill, and hear and join the angelic choir as they sing, “Glory to God!”

But there is work to be done. Mary did not stop with “Here am I.” She went on, as she visited her relative Elizabeth, to sing with joy of justice and redemption, of faith and hope and the lasting challenge, the commission even, of every child of God.

He has redeemed us. He has come to his people. And he has given us a job to do.

To join in the redemption of the world by our actions of justice, mercy, and compassion. The small things, yes, the big things too: the work of the people is to join in the salvation of the world. 

No, we are not deities. We are not divine. Neither is she. But we follow the one who is.

“Now, master, let your servant go in peace according to your word, because my eyes have seen your salvation. You prepared this salvation in the presence of all peoples. It’s a light for revelation to the nations and a glory for your people Israel.”

Luke 2:29-32 (CEB)

	JESUS MAFA. The Annunciation - Gabriel and Mary, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48278 [retrieved December 8, 2021]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).

Oh, by the way, that 18 year old was sent out with a fond farewell by his foster parents but he was back at the door in moments. “Mom, could you give me money for the bus?” He had given them his whole paycheck and it was all he had.

https://youtu.be/GfTs-Rw-SNk

star

In terms of social unrest today or 2000 years ago what happens to a young Palestinian woman unmarried who turns up pregnant? How can she safely carry the child to term? And then what happens to them? In Bethlehem a few years ago I listened to a French speaking nun from Lydda tell a group of us North American pilgrims what happens there at the orphanage where she serves.  They take in orphans, and raise them through their first school years. An 18-year-old man came to their door one day with a gift. It was a thank you gift: his first paycheck. Years before he was born and cared for and raised to school-age there at la Crèche de Bethléem. Kids grow up there, up to first grade, then go to foster programs and schools until they are full grown. Where did these kids come from? Some are children found abandoned, or placed temporarily by social services due to serious social unrest or problems within their families. And others? Their mothers were young unmarried women from villages in Palestine who became pregnant. A scandal, possibly fatal, would erupt if their pregnancy was discovered or they had a child in their hometown. So on the quiet they are brought to Bethlehem where the child is born and the mother is cared for. Then the mother returns to her village. Crisis averted: the child lives, the mother lives, violence is not done to either one. How different it was for Mary who knew her husband but not yet intimately. Customarily he would have severed the relationship if she were pregnant by another man, wouldn’t he? But he protects her and raises the child with her and so the holy family begins its journey. Pregnancy is risky, always risky when the child is unwanted or wanted only by a jealous king its peril is increased. Mary took on the risk, as did Joseph, and what we see in Mary is more than courage: it is humility and obedience. She sees herself as of lowly estate, as a simple daughter of a village family. She is not the daughter of the king, not a daughter of Herod and certainly not the child of Caesar Augustus who was called “son of God, King of Kings.”  (Read or watch “I Claudius'' and you’ll see just how wildly different two young women can be.) Mary is a woman of honor and great strength. To say, “Let it be done to me according to thy word,” is to take on a great burden for any woman. To bear a child in time of danger, to take on the grace and favor that is not her due but her desire now to serve God as God calls her to serve. Mary Holmes, art history teacher at Cowell College, said that the virtue our society needs now is obedience – and I think she meant it in the Marion sense of docility: accepting the reign of God and the power of the spirit is not passivity. Mary is already empowered by her creator’s love and her sacrificial response. She will now know no ordinary life nor will her son. All that is changed now and forever. She is a woman clothed with the sun: made shining and glorious by her simplicity and her humility, her obedience and her courageous response: “Here I am, Lord.” Oh, by the way, that 18 year old was sent out with a fond farewell by his foster parents but he was back at the door in moments. “Mom, could you give me money for the bus?” He had given them his whole paycheck and it was all he had.

JRL+  

1. Here am I Lord: let it be done to me according to thy word.
2. Docility, obedience: Mary Holmes
3. He hath regarded the lowly estate of his handmaiden: Martin Luther Christmas Book (1950)
4. Risky: la Crèche de Bethléem en Palestine. (https://www.helloasso.com/associations/amis-de-la-creche-de-bethleem)

(https://youtu.be/sU6B9GzPuM8)

What happens to a young Palestinian woman who turns up pregnant?

“Docility is to have reverence and acceptance of God’s plan for our lives in order to experience fulfillment, true happiness and closeness to God.” (https://ct.dio.org/item/4903-docility-to-the-holy-spirit.html)

A version of this story was printed in the Arizona Daily Star on December 19th 2021, page E3, under the title, "Trust in God as Mary did." 

Annunciation 2012

Back on the feast of Epiphany we remembered the visit of the magi to the Holy Family, and the gifts they bring: Gold for the king, Frankincense for the priest, Myrrh for the sacrifice. There is, I submit, one more gift - for us to offer: Praise for the Living One.

Right in the middle of Lent we encounter a part of the Nativity story, nine months before Christmas Day. Raymond Brown, the Roman Catholic biblical scholar, taught that the gospels actually were written beginning with the passion narrative - proceeding through Holy Week, the Passion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and then on around to the Birth narratives.

The birth narratives begin with the visit of the angel to Zechariah, announcing the coming birth of John. Then the focus shifts to a younger woman, cousin of Elizabeth. It is Mary. The angel comes to Mary – and hails her as full of grace: she is to bear a son, who is to be the Messiah.

Mary accepts the burden of birth and the destiny of motherhood to the Messiah, Conception to Assumption, somehow knowing that she must not count her child as hers to keep, but must let go of him, dedicate him to the Lord, as Samuel's mother Hannah dedicated him, knowing he will go from her.

Mary, mother of Jesus, takes this task on herself, knowingly, as God's servant, because she knew that he, her child to be, was sent to set the people free: that at last God's promise to redeem Israel would bear fruit in the fullness of time, and that that fulfillment was coming very soon, and was beginning to happen, quickening even now in her.

The Word would indeed ripen in her own womb. She would bear forth upon the world he who would himself bear the pain of the world.

Like Hannah's son Samuel, Jesus the Son of Mary is one consecrated, set apart for service to the Lord, as a thanksgiving offering to the Lord. Samuel is the prophet who brought justice to Israel, and yet he points beyond himself - to Saul, first, then to David, to David's son Solomon, and ultimately to Jesus.

In the birth story of Samuel, Hannah his mother rejoices that God has remembered the forgotten, and will bring relief to the poor. “My heart exults in the Lord; my strength is exalted in my God,” she sings (1 Samuel 2:1-10).

In the birth story of Jesus, Mary his mother rejoices that God remembers the forgotten and brings relief to the poor. (Luke 1:46-55) And in our prayers, even daily, we join in her song, the Magnificat, the Song of Mary, Canticle 15 in the Book of Common Prayer: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior...”

The Annunciation

"The Annunciation" by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1898)

"But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse and from its roots a bud shall blossom." (Isaiah 11:1, New American Bible)

“When you think you're at the very end, the rotten stump, in decay, something grows. You keep tending to the thing that seems dead or not working, and, with your tending, something new and beautiful sprouts up.”—Father Rick Frechette, in "Children's Champion", Financial Times, House & Home, December 17/December 18 2011, p.2. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a5aadbee-226c-11e1-923d-00144feabdc0.html##axzz1gr9MuKu1

 

"Then a shoot shall grow from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall spring [Heb., bear fruit] from his roots." (Isaiah 11:1, New English Bible)

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us... (John 1:14)

Th' angel went awei mid than/Al ut of hire sighte;/Hire womb arise gan/Thurw th'Oligastes mighte./In hir wes Crist bilok anon,/Sooth God, sooth man in fles and bon,/And of hir fles/Ibore wes/At time,/Warthurw us kam good won;/He bout us ut of pine,/And let him for us slon. 

With that, the angel went away, out of her sight; her womb began to swell through the power of the Holy Ghost. In her Christ was straightway enclosed, true God and true man in flesh and bone, and of her flesh was born in due time, whereby good hope came to us: he redeemed us from pain [of hell] and allowed himself to be slain for us.

Angelus ad virgenum, 13th C. Arundel ms. English version. (tr. E. J. Dobson, adapted). In Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott, eds., The Shorter New Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford, 1993) 7.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. (John 1:14)

See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them. (Revelation 21:3)

There is a stump out back,

behind the Sunday School

by the Boy Scout shed.

A tree was cut down last spring,

rotten in the core of it,

so down it came – and now look!

Go look! New growth is springing up

like crazy, like weeds, all over the place.

You never know with life, with God.

There was an old country that had been around too long,

said some. It had the heart

rotted out of it, nothing left to say,

nothing left to give—haul it away!

But somehow a stump gave birth to something new.

And emerging from that old ruin came new growth.

Out of the stump of Jesse sprang

a branch, bearing fruit—

(As the prophet Isaiah says, in chapter 11, verse 1:

Then a shoot shall growth from the stock of Jesse,

and a branch shall bear fruit from his roots.)

The old tree was Israel and the stump its old ways

of doing things— so when the prophet came,

bearing news of new growth, it was good news.

And when the angel came to Mary

centuries later, and said,

Hello! Favored one of God,

something new is happening.

Can you bear it?

Can you bring forth— give birth to—

the Son of God?

God plans for you to do it,

to be the bearer of God,

of new Grace

shone upon the world.

It’s up to you— will you bear it?

Will you bring forth the good news?

Mary was incredulous.

How can this be? A son?!

I’m only 15 years old—

and not married yet.

Oh, Mary, said the Angel.

With God anything is possible.

Your cousin Elizabeth, like Hannah

who bore Samuel in her old age,

you own cousin Elizabeth is pregnant,

with a son to be borne 3 months from now.

She’s six months along!

And so— will You bear the Child,

the One who will redeem

his people? And she said Yes.

An impossible answer to an

impossible request. Yes.

To all that will be, Yes.

And that is how it began.

With that the angel went away—

With that, the angel went away, out of her sight;

her womb began to swell

through the power of the Holy Ghost.

In her Christ was straightway enclosed,

true God and true man in flesh and bone,

and of her flesh was born in due time,

whereby good hope came to us:

he redeemed us from pain  

and allowed himself to be slain for us.

This one, this child, was the eternal Word,

and in the flesh incarnate, come to dwell among us—

come to ‘pitch his tent’ with us—

to use the literal meaning of the word.

He came among us as of old

he walked alongside the caravans

of the people fleeing Egypt.

He walked among the trees of

the primordial Garden.

But here he is walking with us

as one of us! for the first time

taking on our poverty, setting his

wealth aside, not counting

his godhood a thing

to be grasped—

and

In this poor peasant girl

the richest of kings

God himself

found a home.

He’d promised he would

make a home for the

Son of David,

and establish his house forever,

his dominion,

But did he say he would

live in it himself?

Somehow now the Son of God

became Son of Man

and that is where our hope lives

as we live in him

and he in us

so that we too in turn are

becoming the home of Jesus.

Learn to welcome him

in the stranger;

to make him room,

and when we find him homeless,

to

TAKE JESUS IN

even as we need to make home

for his kin— the poor ones of Haiti

lost homes in the earthquake—

in them we see the face of Jesus

— and the need for shelter.

So too through all the projects

of good work through World Concern

(thanks for all the fish!)

ERD and others,

we seek to serve Christ in all persons

as our Baptismal Vows call us to do—

we seek to see in the homeless

and the forgotten

the One who made his home with us

the One whom Mary made home for,

in her womb,

THEOTOKOS

bearer of God,

she bore him

who welcomes us home

whenever we stray from God

calling us to find our home in him.

May we open our eyes to see him.

May we open our homes to welcome him.

May we open our minds to know him.

May we open our lives to bear him.

May we open our hearts to be his home:

Jesus, Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

a woman clothed with the sun

A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. (Revelation 12:1)

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

One fall Friday evening fourteen years ago, after a banquet, a group of Jesus Scholars stayed up late talking together in a hospitality suite in the convention hotel – and began to play a parlor game together. They asked each other, if you were going to make a movie about Jesus, whom would you cast as Jesus? As Mary of Magdala?

I had all sorts of ideas – but just as someone turned to me and asked, whom would you cast? The door opened and in walked a Hollywood director who was indeed planning a movie about Jesus. I got a little tongue-tied and lost my chance at fame.

Since then, I’ve turned the question over in my mind and I’ve even thought up a plot device to frame the story – one I thought that director might like. Things like that. It’s a fun game to play.

But here’s a part for you to cast, one we didn’t really discuss that night so thoroughly. Maybe it was too tough a problem for a late-night bull session.

Who would you cast as the Mother of God?

Who would you cast as the Bearer of the bearer of our sins? The one to give birth to the One in whom are born our hopes for new life?

What qualities would she have? Where would you find such a person? How would you break the news to her? What kind of family would she have?

What we know about Mary is that she was a girl living in a poor village. She was the promised bride of a man named Joseph, a workman who worked with his hands. And there was certainly work to do.

The poor village lay in an obscure corner of a mighty empire – not so obscure but that its power could be felt. The Romans had indeed been by – flexing their power, the Imperial troops had laid waste to a nearby town, a center of rebellion. They didn’t like those things, no, and they blotted them out. They’d leave no stone unturned until they’d rooted out the last nugget of resistance.

We know this of Mary: she said Yes. May it be so with me as you have promised. As you have promised my people from long ago – send us a Savior. Send him to me; I will bear the mystery.

I will raise him, and teach him. And he will raise up his people and teach them the way – the way of the Lord, the way of justice, and righteousness, and mercy, and peace.

Courage, faithfulness, and hope. Innocence and obedience.

A girl who had never known a man was declared to be the perfect mother. No wonder she ran to consult her cousin Elizabeth, who at least had some idea of what was going on. Indeed, as the once-barren bearer of the greatest of the prophets, the mother-to-be of John, the voice calling in the desert, one who had spent long years waiting for her womb to bear its fruit, for new life to begin and grow and come to time, she would be the best to know.* To know what it meant to bear the greater mystery, the coming of the Christ – as a Child.

O little lady, you are not least among the women of Israel, for from you shall come the greatest of Kings – greater than David his ancestor. The hopes and fears of all the years will meet in him.

What were you expecting, O people of God? A baby? Or a warrior, a prince, a king, a deliverer? One to lead you to triumph? One to set you free from those who made you captive, to heal you from all infirmity, to comfort you from all sorrow, to set you up once again as the peak of all the nations, the highest mountain in the whole range of hills, the one all would turn to – to regard as the greatest of nations?

And yet, you get a baby, an infant meek and mild, vulnerable, tiny, just a beginning, a birth, a new life, a small package promising greater things – so fragile: but not to worry.

She is up to the task. Let it be to me according to your Word.

And now you and I are called to bear this fragile message into the world. In each of us to bring it forth, give it a new place to begin to grow, to nurture it, to give it a new start, and let it grow, and carry it into the world.

In innocence of our experience,
In obedience of our misgivings,
In the strength of our fragile hopes,
To take him in our turn, the burden and the message,
To conceive the new life in us,
To know the Christ in us, the Hope of Glory,
To take that little light of ours, and give it to the world, and let it shine,
And to be willing to say to God:
Here we are, the servants of the Lord,
Let it be with us, according to your Word.

+

*[Meredith Long shared this insight with colleagues at World Concern while leading prayers one Thursday this past month.]