Together We Are One with The Holy One of God Advent 4C

Together We Are One with The Holy One of God                                                      Advent 4C

It is that time of year when a female skunk, who otherwise leads a solitary life much of the rest of the year, leaves the cushy den she has established with leaves and grasses to go join another three or five or nine females, ball up together into a single ball of black and white stripes, to keep one another warm in the coldest days of early winter. What matters most is not whose nest, but togetherness. Each shares her body heat with the others so that thick or thin, they all preserve enough body fat to get through to spring time. Fat is their only food, and tucked into the huddle, what each has goes further and longer. She does this not only for herself, but for there to be enough of her come spring to bear several new lives. So, for now, as her body shrinks along with the others, they wrap the ball tighter and share the warmth that together, they are one. i

It is a similar need for togetherness that urges the unmarried Mary of Nazareth to make the 80- or 90-mile trip down to the Judean hill country to visit her kinswoman, Elizabeth. Like Mary, Elizabeth finds herself surprisingly with child after years of being the barren wife of a Temple priest, Zechariah, who currently is unable to speak. Mary has no husband as of yet, and Elizabeth has no one to speak with. They need one another to ponder just what God has instore for them and for the children they will give to heal a broken world.

God entrusts God’s own future to these two, otherwise, ordinary women. They each carry a dimension of God’s promise and hope that “however dark the moment or days may be, the redemptive impulse of God is ever present in human life.” Their respective conceptions suggest, writes Howard Thurman in his book, The Mood of Christmas, “… that the growing edge of human life, the hope of every generation, is in the birth of a child. The stirring of a child in the womb is the perennial sign of humankind’s attack on bigotry, blindness, prejudice, greed, hate, and all the host of diseases that make … life a nightmare and a holocaust.” ii

As soon as Mary arrives, the child that is to become John, the prophet who calls all Israel to repent, gives a good kick in Elizabeth’s womb signaling that the One who is to come is already here. [Luke 1:39-55]. It seems that when the world is at its darkest, God chooses two women to carry God’s hope of turning the world right-side-up again.

Each woman becomes a poet, putting into verse just how they understand their respective predicaments. Elizabeth sings out loud as the one to become John dances with joy in her womb! All tidings of comfort and joy! No one else but Mary and Elizabeth can understand just what is happening within them. They need to be together in their shared miracles.

Then Mary sings a response of her gratefulness at being God’s chosen mother, spinning a vision in which the hungry will be filled with good things; the rich sent away empty; the mighty will be brought down from their thrones; the lowly will be lifted up. The irony of that last vision cannot possibly be known to her: that to be lifted up from death in a tomb, first her child will be lifted up upon a Roman Cross. Yet, promises will be kept as they were to Sarah, Hannah, Ruth, and all those strong women of faith who when faced with the promises of God asked, “How shall this be?” When given God’s total trust, each in her own way says, “Yes! Let it be to me according to your Word.”

How shall this be? This is the question for all of us. Because at the end of the day, as Jesus would say to Nicodemus, a leader of the Pharisees, we all need to be reborn of the Spirit, the Spirit of the Word; the Word that was with God; the Word that is God; the Word that comes to dwell among us! Emmanuel – God with us! But I am getting ahead of our story.

Like Nicodemus, we find this still difficult to understand. Yet, as Maggie Ross (nee Martha Reeves, not of the Vandellas!) recalls, certain Cistercian monks believe we all must be taken into Mary to be born again with Christ. The paradox being, that only then can we bear the Word, the Christ, as well. That is, Mary teaches us to say “Yes,” just as Sarah said, “Yes,” and Elizabeth said, “Yes,” as Jesus said, “Yes,” to the cup that did not pass from him that night before he was lifted up. Just as we say, “Yes,” each time the bread and the cup is passed to us. iii

And who knows, perhaps one day each of us will become poets and prophets like Elizabeth and Mary. Perhaps like Joy Cowley, a storyteller from New Zealand, we might find new ways to sing our love of God and God’s vision for repairing a broken world:

A Modern Magnificat

by Joy Cowley

I’m dancing in the mystery of God.

The light of the Holy One is within me

and I am blessed, so truly blessed.

This goes deeper than human thinking.

I am filled with awe

at Love whose only condition

is to be received.

The gift is not for the proud,

for they have no room for it.

The strong and self-sufficient ones

don’t have this awareness.

But those who know their emptiness

can rejoice in Love’s fullness.

It’s the Love that we are made for,

the reason for our being.

It fills our inmost heart space

and brings to birth in us, the Holy One. iv

Advent. What matters most is togetherness like Mary, Elizabeth and the female skunks. And to be filled with awe at a Love, whose only condition is to be received. Amen.

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[i] Gayle Boss, All Creation Waits, Paraclete Press, p.50

[ii] Howard Thurman, The Mood of Christmas, Friends United Press, p.16

[iii] Maggie Ross, The Fire of Your Life, Paulist Press, p.20

[iv] Borrowed from John Shelby Spong’s website “A New Christianity for A New World” 19 Dec 2007