Homily Advent 3A
Sunday, December 15, 2019
St Stephen’s Episcopal Church
New Harmony, IN
Every Advent, the gospel reading for both the 2nd and 3rd Sundays
Feature John the Baptist
John always gets his coverage in Advent
Surprisingly, Mary gets very little scriptural attention in Advent
But for today Dr. Beth chose Canticle 15
The Magnificat of Mary
She chose it as a substitute for Psalm 146---
(The lectionary gives two options)
She chose it because
though Mary is very prominent in the Liturgy of the hours,
showing up to conclude every day’s Evening Prayer
From the point of view of Sunday Worship, she is quite hidden
The pink candle
Always lighted on the third Sunday of Advent candle
Is the Mary Candle
This Sunday is known in liturgical language as Gaudete Sunday
Gaudete means REJOICE
And so the Magnificat of Mary is the perfect text.
I had a professor of Scripture once say to the class…
(we were studying Luke’s Gospel where all the good stuff about Mary is found)
He said of Mary “She is too important to leave to the kooks!”
Doesn’t sound very nice
But he wanted to help us reimagine Mary
Taking away her blond hair and blue eyes
Substituting practical working clothes
for the Blue and white silk perfection of the catholic catalog Marian statues
Not that these devotional Mary’s are somehow wrong
But they simply don’t capture the Mary of the Gospels.
My professor wanted us to get to know the Mary of the Gospels.
When I first started working at St Vincent’s as a chaplain
I was surprised to find that many people are attracted to Mary
And not just women…not just Catholics
We had these deep drawers full of plastic rosaries…
And I remember thinking that surely they’d been there for years
But then I noticed that people…all kinds of people…asked for them
And I wondered:
What is it about Mary that makes believers…from Catholic to evangelical alike…
feel a kinship with her?
According to Luke it all begins with Mary’s YES
Could it be that God had been waiting and waiting and waiting
Waiting since the beginning of human life
For someone to respond with a completely free yes
A Yes like Mary’s?
Was God tired of all the half-hearted Yesses?
The Yes, if’s
And the Yes, but’s
And the Yes, when’s…
And the Yes, after I finish….
And the Yes, well maybe’s…
Was God tired of the human inability to make a complete and free YES
To the invitation to bare Christ
To participate bodily in the Incarnation
To be God’s creative partner???
…and then came Mary
Her YES…her free and total YES
makes her the first disciple
The perfect disciple
The mother of the community that is the church
Her YES is what we all strive to imitate
She utters her Yes to God’s plan for her
And she rushes to share her news with her cousin
When they meet, the pregnant Elizabeth and the pregnant Mary,
Mary irrupts in song
All the songs on her top ten play list come from the psalms
The psalms were the soundtrack of every first century Jewish life
She irrupts in psalms of rejoicing
What is this ‘REJOICING’?
How is it different from…say ‘Happiness’?
I think at the root of it
Happiness is dependent on things outside oneself
Whereas, Rejoicing is an internal knowing
A knowing and recognizing the unconditional love of God at work in the world
like being overwhelmed in your whole body with the nearness of God.
And so…I have been thinking
What causes me to REJOICE?
That makes me shake in awe?
That makes me short of breath with delight?
I paid attention and noticed 2 things yesterday
Yesterday morning
I was reading the obituaries
And I read the obituary of Barbara Jean Warfield
And this is what her family wrote of her death:
On December 3, 2019,
Barbara Caught the Morning Train to Glory
with her family at her side as she departed!
(and Morning Train to Glory was capitalized!)
Who was this woman…so in love with God
That her family was perfectly sure she had a first-class ticket on that Glory Train?
I really couldn’t help but rejoice for Barbara
But not just Barbara
But for her family’s big and bold witness
on the pages of Saturday’s Courier and Press!
Later in the day
I read a reference to the California Super Bloom
Which happened in March of this year
…A super-bloom is a rare desert phenomenon
when an unusually large number of dormant seeds
bloom all at the same time!
I’d heard about it back in March
But I hadn’t taken the time to search for any pictures
And because I had the Isaiah reading on my mind
With its vision of impossibly beautiful happenings in the desert…
Because of that
I searched for pictures
It takes your breath away---even in pictures.
In the desert…
This unexpected and surprising explosion of color!
A carpet of color and texture as far as the eye can see!
It was completely rejoicing-worthy!
God is near!
I paid attention
And it helped me think differently about what was happening in my day
Rejoicing simply must be good food for the soul
Earlier this week I was talking to my daughter in law, Stephanie
Who is 8 months pregnant
She was telling me about a Church she visited where the Advent Wreath
has a small statue of a pregnant Mary in the middle of it.
There just is something about Advent and pregnancy
The Chaplains office at St Vincent’s
is located at the entrance
to the Hospital for women and children
And several times a day I would see women in varying stages of pregnancy
walk the long hallway to the elevator
And as pregnancies unfold the walks change
This happened all year long
But Advent made me notice
Eventually…you know...
The hands are on the hips
The back is a little arched
And the belly leads the way
At the literal level
We can recognize the growing, and anticipating, and preparing
that surrounds the bringing to birth of a child
But on the level of mystery
This is an image for all of us
Pregnant Mary is a prod
…An Advent prod for each of us
A prod to our own reflection
What do I say YES too?
What do I welcome to take up space in me?
What do I birth…what comes forth from me?
The action of Advent is ADVENTING
Adventing means…to bring into being
We…all of us here…
Are Disciples of Christ
We are on a pilgrimage
And as we journey along
We have Mary’s example as first and most perfect disciple
As our guide
We have said our shaky YES in baptism
Yes, to the vocation of Adventing Christ
In what we say
And do
And feel
In how we walk
And sing
And love
Every day we have countless opportunities to bring to birth new life
Perhaps not grandiose opportunities
But near ones
Paying attention is how we will get better
At this REJOICING business
All that I am
Sings to the God
who brings new life
To birth in me
My spirit soars
On the wings of my Lord
(from our singing of the Magnificat version by David Haas…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zIIWVioh-Q)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zIIWVioh-Q)
No comments:
Post a Comment