“Christmas: A Paradox of Love”
Luke 1:46b-55
Advent 4 – 12/21/14
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
Before reading our text, let’s remember the context in
which these words are spoken.
A teenaged Mary learns that she will soon feel and show the
effects of a remarkable pregnancy. As the scene of the Annunciation closes, we
hear Mary say, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according
to your word.”
Most of us have been taught – and with good reason – to hear
Mary’s words as her humble surrender to God. After tumbling around inside these
words once again, however, I also begin to hear a young woman’s terrified submission to the demands of yet another
male in a thoroughly patriarchal culture. Mary’s “Here I am” begins to sound
like the gasping breath one takes before being plunged beneath the surface of
the water.
By no means do I want to diminish anyone’s appreciation of
this part of the Christmas story. It’s just that our world and the world of a
first-century Mary are incomprehensibly different from each other. Maybe that
lack of understanding makes it inevitable that we romanticize the story of the
Annunciation and gloss over the breath-taking scandal inherent to it.
Think about it. The way Luke tells the story, Mary is a
runaway teen. This young girl leaves home, in haste, and apparently alone. These
are not the actions of a girl who is excited and grateful. These are the
actions of a girl who feels overwhelmed, and not simply by an unplanned pregnancy, but by a pregnancy
that has been imposed on her. She
needs a loving, understanding, and non-condemning presence in her life, a
presence no first-century male can provide – not even a patient and sympathetic
fiancé. So she heads straight to Elizabeth, a relative, traveling as if running
downhill all the way.
In Judea, Mary falls into the arms of this crone. And I use
the term “crone” in the ancient, archetypal sense of a woman not only of great
age, but of deep spiritual wisdom. Remember, Elizabeth is enduring her own remarkable
pregnancy. Because of that, she represents the fertility goddesses of an era that
predates Father Abraham. Long before the patriarchy that characterizes first-century
Rome, feminine images of God were the norm. God mothered humanity into spiritual awareness and healing.
When Mary arrives at Elizabeth’s home, the Old Mother in Elizabeth awakens. With body,
mind, and spirit fluttering to life, Elizabeth sings her own song of
thanksgiving. Then she utters a crone’s blessing on Mary. Only now, at this
moment of mystic sanction through this particular woman, does Mary accept
Gabriel’s announcement as good news. And her heart sings:
46b “My soul
magnifies the Lord,
47and
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48for
he has looked with favor
on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely,
from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49for
the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and
holy is his name.
50His mercy is
for those who fear him
from
generation to generation.
51He has shown
strength with his arm;
he
has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52He has
brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and
lifted up the lowly;
53he
has filled the hungry with good things,
and
sent the rich away empty.
54He has helped
his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55according
to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to
Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
(Luke 146b-55)
One can almost see Elizabeth as she listens to
Mary. She casts an embarrassed gaze to the floor. Her wrinkled brow creases.
She folds her old, thin-skinned hands in her lap. When Mary finishes, Elizabeth
looks at the young woman with a tight-lipped, bless-your-heart smile.
Mary’s song, you see, dives into
territory reserved for men like
Elijah and Elisha, Jeremiah and Isaiah. Mary’s song is full-blown prophecy. And
such prophecy sounds out of place on the lips of a teenaged girl. But Mary has
experienced a visitation, and now she is making a visit of her own. Everywhere Mary
goes, God meets her there. From Heaven to Sheol, morning to evening, shore to
shore, God is there for her and for the one being knitted together in her womb.
To make peace with all of the thoughts and ways that lie so far from her own
thoughts and ways, Mary must embrace Gabriel’s announcement and Elizabeth’s
blessing.
As she accepts this gift, which is
only a gift when given, Mary speaks with clarity and authority. And like the
child within her, that authority comes as a gift of grace. It comes through Mary’s
willful struggle with and her willing acceptance of her call. Mary’s prophetic
authority arrives on the back of that feathered fish called paradox.
So it is with virtually all things
spiritual. The last shall be first and
the first shall be last...Whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of
all…God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise [and] what is weak in the world to shame the
strong. Mary’s prophecy is all about the paradox of faith. It’s all about
God’s ongoing work to displace violent power with transforming meekness. It’s
all about God’s work to reveal the dingy darkness of shiny things, things that
wealth may buy, but which inevitably end up owning us.
Paradox is about God’s aggravating
truth that only when a human being learns to die will he or she live.
Paradox lies at the heart of all
prophecy, because virtually all prophecy says, in one way or another, that things
are not what they seem. Prophetic truth declares that eternal reality is almost
always diametrically opposed to what appears to be physically real. Fundamentalist
theism and fundamentalist a-theism cannot tolerate all the gray space of
paradox. They demand that all things be exactly
as they seem. There is no such thing as mystery then, only facts, some of which
have yet to be verified. And these two fraternal twins, fundamentalist theism
and fundamentalist a-theism, do so love to hate. They love to hate each other,
and to hate just about everyone else, as well.
Christmas, which cannot be divorced
from Easter, declares the paradox of Love. Christmas and Easter declare, with
earth-shaking gentleness, the enduring mystery of grace. There is no such thing
as earning or escaping the Love of God. At Christmas, the powerful wealth and
wisdom of the ages is born to a poor, uneducated, teenaged girl. Well-to-do,
First-World Christians have tried to undo the scandalous paradox of Christmas
by connecting it to Black Friday
instead of Good Friday. In doing so,
we have managed to flip the paradox in our favor. We have made Christmas a
celebration of the wealth and power that God comes, in person, to judge. Still,
even when we corrupt our observation
of Christmas, Christmas itself remains,
well, immaculate. As Mary’s prophecy reminds us, Christmas still delivers God’s
commitment to justice for all creation.
The paradox of Love: Just as something
in Mary must die before she lives into the new life stirring within her, we,
too, are called to embrace, over and over, life-renewing death. And we embrace
that death by receiving with grace all that giving has to offer.
Christmas is not under the trees in
our homes. It’s under those trees out there, and in those wide-open spaces, and
in the classrooms and cubicles. I do wish a Merry Christmas to you. And even more so, I wish to all
the world a Merry Christmas through
you.
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