"THE ROSE WILL BLOOM"
Zechariah 9:9-10; Luke 1:39-55
Posted December 23, 2000
There is on my desk a picture of a large blue stone Buddha cradling a tiny blue stone baby in her arms. The picture is from a Spirit Rock holiday greeting card. The name of the statue is "Buddha-the Mother of All Beings." She is placid and still, present and blue, silent and full of possibilities. I have kept this picture on my desk throughout this season of Advent. This year, she has become the spirit of Advent for me. Waiting. Hoping. Carrying the birthing in her arms. Wondering with wisdom about the future, but secure in the present, with compassion, fecundity and creativity.
I suppose I have kept her there this past month as a sort of prayer card-a reminder of the potential for peace, joy, and love which is supposed to be part of this season. The other mother that I have kept in my heart is my sister Leslie. She is pregnant for the second time and goes to bed the day before Christmas until the first week of May. Her first child was born very prematurely, and her doctors are hoping that complete bed rest will ensure for this second child a longer stay in the womb. Leslie, like the Blue Stone Buddha, is waiting and hoping, but with a little more anxiety and trepidation! Still, she is waiting and hoping for time to pass, the baby to continue to grow safely in her womb, and everything to come to pass as we hope it will.
We know so little about the actual Mary of this morning's reading. But she is archetypal and figures in all our lives- male or female, pregnant or childless, old or young, hopeful or hopeless, fulfilled or hollowed out. We Protestants are dubious about the Mariology of the Roman Church. Such doctrines as the Immaculate Conception, Perpetual Virginity, and the Assumption of Mary give us the jitters-and the thought of Mary being named co-Redemptrix with Christ makes us very uncomfortable. The former Catholics among us, however, might miss her feminine presence in our "Reformed" worship. The fact is, both Catholics and Protestants have created and recreated her meaning and importance over and over again throughout the centuries. One reason for this is that she embodies for us all willing hope, pregnant expectation, and unconditional acceptance and love.
The beautiful Magnificat that she speaks is actually not hers in the strictest sense. Luke places these words from assorted Old Testament texts in her mouth and makes a beautiful prose poem for his readers. Most likely Mary was a simple Mediterranean girl whose life spanned the end of the last century BC and the beginning of the first century AD. Contrary to how we have made her up as shyly accepting, sweet, and innocent, she might have been feisty, inventive, and brave. Jana Childers, professor of Homiletics at San Francisco Theological Seminary, suggests that if her son was the new Adam, then Mary his Mother was the new Eve, straddling the cosmic divide between the old and new order of things.
Whatever our personal opinion is of the young virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus, we must admit that she plays a key role in salvation history and in the history of our faith. To neglect her, especially at this time of year, impoverishes us spiritually; for her story proclaims the essential nature of the grace of the God of our salvation. In this text, Luke places her in juxtaposition with her older cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth and her coming child John the Baptist mark the close of the age, while Mary and her child Jesus signal for us all the beginning of a new era. Elizabeth and John close the age of Law, and Mary and Jesus signal the beginning of the new age of Grace and Love.
As the story is told, Mary is the one who carries within her own body the quickening, the longing for new life and new hope. The love of God seeks to be born in ordinary mortals and now labors to be born into a world too widely and so tragically devoid of love.
But at Christmas, God is willing to be made vulnerable, made small and helpless and mortal. The mighty takes up residence in human flesh and blood and longs to be born onto the earth again.
The hope being born again is Emmanuel-God with us-God coming to earth because God so loved the world that God wants to give love and hope not only to us as individuals, but to whole communities of people. Every Christmas, there are those who need to know that God comes to us-and God is trying every Christmas to send hope and love to the homeless, the exiled, the tortured and the deported, those who have been silenced, those who live as the dispossessed, and those made alien by excluding government policies.
Who but Jesus, the homeless child of a teenage mother, about to be exiled out of the country, can bring to these any semblance of comfort, any hope in the midst of sorrow?
Who but Mary, the mother of an extraordinary child, destined to die young, can remind us that hope is real, that comfort will come, that new life is always possible?
The questions comes to us each year at this time. Yes, Lord we are grateful for your love from heaven to earth come down-but what are we to do for those for whom there is no relief and no justice?
What am I to feel for the young mother with three children who lives in the Tenderloin?
What am I to do about those who walk around us wrapped in newspapers instead of reading them?
What am I to think about those who remain hungry in Zimbabwe, Mexico, South America?
What do you want me to do for those victims of war and war crimes in Bosnia?
And what of human rights abuses in China, South Africa, Korea?
We cannot, even for a moment, deny that the world is indeed doubled up with hunger, hurt, and violence. But we also cannot deny that if we were to follow God's constant bidding to love and justice, the benefits of civilization could also be made available to the whole human race. The mess that we have made is the mess that we have made; it is not what God desires.
The stories we have been given at Advent and Christmas are stories created to give hope and meaning to people living in pain and despair. Mary's story reminds us that God still comes to us and is born in our flesh and blood. God still comes asking us to bear the promises for a world made hopeful again.
These stories are meant to remind us that divine joy can unite with human pain;
confusion and agony can be overcome by love and caring; and new life can be birthed out of fear, sorrow, and despair.
These are stories about a whole people who stood in darkness, waiting for the light; stories about women who were pregnant with possibilities, even though their situations were difficult; stories about babies who entered into a suffering world which offered them only love and hope; and stories about "making a way out of no way," as the spiritual tells it.
We enter now the final week of Advent. In just three short days, suddenly, we will be swathed in radiant joy and fulfilling light. How we wish it were true-that light will come, the hungry will be filled with good things, the homeless will be given shelter, the mighty shall be humbled, and God's love and justice will come to earth to reign. How we wish we could make all things well with the earth and her inhabitants. How fervently we pray for the day when all sorrow, despair, violence, and hatred will have passed away, and the lion shall lie with the lamb, and a little child shall lead them.
There is a prayer that comes to us from the people of Nicaragua, written in 1989, in the midst of the struggle and turmoil of that tiny country:
May it come soon
to the hungry
to the weeping
to those who thirst for your justice
to those who have waited for centuries
for a truly human life.
Grant us the patience to smooth the way
on which your kingdom comes to us.
Grant us hope
that we may not weary
in proclaiming and working for it,
despite so many conflicts
threats and shortcomings.
Grant us a clear vision
in that hour of history
that we may see the horizon
and know the way
on which your Kingdom comes to us.
I turn to the radiant Mother of All Beings, the blue Buddha on the card on my desk. She is willing to wait and to be present to the hope that this day will come. She holds her blue stone baby, solemnly and with love.
Thousands of miles away, a woman, my sister, prepares a bed which will be her nest for the next four and a half months. She is willing to wait and to hope for new life, new birth, deep joy.
On this final Sunday in Advent, I think of Mary, pregnant with expected hope, a little traumatized by the luck her life has handed her.
In all three, I see love. The love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. The love embodied in the child in the manger, the love that is of God. I know that it is in being loved and loving that we seek and we find life's deepest meaning, a meaning we can affirm in the face of tragedies we cannot fathom and in the face of human stupidities we cannot understand. The highest purpose of Christianity-which we know is a way of life, not a sophisticated system of belief-is to love one another because we have first been loved.
And the first rose to bloom from love is joy, the joy of meaning and fulfillment.
Dear friends, may your Christmas be full of the deep, radiant light of Christ. May you hold others in your hearts and prayers as the Blue Buddha tenderly holds her child. May you who wait find God in the midst of your waiting. May the rose bloom in your life.
Arise, shine, for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. You shall see and be radiant. Your heart shall thrill and rejoice. Amen.
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