Monday
morning is my time. All of the other
days are full of work, kids and other commitments, but Monday morning from
8:30-11:30 am my youngest is in school and I have some time to do what I choose. So Monday morning was to be my time to work
on this sermon. I walked my oldest to
school and as I am eating my breakfast my youngest comes to me coughing and
with snot coming out of his nose saying he can’t go to school. “Ok” I say “but if you stay home mommy can’t
play with you because I have to work and you can’t have any sweets all day and
we can’t go to see the Lights at the Zoo tonight.” He agrees.
So I start digging into the scripture trying to focus and of course I am
constantly interrupted by requests, questions and comments. I can’t help but smile a bit when he only
cracks the door and whispers as if that is less of an interruption. But by the fifth interruption I was super
frustrated.
As my level of frustration was rising with every footstep
running down the hall, I was also sitting there looking at these scriptures for
today and … quite honestly finding them to be super frustrating as well. I mean I love the Magnificat or the song of
Mary from Luke’s Gospel today, but reading it in the context of the other scriptures
today I found it blaringly frustrating.
The Psalm today is Psalm 80 and the people are begging God
for help. They are begging God to please
stop being angry and please hear their prayers.
It says that they are eating bread of tears with bowls of tears to drink
as their enemies laugh at them. It is
raw, painful and honest. It is also
urgent.
And then we read the passage from Luke, this beautiful hymn
from Mary, which, like Psalm 80 is Hebrew poetry, a hymn in the same style-
meant to allude to the ancient Psalms.
That connection would have been clear for the original Jewish
audience. It might be understood as a
response to the pleas and prayers in the Psalms, a fulfillment of the hopes and
dreams, an embodiment of the longed for salvation of which the psalmists wrote.
So, just to be clear, that means that basically God hears
these pleas and prayers in Psalm 80 and is like “it’s ok, in over 1000 years a
teenager of no social standing will have a baby and he will be hated and killed
on a cross …. So take comfort in that as you drink your tears.”
I don’t know if that was the answer they were looking for.
When I pray I hope that my prayers will be heard right away and all the more
with bowls full of tears and enemies encroaching. So the seemingly distant and delayed response
is frustrating.
And then we have these words of the Magnificat- the mighty
thrown down, the lowly lifted up, the hungry fed, the proud scattered- these beautiful words, these words of justice
and hope. I hear them and I look around
at what this world is and that justice and hope is hard to see. I read these words of justice and hope in a
world full of injustices and despair and it feels … frustrating.
Frustrating because what is on the news is not the lowly
being lifted up and the hungry fed but rather the face of a seven year old
girl, the age of my son, and she has died of dehydration trying to cross the
border into this country. And a story
about how over 85,000 children have starved to death in Yemen. And while we argue about who is to blame and
the solution is unclear- what is clear is that the hungry continue to not be
fed, and the lowly are not lifted up and it feels … frustrating.
And if that is too distant than just outside of our doors
are people struggling to survive these cold winter months. In our own front yard are hungry people not
fed, lowly people not lifted up and it feels … frustrating. The scales are still tipped to the rich and
the few waste food while the many go hungry and so these words of Mary, this
hopeful song does not seem to match reality … a reality that is frustrating.
With these thoughts wrestling about in my mind as I am
working on this sermon I am interrupted again.
My four year old tells me that the mailman is here and asks if he can
give him the chocolate covered pretzel we bought at the church bake sale. So I open the door and he runs across the
yard in bare feet and the mailman says thank you and my son bounces in delight
and comes back with a smile. And I feel a little less frustrated. Then my brother in law messages that he will
be bringing my husband’s grandma down from Ohio to Texas so we can all be
together after Christmas. And I feel a
little less frustrated. And I get a
message from two more people willing to volunteer at the school for the health
screenings when I thought we would never find anyone who could help. And I feel a little less frustrated. Then I
get a call from the school asking if the special needs teacher can have a
school shirt from the PTA because a kid threw up on her as she was caring for
him and as I hand her the shirt I see her smiling face, hear her appreciative
words, see how the sick child with special needs has been cared for and I feel
less frustrated. And I look around and
see Christmas trees and twinkle lights and people all around me celebrating the
birth of a savior born to lowly parents with a challenging message of
self-sacrifice and deep love. And all
around me I see people who live in a frustrating world with frustrations
mounting and yet walk the path of justice laid out by Christ. And the frustrations fall into the background
as signs of love and kindness become clearer.
I forget that I was frustrated as the sun goes down and sends a
beautiful pink glow on a world full of people loving each other and serving
Christ through their actions.
Being a youth pastor again has reminded me of just how much
hope there is for the world we live in.
Often young people are characterized as uncaring, undisciplined, violent
or weak and yet as I work with the teens of our church I find young people who
care deeply, are thoughtful, intelligent, work hard and are generous with each
other. They have many frustrations and
deal with a variety of struggles and yet their hearts are full of love and
possibility. It is inspiring and nurtures
my hope. It makes it easier to see God’s
daily work toward justice and peace and harder to let the frustrations dominate
my worldview.
Today we hear the words of an unwed pregnant teenager
living 2000 years ago under an oppressive government and with few resources,
certainly with her share of frustrations.
And her words ring out over the years, over the generations- her words
of hope; her words of God’s acts of love, justice and mercy in the past, in the
present and in the future. She tells us
who God was for those people singing Psalm 80 drinking their tears and crying
out to a God who did listen, who was with them and who lived in relationship
with them for generations. She tells us
who God is for us today in the midst of our frustrations, in the midst of our
pain in the midst of our world and who God will be thousands of years from
now. And we call her blessed.
Sometimes the work of justice, the work of God, the hope of
the world is hard to see, sometimes it is buried under frustration, under
injustices, under pain, under tears … sometimes you need to squint to see it, you
need a magnifying glass to behold it and then when you do you recognize it as
what has been, is and will be, what is all around us, what is in us and what
knits us together. And Mary’s song,
Mary’s soul, magnifies the Lord, it is that magnifying glass making clear what
seems hidden.
In her book Love Warrior, Glennon Melton writes about a
conversion experience she had. Her
parents sent her to a priest after she told them that she was still an
alcoholic with an eating disorder and had just had an abortion. She goes to a church she has never been in
and writes of her experience of Mary:
“I look up higher and
see that I am standing beneath a huge painting of Mary holding her baby. I look at Mary and she looks at me. My heart does not leap, it does not thud- it swells
and beats steadily, insistently. My
heart fills my whole chest but does not hurt, so I do not break eye contact
with Mary. Mary is lit up bright but I
am in soft, forgiving light. She is
wearing a gown and her face is clear. I
am wearing a tube top and my face is dirty, but she is not mad at me so I do
not bother to cover myself. Mary is not
what people think she is. She and I are
the same. She loves me, I know it. She has been waiting for me. She is my mother. She is my mother without any fear for me. I sit in front of her and I want to stay here
forever, in my bare feet, with Mary and her baby around this campfire of candle
prayers … She is what I needed. She is
the hiding place I’ve been looking for.”
Mary is a young woman of rebellion, courage and hope who
can see God in the midst of frustration, who can sing joy even as she plays her
part in a story of loss and death. Her
soul magnifies the grace of our God who looks at an imperfect people and an
imperfect world and continues to plant seeds of justice, who continues to move
our hearts to love and peace.
Christmas is almost here.
A savior born in a lowly manger to parents of no social standing is
about to come. A vulnerable baby with
few resources laid in a feeding trough.
So take out your magnifying glasses because if you look closely, if you
look past the frustrations and pain and sorrow you can see that this baby born
to an unwed teenager is God made flesh.
Emmanuel.
