Mass readings for the 4th Sunday of Advent:
Micah 5.2-5a Psalm 80.1-2, 14-15, 17-18 Hebrews 10.5-10 Luke 1.39-45
I’ve already mentioned that St. Luke likes to set the stage of the great story of the gospel by letting us know who all the “important” people are, who live in the great cities, according to the metrics of the worldly: the rich and the powerful, in the royal and imperial courts in capitals of kingdoms and empires; and then he proceeds to ignore them and talk about those who are by convention marginal in terms of status, and location.
And that might strike us as a peculiarity of Luke’s but it’s actually consistent with the perspective of the Bible. Scripture is occasionally concerned with powerful people in important places, but the heroes of the story tend to be ordinary folks. It would seem that God is most at work in the realm of the ordinary and the everyday.
Bethlehem is not a town of any importance, yet the prophet Micah says it will host an event that eclipses all else throughout history.
In the Old Testament, we have Abraham, the father of faith, who is really not important in the scheme of the ancient world. He’s a caravan operator out of the city of Ur. His equivalent today would be a guy who runs a small trucking and warehouse operation in Waterdown. Respectable enough, but hardly exceptional. But through him, in his adventures in a “Promised Land” that when he arrives his far from the magnificence of Ur and the other cities of Mesopotamia, the wondrous story of humanity’s salvation begins. Indeed, when anything of historical importance has its start in the corridors of power, in the halls of the high and mighty of the earth, in the great cities, its almost always a tragedy that results.
Take for example David, the great hero of the Old Testament. He is never more admirable than when he was a poor shepherd, and then an outcast and outlaw on the run from King Saul whose obsession with keeping his throne drives him mad. Its once David is king and living in the palace that his real troubles begin and so compromise the well-being of the whole nation. It was as he lounged on the rooftop terrace of his palace that he caught sight of Bathsheba and fell prey to the temptation of lust, and put in progress a chain of events with a disastrous outcome for himself and for a great many others. While there will be some instances of repentance, David is nonetheless seen having this downward trajectory of moral degeneration that sees him redeemed only in his last days. His son Solomon will have a similar story; and the whole royal house of David will play out this pattern on a grander historical scale.
I don’t think we need to talk about Pharoah, or King Nebuchadnezzar, King Herod, et al. to get the point.
What happens among the weak and lowly, the humble and the meek, as it were, that’s what really counts in terms of God coming into the world; in terms of humanity fulfilling itself according to God’s design. As someone mentioned to me, when Mahatma Gandhi became active in the drive for India’s independence from British rule, he’s quoted as saying, “There goes my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”
It’s hard to make the sacrifice of our obedience as ordinary people in times of national and international stress; or when one’s personal life is in disorder – the intuition born of fear is to withdraw, to stay in one’s room, to pull the covers over one’s head, and to wish someone else would solve our problems. Don’t we elect people for that?
I know whereof I speak – as I’ve shared with people before, I once suffered horrible depression. Now, much better, but never entirely free of it, my faith sustains me, and spurs me on to fight the promptings of an anxious mind, to instead listen to the voice of Christ. And that voice prompts me to get out of that bed either literally or figuratively, to rise, take up my bed and walk, we might say, because I can not overcome my sin, the sins of the world, by staying tucked up in a dark room afraid, either literally or figuratively. My obedience to Christ, to be of service to him in the world, in whatever capacity, in whatever circumstance, draws me out, and toward him, and makes ever stronger my desire to be reconciled to him, and in communion with him. And I see how little the supposedly powerful have to do with that.
Where do we see Mary, our lady, today? She’s not in Nazareth fretting about King Herod, who surely was a cause for concern.
After the famous visitation by the archangel Gabriel, the tremendous announcement the she would be the mother of the Messiah, we see her out in the world; she’s out visiting, making connection with a cousin she may not even know that well, whom she hasn’t seen in some time; and who in no way lives anywhere conveniently close by to Nazareth but is out in the hill country of Judea. And in that coming together, there’s an inspiring moment of realization by the two together – God is at work in the world, they both know it, and they rejoice in it.
Why do we come together today? Why do we make a habit of worship together? We come together as did Mary and Elizabeth to revel in what we know: we have become bearers of Christ, and we are those who create, or “birth” a community that is his herald and proclaims his coming just as John once did.
I know that in our recent stewardship discussion there was some difficult truth-telling about the state of the Church, the situation of the parish, and that came ahead of the news of a national nature which is doubtless concerning to us all, for the sake of our families affected by economic uncertainty, for the sake of our community during a crisis of governance. The thing about salvation history, what our Lord has to say about the march of events, is that all of this is passing away, and as much as we need to guard against attachment to the things of this world, we also have to be careful of an attachment to the current events that pass into history. Our lives play out not through the course of human events so much as they do in the eternity of God; and so, our focus is on Christ and obedient service to him. That will be done admittedly in the face of what the world will offer as hindrances to it, even open opposition, but the test for us in our persistence. And we persist because we know, from the witness of scripture, from the witness of history, great things come from small beginnings, they stir from places overlooked by the high and mighty, they burst forth into the world from what those of the city see as the wilderness, the hinterland, “fly-over” country… They come of the faithful who gather, even where only one or two gather in Christ’s name, there he will be present, inspiring and empowering us to repeat our Lord’s words, those quoted by the author of the Letter to the Hebrews:
“See, God, I have come to do your will, O God.”
Amen.