Sunday, December 19, 2021

Bearing Christ

An icon of the Visitation of the Theotokos, the God-bearer

 

Micah 5:2-5a

Hebrews 10:5-10

Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)

Canticle 15 (or 3)

© 2021 Seth Olson

Video of this sermon may be found here.

Emmanuel, God with us, let my words be your words and when my words are not your words, let your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.

I grew up going to a one-of-a-kind Episcopal Church—St. Andrew’s Parish in Southside Birmingham. Unique in its high church “smells and bells” style of worship—and its radical sense of hospitality—after going to church with a couple of my friends I realized my church was… different.

Instead of having a normal children’s Christmas pageant on Christmas Eve, St. Andrew’s had a very brief children’s play with only Mary and Joseph on the night before Christmas. “Why?” you might ask. Well, because at St. Andrew’s we waited until Epiphany when the wise men showed up to tell the full story of Jesus’ birth. Every year in the Epiphany pageant growing up I wanted to play the same part—not Joseph or a shepherd, nor a wise man or an angel, but rather the inn keeper. Odd, right?

If you are unfamiliar with this part in the Nativity story, Mary and Joseph had to go to Bethlehem because of a census that was being taken at the time. Joseph had to return to his family’s hometown. While the innkeeper appears nowhere in the story, this part is implied when Luke wrote “because there was no place for them to stay in the inn.” Why did I want to play this negative character? Maybe this is something to take to a therapist. As I have reflected on my penchant for this particular part, a few reasons emerge as to why I liked playing the innkeeper so much.

First, the innkeeper only had the one line, “Sorry, there’s no room in the inn.” Even after almost 30 years I nailed it! Second, I got to sit in a pew all by myself so that when Mary and Joseph walked down the aisle knocking as they looked for a place to stay, I could deny their request. Which gets to the final and most convicting reason in hindsight as to why I might have enjoyed this role. Could I have wanted to play the innkeeper because I got to deny the Christ child a place to stay?

Oomphf! This is what the innkeeper did, right? This man who owned the inn denied Jesus’ family access to a room. Except, in the Epiphany pageant at St. Andrew’s the hotel owner had a stable that he let Mary and Joseph use, so maybe there is redemption in the Inn (#dadjoke #priestjoke). Regardless, if we back up in the story as Luke tells it, before Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem, right after Mary was visited by the Angel Gabriel, we find two figures who did not deny God a place to stay, but instead bore the Holy Spirit, God, and Christ in exemplary ways.

In today’s good news, we experience something wholly different from a denial of Christ—instead we encounter a story utterly holy—dripping with the power of God’s spirit. Two pregnant women and their visceral, feeling-soaked, prophetic conversation take center stage. Mary’s visit with Elizabeth shines a spotlight on the great hope of all who follow in the Way of Christ. What is that hope? We will get there, so keep listening, but first, let us go to the Judean hill country.

Today’s gospel story opens with “In those days.” This phrase harkens back to “the days of King Herod”[1] mentioned earlier in the story, even though we might expect God to be moving amongst the powerful, that is not what we find. Case in point, the angel Gabriel had just visited not the palace, but Mary, a lowly servant of God. Gabriel had been busy.

Earlier in Luke, God’s messenger visited Zechariah while he was offering incense in the sanctuary of the Temple. Gabriel told the priest that even in their old age Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth would have a child and they were to name him John. Being the stubborn priest that he was, Zechariah questioned God’s messenger. What happened next might have been why Elizabeth and he were finally able to conceive a child—Gabriel made Zechariah unable to speak until the child was to be born—the priest had to be quiet, and maybe he finally listened to his wife. Next thing you know, Elizabeth was pregnant with John the Baptist.

Fast forward just a bit in Luke’s account, and we find Gabriel announcing to Mary that she will bear a son as well. The angel told her, this child will be the Son of the Most High God—even with two thousand years between this news and us, it still strikes me as shocking! Gabriel told Mary this unbelievable announcement and solidified the claim by informing her that her relative, the once barren Elizabeth, was now pregnant. Mary unlike Zechariah did not question this surprising report from God’s messenger. Instead, she went with haste to meet Elizabeth, which gets us to today’s story.

When Mary entered Zechariah’s home, we can imagine the priest just silently raising his hand to wave hello, while Mary and Elizabeth embraced sweetly—the two holy children leaping within their mothers’ sacred wombs. Immediately from Elizabeth a blessing broke forth upon Mary—blessed are you among women, blessed is the fruit of your womb, blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord. The elder pronounced a three-fold beatitude upon Mary. The third of which might have been a veiled insult at her husband Zechariah who like many willful priests did not immediately believe what God’s messenger was saying.

Elizabeth pronouncing these blessings get me wondering—did Elizabeth’s late-in-life pregnancy give her new vision? Elizabeth greeted Mary with what many recognize as the beginning of the Hail Mary. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.”[2] Did Elizabeth’s own state of blessedness open the eyes of her heart to see Mary’s true nature. This makes sense. Don’t we more easily behold blessings in others when we are open to God blessing us?

Regardless, Mary inspired by Elizabeth’s words, sang some of the loveliest and most challenging words in all of Holy Scripture. She replied with what we know as The Magnificat—named such for the first line—My soul magnifies the Lord. The first few lines are all about Mary’s state of blessedness that Elizabeth was describing:

 

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.[3]

We often might stop paying attention here. Thinking how beautiful Mary’s words are. Yes, the beginning bits of this canticle are about Mary’s blessed nature, but then the Theotokos, the God-bearer, announced a prophetic description of blessing. In it, she told us who God was, who God is, and who God will always be—and who we are called to be in response.

 

His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.[4]

Mary, the bearer of God’s Son, pronounced a truth she intimately knew. She was blessed not just because she bore God’s Son, but also because she knew God’s way:

  • Mercy for those who lovingly hold God in awe.
  • A strong scattering of those who take pride in themselves alone.
  • Dethroning the powerful, while exalting those on the fringes of society.
  • Filling the hungry, telling the rich they’ve already had their fill—inviting them to share?
  • Holding the people of God in a merciful embrace forever.

This is God’s way, and it is to be our way too!

Elizabeth’s geriatric pregnancy opened her eyes to see her relative in a new way, such that she could pronounce a blessing upon Mary. Mary’s out-of-wedlock, divine pregnancy gave her the courage to see herself as blessed and to point out God’s countercultural way. Far from denying God a place to stay—these women prepared God mansions in which to dwell. We are called to do the same—this is the ultimate hope, which I hinted at earlier! All of us, no matter our gender, our skin color, our age, our sexual orientation, or our ability, all of us are called to not only make room for Christ, but also to bear Christ into this world—to live into the virtues set forth in Mary’s prophetic words.

The great theologian, philosopher, and mystic Meister Eckhart wrote it far more eloquently than I ever could:

 

We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us.[5]

In this season be it our care and delight to prepare a place for Christ to dwell—not just in a manger but in us and this world. May we be blessed like Zechariah and be quiet, so that we might hear God. May we be blessed like Elizabeth and see the blessings of others, so that we might exalt one another. May we be blessed like Mary and bear Christ in ourselves, so that God’s reign thrives in our time, place, and culture! Amen.



[1] Luke 1:5

[2] Hail Mary found on the Vatican News. https://www.vaticannews.va/en/prayers/the-hail-mary.html. [accessed December 19, 2021].

[3] Luke 1:47-49

[4] Luke 1:50-55

[5] Meister Eckhart, Be Mothers of God retrieved on the Catholic Storeroom. http://www.catholicstoreroom.com/category/quotes/quote-author/meister-eckhart-1260-1328/ [accessed December 19, 2021].

Monday, November 22, 2021

What Is Truth?

 

The already-and-not-yet reign of Christ is not about crowns.

2 Samuel 23:1-7
Psalm 132:1-13 (14-19)
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37

©2021 Seth Olson

Holy God, let my words be your words, and when my words are not your words, let your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.

Does anyone remember what happens next in this story? Do you know what Pilate said? Starting in John 18:38, Pilate responded, “What is truth?”

How did Jesus answer him? Certainly, with some wisdom-soaked teaching, right? A profound healing that stunned the governor? No, Jesus said nothing. His response was in God’s first language—silence. And, if you are bothered by this, you are not alone.

Frederick Beuchner, the spiritual giant and once-in-a-generation preacher put it this way, “The silence that has always most haunted me is the silence of Jesus before Pilate. Pilate asks his famous question, ‘What is truth?’ (John 18:38), and Jesus answers him with a silence that is overwhelming in its eloquence. In case there should be any question as to what that silence meant, on another occasion Jesus put it into words for his disciple Thomas. ‘I,’ [Jesus] said, ‘I am the truth’ (14:6).”[1]

When facing his own death, being interrogated by the highest power in his people’s occupied land, Jesus answered audaciously with self-emptying silence. Not a mighty teaching on truth, nor an earth-altering moment of restoration, Christ Jesus simply stood there.

Part of me wants to yield the rest of my time in the pulpit to God—to allow for Jesus’ silent reply to search our souls. I would love to simply dwell on what it means that Christ Jesus is the truth. However, I love working at All Saints too much to make you all sit in silence for an undetermined amount of time. And, as much as I would love to rest here in the quiet allowing God to speak in our hearts—and I know some of you would love that too—everyone might not enjoy an unannounced contemplative service. Still in wordless moments we discover the truth of Christ Jesus and on this day especially, we can aspire to know the truth of his reign in our lives and in the world.

Today is the last Sunday in our liturgical year. Advent is right around the corner and Christmas ever on its heels. Some call today Christ the King Sunday. You may wonder, where did this celebration originate? This feast sounds like an ancient occasion, so you might be surprised to discover that it emerged in Mainline Protestant Christianity after the Second World War.

Religious councils were gathering in a world and a time that felt torn apart and broken—not unlike our own day. These ecclesiastical bodies sought a shift in a brave, new, post-war world. They wondered how we as a species might avoid another contest that would bring us to the brink of total annihilation. One answer arose, which we commemorate today—Christ the King Sunday.

During this occasion we recognize that no power or principality of this world sits upon a higher throne than Christ, our true king. Of course, we here in the United States do not like kings very much. So, this feast is often referred to as the Reign of Christ Sunday, and that feels a bit more fitting—at least here stateside.

Reign of Christ Sunday sounds marvelous, but what exactly do we mean by this? What is truth in regards to Christ’s reign?

There’s a marvelous saying out at Camp McDowell, our diocesan camp and conference center, that I absolutely love, and it provides a helpful analogy. The motto goes, “This is God’s Backyard—the way the worldcould be.” Likewise we might say about Christ’s Reign that we can find it anywhere, and it’s the way God dreams it can be! There are of course, more weighty examples of what Christ’s Reign might look like or the way the world could be—including in today’s readings.

Our lesson from Second Samuel put it this way: He will “[rule] over people justly… who is like the light of morning, like the sunrising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.” Can’t you see Christ making things right—shining the brightness of truth over the whole earth?

The Revelation of John tells us Christ will be the Alpha and the Omega—the beginning and the end. So, the Reign of Christ has already commenced, and yet it is not yet fully realized. We are getting more pieces in the puzzle of the way God dreams the world can be!

Isaiah whom we will hear from during Advent… in 2022, so next December, describes what the Reign of Christ will look like in even more expansive and poetic language:


The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:6-9).

This vision is stunningly beautiful. A wolf and a lamb, a leopard and a kid, a calf and a lion, a child and a snake dwelling together without violence—what a different way of being than what we are accustomed to seeing in our world of competition! It gets me wondering about this age—if Christ’s Reign started long ago at the beginning and it continues to the end, then what does the reign of Christ look like now?

Instead of a lion and lamb lying down peaceably—how about during this Iron Bowl Week the Tide and Tigers getting along? We might chuckle at this, but more seriously how about political donkeys and elephants finding ways to serve one another and the common good together! Try remembering that when you are about to argue across the Thanksgiving table. Least you think I am picking unnecessarily on politicians, how about us in the Church not deriding brothers and sisters from other denominations or other religions, but gathering around Christ’s throne?

This week I was overjoyed to walk in on Monday morning to see an empty Angel Tree. Your generosity and giving offered a glimpse at the Reign of Christ. What now we see in part through a mirror dimly God will reveal fully when God’s Kingdom comes. In the fullness of time that Angel Tree will hopefully be empty not because we took all the names of children whose parents are in jail, but because we have a reformed prison system and restored people reunited with their families.

During our Thanksserving project we gave out 40 turkeys and Thanksgiving baskets yesterday, which was wonderful and another look at God’s Kingdom. And, the full Reign of Christ may appear different. A place where there is no more hunger or children who go to sleep malnourished or starving. The Kingdom is already here, but not yet fully realized.

We have a class called Sacred Ground, which will soon begin discussing the challenges we as individuals and a church face regarding systemic racism. This course will be both challenging and life-giving! And this sort of work will open opportunities for all of us to participate in the work of truth and reconciliation. That work invites us into the Reign of Christ that has begun and beckons us to make it fully known one day.

During the Prayers of the People in a few moments we will remember Leann Hampton, a member of this parish who died tragically this week. I have been devastated and will continue to mourn the loss of this beloved child of God who had the gift of making life more fun and who rarely did not have a smile on her face when she walked in the doors of All Saints. She now dwells in the fullness of God’s presence—even if we who are on this side of the grave long for the fullness of the Reign of Christ where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.

Are you seeing the paradoxical nature of the Reign of Christ? It is the beginning and the end. It has already started and is also not yet. It is both here on earth and also in heaven. It is seen in who we are and what we do, still not fully. And while we spend time yearning for the whole kingdom to be revealed we would be wise not to let our own expectations get in the way of how God is already here and already working among us.

Simon Peter, one of Jesus’ chief disciples, put his own vision of Christ’s reign ahead of the truth. When Jesus talked aboutthe suffering that he would undergo—that his throne would be a cross and hisenthronement would be his crucifixion—Peter rebuked Jesus saying, “I will neverlet this happen.” To which, Jesus replied, “Get behind me Satan” and “You haveyour mind set on earthly things, not divine things.” Christ’s Reign may not look like what I expect, what I think, or even what I hope for, but that’s okay for it’s not my kingdom but Thy Kingdom.

As we dwell in the already-and-not-yet Dominion of God and anticipate Christ’s Reign which stretches from the beginning to the end, Jesus calls us to set our minds and our whole lives on how the earthly things become the divine things with God’s help. He revealed God’s “kingdom come” in eloquent teachings, powerful healings, and life-giving sacraments. We may also find the fullness of truth in God’s first language of silence. May we dwell with Christ in his reign now and forever. Amen.

 



[1]Frederick Buechner. Weekly Sermon Illustration: Truth, November 19, 2018. https://www.frederickbuechner.com/blog/2018/11/19/weekly-sermon-illustration-truth [accessed November 18, 2021]