Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us. Strengthen our hands and make firm our knees. The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. Amen
Saying Yes to God
We entered this third week of Advent with the glorious sounds of the Newport Music Festival’s presentation of A Musical Christmas still in our ears. Our own Raymond Buttero was the anchor of the performance, playing in 12 of the 16 pieces presented. With two concerts Saturday and the concluding concert on Sunday, Emmanuel Church welcomed over 500 people into our beautiful Nave — even more gorgeous following the Greening of the Church after services on Sunday. As I moved around in the crowd before and after the concert, I heard over and over again people’s comments: What a beautiful church. I couldn’t agree more.
We celebrated Commitment Sunday last Sunday, laying our gifts before God for blessing. As we’ve been discussing, your pledges are essential to support our lives in Christian community at Emmanuel. While all of your gifts are important, your pledges of financial support are essential to allow the vestry to budget and plan for our actual costs of life together, which come due at specific times and in specific amounts. We thank all those who have pledged for your support of our common life, and ask all those who have not yet completed your pledge cards to commit to our life-giving purpose together in God.
EDS Christmas Program
I have special news from our Emmanuel Day School congregation this week. We are rehearsing for our Emmanuel Day School Christmas program in partnership with the Emmanuel Angel Choir and the Newport Choir School — A Joyous Christmas Journey on Thursday, December 19 at 5:00 pm in the church. I know I speak with the eyes and heart of one who is just starved for grandchildren, but our EDS and Angel Choir children are just incredibly cute, and it is pure delight to see their excitement and curiosity fill the church. We have welcomed in these children as our own congregation in the school, and by making space for them in our lives here, we have grown.
Rose Sunday
Today is what we call Rose Sunday in Advent — the 3rd Sunday of Advent when we take a little break from all that repentance that John the Baptist has been talking about and focus on our joy as we get closer to Christmas, when we celebrate Jesus’ birth. On the first two Sundays of Advent, we lit candles for hope and peace. And at the start of our worship this third Sunday of Advent, we lit the one rose candle for joy.
The joy is that little break from our penitence, our deep reflection on turning from darkness and putting on the armor of light, as we prayed last week. We rejoice on Gaudete Sunday — another name for Rose Sunday that means rejoice. We rejoice as Mary does in our canticle today — in her beautiful song, the Magnificat. Last year while I was in Jerusalem, I led Evening Prayer every night, and I can still hear the Magnificat in the beautiful stone chapel: My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord! My spirit rejoices in God my savior. For he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
Mary
The Magnificat is Mary’s great song when the Angel Gabriel shows up and tells her she will bear a son and name him Jesus. And the Magnificat — that great hymn Mary sings in the Gospel of Luke and that we sing today on Rose Sunday — reveals Mary’s astonishing strength and resolve. Mary sings of the bounty, fertility, and abundance that is released when we say yes to God.
A lot of our hymns and stories about Mary, Mother of God are about her meekness. Sing of Mary pure and lowly. And we do know from scripture that Mary was young when the Angel Gabriel dropped by Mary’s house in Nazareth one day with his stunning announcement that she would be the Mother of God. Luke’s gospel doesn’t say how old Mary was, but we know that she is a physically improbable and theologically inappropriate choice for the job. We know that she was very young because she was a virgin betrothed but not yet married to Joseph, and she’s not from a priestly family — so she’s pretty much a dark horse candidate for this God-bearing gig.
But pure and lowly? Meek and gentle? Let’s look again at Mary’s song of praise — the Magnificat that we sang today. This is the knowing and powerful song of someone who has already entered into partnership with God:
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.
My spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
For he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
All generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me.
He has lifted up the lowly,
filled the hungry with
good things.
These are not expectations for the future — this is a list of the abundance and reversal that supposedly meek and gentle Mary saw the minute that she said yes to God. And like that’s not enough of an upset of our expectations about what’s possible and what’s not, Gabriel tells Mary in this same conversation that her childless kinswoman Elizabeth, who referred to herself as an old woman (although Luke’s gospel doesn’t tell us her actual age), is at the end of her second trimester, pregnant with baby John the Baptist.
Saying “Yes”
After dropping this knowledge on Mary, when Mary wonders aloud how she will conceive as a virgin, Gabriel says: Nothing will be impossible with God. But in this conversation with God’s messenger, the ball is still in Mary’s court. What if she hadn’t been home when Gabriel stopped by? What if she’d said she had to wait until the bread was out of the oven, or until she finished up this big project at work? Or that she would have to get back to him when she freed herself up from some other commitments, like, say, her betrothal to Joseph? What if she’d said no? I wonder if God had a backup plan for human salvation.
But Mary says yes to God through Gabriel, and then lets loose with a mighty song of fulfillment and reversal, a version of the song that Hannah sings in the first book of Samuel when she is blessed with her son Samuel after praying to God for children.
Scripture is full of stories of those who, at least at first — at least for a while, turn away from God. Gabriel, like other angels, was just God’s messenger. And Mary didn’t make him display his angel ID badge before she agreed to talk to him, so she wasn’t even sure of that. Her doubts about the whole conversation are evident in her response to Gabriel’s greeting: Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you. Mary is not sure at all about this. Luke’s gospel tells us that she was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But she hears him out. She asks good questions. She evaluates Gabriel’s answers. And then she says she’s all in: I am the Lord’s servant, she says. Let your word to me be fulfilled.
Partnerships
What partnership — what relationship — is God inviting us into today? Are we saying yes to God when we invite the broader community into our church — as with the Newport Music Festival, the Crafting and Caroling event, or the EDS Christmas pageant with the Angel Choir and the Choir School?
Are we saying yes to God in responding to what our community hungers for, whether that’s spiritual enrichment, Bible study or other education? Are we listening for angels among us inviting us to new activities in connection or community? Even when they might seem improbable, unlikely, or hard to do?
There is gospel precedent both for our doubts and for God’s infinite possibilities. Remember Zechariah the priest, Elizabeth’s husband, was so stunned by the Angel Gabriel’s announcement that his wife Elizabeth would bear a son that he blurted out to Gabriel that he and Elizabeth were too old to be parents.
And Mary, the Mother of God, started out the day of Gabriel’s visit as an ordinary teenager — fetching water, tending cooking fires, sweeping, and kneading bread. But then she had a conversation with an unexpected angel that changed everything — lifted up the lowly, scattered the proud, and filled the hungry with good things. What abundance will be released when we go into partnership with God?
Are we ready to say yes to God’s invitation? Amen