21 December 2018
Advent Canticles 4 – 21 December 2018
He
has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts
of their hearts.
He has brought down the mighty from their
thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich empty away.
(Luke 1:51-53)
Part of the Magnificat…
Mary’s song of joy when the two mothers meet, Elizabeth and Mary. I am very much on the outskirts of all
this. You know how people often say, “I
know exactly how you’re feeling”… when of course they don’t, and they can’t. What they know is what they are feeling, or
felt. We don’t know what these two women are feeling. We are distant onlookers, rightly hesitant
about approaching, and we sense mystery.
But we may listen to Mary’s song.
It is very moving poetry… and it is profoundly subversive. God, she sings, by the birth of this child
has done three things.
The first is: He has
scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts. It is in Greek. “The proud” is a word meaning those who deem
themselves naturally superior, the arrogant, the ones who believe they are born
to rule. But there is simply no place at
the cradle of this child for proud self-satisfaction or egoism... wherever it happens, in presidencies or the
highest places in church or politics, or in our homes or the secrets of our
hearts. It doesn’t belong. It is simply inappropriate here. Mary sees such people “scattered”, she says,
with all their pretensions.
Secondly, He has
brought down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. This is about power. “The mighty” means those not only wielding
power but enjoying knowing others are powerless – the Greek word denotes
powerful dynasties. Mary sees such power
defused, cancelled – as in the end, in history, it always is. It is the meek, the humble, said Jesus, who
inherit the earth.
And thirdly, he has
filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich empty away. This is more than turning on Christmas
dinner for the city’s needy… it is more than foodbanks… admirable and all as
they are. It is a vision of justice, equity
in which no one is hungry, children are nourished… in which there is no culture
of flaunted affluent greed or the diseases of over-indulgence.
Mary’s vision… we scarcely see it happening in fact. There is the poetry… and there is the
reality. Human arrogance, the misuse of
power, greed and inequity, continue to thrive.
Eventually the followers of this child began to realise that the
kingdom, as he indeed taught, is within.
The same Spirit who inspired Mary’s vision sets about changing
hearts. Mary knew what Jeremiah had
prophesied[1]: I will put my law within them, and I will
write it on their hearts. Or Ezekiel[2]: I will
remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh… I will
put my Spirit within you… These, in
ancient terms, are the changes to which we consent in the stillness and silence
of our prayer.
14 December 2018
Thankfulness – Advent 3, 14 December 2018
You will say in that
day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your
anger turned away, and you comforted me… With joy you will draw water from the
wells of salvation. And you will say in
that day: Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among
the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted.
Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be known
in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing
for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. (Isaiah 12:1-6)
The Principal of Mahurangi College, on sabbatical, spent five
weeks in South Sudan, a war-torn place, schools destroyed along with much more of
the infrastructure, children now having lessons under trees or in the ruins,
bringing their own chairs… But David
MacLeod found students “bright-eyed and eager to learn”. He went on to Canada, with schools better
equipped and financed than here in NZ. There
he found students “disinterested, poorly motivated and contributing to a youth
mental health crisis… The Canadian kids just had a dullness in their eyes by
comparison”, said David MacLeod. Of
course, those are generalisations, but still, I imagine, we are not entirely surprised.
The passage from Isaiah is the Lectionary Canticle for
worship on the 3rd Sunday in Advent.
It is about joy and thankfulness.
Isaiah is filled with gratitude… this is the 8th century BC,
when the Assyrian was coming down like a
wolf on the fold.[1] Gratitude is a principal marker of grown-up
faith – but the gratitude we mean is decidedly not on the level of counting your blessings, naming them one by
one. That is more on the level of
Aunt Daisy than Jesus or Isaiah… if your blessings outnumber your disasters, so
the story goes, then you’re ahead – but that’s not faith, it’s
accountancy. A related cliché says: There’s always someone worse off than you… Believe me, there are situations, some of
them quite common, in which there is no one worse off. Nevertheless, gratitude was not unknown in
Auschwitz.
Real gratitude flows from God. It is a gift of faith, not something we
generate ourselves, like remembering to say thank you to Aunty Agatha. Gratitude and praise is a grace we receive. It is a sharing of God’s joy in creation and
in constant re-creation. To say “Grace”
at meals, for instance, though we may do it perfunctorily, if at all, is a “kairos”, a spiritual moment. The food before us is a gift, part of the
gift of life and love. So we pause,
properly, to think however fleetingly how all is gift – and of the atrocity of
famine in the world God made and gave to feed us. Neither is this gratitude giving thanks because
we are safe and privileged – that is what the pharisee did. We give thanks that food is there at
all. We give thanks for the hope that is
in us, which is often “hope against hope”.
We give thanks for life and breath, for love and goodness, and kindness,
for second chances and the lessons of adversity. We give thanks for light on the horizon, the
promise of Advent.
07 December 2018
Advent Canticles 2 – 7 December 2018
The Song of Zechariah, more commonly known as the
Benedictus, normally gets said or sung in morning worship – but on Advent II it
is given a special place. Zechariah, a
priest in the temple, so the story goes, sang this at the circumcision of his
child John, whom we know as John the Baptist.
This was remarkable because Elizabeth his wife had long been labelled
“barren”, which in practice meant useless.
They were elderly people – Luke stresses all this -- they may even have
had their names down for Summerset Falls.
We are also told that Zechariah had been struck dumb, before John’s birth,
for having expressed doubt to the Angel Gabriel that any of this was
possible. So Zechariah’s song was the
first thing he had been able to speak for quite a while. I do hope you are keeping up with me…
For some two-thirds of his song he lyrically celebrates his
belief that God is about to intervene and deliver Israel from the hands of
their oppressors, the Romans. The
Deliverer will be from the royal house of David. Everything God promised to Abraham, and ever
since, is about to be fulfilled. Then
suddenly he directly addresses this baby, his baby, the whole point of the
observance in the temple today. Luke
renders this in Greek as an emphatic shift of focus… and you, little child…[1] Have you ever noticed that abrupt change, as
you recite the Benedictus?
It is difficult to resist, as a father, interpreting this in
21st century terms. What is
Zechariah expecting of his son? A worthy
replica of himself…? a young hero…? a dutiful prospect on which the father will
spend a fortune for education and formation…? a sporting icon perhaps…? a
credit to the family…? a loyal assimilator of his father’s goals and ideals and
values…? Zechariah is not, he is letting go of his son. Certainly he will do all that is expected of
a father and a parent, in love, in nurture, in care and provision, in
counsel… But fatherhood does not mean
ownership and control. Fatherhood
eventually means letting your child go. Your
child is another person, not under constraint to replicate anyone or anything. Zechariah’s child will serve faith and hope
and goodness in his own ways.
The Benedictus ends in sublime poetry about God. Zechariah sings of the tender compassion of our God – the Greek literally says “bowels of
mercy”[2]. He pictures the dawn suddenly rising in the
east, enlightening, shining on those
sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death, guiding our feet into the way
of peace. It is a lovely prophecy
that Zechariah weaves over this newborn child, utterly mysterious, profoundly
hopeful and faith-filled. Advent waits
for the dawn, never more needed than in the 21st century… a dawn of
mercy and truth, light in the darkness, hope for those who see nothing but the shadow of death, a discovery of ways
to live in peace.
[1] Καὶ
σὺ δέ, παιδίον… very focussed and emphatic.
[2] We
have encountered ancient anatomy before.
τα
σπλαγχνα (ta splagchna) means bowels, innards,
heart and lungs. It is seen as where our
deepest feelings and reactions come from.
The word is used here, of God.
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