Good Friday. Where are you, God? April 15, 2022, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, AR. noon

Good Friday. Where are you, God? April 15, 2022, St. Mark’s noon

All of Little Rock mourns the death of award-winning photojournalist Brent Renaud, gunned down in Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, documenting the plight of fleeing Ukrainian refugees. Americans, especially Arkansans, cry out, “Where are you, God? Why did you let this happen?”

Tetiana Pere/by/in/is, an accountant, gardener, and avid skier, and her two daughters, /18-year-old Mykyta and 9-year-old Alisa,/ along with Anatoly Berezh/nyi, a 26-year-old church volunteer helping them to safety,/ didn’t make it. On a Sunday, they were also killed in Irpin, trying to evacuate, as they dashed across the concrete remnants of a damaged bridge. 1 The Ukrainian people cry out, “Where are you, God, in the midst of this bloody Ukrainian invasion?” 1/

Over 80 years earlier, Ellie Wie/sel, a Romanian Holocaust survivor, describes a scene at his concentration camp, Auschwitz. “The SS hang two Jewish men and a boy before the assembled inhabitants of the camp. The men die quickly, but the death struggle of the boy lasts half an hour. “Where is God? Where is he?” a man behind Wie/sel asks. After a long time, as the boy is still in agony on the rope, Wiesel hears the man cry again, “Where is God now?” And Wiesel hears a voice within him answer, “Here God is—he is hanging here on this gallows” suffering with the young boy…. 2//

On Good Friday, we bring our grief to this place, mourning others who have died, as we contemplate the why of Jesus’ death. We linger at this cross for a few uncomfortable moments. It is a reality. Jesus died. Like others, it is a profoundly unjust, sometimes overwhelmingly painful death, and we need one day more to deal with it. Probably more than one, actually. We stand on top of Gol/go/tha to decide what Jesus’ death means to each of us? How should all these deaths, but particularly the death of Jesus, make some sense of our living and our dying.3 /

The stark rawness of today does not bring many answers.

Of all the world’s religions, Christianity is the only one that has a God who suffers, who knows, has experienced firsthand our own pain. He is a suffering servant, which no one had ever heard of before. Jesus means to transform the world by loving it, not by controlling it, which makes his life hell most of the time. No other world religions have a leader who dies suffering. Buddha dies at eighty, surrounded by his followers. Confucius dies an old man putting together ancient Chinese writings. Muhammad dies in the arms of his favorite wife while he is the ruler of Arabia. Jesus is not so fortunate. But his suffering does make him our best company/when we run into our own bad times. He has been there. There is nothing that hurts us that he does not know about. At our most broken, our most frightened, our most forsaken by God, we have this companion who has been there and promises to be there with us. There he lives, sitting beside and inside us in the lowest places in our lives. Nothing we think or do can shock him. Nothing we say can make him turn away. If we say, “Where are you, God? I’m all alone here,” HE also said it from the cross, / as Mark and Matthew tell us. Good Friday shows us that the Christian faith has nothing to do with the removal of suffering. Instead, we are given a God who intimately knows our pain and agrees to suffer with us/and for us.4 This is love that crosses all boundaries.

 Jesus’ death may be beyond comprehension, but it is not beyond belief. We may later find it smack dab in the middle of our belief in life beyond death, ushered in by the humble death of this suffering servant./

Perhaps if we continue our window into the scenes of Good Friday, where Michael led us on Palm Sunday, actually placing ourselves on that hill, we may find answers/.

We come closer and hear Jesus’ first words from the cross recorded in John./ Jesus never observes our suffering from a distance, so we, in turn, must move even nearer to him. Jesus says to his mother: “Woman, here is your son.” And to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” Barbara Brown Taylor5 believes that when the beloved disciple takes Mary home, and when the other disciples crawl out from under their rocks, they will find themselves in the presence of two people whose contact with God’s love has become far more intimate than theirs. While the principalities and powers in Jerusalem believe they are tearing his family apart, Jesus lovingly is quietly putting it together again. My experience is also that Jesus constantly does this for us. When our sister or brother or mother or father or child is physically separated from us by death, Jesus gives us a new and different loving relationship with them/and others, if only we have eyes and ears to see/ and hear/ and believe/ and accept it./

On Good Friday, so much focus is rightfully on Jesus’ suffering on the cross. But as we stand below Jesus, we see next to us the courageous women of John’s story, Mary, her sister, and the woman from Magdala. To honor them, we pray for other women who now weep for their children, refusing to be comforted. We hold in prayer similar women standing on today’s Golgotha, who, in the face of horrible suffering, somehow find strength to hold each other up.” 6//

 Jesus’ last words we hear are “IT IS FINISHED.”

But is Jesus’ crucifixion indeed finished that afternoon 2000 years ago?/ We gather here at St. Mark’s because we are an Easter people, but our world is still more like Good Friday. Do we continue to be active observers and participants in Christ’s crucifixion still going on today?3/

There is no lethal injection in Jesus’ time. The whole point is to make everything as painful as possible. As we stand so close to that cross today, we agree that crucifixion is the worst.

As we look up at the wounded crucified Jesus, we recognize that he has become what we most fear: nakedness, exposure, vulnerability, and failure.7 We listen, but hear only silence from the God of our understanding. We receive few direct answers. We suffer in silence with the crucified one, wondering what is God’s meaning in all this. Perhaps we can connect to God’s love so immense that we now know God suffers with us. 8  //

It will be dark by the time we help take Jesus’ torn, naked body down from the cross and find a place to lay him. It will be the Sabbath. His time to rest. His part is over. His work is done.9 Some will tell us that Jesus is brutally crucified so that we might see the horror of it all and cease crucifying others like Brent, Tetiana, Mykyta, Alisa, Ana/to/ly.7/ Will it ever end?/

We will go home and prepare for the Sabbath. It will be hard to say our prayers.

 “God, where are you? We desperately want answers./ But we are not yet giving up on you, God./ Your history with us tells us that you have continually redeemed evil and turned it into good since time began. But this horrific event is too dark. Where can there be good  in this Friday?”10/

We will finally fall asleep, but out of respect for you, God, plan to come back, continuing our Holy Week walk together, hoping to find any answer. / We will return to this place near sundown tomorrow,/ or at least the following day.

Joanna Seibert

1 Andrew Kramer, “They died by a bridge in Ukraine. This is My Story,” New York Times March 9, 2022.

2 Elie Wiesel in Night (Night Trilogy) (Hill and Wang January 2006).

3Julian DeShazier in Christian Century, March 23, 2016.

4 Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Suffering of God,” God in Pain (Abingdon 1998) pp. 120-124.

5 Barbara Brown Taylor, “Mother of the New,” Home By Another Way, pp. 97-99.

6 Eileen D. Crowley, “Sunday’s Coming,” Christian Century April 11, 2017.

7 Adapted from Richard Rohr, On Transformation: Collected Talks (Franciscan Media: 1997), disc 1 (CD).

8 Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Silence of God,” God in Pain (Abingdon 1998) pp. 110-114.

9 Barbara Brown Taylor, “It is Finished,” Home By Another Way (Cowley 1999) pp. 103-105.

10 Frederick Buechner in Wishful Thinking.

Last Epiphany C, Luke 9:28-36, February 27, 2022, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock

Last Epiphany C

February 27, 2022, Luke 9:28-36 St. Mark’s

 My husband’s father, Bob, calls. He is experiencing excruciating back pain and can barely walk. My husband and daughter are in Greece. I get off the phone and seek advice from colleagues who perform tests, and then I go with Bob to a specialist. As I impatiently and nervously wait, a lone older woman in the waiting room briefly reminds me of all those who do not have friends or family with them and must wait for long hours alone in emergency and waiting rooms in pain before answers come./

 The specialist says that my father-in-law has advanced metastatic cancer to the spine. The medical team starts Bob on a trial protocol. Two days later, on my way home from church, I realize the hospital has been paging me. My father-in-law is in intensive care and has had a reaction to the new drug. My husband and daughter rush home from Greece. Bob is put back on a more standard treatment for his cancer. Our oldest son, Rob, takes a leave of absence from graduate school and moves back home to help care for his grandfather. Six months later, Bob falls and breaks his hip. We can no longer care for him at home and go through all the nursing home and assisted living decisions that many of you have faced. Each day presents a new, unfamiliar, often exhausting challenge of how to minister to someone we so dearly love.//

The disciples in our story today also have faced one new challenge after another. They are exhausted by the nonstop demands of the crowds. Recently, they were sent off to cure and heal the sick. They have an amazing run of success and return to tell Jesus all about it. But when he takes them for a well-earned respite, more crowds interrupt them. The weary disciples beg Jesus to send the crowd away, but we all know what happens next—“fish sandwiches” for 5000, or probably 15,000 if we add in the women and children.

The next day doesn’t feel like a vacation either, because Jesus starts telling them about his upcoming suffering and death, something they may experience as well. We can’t blame the disciples for missing the resurrection part on the third day. Heidi Neumark says, “When you think you are heading for the dungeon, anxiety, and panic tend to block out everything else.” 1

Eight days later, the disciples are still in no shape for mountain climbing, even if it is to pray, as Luke mentions. But there go Jesus, Peter, James, and John ascending up a steep mountain. You know they are wondering what is so special about praying on top of this unnamed mountain?/

 If I am honest, on most days, attempts to pray/ are a steep uphill climb on weary legs. The world’s insistent demands make it challenging to find a spiritual focus. I, like Barbara Crafton, keep thinking of a million silly things, like did I send out that last email, what’s for lunch?2  If I make it, it is only thanks to many faithful companions beside me in community here at St. Mark’s,/, as well as the communion of saints, past and present, that constantly support and pray with and for us.//

On top of this mountain, Jesus is doing all the praying. Peter, James, and John can’t keep their eyes open, which connects the disciples’ humanness on this mountain to their inability to stay awake later at  Mount of Olives. Suddenly, just as sleep is about to overcome the three, a brightness startles them. Their eyes open wide. Jesus, who reached the summit slightly above them, now shines with the brightness of the sun, says Matthew, and his clothes become “dazzling white as no bleach on earth could make them,” says Mark. The disciples have an unforgettable experience of seeing the divinity of Jesus./ They also see two other well-known figures talking to Jesus. All three synoptic gospels identify them as Moses and Elijah, who speak in Luke’s account to Jesus about his imminent departure in Jerusalem. “The word departure comes from the Greek word for exodus, referring to the trip down the mountain and into Jerusalem, but also to Jesus’ death.1” Moses’ presence reminds us of the exodus of the Jewish people through the Red Sea from Egypt, suggesting that Jesus will now accomplish a second exodus, leading God’s people safely through the waters of death to resurrection,/ just as Moses parted the Red Sea, leading his people safely to the promised land./

But Jesus’ brief dramatic change in appearance from man to God/ is lost on the three disciples. They are mystified, dumbfounded. Peter expresses the confusion of his shocked companions and a lack of awareness of Jesus’ true divinity by suggesting they stay on the mountaintop to make similar dwellings or monuments to all three.1///

On the top of a mountain, we sometimes do see the world differently. In the Hebrew Bible, mountain summits are stages for life-changing events. Noah lands on Mount Ararat. Abraham nearly kills his son, Isaac, on Mount Moriah. God gives Moses the ten commandments on Mount Sinai, and today we hear about the transfiguration of Jesus on an unnamed mountain.3

We all have had mountaintop experiences of seeing God in our lives, even when we barely comprehended them, as did the disciples./ Yet, truthfully,/ most of our transfiguration experiences occur below /at the bottom of the mountain, / where we daily work and play, /where theological bones take on flesh. Flesh becomes divinity. / This is where we most often see the transfigured face of God, in places where premature babies are born and thrive, where loved ones and patients’ appearance changed as they return to life from near-fatal illnesses, where addicts and alcoholics find recovery, where we forgive those who have harmed us, and we are forgiven; where we forgive those who have not accepted us as the gender God created us to be, where we see Jesus, the Christ, in the face of a homeless man at the traffic stop, or in our neighbor who irritates us, or in the slow and tired checker at our local grocery/. In these times, for a brief moment/ we see someone as a real person, we see Christ in each other.

A priest friend, Pat Murray, believes that in reality, Jesus, God, is transformed all the time, but only at certain moments can we see the likeness of God in each other,/perhaps most often when we live in the present moment/ or in stressful times where we are experiencing “altitude sickness.” We, humans, seem not able to bear much reality, wrote T. S Eliot. It is too incomprehensible to look God in the face/ for any length of time.2 ///

We all take turns taking Bob for his many treatments. As I look about the crowded waiting rooms, again, I think of the ill who do not have family to support them. How do they get here? How do they survive and keep coming back?/

 At one visit, Bob is too weak to dress himself after his examination. I see our son, who looks so much like his grandfather at an earlier age, / dress Bob, / pull up Bob’s baggy trousers, / tighten his belt/ and lift Bob up to stand. / The young and the old man hug each other./ I see the look they give to the other; one, the look of loving surrender, the other, the look of a loving servant. / They see the face of God in each other. / They are each transfigured in front of each other at the bottom of the mountaintop. / “Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it is almost beyond bearing.” 4

Transfiguration again occurs the night Bob dies, as he is cared for in his last hours by both of his grandsons. Bob lies in his nursing home bed/ unable to speak/, but his face shines like the sun as he radiantly,/ continuously/ smiles at his two grandsons he so dearly loves/ as we sit at the bottom of the mountain and he begins his ascent. //

Today, if we listen carefully, we can still hear the voice that interrupts Peter: “Listen to him.” Listen for dear life. Listen to words of forgiveness and mercy, promises of paradise, words we will soon hear from the cross. Listen without ceasing, on the edge of glory/and on the brink of death. We have heard this voice before at his baptism, “Here is my only begotten son with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” Listen on this hill, but also listen soon on another hill when darkness closes in.1////

“When cures and healing are beyond our powers, when the shine on a loved one’s face comes from tears reflected in the fluorescent lights of intensive care, / on such days remember to put yourself inside this story, listening for the voice that urges us to stop and listen for his Voice. When you are overcome with weariness and difficulty, remember to look for the transfigured face of God in all you will meet./ The Beloved, the Son of God, the Son of Man, will always be there/ beside us/ and will shine in the darkness,/ and the darkness will never,/ ever overcome it.1”

1Heidi Neumark, “Altitude Adjustment” in Christian Century, February 6, 2007, p. 16.

2Barbara Crafton “Last Epiphany” in The Geranium Farm, February 1, 2008.

3Thomas Jay Oord in Christian Century, January 17, 2017.

4Frederick Buechner in Whistling in the Dark.

Joanna Seibert  joannaseibert.com

Epiphany 5C Call of Peter, Luke 5:1-11, February 6, 2022, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock

Epiphany 5C. Call of Peter

February 6, 2022

Luke 5:1-11 St. Mark’s

“Hello, yes, this is Mrs. Simon Peter. What! My husband has not been at the docks for two weeks! His boat is filled to the brim with dead, rotting fish! You are going to confiscate our boat! And the boat of his partners as well! Could you give me a little time to look into this? I have been taking care of my mother, who has a recurrent febrile illness, and we have just started building a new home in Capernaum.”

Do you ever wonder what is really going on between the lines of this familiar story about the call of the first disciples? There is often more that is not said than what is said. For centuries, students of the Hebrew scriptures have been trying to fill in the blanks, the conversational details. This is called midrash, and that is what we are doing this morning to Luke’s version of the story of “the catch of the day.”

Peter and his brother Andrew are in the family fishing business, in partnership with Zebedee and his sons, James and John. They have all been intrigued by the teachings of this new itinerant preacher. Jesus has even come to Peter’s home for dinner and miraculously healed his mother-in-law so that she can serve dinner. This particular morning, a huge crowd is following Jesus along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Peter and his partners, however, are out trying to make a living and haven’t had the luxury of free time to spend with Jesus. They have been fishing all night with no results. As they pull into shore, they are running their bruised, tired hands along miles of worn wet netting to tighten knots and take in the slack of frayed cords. They are hungry, tired, and want to go home.

Jesus then spies his dinner partners and asks if he might use their boat for a pulpit for his impending sermon. Of course, Peter cannot refuse the one who has just healed a family member, especially in front of all these people; but this interruption is not what Peter has on his agenda or even his radar screen. Peter nods his head, but grumbles under his breathe while Jesus gets into his boat and begins to preach. Luke doesn’t tell us anything about Jesus’ sermon. Perhaps it is his first draft of the Sermon on the Mount or an early version of his series on the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost Son. Poor Peter now has yet another job trying to keep the boat in place offshore while Jesus speaks. There is no indication that he listens to the sermon, for it probably takes every bit of his last energy to steady the boat off shore, work the live stream sound system, so that the crowd can now hear more clearly the voice of Jesus magnified from a cove in the lake. Finally, after about an hour, Jesus finishes. It is now midday. Jesus then shows us his flexibility, how he lives continuously in the present moment. He sees Peter’s fatigue and frustration. Jesus senses that Peter needs fish, not words. So he tells him to go out into deeper water and put down his cleaned nets and fish again.

“What in the world is he saying? We have tried that before, and it doesn’t work. Everyone in first-century Palestine knows you fish in deep water at night.” Peter is a professional fisherman who knows this lake like the back of his hand. Jesus is a carpenter turned teacher. Well, you know what Peter is tempted to say, but exhausted, Peter does as he is told, hoping that he will eventually get to go home. And then, to his amazement, he catches extreme abundance, more fish that he and his partners can bring in or their boats can hold. Finally, exhausted and overwhelmed, Peter falls to his knees in a sinking boat full of flipping fish and confesses to Jesus that he was so wrong. Peter is ready to turn his life and his will over to Jesus. And Jesus’ answer is even more astonishing: “Do not be afraid, from now on you will be catching people.” When they come to shore, Peter and his partners have changed their priorities about fishing, and leave their boats and follow Jesus.

All of us desperately want to know what it is like to be Peter, to be called by and hear the voice of God, or we would not be here in this place. Today, Luke clearly tells us what that call looks and sounds and smells like.

Where is Peter, and what is he doing when he is called? Peter is not doing anything particularly religious when he has his life-changing spiritual experience. He is not following Jesus, but is busy trying to make a living at his workplace. We may hear God call us in this church, but we are more likely to hear that voice in our everyday lives, at home, school, and work.

My experience also is that this call will come in an interruption from our routine. So pay very close attention to the interruptions that come when you are much too busy for them: people and places that are not scheduled on your desktop or Google Calendar.

God also comes to us where WE are. Luke tells us that Jesus begins his ministry in synagogues, but he doesn’t call his disciples by putting an ad in the Galilee Hebrew Democrat-Gazette saying, “Local teacher needs staff. No experience necessary.”/ Instead, Jesus makes personal appearances at the homes and workplaces of those he calls.

What do you think motivates Peter to go out into deeper water and try a new way of fishing? My experience is that we only make these life-changing decisions when we are like Peter, exhausted by how our life is going, when we are “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”/ We hit a bottom and have no more answers. One of our children gets into trouble, and we cannot fix it this time; our spouse is sick and is not getting better; we lose our job and have difficulty finding another one. Suddenly we are open to a memory from childhood, a conversation with a stranger or an old friend. We read a scripture passage again, or see an old movie like “Field of Dreams” or “A River Runs Through It,” or “Places in the Heart,” and it is as if we are hearing and seeing it for the first time. And God comes to us/ and transforms us/ in the ordinary, small kindnesses and acts of self-sacrifice from strangers, family members, friends,/ even simply from a child’s smile,/ and our nets are filled to overflowing in ordinary ways. //

Have you wondered why Peter’s confession of his humanity, his shortcomings, his inability to be in control is so essential to his call? Fishing is Peter’s talent. He must recognize the source of that talent and who gives him the direction to make the catch. Part of Peter’s greatness is this ability to surrender and see his own powerlessness. But that same power that causes him to fall on his knees also lifts him up. Jesus says to him, “Fine, now we are ready to get to work. If you hadn’t been able to see and confess your true self,/ you would be no good to anyone.”

What does Jesus mean by telling Peter he will now be catching people instead of fish? Is he saying Peter should now give up fishing? My experience is that God uses the talents we have perfected in our worldly vocations for his purposes. Peter’s skills in fishing will now be used for the kingdom. Nothing, nothing is ever wasted. Fishing may now be the best way Peter will meet others seeking the Christ, just as Jesus first met Peter at his workplace.

Many of you know better than I the skills you learn at fishing and hunting that can be used to further the kingdom: patience; working in community; putting out a net, a feeler, a fishing line, to find something utterly unknown beneath the surface of your life; becoming an artist, seeing God’s presence in nature, feeling God’s pleasure in the sun and wind on your face and the salt in your hair, being constantly surrounded by images in a natural world more significant than yourself.  This is where Peter finds God in his ordinary life, as we can as well.

One last thought to ponder. Isn’t it also interesting that none of the disciples Jesus chooses are from the religious community of his day? Instead, all of his followers are people called to a second career, people seeing their present occupations in a new light.

 So, this is the call. Do you hear it? God is calling each of us, most of us a bunch of rank amateurs, who don’t know a trout from a salmon or who can’t distinguish port from starboard./ We are not called because WE are able,/ but because God is able. God constantly gets into the boat with us,/ usually at odd and inconvenient times, /leading us and going with us to deeper waters where our nets will be filled to the brim.

Joanna joannaseibert.com   

12 step Eucharist, Epiphany, January 5, 2022, Christmas II, Matthew 2:1-12, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Arkanas

Visit of the wise men 2022, 12 step Eucharist

January  5, 2022, Christmas II, Matthew 2:1-12, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock

We hear tonight, and we will again celebrate tomorrow night at 6:30, the visit of the wise men. Our tradition calls this Epiphany, the revelation, the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, which is most of us, you and me. The Christ child, the God of my understanding, is indeed manifested to me almost sensuously at Epiphany. It first happened in the mid-fifties, when I attended my first Epiphany Feast of Lights service around the age of eleven in a small Virginia church with a boyfriend and his family. I still remember the unfamiliar liturgy, the candlelight, and the haunting mystic melodies. As we walked out of the small-town church on that bitter, cold January night, carrying our candles, we were surprised by the winter’s first snow. I knew that night that God spoke most clearly to me through this tradition.

 A decade later, I again encountered the beauty of the Feast of Lights at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Memphis, with their choral procession of the costumed wise men bearing their extraordinary gifts. Here in Little Rock at St. Mark’s, you can again experience that haunting call of Epiphany at their candlelight evening service at 6:30 tomorrow. To me, the choir and candlelight recessional out of the church into the dark night is always breathtaking. I watch the beautiful, often familiar faces of those walking out behind me. Their expressions seem to ask, “What will we encounter next in the night? Will this light be enough for me to see?”/

 This service empowers us to think about carrying our single small candle out into the world. As the candlelight service concludes, we realize that we can only see our path in the dark night because of the light from so many others. This is also our 12-step tradition. It is a we program. We stay sober because we stay connected to a community of others. Occasionally our light shines brightly in recovery. But, more often, we need the light of others for us to see the path ahead.//

Let’s listen to one more part of the journey of the wise men that speaks to our recovery. “They were warned in a dream… and left for their country by another road.” “They were warned in a dream… and left for their country by another road.”  This is also our story. We were warned in a dream, by another person, a judge, our family, consequences of our behavior, an intervention, whatever brought us to a moment of clarity to return home, to a new life by another road. Living the path of the 12 steps is the other road we have been called to travel. It is often called the road less traveled. What a privilege it is to trudge, to travel this road of happy destiny in community with each of you.

Joanna     joannaseibert.com

Advent 4C Luke 1:39-49, ((50-56), December 19, 2021, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock

Advent 4C Luke 1:39-49, (50-56)

December 19, 2021, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock.

On this fourth Sunday in Advent, a few days before Christmas, the atmosphere in our church is more like a hospital maternity waiting room where all the relatives gather during these last hours before the birth of the family’s first baby. 

But in our excitement, we are ahead of our story. Back up. Teenage Mary from upstate Galilee, possibly thirteen years old, engaged to Joseph the carpenter, descended from King David, is visited by an angel, Gabriel. Mary’s eyes must have said “no,”/ for the angel’s first words are “Fear not.” Gabriel then delivers to Mary the first Christmas card, “Rejoice,/ the Lord is with you,/ you have found favor with God.” The angel then promptly tells Mary she will be the God-bearer, the Mother of God, Theotokos (THEE-oh-Toh-kus), our Greek friends will call her.

 The heavens and the stars all hold their breath for that one moment waiting for Mary’s answer. Mary’s response is not “well--ll, I suppose so” or “if you say so,” or “well I don’t like this, but you are the boss.” Instead, Mary says, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38). With that,/ Mary agrees to smuggle God into this world inside her own body, and the sun and the stars give a great SIGH of relief and begin to breathe again.  

But making a decision to say “yes” does not mean Mary is not frightened. She is so worried she asks her parents to let her leave town for a while and visit her relative Elizabeth, a priest’s wife, who lives south in the Judean hill country. Mary longs for a kindred spirit in this time of crisis, and Gabriel tells her that Elizabeth is also having a miraculous birth. If anyone can, Elizabeth will support her. Elizabeth is older than Mary, but never patted Mary on the head or used that tone of voice adults utilize when speaking down to children. Instead, Elizabeth has always treated Mary like a friend, a soul mate. Mary’s parents respond, “Yes, Mary, you have been looking a little peaked lately. Perhaps a visit to the country will do you good.”/ Mary leaves, and on the long, dangerous journey, probably in a caravan, she now has even more time to worry. Will Joseph stick around? Will her parents still love her? Will she be dragged into town and stoned? How will she, a pregnant teenager, take care of a baby, with no place to live, no way to get food, no one to help her?

When Mary arrives at Elizabeth’s, she is a mental wreck, but at the sight of her beloved cousin humming softly in her outdoor courtyard in the sunlight, she forgets all her fears. Elizabeth is six months pregnant and gorgeous. Not movie star gorgeous, but so full of life that it is hard to see anything but her joy, what Frederick Buechner calls “joy beyond the walls of the world.” Her grey hair is plaited and tied under a scarf. As Elizabeth takes Mary’s hands in hers, the girl cannot help but notice the dark spots on Elizabeth’s hands, the ones that come with age. The younger woman, hardly showing, then moves Elizabeth’s hand to her body and whispers, “ I am going to have a baby as well!” Luke then tells us that the baby in Elizabeth’s tummy leaps for joy. Actually, the Greek translation says the baby we know as John the Baptist “dances” for joy./ Elizabeth then takes in a deep breath as she is filled with the Holy Spirit and sings those beautiful words that Roman Catholic friends recite daily with their rosary, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Except Elizabeth didn’t just say the Hail Mary, the gospel tells us she “exclaims it in a loud cry.” She shouts it!

After Elizabeth lets loose,/ it is Mary’s turn again. The younger generation now enlightens her mentor, launching into a prophecy that we sing or recite today, especially in Evening Prayer. /This exchange between Mary and Elizabeth models for us what happens when we recognize and affirm God in each other. Our feet start tapping. We want to make music: harp, guitar, drums, violins, organ, an entire symphony to accompany the outpouring of our joy and gratitude. Mary’s voice and heart sings the Magnificat, “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.”

What allows Elizabeth and Mary to sing in harmony is gratitude and praise for God being alive within each other. Each one carries that presence in her body, kicking and growing until no one looking at her can miss it. This always happens when we recognize God’s presence in each other.

 Mind you, the Magnificat is not a wimpy sentimental song. If you think Mary and Elizabeth are sweet and retiring, re-read Luke. “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones.” /

For the next three months, Mary stays with Elizabeth and must have been present at John’s birth. Imagine the beautiful music at that home? /

In the first two chapters of Luke’s gospel, everyone sings.  Until John is born, there is only a women’s chorus. For that same angel who visited Mary silenced Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband. But then, with John’s arrival, Zechariah pours out the powerful Benedictus our choir sang on Advent 2, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David.”/

And so, our story on this fourth Sunday in Advent from Luke has become the first act of a musical where everyone has a singing part: Gabriel sings, Elizabeth and Mary sing, Zachariah sings. And in a few hours in the second and third acts, we will hear more angels, heavenly hosts, shepherds, and later old Simeon will even sing./

Barbara Brown Taylor tells us that this musical also has a dance part, and it is a divine dance where God gives each of us the opportunity to play a role. God leads,/ but it is up to us whether we will follow. It is a two-step, just like that relationship between Mary and Elizabeth when they see God in each other. God acts. Then it is our turn. God responds to us. Then it is our turn again. The only thing that is absolutely certain in this scenario is that our partner is always, always with us and supports us and wants us to have that same new life and a new spirit within us that is gifted to Mary.////

 The birth of Christ not only happened 2000 years ago. We are here because the living Christ is inside each of us, ready to be born. Mary’s trust in that fact is all she has. What she does not have is a 3-D fetal ultrasound, a husband, or a written sworn statement from the Holy Spirit saying, “The child is mine. Leave this young girl alone.” All she has is her unreasonable willingness to believe God has chosen her,/ and that is enough to make her burst into song. She does not wait to see how things will turn out later on. She trusts the Holy Spirit, and sings ahead of time,/// and all the angels sing with her.///

 If there is some restlessness going on inside you right now, and your stomach is rolling with your own version of morning sickness,// then you might try following Mary’s lead. Who knows? Maybe the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Perhaps that shadow hanging over you is the power of the Most High.

While it certainly would be appealing to have more details about what all this uneasiness inside of us will lead to, Mary’s experience and wisdom mentors for us that we do not need to possess the knowledge of what is in this “cloud of the unknowing.” Mary’s story reminds us how God has acted in the past. She models for us what happens when we say, “Yes,/ thank you, /I’d love to sing and dance.”

 Joanna Seibert

Barbara Brown Taylor, “Mary,” in Mixed  Blessings (Sue Hunter 1986),  pp. 21-24.

Barbara Brown Taylor, “Mothers of God,” in Gospel Medicine (Cowley 1995),  pp.150-153.

Barbara Brown Taylor, “Singing Ahead of Time,” in Home By Another Way (Cowley 1997), 15-19.