“I am the Lord’s servant…may it be to me as you have said.”-Luke 1:38
It’s Advent again. Which means that my thoughts are turning to Mary again.
Mary. A woman who was highly favored, who pondered things in her heart, who was responsive to the Divine invitation before her. A woman who was willing to open all of herself- even the very cells of her body, her most intimate parts- to God.
Whoa.
This kind of opening is radical. It is risky. This kind of opening risks it all- one’s life plans, one’s relationships, one’s reputation, one’s physical well-being, one’s very life- for God.
[I mean, seriously?! Opening the very cells of one’s body to receive the God-fetus? Talk about vulnerable!]
This kind of opening requires so much trust and faith that the God of Jesus is indeed the God of Love and Life, whose invitation leads to salvation and great joy.
Mary clearly thought that this opening, this Inbreaking reality, was deeply good news that led her to heart-expanding praise. Salvation has come! The hungry will be filled! There will be justice and peace on earth!
Mary’s Magnificat response reveals her entrance into this joy:
“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me– holy is his name…” (Luke 1:46-49)
For Mary, opening herself to the Inbreaking reality led her to ecstatic, joy-filled worship as she encountered the salvation of God.
This opening to salvation, however, also led Mary into dark, difficult places. I think of the blessing and the prophetic word that Simeon spoke to Mary when he said of her boy, “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul, too” (Luke 2: 34-35).
Mary didn’t just open herself to receiving in her son the Savior of the World; she also opened herself to receiving the one who would become the Suffering Servant. And his suffering (all the way up to his murder) inevitably became her suffering. And the suffering of her neighbors- the mothers of innocent children who were slaughtered because her child posed a threat to the powers who felt threatened by Jesus- inevitably became her suffering, too. “A sword will pierce your own soul, too.”
Mary teaches me that opening oneself to God means opening oneself to all of it- to the deep, abiding, ecstastic joy and peace that comes through encounter with the liberating Word–the proclamation that salvation is coming to all people–and also to the soul-piercing pain that one feels when one encounters the depths of one’s own suffering and the sufferings of others. It means opening oneself to the Love that also reveals injustice and evil for what it is.
It hurts that in this time of Advent expectancy there are millions of black boys and men who are locked away for the entirety of their earthly lives with no hope of ever getting out. It hurts that there are millions of people in this country who will go to bed hungry tonight. It hurts that there are children in the Middle East who are being struck down with drones at the hands of the US military.
It hurts that there is not peace on earth. (How can one even pretend to proclaim that, in light of Ferguson, of Marysville, of Syria…?)
It makes me wonder how God can bear it, how God can continue to keep God’s heart open to loving this world.
Because everything in me wants to close up, close off, protect myself from facing suffering because it hurts so much. And it hurts that I even have the privilege that affords me a choice about whether to engage the pain or not just because I have white skin and a support system with enough money that I don’t need to worry about where my next meal will come from.
I sometimes feel powerless against the onslaught of pain that comes when I keep my heart open to love.
So, why did Mary do it? Why did she open up the cells of her body for God to take up residence and then to come forth into this pain-full world to die? Why did she open up her heart to love and raise this child, knowing from the beginning that she couldn’t protect him from the powers that would speak against him, that would eventually shed his blood)?
“This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.” Is this the purpose of the soul-piercing: that disorientation, disillusionment, and the realization that things are not as they should be are necessary so that the knowledge of salvation can be realized? Is this soul-piercing a prerequisite for liberation and deliverance? Is it necessary to be pierced so that we can be emptied in order to be filled? Does this soul-piercing serve to bring us the knowledge of salvation?
This soul-piercing reveals to me not only the immensity of pain, suffering, and sin in the world, but also my own pain, suffering, and sin. It reveals the ugliness and sin that prompts me to turn away from the pain of my brothers and sisters, grasping for things that would keep me “safe” and “comfortable” while leaving others to fend for themselves. It shows me that I am not only capable of inflicting suffering on myself and others, but that I do. And that I, along with this world, am in desperate need of a Savior.
It hurts to be pierced to the core. But the piercing is what enables me to experience the deep, abiding joy and peace that comes from encounter with God’s Love. And oh, how worth it the soul-piercing is for the experience of encountering the deep peace and joy of God that is born of Love!
Mary’s choice to receive her Savior-Son shows me that encounter with God necessarily means that one will experience the soul-piercing sorrow and the heart-burning joy, and that you can’t have one without the other. That to experience the heart-burning consolation of encounter with the Risen Christ, one must experience the soul-piercing pain of Golgotha. And perhaps the extent to which we enter into the joy that Love has made a home with us is what enables us to continue to enter into the pain.
I am comforted that the Living Word- the One Whose Spirit pierces my very heart–knows what it means to be pierced, too. And that he knows what it is to be raised. The fullness of sorrow and pain.
In both Jesus and Mary, I hear the invitation to open myself to Love and to receive and enter into experience the other. Like mother, like son. Like Son, like mother.
For me, opening myself to Love this Advent means entering into joy that salvation has come. It means proclaiming the coming of Immanuel, insisting that God is in fact with this world despite evidence to the contrary. It also means considering how I am being called to enter into true com-passion by being with my brothers and sisters in their joy and pain. It means asking God to fill me with God’s love, that I might live as an embodiment of that Love in this world.
What are you being invited to this Advent?
May we all, like Mary, ponder this question in our hearts and open ourselves to respond to the invitation God places before us.
Kari Rauh is a spiritual pilgrim on the journey with Jesus who lives and works as a massage and craniosacral practitioner in Seattle, WA. She encounters the Divine in authentic conversations around the dinner table, giving and receiving hugs, watching birds, and eating Thai food.”
Christmas is only a couple of days away. This week I am lighting the love candle to add to those of gratitude, peace, joy and hope that I have lit in past weeks. The light shines brightly in the early morning darkness, reminding me of how Christ’s light shines in some of the darkest parts of our world.
Sometimes we look around us in despair and long for the coming of Christ’s light in all his fullness. Then we catch glimpses of where that light has already entered our world and it dazzles us with its brightness filling our hearts with gratitude, hope, and joy.
We watch the unsung heroes whose lives make a difference in places of grief and despair. People like Sandra Lako, a physician who works in Sierra Leone. I first met Sandra when she was six years old, ministering with her family on board the mercy ship M/V Anastasis. Her whole life, like that of her parents Rene and Marianne who now work in Haiti, has been dedicated to those less fortunate than we are.
Sandra has lost several colleagues to Ebola, and lives and works under the constant threat of its deadly grip. Sierra Leone has banned Christmas and New Year gatherings this year and Sandra has cancelled her own personal celebrations with friends and family in the U.S. Yet Christ is being birthed in that country because of the commitment that she and her colleagues have made. Pray for them and light your own Christmas candle for them.
We watch those who struggle with their own heavy burdens of illness, death and injustice and still manage to shine like bright Christmas stars in our midst. Like my friend Niki Foster Hibbert, undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. The doctors only expect her to live for around three years, from Niki’s perspective 1,000 days to share blessings. Sometimes these blessings are filled with joy, other times with heartache. I am following Niki’s daily journey on Facebook, laughing and crying with her and her family and friends. It is a beautiful though obviously painful journey which is touching the lives of many and filling all of us with Christ light.
So as you gather round the manger this week, whose light shines in the darkness for you? Who do you think of that has filled you and those around you with Christ light?
I wrote this prayer for Christmas last year and used it as the Christmas eve prayer in A Journey Toward Home. I found myself reflecting on it again this morning and thought that some of you might appreciate it too.
Today’s Advent post is written by Ryan Harrison. When Ryan isn’t dreaming up ways to reach out to her community and participate in Kingdom building, she’s working and writing (and writing when she should probably be working).
nativity – Andi Harisman Indonesia
I decided to brainstorm my guest list, the way one might brainstorm wedding or party guests.
Manger Guest List:
- People who don’t think like me (as long as they don’t crowd me)
- People who don’t act like me (people who act more hateful, more judgmental, more foolish, less empathetic, less kind than me)
- People who need the manger more than I do (those who need a reminder that Christmas isn’t about shopping or parties, but about worship)
- People who need to repent for their sinful ways more than I do
- People who don’t feel the weight of justice and mercy the way I do
What an incredibly insensitive (at the least) and hurtful guest list; I’m ashamed to admit it’s mine. But when challenged to think honestly about who we would invite to the manger, that’s the list that emerged. I thought of all the ways the manger could be kept neat and tidy, by keeping those who thought differently at arms’ length, over there by the stable. I thought of all the ways the manger represents the upside-down of the season, and all the people who needed a little bit more upheaval in their thinking about God, King and Country. I thought of all the people who just could not fathom the King of Israel, the Redeemer of Israel being laid to bed in the pungent smell that seeps into the skin and the dust that cakes on layers thick. I thought of all the people who held onto the shreds of power the way a baby twists his mom’s hair around his fingers and in between his knuckles, matting it in sticky drool. I thought of all those who ignore the rending hearts, the seam-ripping sorrow that fills the air in cities across the world. I thought that they could all crowd in close to the manger to see the newborn King.
But the person I didn’t think about, the person who most needs to be invited to the manger is me.
I need the manger.
I have a pit in my stomach and I don’t think it’s from too many Christmas cookies. My inability to admit that I am the one in need of a manger has crept up on me and it’s settled in, rooting itself into my stomach the way a hedgehog burrows deep into the dirt. I am the one who needs the upside-down Emmanuel. I need the upside-down of the King who welcomes sinners and tax collectors into his presence but also Pharisees in the dark crevices of the night. I need the upside-down King who isn’t afraid to tell his disciples that they have it all wrong, that their empty arguing about first and last isn’t the way of the kingdom—even after they’d known so long, seen and heard for so long that it wasn’t the way. I need the upside-down King who says, ‘just one more step’ to the man who really isn’t willing to follow Him so far, after all. I need the upside-down of the One who loves the deserter-denier, who calls out beloved instead of betrayer. I need the upside-down King who tells me I’m holding on to my life too much and the only way to keep it is to lose it: gradually, step-by-step for the sake of others and sometimes all at once for them, too.
I need the manger. I need to be invited to rejoice over the tightly swaddled baby, the light that destroys the darkness, all-creation-turned-upside-down Emmanuel. And then perhaps, my guest list will reflect God’s heart and not my own.
- Story by Mustard Seed House
- Music by Lacey Brown, In Mansions and Church of the Beloved
- Reflection by Tom Sine, Mustard Seed Associates
- Meditation by Christine Sine, Mustard Seed Associates from Light for the Journey
- Produced by Ryan Marsh, Church of the Beloved
Join us here at the Mustard Seed House as we celebrate our annual Advent II Homecoming party. Listen to Tom Sine reflect on coming home to the kingdom of God and Lacey Brown’s beautiful song What Happens When God Comes Close.
Or right click this link and save to your computer. Advent Podcast Four
This is the last of four Advent podcasts produced by Ryan Marsh of Church of the Beloved for the Godspace blog during Advent. We hope that you have enjoyed the series as much as we have. We would love to receive your feedback as we consider other podcast series for the future.
And don’t forget our other Mustard Seed resources including these beautiful prayer cards that we have put together. Your purchase of these resources is one way to help support the Godspace blog and the ministry of Mustard Seed Associates. If you have enjoyed this series and would like to consider an end of year donation to Mustard Seed Associates to help us develop more resources that would be appreciated too.
Listen to previous podcasts hosted by Ryan Marsh and Christine Sine:
First week of Advent with Tara Ward and Chelle Stearns listen here,
Second week of Advent with Aaron Strumpel, Dwight Friesen, and Donna and Jim Mathwig listen here
Third Week of Advent with Karen Ward, Tacey Howe Wispelwey and Mary September listen here
You may also like to check out these Advent Mediation Videos
If you are just tuning in on this you may also like to watch the Advent meditation videos:
Alleluiah the Christ Child Comes
The Coming of the Lord is Near
Enjoy – have a wonderful Christmas and a blessed New Year.
I am; yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes:
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death’s oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live with shadows tost
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems …
From ‘I Am’
Written in The Asylum, Northampton
John Clare (1793-1864)
Blue Christmas is a feast for those for whom the longest night of the year might hold some particular emotional or physical significance; a feast for those for whom darkness is perpetually threatening to overwhelm the light; a feast for those for whom the phrase ‘the dark night of the soul’ holds a special resonance; it is a feast for all those who find themselves unable to celebrate.
It is a feast to welcome in the unwelcomed.
In the last six months the depression that permanently lies under my own skin has become acute again, so this is a feast of particular pertinence to me this year. I am fortunate to be spending today with my parents.
But what of those whose families struggle to support them? What of those whose families reject them, for whatever the reason? What of the families who are missing a beloved part this Advent because support systems were not in place to help when they were most crucially needed? What of those who have been ‘released’ to the ‘care of the community’?
‘Many translations of Luke’s “Magnificat” (Luke 1:46-55) use the wonderful phrase “God has regarded me in my lowliness” (1:48). This French-based word regardez means to look at twice, or look at again, or look at deeply. Mary allows herself to be looked at with God’s deeper and more considered gaze. When we do that, God’s eyes always become more compassionate and merciful. And so do ours if we regard anything.’(Richard Rohr, online meditations)
Blue Christmas is a feast then to be hospitable to myself, to bring all my own grief to the manger and expose myself to the searing Love of God’s gaze; and it is a feast to bring others to this place too, reaching out to those who feel love-less at this time. As Godspace discussed at length in the summer, ‘Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place … It is … the liberation of fearful hearts.’ (Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out)
Am I offering a space where those who meet me find themselves looked at compassionately, so that the Spirit’s work of loving liberation may begin or continue? Further, is there honesty in my artistic work which reaches out on an emotional register, perhaps creating just even a small moment of emptiness which the Spirit may freely fill in? As Amy Winehouse said so brilliantly ‘Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen’: Creativity is God’s integrating response to all grief.
As a photographer I am always considering the interplay of physical light and non-light, and all stages in between. Shade and shadow dance their way through my work, drawing my eye further into an exploration of what is called ‘darkness’, both inside and outside me. (The abstracts that accompany today’s post are all details of IPhone photos that drew me in the further I looked.) I take spiritual comfort from the knowledge that God dwells in the dark. Indeed God deliberately entered into darkness, being born in a stable hewn out of rock; and rose out of a cave, ensuring all may hope to be so transformed. Further, the very name of God we can repeat so blithely at Christmas, Immanuel, is the specific promise that the Living God is with us in the darkness.
I have spent much of this year mulling over Barbara Brown Taylor’s brilliant book Learning to Walk in the Dark. As part of her research she went to sit in the Organ Cave, Virginia, where she picked up a small stone that had gently sparkled next to her. Later it looked ordinary. It is only by turning off all the lights (deliberately deciding to enter a state of darkness) that she realises the paradox: ‘the stone is alive with light, but only in the dark’:
While I am looking for something large, bright and unmissable holy, God slips something small, dark, and apparently negligible in my pocket. How many other treasures have I walked right by because they did not meet my standards?
Those who ‘dwell in darkness’ have much shimmering beauty to share, even in, most particularly in, their, our, my, howls of pain. If only there were ears to listen, and eyes to see, and hands to hold. If only we had the courage to sit in the dark. If only we welcomed the darkness. Then God might indeed be born in us again this day.
Kate Kennington Steer is a writer and photographer with a deep abiding passion for contemplative photography and spirituality. She writes about these things on her shot at ten paces blog (http://shotattenpaces.blogspot.co.uk).
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