Well, isn’t this just jolly. No matter that we’re still trying to get around life and not be sidelined by mysterious drone sightings, people getting shot just walking down a street, or watching dictators fall only to create a vacuum for power. The world daily has some kind of crisis that needs attention. Noooo. People keep acting like they’ve got to get ready for the Big Day and all the festivities that cover for the stress of the season. For the love of God, give it up and tend to what really matters.

You’ve got a point there. The world is a mess. A big mess. Please concede though, it’s no different than it ever has been. Fifty, five hundred, two thousand years ago, no difference. Why, it wouldn’t seem like planet earth if it wasn’t a hot mess, would it?

For the Love of God, A Promise

Yet, there is a difference, or at least the perspective that it should be different. Central to this season is this idea that things could turn around if…. If? If what? If you need a reason for the season, as they say, start with what was going on long before anyone today woke to expectations otherwise.

Back then, life was not good for any who didn’t have money, power, influence, privilege. (Ahem, that’s a laugh.)  Ok, you’re starting to get it. Only, in the first century there was the ruling class and then those so low on the status pole they had no class, that is no way to make a change in life except to endure.

Yet, somehow there was this promise from so long ago that God would one day make a move, change the system somehow, and people were beginning to think it might not be so far off. But if you were to look for it in some regal decree or military campaign, well, it wasn’t there. God was moving, but not where or how you’d expect.

For the Love of God, Adjusted Order

From here, you likely have heard some of the story. This young girl, maybe barely in her teens, is pregnant. (Yeah, that’s been going around like forever.) Yet, she’s a virgin. (Good one, like how many people bought it?) Ok, not too many for sure, but the ones who did believe her were also major players.

Still, she wasn’t the only one expecting. A relative of hers also was pregnant, but the thing was, this woman was too old to have kids. If anything, see how things are getting turned around, how the natural orders are being shaken? Life is not working like you know it always has. Is that a bad thing?

Not sure. Everyone wants life to get better, but this kind of adjustment seems to speak to trouble that is on its way. When your world gets turned upside, fear sets in.

Right, and these women knew how life could change in an instant better than anyone else. For the older woman, Elizabeth, not only was her pregnancy risky, but her husband suddenly couldn’t talk, not just lost his voice, but was totally mute. The whole thing was strange.

Then young Mary was really in trouble. Beyond the questions of how this could happen are its consequences to her. According to Jewish law, if a woman was found not to be a virgin before marriage, she should be stoned to death. (Deuteronomy 22: 20-21) Mary’s very life would be in jeopardy.

Let’s remember as well that just by the facts of their gender, women experienced cultural and social weakness. In terms of what the world saw in them, they were nobodies. Still, even in their powerlessness, they do not call upon their men to defend their predicaments. As the story is told, one’s husband couldn’t say a word anyway, and the other who had promised to marry her is silent with no recorded words.

Ok, so move this up until today. Life dealt these women a low blow with no personal resources and no protectors of their lives. People living this today don’t go around singing merrily when a torturous form of capital punishment is hanging over their heads. About this kind of thing you guys get all animated and sparkly and elf-silly?

If people do, it’s because these women did. When they meet, Elizabeth’s baby actually kicked up his heels in excitement, and the two of them saw in each other what God was doing. Elizabeth calls Mary “the mother of my Lord” and affirms a blessing upon her because she believed that God would act as promised. Finally in the presence of someone who believed her, Mary rejoices over what God will do through her.

For the Love of God, A Protest

What follows is a song, but not just a sweet, sentimental holiday tune with snow, mistletoe and sleeping babies. At its core is a revolutionary statement that is subversive and insurrectionary. The message is that God will overturn and shakeup what the world sees as powerful and bring it to its knees.

Go Girls! Give those guys what they have coming and don’t be nice about it. Say, this is not so bad.

Back up some there. This is not male bashing, though certainly gender roles needed to be readjusted. Mary’s song upends the movers and shakers of all kinds, the rich, the rulers, those who in their pride think they’ve got it made. Human standards of order will fold as hungry persons are fed while the rich are divested of finances, the poor in status find blessing at the same time powerbrokers slam against the very walls they built. She credits all this to her God, the one who will work through this mere girl whom generations following will call blessed.

For the Love of God, Never Forgotten

Covering it all is mercy, knowing that God does not ever forget the weak, oppressed, those sidelined from participation in all the fullness of life. Through this child she carries, a reversal of individual soul and world systems will be activated.

When it seems the worst could or has happened, that’s when God shows up

 and tends to what really matters.

Luke 1:39-55

The Trouble with Jesus: Considerations Before You Walk Away by Constance Hastings

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