A Magnificent Song

Gabriel sends Mary hurrying to Elizabeth with a child in her womb and wonder in her heart.  One wouldn’t think she could be more filled at the moment.  But the Holy Spirit who has overshadowed her womb spills out all around her.  John the Baptist leaps for joy in Elizabeth’s womb. Elizabeth is filled with awe, wonder and blessing upon blessing for her young relative.  In the end, Mary sings a magna, a song of “great things.”  She sings it with so much beauty and skill that some contemporary biblical scholars believe it was humanly impossible for Mary to have sung it.  Surely the early church later placed it in her mouth.  I tend to approach the issue from a more child-like place.  It was rather impossible for a virgin to bear a child, too.

The song is a masterpiece of biblical poetry.  It begins with the testimony of one hidden woman, and ends with the Word God spoke to Abraham and his seed forever.  Mary looks forward with joy to a church of which she, in hidden humility, has become the vanguard; she looks backward to the God who, remembering his compassion, has never ceased to uphold a small nation called Israel.

But the centerpiece of this crown jewel is verse 51: “He has shown strength in his arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.”   Mary’s God, Yahweh, “He who causes to be,” has initiated his ultimate creative act by begetting his own son in the vulnerable womb of an unmarried girl.

Only One endued with the potency of real creative strength could act with such effectiveness in the midst of weakness.  A lone sojourner with a barren wife becomes the father of many nations, a reluctant shepherd with nothing but a staff and the name of his God becomes the deliverer of his people.  A faithful, but impoverished, daughter-in-law collects left-over grain and becomes the great-grandmother of David.  A monk struggling under the weight of guilt becomes the catalyst for the Reformation…and I find myself pondering the secret places where this strong, creative arm is moving even now.

Mary teaches us this: the contrast to God’s creative power so often manifest in weakness is the illusory strength of the proud who are “scattered in the imagination of their hearts.”  I only wish I didn’t know what that meant.  But I do.  My heart has often been too easily fired by a vivid imagination that creates paper-thin pseudo-reality for a moment (or a year)—only to watch it “scattered” with the first gust of real wind.  

Underneath the beauty and power of the poetry is the wisdom of deeply distilled truth.  Ultimately, Mary paints a portrait of the heart of our God with pristine clarity.  “This song lacks nothing; it is well sung, and needs only people who can say yes to it and wait. But such people are few.” ~David S. Yeago

Father,  please send your Spirit into our hearts, that we may be given wisdom to internalize your priorities, eyes to see their incarnation in our midst, and hearts to wait patiently for that which is hidden to be revealed.

Four Fiats and the Substance of Faith

No, I’ve not taken to writing new slogans for Italian made cars that can be trusted.  That is a Fi-at’.  I am writing instead about fi’-et, the great “let it be done” in redemptive history. This fiat is not a resigned acceptance, a sort of spiritualized “que sera, sera, whatever will be will be.”  Rather this fiat is a living desire—“It is so, may it be so.”  There is passion and strength and purpose and abandon to this “let it be.”

After all it’s an expression that we find first and last on the lips of the Godhead.

At the moment of creation. God says. “Let there be light [according to MY word].  And it was so.  And at the pivotal moment where the God man sets his face toward the cross, Jesus cries out, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done.” (Luke 22:42).  These are bookend fiats. The creation fiat brings life in all its fullness, the crucifixion counterpart embraces death and all that provokes it so that fullness of life might again be restored.

And in between these two firm acts of will lies the response of a young girl. For Mary’s “let it be to me according to your word” is this living desire of a mere creature to surrender her whole life as a tablet for God to write his story upon. 

But Mary’s deep receptivity is not based merely on the presence of a terrifying angel with amazing news.  Gabriel first establishes the basis on which his words are to be trusted.  She is folded into the Mosaic covenant in which the presence of God is synonymous with God’s favor.  And she is directed to the Davidic covenant where a child from her womb will be given the throne of his father David. 

Her fiat rests on the foundation of substantive revelation.  She is drawn as participant into a story she already knows—at least in part.  And in the gracious confidence of recognizing truth and responding to it with all her heart, Mary borrows a bit on her son’s total embracing of personal death so that others might live.  Fiat this side of the fall always comes with a price.

Yet there is one final fiat.  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  It is the “let it be” of the Church and every Christian soul within her.  Perhaps we would do well to learn to pray the Lord’s prayer with the immediacy of Mary.  May your kingdom come, your will be done on this bit of earth, in the dust of my flesh, that heaven and earth might just kiss each other on this day, in this place.

“It is so. May it be so.”  Today.

Favored Ones?

“I renounce the lies the enemy tells us about you, dear Father of Jesus.”  

The scene?  Last  Saturday afternoon as our class on the Sacred Actions and Ministries of Worship gathered in a little historic chapel at the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies for a service of baptismal renewal.

The teaching on renouncing the schemes of the evil one was behind us, the water in which we would meditate on what it meant and still means to be brought into Christ through baptism lay before us, and in between was the moment to turn  away from the centripetal force of the world, the flesh and the devil and affirm once again the foundational realities of our faith.

An earlier class discussion on Satan’s lies yielded this reflection: “What lies does the enemy tell you about God the Father?”  “Whatever I do isn’t good enough.” “He tolerates me, but is never pleased.”   “He is distant and I can’t find my way to Him.”  “He shows his favor to others, but not to me.” 

The latter comment was my own.  I have recently become painfully aware of my unbelief that God truly favors and delights in his children, and that his heart was, is, and always will be to bless us. 

In the last decade I have lost my child-like wonder of God's favor.  It has not been a particularly smooth season, and somewhere along the line, my need to endure, while true, has been overshadowing God’s immense heart of mercy, love and delight.

And so, last Saturday, in addition to the ongoing repentance of my unbelief, I renounced the liar who buzzes around my head with the image of a God who demands but never delights.

I'm back home now and my thoughts return, as they so often do, to Mary, who is told she is highly favored.  “Oh, but Carla, that’s Mary.  She was unique, and the favor extended to her was truly extravagant. Even the Greek word employed to describe God’s favor to her is only used…twice.”

Twice.  Once in Luke 1:28: “Greetings, oh favored one, the Lord is with you,” and once in Ephesians 1:6: “In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”

Oh.  In the fullness of time Mary was the first to be highly favored. But she is not the last.  She once bore the Beloved, that the Beloved might bear us forever.

Greetings, oh favored ones.  The Lord is with us.

What Difference It Makes

A casual observer would have thought, “Now there is a woman who needs a life.”  New Year’s Eve: My husband, in the midst of his busiest season at the college bookstore (and having shoveled for three hours on the college’s holiday snow crew) was in bed at 9:00 and I was watching half a season of “Murder, She Wrote” reruns and crocheting a scarf.

But I really do have a life.  And in the midst of smiling at Angela Landsbury and making up a scarf pattern as I went along, I was considering this question: “What difference does it make that I am a Christian as yet another year begins?”

Fireworks rang out very close by as the year changed—Wyatt reports that he was awakened by our backyard neighbors putting on quite a lovely display, and I could hear the uninhibited cheers that accompanied the popping and the colors.  Hurrah, 2010.

A different set of celebrations was bookending my New Year’s eve. I was musing about a wedding where a new teacher took large jars of water and made from it the richest of wine.  And I thought of the vision of a time to come where God, having wiped away all tears, announces, “Behold, I am making all things new.” (Rev. 21:5)

What difference does it make that I am a Christian as this new year begins?  I, along with my brothers and sisters throughout time and space, have been drawn into a story of re-creation, where we are profoundly loved by a God who makes small things, like a wedding party, richer; and is making large things, like “all things,” new.  His arm is strong, and he will NOT let us go. And this gives me the courage and hope to celebrate the coming of a new year. 

I no longer possess the natural optimism of the cashier who looked at me with determination and said, “2010 is going to be a GOOD year.  Let’s hope the economy continues to get better.” Neither am I a cynic who has concluded that nothing will ever change—although I am old enough to sympathize with the impulse.

I am, rather, a woman gratefully drawn into the story of a God who would not and will not abandon his broken creation, and who continues to pour the new wine of courage, strength and hope into his people as we press in and press on—until that day when all things are fully made new.   Come, Lord Jesus. 

And that is cause for rejoicing.  Happy New Year.

Wooed By A Baby

Our son made a tempestuous arrival into the world.  An emergency c-section at the end of hard labor would have been climactic enough. But, somewhere along the way,  Ethan had contracted a life-threatening virus. My new-born was rapidly whisked to a neo-natal intensive care unit an hour away…and I finally caught up with him four days later.

Not the easiest start. But this little guy was a snuggler, and when that boy, wires, tubes and all, was finally in my arms, he pressed his little body against my neck as though he wanted to crawl inside it.  My heart was captured.  I had been wooed by a baby.

***

For years I have listened to a relatively familiar song on classic Christmas albums, and, somewhere below my consciousness, wondered why this song belonged to Christmas.

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day;

I would my true love did so chance

To see the legend of my play,

To call my true love to my dance.

Sing! Oh, my love, oh, my love, my love, my love,

This have I done for my true love.

But this year I paused to listen to the lyrics.  The next line reads, “Then was I born of virgin pure…”   And my heart finally caught on.  It’s Jesus calling us to his dance!   The carol was mostly likely written in the 15^th century when the movement of planets was still called “the music of the spheres,” and everything was connected to everything else, and all of life was a dance. 

This Christmas I simultaneously hear a faint echo of that earlier understanding, even as I ponder the current rich conversation occurring on many levels about life within the Trinity—a mutuality of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit so full that it spilled forth to call back a broken creation into the dance of divine love.

This Christmas we are beckoned to the regal dance of the most excellent of men with grace pouring forth from his lips (Ps. 45:2). We are enticed to the joyful dance of the Lord our God who “rejoices over us with gladness” (Zeph3:17).  We are called to join our strong partner who “is able to keep us from stumbling and to present us blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (Jude 24).  Hope against hope, in spite of all we see before us, this baby invites us, his true love, to his dance.

Jesus: the baby who came to draw the whole world to himself.  Oh come, let us adore him.

Borne By What We Bear: Advent Meditation #4

During the last night of a fall course on Trinitarian Spirituality at Northern Seminary, my students and I recently marveled at Jesus’ words, “…you are in me and I am in you.”  (John 14:20)  We pondered the practical implications of being surrounded by Christ's gracious life—protecting, leading, guiding, even as we carry His life within us—strengthening, convicting, comforting.

Nearing the end of his ministry, Jesus was opening to his disciples a reality that his mother had long lived within.  For from the moment Gabriel had told her she was “favored, ”she knew herself to be “in-graced” by God.  She carried a son who would come to us “full of grace and truth.”  And  she carried him as that same grace poured through the Father’s heart to meet her moment-by-moment need.

And so, as von Balthasar so beautifully says, “she bears what she lets herself be borne by.” (The Threefold Garland)

Grace is in Mary’s steps as she hastens to Elizabeth, and grace is in her trembling heart as her womb has begun to swell and her feet move more slowly back to face the unknown in Nazareth three months later.  Grace is with her as Joseph listens to his dream, and strengthens her knees as a donkey sways with her bulging form toward Bethlehem. In her utter vulnerability, grace enables Joseph to find a shelter for her and her child, and grace enables the small family to escape when Herod’s envy would bring an end to earth's redemption before the Father’s grace en-fleshed could unfold in all his fullness.

After Mary and Elizabeth, the first person to know the tangibility of this in-filling grace was Joseph. Pam's picture radiates the joy of a Joseph in-graced, borne on his own journey at Mary's side by the very grace she bore.

“You are in me, I am in you.”  We, too, are borne by what we bear.  It is the mystery of faith. Like Mary, like Joseph, we carry within us a reality much greater than we can contain.  We, too, are surrounded by the very grace that renews us from the inside out.  As Advent is fulfilled, let us sing the old carol with an in-graced heart:

O Holy Child of Bethlehem,

Descend to us, we pray.

Cast out our sin and enter in,

Be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels,

Their great, glad tidings tell:

O Come to us, abide with us,

Our Lord, Emmanuel.

Heaven's Breath: Advent Meditation #3

Peace whispered

to her troubled heart

Be still, the Holy One

will rest deep within your waiting womb

Direction given

to her astonished feet

Elizabeth with child

Blessed community in her great need

Joy spread

from mouth to elder ear

Baby leaps and cousin speaks

while world is wrapped in veiled wonder

Dust stirred

from a more ancient song

As mercy's stream tumbles

O'er second Hannah and second Eve

(A meditation on Luke 1: 34-50)