Reflection for Advent 4: psalm 89 verses1-4, 19-26, Romans 16 25-27 & Luke 1.26-38
In his poem the Ballad of the Breadman, Charles Causley speaks of Jesus as the bread man. He begins by painting a picture of Mary baking bread, and as she goes about this very ordinary domestic task, probably undertaken daily in her household, she is visited by the Angel Gabriel. He comes with a message that she is to have a child. This is to be the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit. Earlier in Romans 16 we heard St Paul speak about the mystery of God that was revealed and disclosed in Jesus. We live in an age when we have had to live once again with mystery. The Covid 19 virus has been a mystery to us. We thought we were invincible, that we knew everything in a way that people in former ages did not view themselves so arrogantly. They knew life was a mystery and death was all around them in the midst of life. The incarnation of Jesus Christ is a mystery, God is “incomprehensibly made man” as Charles Wesley puts it. Perhaps this year we have been sorely reminded how mysterious life is and how little we know and understand. We are thankful for those who have laboured hard to trial a vaccine but we await how it will be rolled out. In the wisdom of God he chooses a very ordinary teenage girl from a back-water village called Nazareth to be the mother of his only Son.
And Causley speaks in his poem of how Jesus grows and develops into an adult exercising a ministry. Eventually Jesus’ ministry is portrayed in strongly sacramental terms as one who offers bread to the people, but they reject it and reject him. They are disinterested, not bothered in the slightest about him and his message and what he offers.
I have to confess that I have found not gathering with the people of God to celebrate the sacramenta of the Lord’s Super the most profound deprivation these last 9 months. For me this is the central act of Christian worship (it actually says that in the Conference authorised Methodist Worship Book). And in case you think that is new-fangled (though we have had that book 21 years) its predecessor, the Methodist Service Book, said “worship in its fulness includes the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper”. I wonder sometimes what some people think worship in its fulness might include and involve.
I wonder if having been deprived of sacramental celebrations we might view them differently now we are back to some of the things we can do in worship.
Magnificat (StF 793 or Luke 1. 46-55)
Mary’s song the Magnificat is not a meek mild message from a submissive girl. It really goes to the heart of the upside down nature of God’s kingdom. Many reflections have been offered on Mary and her Magnificat. What became known in the 1960’s and 70’s as Liberation Theology in Latin America started to see Mary as a symbol of a revolutionary God who see the cry of the poor and oppressed and wants to liberate them. A story we had forgotten from the OT when Israel was in slavery and Moses was raised up to confront Pharaoh. I came across the poems of Pedro Casaldaliga recently who was a Brazilian bishop who died earlier this year. Like many others he began from his traditional Catholic spirituality but came to see Mary as a symbol of the struggle the poor and oppressed people were engaged with. I have thought for a long time that Mary is someone we forget at our peril. And we often have forgotten her. I love the story of the very zealous Protestant minister who died and went through the pearly gates. Jesus greets him and says he wants to introduce him to someone he believes that the pastor does not know. “Who is it? “ the pastor asks. “It’s my mother”, says Jesus!
Mary is a model for all Christian disciples. She carries the Christ child, she bears Christ. She is the first Christian believer. And she sings forth God’s radical message as relevant today as in any generation.
So Casaldaliga writes
“Our Mary of the Magnificat,
We want to sing with you.
Mary of our Liberation”
And in Magnificat of the poor he writes
“Your Mighty Arm
Shatters capital, missiles and misery,
Fills poor humanity with the good things of the Reign
And sends the accumulators away naked into the reign of darkness”
He sees Mary with Joseph and the Christ child fleeing as refugees as something she shares with many today
“There was no room in Bethlehem, there
Was no room in Egypt;
And there was no room in Madrid, for you
Joseph will be forced into unemployment
For many days…
And the child will grow up with no more schooling than the lessons of the sun and of your word”
And again
“Peasant woman, working-class woman…
Teach us to read the Gospel of Jesus with sincerity
And to translate it into life
With all its revolutionary consequences”
So as we reflect on Mary’s role in God’s plan of salvation today, as God illicits from her a “yes” from deep within her heart, as she responds positively to the invitation to co-operate with God in this great plan of salvation, may we see her more clearly as a model for our discipleship of Christ, that we too may be Christ-bearers in our lives and live the radical disturbing nature of her Magnificat in our world as agents of God’s kingdom as she was.