Many Dwelling Places with God

“Many Dwelling Places with God”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, April 20, 2008 at Trinity Episcopal Church, Seneca Falls, NY

²In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?... ⁶Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:2,6)

In the novel by Chaim Potok, entitled The Book of Lights, a young rabbi from Brooklyn, on leave from his post in Korea during the Korean war, travels for the first time in Japan. One afternoon he stands with a Jewish friend before what is perhaps a Shinto shrine or perhaps a Buddhist shrine, the characters are not sure which. The author describes the scene as one in which the altar of the shrine is lit by the soft light of a tall lamp. Sunlight streams in the door. The two young men are watching with rapt attention a man standing before the altar, his hands pressed together before him, his eyes closed. He is rocking slightly. He seems to be engaged in what these two young Jewish men would call prayer. The rabbi turns to his companion and asks:

“Do you think our God is listening to him, John?”

“I don’t know, chappy. I never thought of it.”

“Neither did I until now. If He’s not listening, why not? If He is listening, then- well what are we all about, John?” (Chaim Potok, The Book of Lights: New York: Ballantine Books, 1981, pp.261-262)

This scene captures a religious dilemma that occurs in the life of almost any sincere religious person of whatever religious tradition at some point in their faith journey. Whether Christian or Jew or Muslim, a faithful person who lives in the religiously pluralistic world of this 21^st century must ask that question – do you think our God is listening to him? Or, in other words, do we worship the same God as this person? Does God love those who are not of my religious persuasion just as God loves me and my kin? Does God listen to their prayers too?

Anyone who has studied world history even cursorily knows that throughout the ages, humankind has found itself embroiled in conflicts of all kinds, from doctrinal arguments to all out war and persecution, on the basis of perceived differences in religious belief. In fact, it is this sad history of institutional religion’s propensity for either fomenting, or at least aggravating human conflict, that fuels much of the intensity among those who call themselves atheists. In the past couple of years, a number of books have been published by avowed atheists, most of which are polemical attacks on institutional religion, laying at the feet of religious institutions all the violence and war of human history. In our current day, the news media bombard us with various reports of the activities or threats posed by religious extremists of all stripes around the world. And of course our own Christian history is replete with occasions on which Christians have slaughtered other Christians over differences of opinion on matters theological.

Is our God listening to those we call “others?” For those who seek to find an answer to that question in the Bible, the verse we heard this morning from John’s gospel is quite often lifted up as proof positive that the answer to the question should be “no.” “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Those words of Jesus, uttered on the night before his crucifixion to his gathered disciples, have repeatedly been put forward as the final word on the place and validity of religions other than Christianity. Where interreligious relations is concerned John 14:6 is what some would call a “clobber passage.” It is a passage of the Bible most often used to beat others down and to lift Christians up to a place of superiority and supremacy vis-à-vis other world religions. Far too many Christians have taken that verse as proof positive that they will “be saved” or “go to heaven” while all those millions of people in the world who are not Christian will simply be out in the eternal cold and darkness.

There might have been a time in our nation’s history when we Christians could be comfortable with that triumphalistic approach to our religion, when the only religious diversity we had to contend with was the presence of Catholics in our neighborhood. But in our religiously pluralistic society, where Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists and myriad other world religions are our neighbors and colleagues, we have to wrestle with passages like John 14:6 so as to find an interpretation that is consonant with the entire Biblical witness about the nature and character of God, and that enables us to live as hospitable world citizens in a religiously diverse universe. The temptation to use verses like John 14:6 as clubs with which to beat others into submission and to give ourselves a sense of security and superiority is strong and one to which Christians have too often permitted themselves to fall, forgetting when they do so that no one verse of the Bible “says it all” as far as our faith or any other is concerned. Jesus’ own life and ministry bears witness to an inclusive, loving God whose “house” contains many dwelling places, not just a room for Christians.

I spend a significant portion of my professional time engaged in interreligious dialogue, as the Ecumenical and Interreligious Officer for the Diocese of Rochester. As I encounter people of many world religious traditions I am constantly reminded that God is broader and wider than I could ever have imagined, and those people of other world religious traditions have things to teach me about God that enhance and enrich my own Christian experience of God. I find that I have to reconcile the seemingly exclusive claims of my Christian tradition with the reality that I experience of deep religious and spiritual truth and insight present in all the religions of the world, even those that are most unlike my own Christianity. Having attended worship in mosques, synagogues, Buddhist and Hindu temples, Sikh Gurdwaras and Jain temples, I have experienced such a strong sense of the holy and transcendant in those holy places that I have had to open my mind and heart to the truth of God as found and experienced in those disparate traditions, as surely as God is mediated in my own.

As is the case with much of our Bible, passages like John 14:6 have to be examined in light of the context in which they were written. John’s gospel was written at a time when the nascent Christian community was beginning to realize that it was not likely to remain as a branch of Judaism but was going to become something different and go a separate path. Tensions were high between those early Jewish Christians and their Jewish brothers and sisters, and differences of opinion about the role and place of Gentiles in the faith community, as well as how and to what degree the Torah would continue to be the source of religious practice and teaching were extreme. The author of John’s gospel writes to this community in conflict presenting his understanding of who Jesus was for his disciples and why following him mattered to those who knew him. This gospel more than the synoptics, provides a window into the conflicted and insecure early community of faith as it tried to find its way amid the various forms of Judaism that were extant in first century Rome and in the face of the pagan religions of the Roman Empire. The author was directing nervous and edgy people back to something they knew and understood as spiritual truth in order to center and ground them in their own path.

The author of the gospel presents a scene in which the disciples are with Jesus on the last night of his life and are treated to a long and very confusing discourse by him in which he attempts to give them advice and comfort as he prepares to go to the cross. The scene presents confused and frightened disciples trying desperately to figure out what is about to happen to Jesus and then to them. When Jesus talks metaphorically – “in my father’s house there are many dwelling places – I go to prepare a place for you” Thomas responds very concretely – “Where are you going? How will we know the way?” Then Jesus responds “I am the way, the truth and the life.” He is offering words of comfort to his closest friends, trying to reassure them by suggesting that they follow the way they have learned with him. Notice that he is not talking doctrine or dogma. He is talking about a way of life, an orientation of heart and soul that he knows will enable them to maintain their connection with God. He directs them to focus on their relationship with him as the way to remain connected to God. His metaphor itself even allows for the existence of other ways, other paths, other truths – the “many dwelling places” of the Father’s house itself is an image of plurality and diversity. Yet for these particular people, Jesus is the Way.

I spent this past week in Chicago at the National Workshop on Christian Unity where I heard a sermon by a Methodist bishop who is Chinese and converted to Christianity from Buddhism in his teens. He told us how fervent he was in his new religion after his conversion, so much so that when his father died, he refused to participate in the family religious rituals and funeral for his father because they were Buddhist, and he believed that as a Christian he had to reject those practices and rituals. He said that as his faith matured he came to understand that Jesus never asked his disciples to reject another religious path in order to follow him. He simply asked them to follow him, to live out in the world his love commandment. The Christian Way to which Jesus invites us is not a matter of rejecting and denouncing other ways – it is rather embracing Jesus as the Way that we know to reach the heart of God. This bishop told us that years later he returned to China and went to the place of his father’s burial and performed Buddhist rituals for his father because he had come to understand that his faith in Jesus compelled him to honor his father in that authentic way and doing so did not undermine his Christian commitment. When Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me” he was offering words of assurance and comfort to his frightened friends, not pronouncing judgment on millions of people in the world who may be destined for those other dwelling places in his father’s house.

Is our God listening to him? According to Jesus the answer is yes. And “our God’ listens to us when we follow the way that we have learned as disciples of the Risen Christ. The good news is that “our God” is a god of “both/and” not “either/or” and has love and compassion enough for all of those in the many dwelling places in the house of God. Amen.

Hidden Arrow in the Quiver of God

“Hidden Arrow in the Quiver of God”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough, on Sunday, January 16, 2011 at Church of the Ascension, Rochester, New York

The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me. ²He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away. (Isaiah 49:1-2)

Two contemporary films are garnering a lot of attention at the moment. One, Black Swan, described by Christian Century as a psychological thriller, nominated for four Golden Globe awards, and the other, The King’s Speech, nominated for seven Golden Globe awards, dramatizing the struggle of King George the VI of England to overcome a serious speech impediment when he ascended to the throne of England just before the start of World War 2. In Black Swan we watch as the main character disintegrates emotionally, psychologically and spiritually as she prepares to perform the lead role of the Swan Queen in the ballet Swan Lake in the New York City Ballet Company. The climax of the film is an eerie and disturbing portrayal of her debut performance in that acclaimed role, during which she completely unravels internally even as we are led to believe that she executes a stunning performance. In The King’s Speech, the climax of the film comes as we watch King George the VI give a national radio broadcast over the BBC to his subjects announcing that Britain is at war with Germany as World War 2 gets under way. The audience is on the edge of its seats as the King carefully and fluidly articulates his speech without a sign of the stammer that so humiliated him at the start of his reign as king.

Both of these films offer us some fodder for reflection about the gifts that God instills in human beings and the reason God creates us with those gifts. Our reading from the prophet Isaiah brings a Biblical perspective to this reflection. As we continue into the season of Epiphany, leaving behind the season of Christmas which was marked by a frenzy of gift giving and receiving, we are invited to reflect now upon how we use the gifts we have been given by God as we respond to the call to live out our baptismal covenant. The season of Epiphany is the time in the liturgical year when we hear a lot of the call stories in the Bible, like the call of Andrew and Peter in today’s reading from the gospel of John. Being called by God ordinarily involves using gifts God has given us to serve the world in God’s name. And much as we’d like to think that offering our gifts to the world will bring us happiness, or satisfaction, or a sense of accomplishment, Isaiah reminds us that often, responding to God’s call and offering our gifts to the world yields pain, loneliness, frustration and sometimes even results in conflict or rejection. And moreover, offering our gifts is hard work requiring tenacity and faithfulness, often in the face of opposition and hurdles.

The reading from Isaiah is one of three Suffering Servant Songs contained in the book of Isaiah, which scholars believe is actually a compilation of three different prophetic voices, dating from three different periods in Israel’s history. The Second Servant Song that we heard today, dates from just after the Babylonian exile, as the Israelites have returned to Jerusalem and are faced with the enormous task of rebuilding their lives and their culture in their ancient homeland, with the Temple that King Solomon built in ruins and their community scattered and greatly diminished in size. The prophet has been called by God to speak to the remnant of Israel and to call them back to their covenant life with Yahweh, to renew their commitment to their vocation to be a chosen people living according to the principles of justice and righteousness laid down in the Torah and the covenant from Sinai. They are also called to rebuild the Temple and the religious life that went with it. The prophet complains bitterly to God about the difficulties he has had getting his people to listen to him. Apparently, much that he has tried to say to them to get them back on the right path has fallen on deaf ears. “Listen to me” he cries, like a child in a schoolyard. Interestingly his plea “Listen to me” is addressed to the whole world, as if he is despairing of ever getting Israel to listen to him so he’s moving out to a larger potential audience. And sure enough God directs him to move his ministry of proclamation out to the whole world and not to direct it simply to the Israelite community. God calls Israel to become a light to the nations, to be a beacon to the entire world, and calls the prophet to focus his energy on that larger world rather than the small remnant of his own people. God declares that salvation is offered to everyone not just the remnant of the Israelite community.

We can tell from what the prophet writes that he’s had a very hard time living out his prophetic call. He has been ignored, despised, been the slave of rulers. “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity” he says to God. He’s exhausted, discouraged, fed up and yet he also affirms that he has felt God’s presence with him throughout his unsuccessful ministry and in the midst of his despair God has been his strength. He veers back and forth between praising and thanking God and professing his own faithfulness to the call he has from God, and venting his immense frustration and discouragement with how things have not gone well. And yet God assures him that he is called to be a light to the nations and to move out and do even more with the gifts God has given him, rather than focus in on his own little community.

Responding to God’s call is never easy, whether it’s the call each of us apprehends in our own individual journeys or the call that we understand ourselves to have as a religious community or parish church. Today as Ascension conducts its Annual Meeting you will be looking at how you have lived out your call in the past year and look ahead to how and where God is calling you to use your gifts in the upcoming year. I’m sure there are a number of you who can relate to the prophet’s frustration and discouragement, as you face the reality of tight financial resources and dwindling membership. The Search Committee will be spending a lot of time in the next weeks and months thinking about what a call from God means and trying to evaluate which of the candidates who are offering themselves as potential leaders of this congregation has the gifts and experience to meet the challenges that lie ahead for Ascension. Both the candidates and the Committee are discerning call and evaluating gifts and how they are to be used to further the mission of God in this part of the world.

And there’s the rub. The mission that all our God given gifts support is the mission of God. Each of us is given different gifts, as St. Paul reminds us, but all the gifts pooled in a community are there to further the mission of God in the world. And the mission of God, we are to understand from Scripture, is a mission of justice, righteousness, and making the kingdom or reign of God a reality in our world. Loving God and loving neighbor are the basic fundamentals of that mission, but how each of us individually and each congregation communally is called to contribute to the larger mission of God is the work of discernment and prayer.

The prophet affirms that God instilled certain gifts in him in his mother’s womb, before he was born, so that when he arrived on the scene he would be equipped to carry out some portion of God’s mission in the world. He uses the vivid image of being a polished arrow hidden in the quiver of the Almighty. Imagine the divine archer pulling that hidden arrow from the quiver and shooting it out across the landscape where it lands with precision in the divine bull’s eye at just the moment that God wants it to be present and visible in some part of the world. Ascension was called into being 125 years ago, an arrow in the quiver of God in the Maplewood section of Rochester. What did the divine target look like then and what might it look like now? When you’re shot from the divine bow this time, where will you land?

In the Black Swan story the ballerina possesses a divine gift to dance. What destroys her is that she develops and uses that gift for her own narcissistic purposes, to achieve some idea of perfection to satisfy her own need for approval, love, admiration and fame. She does not dance to delight others with the beauty of her art. She dances to prove something to the world about her and her alone. And in the process of focusing in on herself and her own fame and success, she destroys herself. In The King’s Speech, the character Lionel Logue is a gifted speech therapist. He does not seek fame, or fortune or recognition; he exercises his gift of teaching to help the king overcome a disability thereby serving his country as he heals the king. Logue helps the king find his voice so he can lead his people. Gifts given to us by God are not given so that we might become famous, rich, powerful, respected, or successful. They are given so that we might serve the larger community by offering our gifts for the good of those God shoots us into the world to serve.

We are each of us polished arrows hidden in the quiver of God. Sometimes, when God reaches into the quiver and sends us soaring out into the air, we don’t land where we thought we might, or where we’d prefer to be. Sometimes we fall into brambles, or a bog, or get stuck in a sticky tree trunk. Wherever we land we’re challenged to use the gifts with which we are imbued in such a way as to serve the world in God’s name. And God is clear with the prophet Isaiah that the call is to be a light to the nations, to offer gifts to everyone in the world, not just his own small group. When we’re pulled from the divine quiver and shot from the divine bow, we must be ready to face challenges we didn’t expect and criticism we might not deserve. As our nation observes Martin Luther King Jr. day tomorrow we are reminded that serving God in prophetic witness can be very dangerous business. Some people, some forces in the world are out to break the polished arrows in God’s quiver so they can’t soar to their destination particularly if the success of that divine shot would mean change in the world, or a shift in the balance of earthly power. As King himself said, quoting Theodore Parker, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The arc of the hidden arrows in God’s quiver bend toward justice as they are sent forth from the divine bow. As you evaluate your ministries and your call in the months and years ahead, consider how your gifts may be offered to this city and neighborhood to further the divine mission of justice and righteousness. When your ministry is challenging and you can’t see clearly how it is all working out, remember the words of the prophet Isiash, “my God has become my strength” and “the Lord who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel…has chosen you.” Amen.

Discussion with Jesus on the Road

“Discussion with Jesus on the Road”, A Sermon preached by the Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, May 8, 2011 at Church of the Ascension, Rochester, New York

¹⁷And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. ¹⁸Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?”…. ²¹But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. (Luke 24:17-18;21)

What an incredible ten days we have lived through in these early weeks of our Eastertide season in this year of our Lord, 2011. Ten days ago I awoke early to watch the fairy tale royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, enjoying the British pomp and circumstance, the beautiful Anglican liturgy of their ceremony, and delighting in the scenes of dancing in the streets as people from all over the world gathered to celebrate with them, partying hearty in Hyde Park and on the Mall and the streets of London. Everyone loves a wedding, with all the promise of happiness and love and good fortune that it embodies, even for those who are not of royal blood. That same weekend, tornadoes ripped through the American South, killing hundreds of people in Alabama and destroying everything in towns and villages throughout Alabama and Mississippi. And later in the week, the waters of the Mississippi rose so high that levees had to be broken to save a town, flooding and destroying acres of farmland in the process.

Then on Saturday night, two 17 year old boys, one from Brighton High School and one from Rush, burned a swastika into the street on Edgemere Road, in Brighton on the eve of the Jewish Community’s commemoration of Yom Hashoah –Holocaust Remembrance. Our city awoke to that news in shock that in our multi-religious, multi-cultural community such a hateful show of bigotry, intolerance and malice could come from two young men, one of whom, I later learned, is a member of a Christian youth group in a local church, which youth group is led by one of our students at CRCDS. The Brighton neighborhood gathered last Sunday evening for a candlelight vigil to show solidarity with the Jewish community and to bear witness to our condemnation of such acts of bigotry and violence in our community. I spent much of this week in interreligious meetings – Christian Muslim, Christian Jewish, Christian Hindu, Interfaith Forum – where this incident was the subject of much discussion. The interfaith groups have sent statements addressing this event to the local media, wanting to be on record that the values that we all stand for do not countenance this kind of behavior in our community and calling for a restorative justice approach to this crime rather than retributive or punitive justice. We have also been involved as resources to the Brighton Schools and the local district attorney who are directly involved in the matter. Our hope is that these boys can be restored to right relations with the whole community through a process of repentance and reconciliation.

And then the crowning event, the assassination of Osama Bin Laden by our government on Sunday night. This was the second major topic of discussion in all of our interreligious meetings this week. We all struggled with our own emotional reactions to this momentous event. My first thought when I heard the news, particularly as the media began to show scenes of people gathered at Ground Zero, at the White House and all around the country dancing and chanting “USA! USA!”, was “Ding dong the witch is dead” immediately followed by the conviction that there are still more wicked witches in the world. Killing this one bad man has not rid the world of evil, so why are people dancing? And no matter how bad a person Osama Bin Laden was, and he was truly an evil man, I cannot rejoice at the death of a human being, nor be proud that we killed him, even as I feel relief that he is gone and the threat he personally posed to the whole world is somewhat diminished. In all of our interfaith conversations this week everyone of whatever religious tradition echoed that same sentiment. We cannot rejoice at the death of any human being, no matter how despicable we thought him to be, but everyone is relieved, most especially Muslims who suffered terribly from his distortion of their faith and the suspicion and malice that his actions brought upon millions of innocent, peaceful and God-fearing Muslims.

All of us struggled with the tension between the teachings of our religious faiths, that call us to compassion and mercy and steer us away from desires for revenge, and our all too human emotions that rejoiced at the death of someone who had caused so much pain to so many around the world. We were very much aware that living up to the values of our religious traditions is truly a struggle against our basest human nature that does not always run immediately to compassion and mercy when faced with threat and danger. The extent to which we all need God to imbue us with God’s grace and mercy as we work through human conflict and tragedy was made abundantly clear to all of us as we prayed and wrestled with this news together.

In the midst of all of these human joys and sorrows, I turned to the lectionary to prepare to preach today and read one of my favorite gospel narratives – the road to Emmaus story. Into this week of deep discussion and prayer, Jesus came and asked me “What are you discussing with each other as you walk along?” And I found myself responding, “Are you the only one in the world that does not know the things that have taken place here this week?” And I told him of all the things that have happened and of the concern and pain and struggle they bring to all of us in this community. And then I listened to Jesus’ response.

Jesus took me through the scriptures, beginning with creation and the call of Abraham and Moses and all the prophets. He walked me through the story of salvation history, the story we tell every week at the Eucharist, that we told in beautiful detail on the night of our Easter vigil. How God created the world and it was good and God created humankind in God’s image. How humankind repeatedly turned away from God and had to be called back again and again by God, through the prophets and uniquely, through Jesus himself. How God brought God’s people out of slavery and bondage in Egypt, through the Red Sea into freedom in the wilderness, and stayed with them during that long wilderness sojourn. How God blessed God’s people, feeding them with manna and leading them to the Promised Land. How God was with them in exile and called them back again when they returned to Jerusalem. How Jesus came into the world to walk with us, as God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden, to show us in a way we could see, touch, hear and feel, what the love of God looks like and how we are to respond to human conflict and pain. “Blessed are the peacemakers” he reminded me. “Love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you.” “Love one another as I have loved you. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, that you have love for one another.” How he taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven….forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil.” Forgiveness, repentance, reconciliation, peacemaking- these were the themes he reminded me of as he went through all the Scriptures with me.

And I said to him, “But we had hoped” – hoped that our young people had been raised to value the diversity and difference that is part of our community and that they would not perpetuate the hatreds and bigotry of their parents and grandparents’ generations, but then look what these children did. We had hoped that with the death of Osama Bin Laden the threat of terrorism might be taken away, but we’re not sure that killing him alone will make the world safe for everyone – soldiers and innocent civilians continue to die in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Palestine. We had hoped that spring would come after a long and harsh winter and yet as it does it is bringing death and destruction in its wake. And he responded, “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in my name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” And I realized that he was reminding me of my baptismal covenant and of my responsibility as his apostle to embody the gospel he came to proclaim. The gospel of peace, reconciliation, non-violence, and forgiveness. That last one is so hard when the ones to be forgiven are so easy to hate. But he was relentless in reminding me, and started once again to go through the scriptures. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” he taught me again.

And like Cleopas and his companion, I asked him to stay with me. And he reminded me gently that he is with us all the time and most especially when we break bread together as disciples of the Risen Christ. He reminded me that when the pain of the human condition becomes as real as it has this week, with the many ways we humans can hurt each other made manifest in the course of our daily lives, and when the vagaries of the natural world wreak havoc on human civilization, we have our community of disciples to return to where, when two or three are gathered together, he is in the midst of us just as he was with Cleopus and his companion. And I remembered how right he is about that. I remembered that when I come to the Eucharistic table each week, he is here, however briefy, however ephemerally, and for a moment I am bathed in the power of his love and empowered to return to my rich, verdant, hopeful and hopeless, joyful and painful world, with my heart burning within me because of my sojourn with the sacred at the holy table.

Amen.

Can You Hear Mary Singing?

“Can You Hear Mary Singing?”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, December 20, 2009 at St. Luke and St. Simon Cyrene, Rochester, New York

⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. (Luke 1:51-53)

Earlier this month, I had the strange experience of living the same day, twice. And of losing another day altogether. I travelled to Australia for the Parliament of the World’s Religions, crossing the international date line as I did so. Going over you lose a day. Coming back, you arrive before you left! Closest thing to time travel this side of science fiction movies! I can’t help but think of time travel when I hear Mary’s beautiful Magnificat. You will notice that in this poetic song that she sings upon arrival at her cousin Elizabeth’s home, she speaks of what God has already done in the world, of the reversals that God has already accomplished. God has scattered the proud, God has cast down the mighty from their thrones, God has lifted up the lowly, God has filled the hungry with good things. All these prophetic statements that she declares in her song are in the past tense, as if they have already occurred. And yet, in the context of Luke’s narrative, they haven’t, exactly, happened yet. She has only just gotten pregnant with the holy child. He is not yet born. Neither is his cousin John, who will be the voice crying out in the wilderness announcing his coming. And, in fact, as we look around our world today, we might wonder about that past tense in Mary’s song. Two thousand some years later, it still doesn’t appear to have happened yet. But Mary speaks as if it has happened. As one commentator on this passage puts it, Mary is remembering forward, that is, she is remembering the future.

Our apocalyptic Advent themes continue this week, even as our celebration of Christmas looms just days away. End times and beginnings, comings and goings, old giving way to new, the already but not yet of redemption, the grand cycles of time and space with a cosmic flourish are the images and themes of Advent. Mary and Elizabeth, a young, poor, unwed teenager and an old, barren woman, the wife of a temple priest, take on significant prophetic roles in this story of the inbreaking of the divine into human history. That in itself is apocalyptic – women prophets. Women? In the early first century, in the patriarchal culture of the Roman Empire and first century Judaism? Right there we’ve got the divine reversal. God has reached down into human history and is doing wondrous things through an old barren woman and a poor unwed mother. And even shepherds, very low folks on the social totem pole, are heralds of this amazing story, witnesses to the inbreaking of God into human history. Luke pulls out all the stops in this first chapter of his gospel, setting the stage for his narrative in which women will be active players, Jesus will bring a prophetic message of social justice into the world and God’s saving grace and compassion will be spread beyond the small Jewish community into which Jesus was born and out to the entire world, scooping up all those people who have lived on the bottom of the social order.

Mary’s Magnificat is one of my very favorite passages in the New Testament. As a child I sang it as a canticle at Evensong and sometimes, Morning Prayer, absorbing Mary’s song into my psyche even as I lived in a church that was not, at that time, honoring the gifts of its women in their fullness. The young teenage girl who longed to be a priest in a world that wouldn’t ordain women, now knows the fulfillment of that yearning and that call. The hope that the Magnificat embodies resonates for many of those who still live as oppressed, poor, humble, lowly members of the human family, even in our modern day. The mind bending, time traveling remembering the future of the Magnificat is what drives modern day prophets and disciples to make that past tense of Mary’s syntax a present reality. The divine reversal of which she sings happens in our midst when those who love God accept God’s call like Mary did, and the promise of a redeemed future, becomes the reality of the broken present.

“God has cast down the mighty from their thrones.” When President Obama appeared on 60 minutes last week and lambasted the Wall Street “fat cats” whose greed and mismanagement of other people’s money brought down our entire economy and that of the global community, I could hear Mary singing, “God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” When President Obama expressed his intention to have what I would call a “come to Jesus” meeting with those “fat cats” I could hear Mary singing.

When I was in Melbourne at the Parliament of the World Religions, I had the privilege of worshipping, praying, talking, reflecting, singing with people of myriad religious traditions. They have different sacred stories than do we, but they sing songs very resonant with Mary’s song. Despite centuries of discord and conflict, fueled by the abuse and misuse of religion and religious texts, thousands of us came together to show the world our commitment to the God we all worship and to our belief that God calls us to live in harmony and understanding one with another, exercising compassion and mercy even when we disagree on important issues and indeed, celebrating our differences as part of God’s divine plan for this world. We talked about addressing global warming, achieving the Millennium Development Goals, empowering women, working to eradicate global poverty, working for peace and justice in many troubled places throughout the world, trying to hear each other’s stories and appreciate each others songs. And we could hear Mary singing as we told stories of on the ground, grass roots work for justice, peace, human rights and freedom all over the world.

When I screened the film “Traces of the Trade” and saw the tears on the faces of blacks and whites alike, as we all grieved our human history of racism and oppression, and yearned for reconciliation, I could hear Mary singing. When I heard the story of Uncle Bob Randall, a member of one of Australia’s indigenous tribes, who is a member of what they call the Stolen Generation, those who were taken from their tribes as young children and raised by Christian missionaries, who stripped them of their culture, their religion, their land, and their families, I wept. But I also heard Mary singing, as Uncle Bob chuckled and told us how when he first heard the stories of Jesus in the Christian testament, he wondered why the missionaries who told him the stories didn’t actually do what Jesus taught! He was the most eloquent bearer of the gospel of Jesus Christ that I’ve heard in a long time, and he is not even a Christian! But he’s heard Mary’s song.

When President Obama received his Nobel prize, I could hear Mary singing. Who would have thought a mere fifty years ago that a Barack Obama would be President of the United States and recipient of the Nobel prize? When I heard of the many groups of people of faith throughout the world who are coming together across divided religious lines to work for peace, to address extreme poverty, to empower women – Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians and Bahai’s, indigenous peoples, Sikh, Jain and many versions of Christian, I could hear Mary singing.

If you just look at the newspaper or listen to CNN or Fox News or even NPR, you might not hear Mary singing. For some reason, our media don’t seem to want to talk about the prophetic witness of so many people of faith around the world, people of reknown, like the Dalai Lama, and ordinary people of faith who climb over the fences of fear and ignorance and move forward to learn to love their neighbor, even when the neighbor is of a different race, sex, ethnicity, religion or social class. Jews and Christians, Muslims and Jews, Muslims and Hindus, Hindus and Christians – all over the world people of faith are building bridges so that the future that Mary remembers in the Magnificat becomes at least for a short while, a present reality, not just a future hope.

When former Israeli soldiers and former Palestinian freedom fighters sit together at a dialogue table and build playgrounds for children in the occupied West Bank I can hear Mary singing. When Arabs and Jews in the West Bank intentionally live together in a village called Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salaam, committing to raising their children together in the same village, attending the same schools, learning Hebrew and Arabic, I can hear Mary singing. When Daoud Nasser, a Palestinian farmer on a hillside hear Bethlehem opens his family farm to international visitors and invites the Jewish settlers who are trying to take his land to sit down and talk, I can hear Mary singing. When Israeli rabbis risk their lives to help Palestinian farmers harvest their crops, I can hear Mary singing. When brave Democratic New York senators speak eloquently in favor of marriage equality, notwithstanding threats to boot them out of office and even in the wake of the defeat of that legislation, I can hear Mary singing. At the end of the Integrity Eucharist at General Convention, as hundreds of GLBT priests joined Bishop Gene Robinson at the altar, a sight that would have been unthinkable just twenty five years ago, I could hear Mary singing.

Mary’s Magnificat is eloquent poetry and beautiful song. It is also sacred text for we who call ourselves Christians. To live the Magnificat is to sing justice into being, to vision the future right into the present, even if we can only manage to do it very locally, in small and quiet ways, in our own neighborhood, congregation, school or workplace. Our Advent texts remind us that God lives outside the constraints of our timebound world, and the promise and hope of which Mary sings is a present reality when we live as if it is, when we commit our own hearts and souls and the stewardship of our lives to singing Mary’s song.

In just a few days, we will celebrate Christmas. We always do a lot of singing on Christmas. As we live these last days of Advent and move to the songs of Christmas, listen hard, be awake, be alert, be watchful. Can you hear Mary singing?