Finding God in Darkness
Advent 4C-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
Cast down the mighty! Send the rich away! Fill the hungry! Lift the lowly! (Luke 1:52-53). Mary’s song, the Magnificat, is the oldest Advent hymn. It is sung everywhere the church gathers for Evening Prayer. It is read every year on the fourth Sunday of Advent.
Mary’s song, inspired by 1 Samuel 2:1-10, was the song of another young women named Hannah. Hannah’s song was already centuries old when Mary took it up and made it her own. When her kinswoman welcomed her, Mary burst into song. That moment could be called the very first Christian worship service. Mary and Elizabeth — representing the young and the old, the unmarried and the married, the socially established and the socially vulnerable — found common ground in their love for Jesus—just like us. Mary received the gifts of community, blessing, and hope from Elizabeth. Together, they formed a church, the living Body of Christ.
Looking at the lyrics is it surprising Mary’s name means ‘troublemaker?’ A colleague pointed out this week that Mary’s name is derived from ‘Miriam.’ Miriam, you recall, was the sister of Moses and Aaron who led the women in singing and dancing after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea and were delivered from the Egyptians. The etymological root words of Miriam’s name mean “beloved,” and “bitter,” and “rebellious, and ‘troublemaker.’ ‘Troublemaker’ is an especially fitting moniker for Mary. Mary has been making good trouble inside and outside the church, for centuries.
Mary’s song is so subversive, governments twenty centuries later would ban its public recitation. During the British rule in India the Magnificat was prohibited from being sung in church. That’s why, years later, Mahatma Gandhi requested that Mary’s song be read everywhere the British flag was being lowered on the final day of imperial rule in India. The junta in Argentina forbade the singing of Mary’s song after the ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ displayed its words on placards in the capital plaza. And during the 1980s, the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador prohibited any public recitation of the song.
Mary, Elizabeth, Miriam and Hannah show us that one of the best ways to be the church is by making a living sanctuary of hope and grace for each other. They are open, welcoming, and ready to hold one another’s story—whether that story is of pain or of joy. They also show us something else that is particularly timely. They teach us that one of ways for the church to resist tyranny is to make art.
Irish poet and theologian, Pádraig Ó Tuama amplified this point for me this week while reflecting on the word ‘poem’ which comes from the Greek poiēma (ποίημα) meaning “a made thing.” Ó Tuama said, “In the face of all pressures, and especially in the face of destructive threat I take joy in the deepest vocation of humankind which is ‘to make.’ All art is a form of making so therefore all art is a form of resistance to that which is destructive… destructive violence only has one plot line which is to win and to kill. And that makes for a very very boring book” he said. “To make something is to lead us into the unknown to the surprise, the collaborations, communications and connections that really open us up to ourselves, the complicated beautiful selves that we are and the complicated beautiful selves that others are and the ways we can collaborate with each other… What brings me joy,” Ó Tuama said, “is the making that is behind poem.” (Pádraig Ó Tuama, Advent Calendar, The Cottage, 12/18/24).
Mary’s song engenders hope. Singing makes those who sing into a community, however briefly. Mary’s words of grace are sewn with song like mustard seed that find the good soil hidden in every human heart.
Mary, Elizabeth, Miriam and Hannah teach us how to wait in longing when the world offers little reason to hope. Of course, this is what the season of Advent is all about. Here, in the Northern Hemisphere, on this day after the Winter solstice, we celebrate Jesus our light, who brings new life like the coming summer sun. This is the obvious metaphorical meaning of the early church’s choice of the solstice for the date of Christ’s birth (which no one really knows).
The less obvious metaphor is more profound. At this darkest time of year, in the bleak winter landscape, when the soil is frozen, we find hope, knowing the movement of God is not dependent on our ability to perceive it. God’s wait “in the womb of Mary was not time wasted but an intimate beginning in mystery, growth, and dependency.” (Cole Arthur Riley, Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human, 2024, pp 228 – 233)
Here’s where Mary’s song stirs up some good trouble in us, because to make a home in Advent darkness we will have to clear away the debris, open windows, and bust through some locked doors we have inherited that prevent us from receiving the wisdom of hope and the gifts of blackness. The blessings of Advent have been a source of strength and comfort to our ancestors in times of uncertainty and chaos. They could be useful for us now.
On the day before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King said, “Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language. They made everything black ugly and evil. Look in your dictionary and see the synonyms of the word black. It’s always something degrading and low and sinister. Look at the word white, it’s always something pure, high, and clean.” This deception has made us blind to the breadth of meaning found in Advent and Mary’s song.
The idea that God ordained the Americas as a “promised land” for European Christians has had devastating effects for more than 500 years. One careful study reveals that anti-black racism increases (increases!) with church attendance, even among white mainline congregations like ours. I ask myself, what can explain this? Could it be that for most of American history, we have worshiped a light-skinned Jesus?
It’s amusing but also tragic that white Christians in America are startled when they are confronted with an obvious fact: Jesus was not a white man. Mary was a very young woman of color. “This Advent, may we reclaim the sacred Black…may we remember that Christ was formed in the holy darkness of the womb—that our origin is not the garden but the dark…May the darkness guide us into deeper rest, resisting exhaustion and overexposure. May it be a darkness that opens us to the unknown, that we would make peace with uncertainty and marvel at mystery. And may it be a darkness that forms us into people capable of holding the lament of others, that we would never be too quick to turn on the light while someone else is grieving. Hold us in the dark womb of Advent [O Lord]. Let us remember what glory grows in the dark.” (Riley)
“Our image of God creates us—or defeats us. There is an absolute connection between how we see God and how we see ourselves and the universe. The word “God” is a stand-in word for everything—for Reality, truth, and the very shape of our universe…. A mature God creates mature people. A big God creates big people. A punitive God creates punitive people” (Richard Rohr, “Letting our Images Mature,” Daily Meditations, 12/8/24). A white-only Jesus makes us blind to systematic racism.
We proclaim the gospel of Jesus with art and song and hospitality for all like Mary, Elizabeth, Hannah, and Miriam so that God will again have a gracious, merciful and loving human face that we see in people of all colors and ethnicities. Living inside God’s embrace transforms our lives with love. “Unexpected and mysterious is the gentle word of grace” (ELW #258). In darkness and longing, perfect love casts out fear, kindles joy and renews our strength. As Mary’s song proclaims, God in Christ Jesus exults over us. What is left for us to do but sing?
