Roses for Advent

The rose is often used as a symbol of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  In this sermon I explored the image of the rose and what Advent lessons roses might teach us.  Warning, though, when I was writing the sermon I lost track of how many roses I had named — so I think there are two “fourth roses” — though I caught the error while I was preaching ..

 Roses

Luke 1:26-38: Luke 1:46-55 

Every Advent we run into Mary and it is always something of a surprise to us. Unlike our brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, we don’t much think about Mary during the rest of the year. And then she appears in the Christmas pageant, wearing the blue cloak and white headdress and offering her enigmatic post-partum smile to the shepherds, angels, and magi.

Traditions dating back to medieval times assign many symbols to her (mostly flowers: violet, iris, lily) and one of the most enduring is the rose. The faithful pray the rosary, cathedrals are adorned with rose windows, and Mary is often depicted in art holding a rose.

So today is a day to talk about roses – just as three weeks ago was the day to talk about clay and two weeks ago was the day to talk about sandpaper. Like clay and sandpaper, roses have much to teach us about Advent.

The first lesson comes from an old song — “I’m Looking at the World through Rose Colored Glasses.” There are, after all, many ways that Mary could have greeted the news she received from the angel Gabriel – we might have expected skepticism and fear. Instead, she chose curiosity and joy: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, …” [Luke 1:38], ..” [Luke 1:46-47]

In our time, when so much of public information seems to be planned in terms of what it sounds like rather than what it is, it is easy to dismiss Mary’s faithful response as just “spin.” But “spin” is what we do when we want to change someone else’s opinion of an event or person. What Mary did is what I would call “framing” her experience. She chose a “frame” in which Gabriel’s announcement to her was surprising, but not out of character for God’s work in the world. And she chose a “frame” in which she was God’s servant, and not just the recipient of a difficult assignment from God.

So from this first rose we learn the Advent lesson of rose-colored glasses: the gift of seeing the world through God’s eyes and not just through our own.

Our second rose is the prophetic clarity of Mary’s song. She has gone to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is also pregnant – in her case after a long period of being barren. When Elizabeth greets her with the news that her own baby has lept for joy in the womb, Mary responds with this marvelous poem of praise.

But it is not an empty poem. On the contrary, it shares a vision that we have heard before in the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures. She speaks of the great reversals of fortune that God’s kingdom brings: the proud and powerful are brought down and the lowly are lifted up; the hungry are filled with good things and the rich are sent away empty. Mary’s song carries this prophetic voice into the New Testament; we shall hear the themes again from Jesus himself (for example in the Sermon on the Mount), in the letters of Paul, and even today in the words of contemporary poets and hymn writers (from Iona: ..give bread to all who are hungry and hunger for justice to those who have bread ..)

So from this second rose we learn the Advent lesson of prophesy, the deep value of seeing what is around us and proclaiming it with power and beauty.

Our third rose is Mary’s youthful idealism: she believes that the vision of God’s shalom is real and immediate, part of history and part of the present. Other prophets have offered this message conditionally: this is what will happen if the people are faithful to God, and this other is what will happen if they are not. For Mary, the presence and power of God are not conditional; God’s power and intentions have already been revealed. Her experience is personal and immediate: “Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Might One has done great things for me.” [Luke 1:48-49]

We are so accustomed to hearing Mary’s praise that we can easily forget that her words come from someone who was likely no older than 16 or 17. Even in our time, we do not always listen to the voices of the young ones around us, no matter how wise and energetic those voices may be – and I suspect the same was true in the first century Middle East. In our own congregation we speak of receiving confirmation youth into membership in the church, but we do not really treat them as members – we see them primarily as sources of labor when we need strong backs or child care, and not as leaders with gifts and wisdom of their own.

So I have always appreciated the respect that the gospel of Luke accords to Mary and her words. This is our third rose, the Advent lesson of the gifts of youth, especially passion and idealism.

Our fourth rose is Mary’s appropriation of tradition. You may know that there is another song in the Bible that is very similar to Mary’s song (which we often call the Magnificat, after the Latin version of the opening verse). It is a song recorded in the second chapter of First Samuel, and it was sung by Hannah when she became pregnant with the son who would be Samuel. She, like Elizabeth and many other women whose stories we find in scripture, had been barren, and she sang with deep joy when she realized that her fervent prayers had been answered. We do not know, of course, whether Mary really had heard Hannah’s song read in the synagogue or the temple, but for today let us imagine that she had. By the way, Bible scholars tell us that the compilers of the books in the Old Testament often included songs that were old even when they were first written down. So it is likely that Hannah’s song contains some of the oldest words in the Hebrew Scriptures. In that way, it was part of Mary’s religious heritage.

So when her own joy was deep, the words that came from her were very much like the words she had heard from other women who celebrated their pregnancies. She reached into her own tradition and found the sustenance she needed and the way to share her joy with others who were part of the same tradition. When she first heard the words – perhaps as a child – she had no way of knowing that they would become her words, and that Hannah’s story would become (at least in some small way) her own story. But because those words were part of her experience in childhood, they were available to her in adulthood.

That is our hope, of course, for the songs and stories that we teach our children, especially the songs and stories of the faith that are part of our Sunday School program. We know that not every story will have meaning for every child when it is first encountered, but we are confident that the stories of the Bible are deep enough and wide enough that they will be valuable assets in the lives of those who grow up in our faith community.

The fourth rose, then, brings us the Advent lesson of tradition, of the ways in which we store up spiritual resources for the days that we will need them. These traditions are like rose petals pressed carefully into a book, retaining some of their beauty and scent to be reclaimed in some future time.

Our next rose is the recognition that Mary’s voice is a woman’s voice. There are not very many women’s prophetic voices recorded for us in the Bible: Miriam, Hannah, and Mary – that’s about it. In fact, I can’t help noticing that there are not even that many women’s names recorded for us in the bible … Edith Deen’s book, All the Women of the Bible, lists 41 unnamed daughters, 24 unnamed wives, 24 unnamed mothers, 8 unnamed widows, and 44 other unnamed women in scripture. We have their stories but we do not have their names.

So it is not small thing that this woman’s name and her words have been saved for us. Again, I deeply appreciate the gospel of Luke, because not only are young people’s voices often discounted, young women’s voices are often entirely ignored. And women of all ages were denied certain leadership positions in the churches until the mid-nineteenth century, and that widespread women’s leadership didn’t occur in the Protestant world until the last twentieth century.

So our fourth rose is the Advent lesson that every person – women and men – have voices that deserve our attention.

And our last rose is Mary’s gumption. That’s a word we don’t hear much any more, but it surely describes an energetic, adventurous, and courageous young woman. One of my colleagues once put it this way: “Mary was about as meek and mild as Golda Meier.” (We might substitute Hillary Clinton or Rachel Maddow!) I have collected a small library of books about the women of the Bible, and almost nothing that the authors of these volumes say about Mary seem connected with the spirited, plucky, exuberantly faithful woman of the Magnificat. They describe her as “sweet-tempered,” “the embodiment of all that is fine and noble in womanhood,” and “the most perfect woman recorded in history.” Maybe so – but none of that is in the Bible!

So our fifth rose is the Advent lesson of bringing our whole selves – body, mind, and spirit – to the work we are called to do.

Mary brings us this beautiful bouquet –

· Rose colored glasses to see the world through God’s eyes;

· Prophetic clarity about the world:

· Youthful idealism:

· A woman’s voice;

· Gumption.

his is our Advent bouquet, a gift from our ancient sister, the young woman of Nazareth. Thanks be to God.

Prayer for December 21, 2008

Almighty and everlasting God, creator of all things seen and unseen, hear now our silent prayers, as we open our hearts to you in the sacred quietness.

God of faith and hope, we bring before you our prayers for those we have named this morning – we especially remember … Bring to each of them the gifts of mercy and grace that are most needed, according to your wisdom and love.

Emmanuel – God with us – this week as we recall the story of your birth, we hear again that there was no room for your family at the Inn, and so we offer our prayer for all of your people who have been turned away because there was no room for them.

We pray, first, for those who have lost their homes to war, disaster, financial problems, or ill fortune, and who have become refugees in one way or another. We recognize their grief at what they have lost, and pray for your comfort and presence with them in their sorrow. We ask, also, for your presence with them as they build new lives and new homes, bringing them the gift of newness of life that we celebrate today.

We pray for those who are turned away because of their identity – their language, their race, their ethnic heritage, their religion, their sexual orientation, or their gender. Give us will and strength for the hard work of hospitality, for the gift of welcoming those who may discomfort and frighten us as well as those whose friendship is easily won. Open our eyes and hearts to the deeper truth of the identity we all share as your children, and let that truth prevent us from closing doors that you would hold open.

We pray for those who are turned away because of past feuds and conflicts, leaving wounds that are still raw and feelings that still run high. We ask you to bring patience and forbearance enough for small seeds of reconciliation to be planted. And then we ask for the strength and humility to nurture those seeds into words of confession, repentance, and forgiveness.

And we pray for ourselves, for all the ways that we feel there is no room for us – for our feelings, for our values, for our deepest yearnings. Refresh our self- knowledge and give us courage to use the gifts that you have bestowed upon us. And let the story of the birth in the stable remind us that our spirits can be reborn in any setting where we see your face.

All this we pray in the name of the one whose birthday we celebrate this week, and we pray together now in the words that he taught us ….

Previously offered December 25, 2005