Advent 4
Luke 1:26-38
Becoming Improbable Gifts of Blessing
And he came to her and said, “Greetings favored one! The Lord is with you”…
Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord;
let it be with me according to your word.”
Then the angel departed from her.
Luke 1:28,38
We need to wait together,
to keep each other at home spiritually,
so that when the Word comes it can become flesh in us.
Father Henri Nouwen
Advent is the time of hope, the time of dreamers, of prophets and angels and revolutionaries. Mary, the unwed bride is all of these. She was a woman who despite her fear said, “Yes” to God’s invitation to become the servant of God’s peace.
What good is it if Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago and I do not also give birth to the son of God in my time and in my culture? We are all meant to be the mothers of God.
Meister Eckhart (15th Century mystic)
The Gospel story from Luke reminds us that for us to live into God’s promise we must live in a community of people who can affirm, deepen, or strengthen our faith. This is why Mary traveled so far and risked so much to be with her cousin Elizabeth. The peasant girl Mary traveled to the borderlands of Palestine, Roman occupied territory complete with checkpoints and patrols, surveillance and ethnic profiling. She traveled to a country where people were over taxed and living in terror. Then she spent three to four months with her elderly cousin eating and gossiping and encouraging each other into accepting the improbable motherhood happening to both of them. They blessed each other and the babies leapt with joy in their wombs.
Elizabeth’s miraculous pregnancy at age 90 helped Mary accept her own miraculous birth story. Their holy conversation led Mary to sing out a song of praise about the reversal or restructuring of the world’s political, social, and economic order; “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
Mary’s Yes is a song of liberation. She sings of a new creation that has already begun. She invites us to join her. Mary, the mother of Jesus, full of grace, the unwed mother, the political refugee, the homeless one, the friend, the prophet, invites us to find our Elizabeth so we can bless one another into creating a new world order based on a disdain for power that diminishes or destroys, a new earth based on divestment of wealth and status and sharing of resources. She invites us to see ourselves as both as the one who blesses and the one who can receive the blessing.
I found my Elizabeth in a small village in Palestine. She was already a mother with one more on the way. She was not 90 but a poor Palestinian Muslim woman whose home had been demolished two months before and whose husband was contemplating turning a barn into their new home. She lived in a village cut off at the bottom of the hill by a checkpoint in hope that its residents would soon suffocate under its restive stranglehold and leave making more room for the growing settlement.
Most of the homes in her village have demolition orders as it against military law to build anything after 1967 in Area C. Coming up the steep slope into the village you can see the remains of a few homes destroyed over the years. It is a village of farmers and shepherds and men who sneak into Israel to work as day laborers. An’Numan is a village that is holding onto its ancestral identity even while it has been annexed to Israeli Jerusalem.
Part of our jobs as Ecumenical Accompaniers was to offer a ministry of presence to those suffering under the occupation. When I met S and her children in February it was clear from her tearful downcast eyes and subdued voice that she was still traumatized over the demolition of her home in December. In addition to offering some kind of comforting presence our former EA team entrusted me with bringing much needed cash to begin the repair and mending of her shattered home life. The former team’s collaborative work with local groups helped bring much needed financial assistance to this family in crisis. I was happy to be the messenger with good tidings.
Through out our visits, S complained about not feeling well during this fourth pregnancy. In mid March bleeding and pain led her to walk 10 miles to Holy Family Hospital in Bethlehem where the doctors confirmed she had lost the baby. I met her in the hospital and became her chaplain, a spiritual role I had trained for back in the US. I knew well the sense of loss and grief a woman experiences after the loss of a baby. I did not know how loss of a home and a future would compound and shape the loss of a child. I also had never offered spiritual care to a woman who thought she lost her child due to hauling building materials up a hillside in the middle of the night to turn a barn into a home. I had never known a depression or trauma severe enough to cause you to walk around for two weeks with a dead baby inside of you. My chaplaincy training had never imagined these kinds of circumstances. So I offered her what I could-- comfort and some advocacy with the hospital to cover some of the expenses for the procedure.
My Elizabeth’s spirit was depleted, her womb emptied. I gave her an open heart to pour her tears into, a woman’s hand to hold, a ride home afterwards back to the village. I offered her companionship, a walking with.
I visited S and her family throughout the spring. With the assistance of another EA and some other foreign groups enough funds were raised to rebuild the barn.
In the meantime, one of our partner organizations spoke to her husband about his desire not to move, to stay in the village and rebuild the house. I was charged with trying to talk to the Israeli Coalition Against Housing Demolition to ask them to reconsider their assessment and come again and assess if they could help rebuild. It was a big ask given all the restrictions due to checkpoint but the need was great as the barn would suffice for awhile but wasn’t big enough for a family of five.
My meeting with ICAHD ended with them agreeing to come and reassess. A few weeks before my departure, they came and assessed it would be possible and scheduled to come back in the fall during one of the Jewish high holy days. They needed a block of time to rebuild while the authorities would be engaged in their faith duties.
A few days before leaving Palestine I went up to the village for the last time to share the good news about ICAHD. When I got there I could see that S already knew the good news. Her eyes sparkled and there was even a smile I had never seen before. She was a woman who could envision a future again. She took me up to see the renovations on the barn and then, looking out over the rubble heap of where her former home used to be, she blessed me with these words, “Loren, when you return, you must come to my new home with my new kitchen and cook with me.” Not come for dinner but come and cook with me. A true blessing involves creating something new together. What a gift after so much tragedy and loss. We held hands and cried this time for joy in anticipation of our next visit.
I close with this image of the pregnant virgin from the Bethlehem wall near the car checkpoint. The icon faces the entrance to the monastery. It is where the Christian faithful go to pray on Thursday or Friday afternoons. I took this picture through barbed wire for effect. The Virgin, Mary, is and has always been in danger. Her words, her invitation for us to become instruments of peace and truth telling is radical. God has brought down the powerful and lifted up the lowly. God has and will continue to do so but needs us to be those vessels so the Word can become flesh in us. God needs us to find our Elizabeths so we can exchange the improbable blessings of joy and new life. May it be so. May you find yours.Prayer (adapted from Maren Tirabassi)
God from whom all blessings flow,
incarnate us to be your improbable gift of blessing to each other,
that we might bring to completion your promise
of radical love to the whole world.
Make our presence, a coming of your peace
so that broken hearts can begin healing
that joy may be shared.
Resources
“ The Right to a Home” by Jeff Halper from ICAHD
For Information on a new Magnificat, a Song of Reversals, see Kairos Palestine: A Moment of Truth from Palestinian Christians
Document at http://www.kairospalestine.ps/
Or order the booklet with study guide from http://store.pcusa.org/ or from Friends of Sabeel at www.fosna.org
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