"THE VISION OF CHRISTMAS"

“THE VISION OF CHRISTMAS”

            Last week I concentrated on Joseph’s part of the Christmas story in the Bible.  I usually prefer to start with the women involved in the story (Mary and Elizabeth), but I felt that I had a pressing case to make to men, especially white men, using Joseph as the model for us to begin to take steps out of our toxic masculinity.  The Biblical stories seem to recognize this split and this tension over gender.  The first book of the New Testament, Matthew, tells Joseph’s part of the Christmas story in chapters 1 and 2.  The third book, Luke, tells the story from the women’s point of view, giving both Elizabeth’s and Mary’s story.  I wrote last week about Joseph using his patriarchal power to protect Mary and his adopted son, and in so doing, it may have seemed that Mary was too passive – that is not the case.

            The Christmas stories clearly give Mary the primary human agency.  The angel Gabriel comes to Mary to ask her to allow herself to be put in a precarious position by conceiving and birthing the Messiah.  Mary is already in a dangerous position as a peasant woman – female in a patriarchal society, under the thumb of the Roman empire, without access to economic support except through men.  Dr. Susan Hylen, in her pioneering work, has shown us the remarkable resiliency and agency of women in New Testament times.  Though they were “buked and scorned” - to borrow from the African-American tradition - many of these women demonstrated powerful resistance and adaptability.  Mary was one of those.  Engaged to be married, retaining her “value” as a virgin, she receives a vision from the angel – a vision that requests that she make herself even more vulnerable by agreeing to become pregnant before marriage, pregnant by someone other than her fiancé Joseph.  While some have indicated that Mary had no choice except to say “yes,” the story in Luke seems to make it clear that she could say “no.”

            She chooses to say “yes,” and her choice is the primary human agency from that point on.  As we will see next week, God is the primary agent, but from the human point of view, Mary drives the story.  She must tell Joseph, and we can imagine the fear in her heart as she tells him – will he take her to the elders for possible execution?  Will he abandon her?  Will he still marry her?   We can imagine Joseph’s response –“Oh, pregnant by the Holy Spirit?  Now that’s a new one!”  As we heard last week, Joseph will receive his own vision from God and will step out of toxic patriarchy and step into a new way of living.

            It is this new way of living that is Mary’s first lesson to us in this Christmas season.  Midway through Luke 1, she sings a powerful and astonishing song about the power of God coming over her.  Coming over her to bring her a child, but also coming over her to proclaim a new vision about who God is and who we should be.  She sings about God at the margins, about God taking down the mighty and lifting up the poor and the hungry.  Mary reminds us that this vision of Christmas is not just about Incarnation, not just about God blessing humanity with Her presence.  It also is about God coming to us in a particular way – to a woman pregnant before marriage, coming to us as a poor, dependent baby born on the streets.   Whatever we think about the way Christmas is celebrated, this vision of God at the margins is at the heart of the story.

            Mary’s story offers us many lessons, and a second one is that she emphasizes the necessity and the power of community in seeking to live out and witness to the new vision of Christmas, of God at the margins.  Before she takes her life in her hands and goes to talk with Joseph, she first goes to her cousin Elizabeth to share in solidarity and community with her sister.  She has heard from Gabriel that Elizabeth is also pregnant in a miraculous fashion, and she goes to her to draw strength from her elder and her sister.  She goes to Elizabeth to start building a new community, based on this vision of God at the margins.  No lone rangers allowed here.  Growing out of this visit and this solidarity, Mary’s spirit is strengthened to sing “My soul magnifies the Lord.”  She receives strength for the journey from community.

            As we enter this Christmas season, we don’t know what we are facing.  Assuming that Trump will not be convicted in the Senate, will he be strengthened or weakened by impeachment?  Will we hear the Nazi troopers coming closer, or will Trump be defeated in 2020?  We don’t know the answers to those questions at this point, but we do know that the same forces of racism and sexism and materialism that elected him in 2016 will remain with us after November, 2020, whoever is elected president.  It is in this kind of world that Mary had her vision and stepped forward, the kind of world in which we live.  That is the power of the Christmas story – it is always contemporary, and we are called to listen for the angels calling to us, listen for that new vision of Christmas, a vision which will scare us and trouble us, and yet a vision that will bring us life and help us to join in God’s movement at the margins.  May we find our places in this year’s live nativity scene.