"HAIL TO YOU!"

 “HAIL TO YOU!”

I must admit that I was surprised with the verdict in the outcome of the Ahmaud Arbery case.  I had been hoping for some sort of conviction in the Rittenhouse case in Wisconsin, and when that verdict turned out to be “not guilty” on all charges, my hopes for the Arbery case outcome dropped.  I had slim hopes anyway – the most that I had hoped for was a hung jury, so that there would be a re-trial.  I was really surprised that a vastly white jury in south Georgia found three white men guilty of killing a Black man.  There might be some hope after all.  

And, that hope, of course, is one of the main themes of the Advent season into which we are now heading.  The turnaround in the Arbery case came because a lone woman, Wanda Cooper-Jones, mother of Ahmaud Arbery, kept at the case, even when the police and two county DAs had refused to prosecute the case.  She kept on proclaiming, kept on poking, kept on insisting that an injustice had been done.  Many of us knew that she was right, but the problem was to get the authorities to believe that too.

Her role is a reminder of the importance of women in the Advent story and in the civil rights movement. The Biblical story is that a young woman named Mary, engaged to be married, had a vision of an angel of God coming to her saying “Hail, Mary.”  The angel was a messenger from God, asking her to agree to a astonishing and dangerous mission – she was asked to carry the Human One, the special child of God, as a baby in her womb.   It was astonishing because she was a “nobody” from Nazareth, asked to be the Mother of God.  It was dangerous because she would be pregnant by someone other than her fiancé Joseph.  In saying “Yes,” she would risk receiving the death penalty.  We don’t know her internal processing of this request, but she said “Yes.”  After she visited with her cousin Elizabeth, she even counted herself “blessed” to be asked to do this, and her famous song about the potential turning of the world is found in Luke 1:49-56.

     This Wednesday, December 1, marks the 66th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ decision to refuse to move to the “white” section of the bus, a decision that led to the Montgomery bus boycott.  There has been a lot written about her decision and about her motivation for it.   She been prepared for it – the previous summer she had attended workshops at Highlander Folk School in Tennessee about these issues.  There she encountered Septima Clark and came under her  tutelage.  Septima Clark encouraged her  to listen for God’s voice and to find her voice in response.  As far as I can determine, she had not gotten on that bus ready for civil disobedience – no Henry Plessy moment for her.  But, her moment came – she heard the angel’s voice: “Hail, Rosa!”  And she responded.  She was not the first to do this – many others like Ida Wells and Claudette Colvin had preceded her.  But, this was the moment, and like Mary before her, when she heard “Hail to you,” and responded by saying “Yes,” the world began to turn.

    The Advent season is about these kinds of moments, about us preparing to hear God’s voice calling to us:  “Hail to you!”  There are a lot of other voices out there (and “in here”) in this season.  The products call to us to tell us to touch the hem of their garments and be healed.  The sentimentality of the “baby Jesus” asks us to leave behind all the struggles of the world - all the calls to justice, all the murders of Ahmaud Arbery – and come to rest in this “sweet little Jesus boy.”  This is a time for meditation and preparation, and even silence at times, but the goal of the story is this:  we are asked to listen for God’s voice to us in this time so that we can join in the parade to seek to turn the world around.  May we hear God’s “Hail to you” in this Advent season of 2021, and may we find the vision of Mary, the determination of Wanda Cooper-Jones, and the courage of Rosa Parks to say “Yes,” when God’s call comes to us.