Readings: Psalm 28, Luke 1:39-35, Secrets of Heaven #545 (see below)
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This week we will take some time to center the character of Elizabeth. Elizabeth is introduced within the first five verses of the book of Luke and is the mother of John the Baptist, who we focused on last week. 

We learn that she is the wife of a priest named Zechariah; they are childless and quite old. But Elizabeth will soon enter into the biblical tradition of miraculous pregnancies. An angel appears to Zechariah to tell him that Elizabeth will conceive and bear a son, and they are to call him John.  “And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to make ready people for the Lord.” (v17)

And soon, just as the angel said, Elizabeth falls pregnant. After a few months, Elizabeth’s relative, Mary, comes to her with her own miraculous story. Mary is pregnant too, the miracle being not her age, but that her womb will grow the earthly body of the living God. The beauty of this story is in its mystery. All Mary needed to do was say an initial greeting: “Hello, Elizabeth….!?” as we all might do at the door of a trusted friend. And the baby John, growing, developing, in his quiet and dark space, was shocked awake by the sound. Something about the call of Mary’s voice activated the Holy Spirit within John, and we are told the baby “leaped for joy.” It is hyperbole, of course. But it serves to illustrate the mystical connection between Jesus and John, one that will be so beautifully illustrated when John baptizes Jesus at the Jordan river some thirty years later.

In this moment though, despite the baby’s leaping, it is Elizabeth who gives voice to the movement of the spirit with what are sometimes called her “four oracles.”

First, she declares the blessedness of Mary. This blessedness, which seems so clear to us now, was patently ridiculous then. Mary was unmarried, and we can imagine what kind of tumult her pregnancy was going to cause her family, and her betrothed, Joseph. Mary was insignificant in the scheme of things; a teenager of no particular family or reputation, an oppressed minority under the thumb of a brutal empire. From an earthly perspective, her life was about to fall apart. But Elizabeth declares her blessed.

Second, she affirms the identity of Mary’s child. Mary is about to sing her Magificat, her hymn about what God is going to do with her, how Jesus will affect a mighty change in the power structures of the world. But even before that, Elizabeth affirms that Mary is, that someone like Mary could be, the vessel for that kind of change. And, she affirms the identity of Jesus but  though Mary, using the term Mother of my Lord, lifting up the fact that God chose to work through women in a patriarchal society.

Third, she interprets the leap of her baby within her. With all that we have already said, that in earthly terms Mary’s pregnancy wa snot a good thing, that it is ridiculous to think that someone like Mary could be so pivotal, into circumstances under which we would all be aghast and overwhelmed and unbelieving, Elizabeth speaks of joy. And in a much more elemental way than “this good news for you makes me happy.” She speaks of what God is doing in electric terms, of life’s deep knowledge that God always reaches out to us and that this is good. She gives words to the fact that in the quantum space between sound and cell there was a communication, there was a missive of love that we call spirit. And it caused a reaction that Elizabeth called joy. The animation of still-developing life recognizing life.

And fourth, she declares another beatitude upon Mary for her faith. We don’t actually know the wholeness of Mary’s mental state at this time. She utters her sacred yes in the previous verses: “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.” And soon she will sing of the possibilities in the future, but in the in-between, we can imagine she might have felt some worry. But Elizabeth lifts up Mary’s faith in God’s promises. We can read this as the promises that the angel fortold, of Jesus birth, but also Mary will soon sing of greater promises, of a just society, of full bellies, of the ascent of the humble rather than the arrogant. Mary has a faith around God’s intention for the world, and is willing to play her part in bringing this into being. This opportunity brings her joy and so she sings: My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…” (Luke 1:46)

Elizabeth becomes the conduit through which the joy in Mary and the joy in John are connected. It is amazing to think that this is the same rough and ready John the Baptist from our text last week, the one hurling epithets about vipers and warning about the winnowing fork and the fire. Today we find that the urgency of his call was born out of joy, was born out of an electric leaping in utero at the sound of Mary’s voice, and the promise that she represented. And Mary, born into a dangerous world of empire that many of us can hardly fathom now (but that many in this world still can), accepting a mission that might well ostracize her, or impoverish her, and that would later require her family to flee as political refugees, into this reality she speaks of joy as well. If joy is possible for Mary, it is possible anywhere, and this is a radical hope.

It communicates to us that we are made for joy. That the very existence of joy is a simple declaration of God’s original intention for us, for a good God would not make beloved children for any other purpose.

But of course, if we are not feeling joy, that is not an indictment of us, that we are somehow defective, or defensive, or unfeeling. There are many reasonable and understandable reasons to not feel joyful. The challenge of the spiritual journey is to acknowledge the fact that we are made for joy, without also making the experience of joy an imperative in every moment. We must hold very gently the potential unhelpfulness of the question: If joy is a natural preordained state, then what am I doing or not doing that is getting in the way of it? There are times that this question is a useful one. Sometimes our ambition, or our distraction, or our selfishness gets in the way of the simple joy that is available to us when we quiet ourselves down, or when we open our eyes to what is already present, or when we serve someone other than ourselves. Sometimes we are looking for joy in the wrong places, and once we recognize that, we are freer to seek joy where it will actually find us.

But other times, joy does not feel accessible at all, and this is not our fault. There is trauma and brokenness and loss in this world, and the appropriate and unavoidable reaction is often sadness, grief and lament. We need to recall that Elizabeth said: blessed is she, not joyful is she. Just as the beatitudes declare “blessed are those who are poor, who weep or hunger” as a way of expressing love, care and concern for those who are normally forgotten and marginalized, so too does Elizabeth’s beatitudes upon Mary pronounce a blessedness that is counter to her circumstances. The beatitudes of the gospels declare a state of inherent worthiness of each of our beings that does not depend upon our emotional state or our productiveness, and so too we hear a beatitude upon Mary that is anchored in a larger trust in God’s promises, a larger trust in God’s ultimate intentions, and not in her feeling in any given moment.

It can be difficult to hold lament in one hand and trust in the other. Even now we might be feeling a mounting tension and uncertainty around the state of the world, or other events in our lives. But what we do know from our Swedenborg reading today, is that heavenly joy resides in our inmost recesses, in the deepest and most secret parts of our being. This capacity for joy is always with us. It is a part of God’s order of heaven and of life, part of the web of experience to which we are always connected. We won’t always feel it, and that is okay. Lament is the price of love, the price of moral concern for those around us. But we may also know that, even when it is quiescent, the capacity for joy is our baseline, an integral part of our operating instructions. At times, perhaps this capacity will come alive with a leap that we weren’t expecting. At times, this capacity will rest within us, softly waiting for a time it can be born. And so, we learn in Advent that we can trust in God’s promises, not even so much what God will do but what God has done already.

Amen.

Readings:

Psalm 28

1 To you, LORD, I call; you are my Rock, do not turn a deaf ear to me. For if you remain silent, I will be like those who go down to the pit. 2 Hear my cry for mercy as I call to you for help, as I lift up my hands toward your Most Holy Place. 3 Do not drag me away with the wicked, with those who do evil, who speak cordially with their neighbors but harbor malice in their hearts. 4 Repay them for their deeds and for their evil work; repay them for what their hands have done and bring back on them what they deserve. 5 Because they have no regard for the deeds of the LORD and what his hands have done, he will tear them down and never build them up again. 6 Praise be to the LORD, for he has heard my cry for mercy. 7 The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him. 8 The LORD is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed one. 9 Save your people and bless your inheritance; be their shepherd and carry them forever.

Luke 1:39-45

39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!”

Secrets of Heaven #545

In order to teach me about the existence and nature of heaven and heavenly joy, the Lord has given me the opportunity to perceive the pleasures of heavenly joy frequently and for extended periods. Because I have learned these things by actually experiencing them, I possess the knowledge but cannot possibly put it into words.

To offer just an idea of it: The countless pleasures and joys there, which come together to create a single experience shared by all, carry with them a certain emotion. Within that common experience, or that common emotion, are points of harmony among a boundless number of feelings. These individual points of harmony do not come clearly but only vaguely to our awareness, because our perception is extremely generalized. Even so, I was allowed to perceive that there were countless parts, organized in a way that can never be described. Those countless parts flow from the order that exists in heaven, which determines their nature.

[2] The smallest individual elements of an emotion are organized in such a way that they are presented and sensed only as a collective whole, according to the capacities of the person who feels the emotion. In a word, every whole has an unlimited number of parts, organized in the most perfect way; every one of the parts is alive; and every one of them affects us, all the way to our inmost recesses. For the inmost recesses are where heavenly joy comes from.

Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-20, Luke 3:7-18, True Christianity #587 (see below)
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Photo by Valentina Locatelli on Unsplash

So finally, here we are with John the Baptist in Advent, who I mention a couple of weeks ago, knowing he would be along in due time. We have stepped outside of the Christmas story timeline, and fast forwarded to a time when the adult Jesus and and the adult John’s ministries are about to converge. N ext week, we will go back in time again to focus on John’s mother, Elizabeth, while John is still in her womb. For the moment though, we get to experience some of John’s prophetic preaching, and hear what he has to say to the people.
It doesn’t start off well. The first thing he says to the crowd is “You brood of vipers!” He sarcastically wonders who tipped them off about the coming judgment so that they might all slither to him in a panic, wanting to be baptized and therefore saved. As much as we might deny it, we are already, most of us, laid bare by this observation. Who wouldn’t want the easy way? There are some parts of us that definitly prefer this: If there are some magic words to say, let’s say them, right? Further, we might wonder: what about my name/family/reputation? Can that get me to salvation? Nope. Neither can the crowd look to their ethnicity or their linage for automatic salvation, as John anticipates the “children of Abraham” doing. Such expediency of either kind is not the way of God’s kingdom.

What is the way of God’s kingdom then? John tells the crowd to “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” The kingdom is about generativity and integrity. We are to produce fruit, we are to use our form and life to create something nourishing for others, and to recognize and repent for whatever it is that prevents us from doing so. 
By this point, the crowd seems pretty convinced. This is not surprising; We already know that John’s call to action was in line with the prophets of old, his language evoking long held images of fruitfulness that the children of Israel were more than familiar with. Moreover, they had already experienced what felt to them like God’s judgment in the form of exile centuries earlier; I’m sure they were sensitive to that history.

So, they quickly turn to the question “What should we do then?” meaning “what does it look like to produce fruit in keeping with repentance?” And here, John gets delightfully concrete. As wild-eyed and eccentric as he is often portrayed, the John of this text means for the kingdom of God to be birthed in the *simple* actions of those around him, in their everyday interactions with each other. He tells them: be generous to your neighbor and be honest with any power you are given.

Then people started to get excited—we are told they were “waiting in expectation”—because it seemed like what John was calling them to was actually doable, and they began to wonder, is John the coming Messiah? He assures them he is not; his baptism is symbolic, and there is one coming who will baptize them with the Holy Spirit and fire.  And here John returns to his apocalyptic language, likening God’s action to a winnowing fork. The stakes are heightened once more. The wheat will be gathered but the chaff will be burned up in an “unquenchable fire.” Thus our text is ended with this verse: “And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.”  Here we might be tempted to shake our head. Good news? Which part? The unquenchable fire? The axe at the root of the tree? The part about being a viper?  It is more than a little funny to hear John’s preaching and call it good news, especially since we usually associate good news as something of either emotional or material benefit to us.

How can God’s judgment be considered good news? How can we rejoice or be grateful or excited when we see the axe or the winnowing fork coming? We often instead feel fear, which is understandable. There is a reason that much of progressive Christianity focuses on preaching God’s love and not God’s judgment. Judgment in the wrong hands is abusive. Many times those in authority take it upon themselves to judge, from and for themselves and their own notions of acceptability, rather than looking to God’s character and nature in doing so, using single bible verses or passages to wound and bludgeon, without grounding such judgment in either context or universal spiritual principles. The Christian church has much to repent for in in the ways that it has judged others.

And there is another reason we shy away from judgment sometimes. Judgment is uncomfortable. No one wants to be told what they are doing wrong. Especially when such judgment challenges our long-held notions of order, privilege, and power. But the the issues that we humans may have with judgment cannot do not do away with the fact that God is not only infinitely loving but also infinitely just. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: “All prophecy is one great exclamation! God is not indifferent to evil. God is always concerned. He is personally affected by what man does to man. He is a God of pathos. This is one of the meanings of the anger of God; the end of indifference.” (1)

God cannot be indifferent to the things that prevent us from being in true relationship with God and each other. The being of God demands justice. The character of God strives for justice. And so, God’s lack of indifference necessitates judgment. That can make us feel uncomfortable, or even afraid. Again, this is not an inherently a bad thing. In the words of Heschel again: “a sense of comfort is no standard for Truth.” (2) If we always went by our sense of comfort, we would never learn and grow. Sometimes we need to endure discomfort and vulnerabaility in order to grow in emotional maturity or process with spirtual progress.

This is what God’s judgement is for; so that we might be reformed, so that we might be taken apart for the purpose of being put back together, so that we might grow beyond that which we are. God’s judgment is a gift. Now, honestly, it doesn’t feel like a gift, not at all. It can sometimes feel like fire burning us up. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good for us.

This is the good news: Judgment shakes us awake, reveals to us how our actions are affecting others and by extension ourselves. For God, judgment is for the purpose of clarity, for the purpose of truth. Divine Love wants us to be able to see. So Divine Love’s judgment is a revealing, never a condemnation. When it is revealed to us that we are hurting someone else, either by our action or our inaction, we are urged to pay attention, we are urged to no longer be indifferent. This is what is communicated in our Swedenborg reading for today: that unless we make an active effort, our earthly desires will just naturally dictate the way we think about things. For the love of self and the world, we will justify our actions in whatever way we can, we will distance ourselves from thinking about consequences for the sake of our comfort. This is not even mustache-twirling evil, this is run of the mill, everyday thoughtless evil. We all do it. So, we are given the gift of God’s judgment, we are given the gift of God’s complete inability to *not* care about us being willfully blind.  From Swedenborg again:

Judgments symbolize the Divine truths in accordance with which a person is to live, truths which reveal [a person’s] character…(3) This is the symbolism of John’s baptism of water. Water corresponds to divine truth, and it cleanses us of our evils and falsities by making them clear to us. But clarity on its own is not sufficient. 

We are also urged to act. We know that we are no longer being indifferent when our actions change. This is the baptism to come, the baptism of the holy spirit and fire. The baptism of illumination from the holy spirit, and the baptism of fire from divine love, working in concert to regenerate us, to birth us into loving action. God’s judgment is not meant to debilitate us but rather to rattle us into seeing possibility, to open us up into being a vessel for love. Through the clarity and illumination of God’s truth we are moved to have faith in God’s loving universe, to have faith in our ability to align ourselves with those ways of love, and so the baptism of fire is alighted within us.

Why, we might wonder, are we asked to consider these texts during advent? We sit here awkward and uncertain with John the Baptist rather than all cozy in the stable with the manger, and perhaps it feels out of step with the season, out of step with hot cocoa and twinkle lights and the most wonderful time of the year. We sit here in this in-between space of expectation because we must not forget how disruptive the Lord’s birth really is. God is not and cannot be indifferent to our flaws and our walls and our temper tantrums and our fears, and so the birthing of God into our lives will involve the sweeping away of these things. The quietness of that sweet baby breath in the manger contains within it a love so deep and wide that it cannot be contained within a hallmark card or a pretty song. When we welcome the baby, we welcome that disruption, that holy beautiful disruption.  But it is not a disruption for the sake of chaos, it is a disruption of the sake of transformation. It is not a disruption that will send us flailing and twirling unmoored into an empty universe, it is a disruption held firmly within the arms of God, the womb of God. We need not fear. We just need to breathe and let ourselves be born.

Through most of his book, the prophet Zephaniah preaches a mighty destruction, a mighty upheaval. But then all of sudden, he also preaches a mighty song of hope, restoration and love.  “At that time”, says the Lord, “I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home.” God’s judgment is for the purpose of bringing us home to ourselves, a vision and a home that God truly believes in.

Amen.​

(1) Abraham Joshua Heschel: Essential Writings, page 86
(2) Ibid, pg 175
(3) Emmanuel Swedenborg, Apocalypse Revealed 668


Readings:


Zephaniah 3:14-20
14 Sing, Daughter Zion; shout aloud, Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, Daughter Jerusalem! 15 The LORD has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm. 16 On that day they will say to Jerusalem, “Do not fear, Zion; do not let your hands hang limp. 17 The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” 18 “I will remove from you all who mourn over the loss of your appointed festivals, which is a burden and reproach for you. 19 At that time I will deal with all who oppressed you. I will rescue the lame; I will gather the exiles. I will give them praise and honor in every land where they have suffered shame. 20 At that time I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home. I will give you honor and praise among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your very eyes,” says the LORD.

Luke 3:7-18

7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 9 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” 10 “What should we do then?” the crowd asked. 11 John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” 13 “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. 14 Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.” 15 The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. 16 John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” 18 And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.

True Christianity 587 

The First Phase in Our Being Generated Anew Is Called "Reformation"; It Has to Do with Our Intellect. The Second Phase Is Called "Regeneration"; It Has to Do with Our Will and Then Our Intellect 

The evils we are born with are in the will that is part of our earthly self; this earthly will pressures the intellect to agree with it and to have thoughts that harmonize with its desires. Therefore if we are to be regenerated, this has to happen by means of our intellect as an intermediate cause. 

This process draws on pieces of information that our intellect receives, first from our parents and teachers, and later from our reading the Word, listening to preaching, reading books, and having conversations. The things that our intellect receives as a result are called truths. Therefore to say that we are reformed by means of our intellect is the same as saying that we are reformed by means of truths that our intellect receives. Truths teach us who to believe in, what to believe, and also what to do and what to will. After all, whatever we do, we do from our will and in accordance with our understanding. 

Since our will is evil from the day we are born, and since our intellect teaches us what is evil and what is good and that it is possible for us to will one and not the other, it follows that our intellect is the means by which we have to be reformed. During the phase called our reformation, we come to mentally see and admit that evil is evil and goodness is good, and make the decision to choose what is good. When we actually try to abstain from evil and do what is good, the phase called our regeneration begins.

Readings: I Samuel 2:1-10, Luke 1: 46-53, True Christianity 394 & 395:3 (see below)
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We’ve been jumping around in the Bible this fall. Early on, we spent some time in the book of Ruth, then hung out with Jesus for a while, then fast forwarded to the end of King David’s reign. Now we jump back to the days closer to the time of Ruth again, to hear a song of praise from a woman named Hannah.

To set the context: Hannah was to become the mother of the great prophet Samuel. But as we begin 1 Samuel, we find that she is the beloved wife of a man named Elkanah and she is also barren. She yearns for a son, especially since Elkanah’s other wife had many children, and was very nasty to Hannah on that account. So, Hannah went to pray at a holy place named Shiloh. She prayed so intensely but silently that the priest Eli thought she was drunk. But once she unburdened herself to him, he added his prayer to hers, and soon she found herself with child. In gratitude, when her son was weaned, she returned him to Shiloh and to Eli, so that his life might be given in service to the Lord.

It is at this point, that she sends another prayer up to God, the one we hear in our text today. She speaks of rejoicing and of praise, but most significantly she speaks of reversal. She speaks of those with power and strength being humbled, and of those who are empty and vulnerable being lifted up. She speaks of the fact that God is in the business of resurrection, of being present to those who suffer and enacting a change in their circumstances. She sings a song of God’s providence and care for human beings. Like many instances in the Hebrew Scriptures, the story and words of her as an individual character speak to the trajectory of the Israelite people as a whole.

Hannah’s words are echoed many books later in Mary’s song, often called The Magnificat. The similarities are obvious. Both are praising God after a miraculous pregnancy, both are drawing attention to the transformation of their lowly state into a triumphant one. Their vulnerabilities are slightly different: Hannah was older and married and despairing due to her barrenness, suffering due to the expectation that women would bear children, and the fact that their worthiness was often tied to their fertility. Mary was younger, inconsequential, as yet unmarried with no real status, a Jew under Roman rule, a nobody. But both received an invitation into a different reality, and both recognized what God was doing. That when God acts, there is always a necessary upheaval. 

Swedenborg writes that our love is our life; it is what drives and motivates us.(1) So of course, the quality of that love, *what* we love, determines the direction we are going. And as we heard in our reading today, Swedenborg organizes the kinds of human love into four main categories: Loving the Lord, loving others, loving the self, and loving the world. What is key, is that none of these loves, even the last two, are inherently bad, rather, it is the order that they are in that counts. Of course we should love ourselves; God wants us to feel self-confidence and self-worth, because we are beloved in God’s eyes. We should all see ourselves as God sees us. And of course we should love the world, not only the magnificence of creation but the ingenuity and the goodness of the societies that humans have built together. God blesses human striving and learning and making. But problems come when love of self and the world are constantly and unreasonably put first all the time. These loves then become shadow versions of themselves. A habitual centering of our selfhood and our benefit above others, a habitual coveting of worldly possessions and wealth and reputation; this is an inversion of God’s wise and loving divine order. That order of things, as Hannah and Mary both knew, will lead to a barrenness of the spirit.

Yet, how easy it is for the order to get out of whack! How easy for us personally, and collectively! How easy it is to be courted and seduced by ideologies of superiority and accumulation! To believe it is a good thing to put our own interest ahead of others because we have come to believe the other is deficient or dangerous in some way. To believe it is a good thing to accumulate as much as possible just because we can, or because we think it demonstrates our cleverness. To believe it is a good thing to win at any cost because our cause is so righteous. To believe it is a good thing to never change our minds, or be open to learning, because certainty is strength and openness is weakness.

But none of those ways of thinking are the gospel. None of those things are what is communicated by the story of Advent. A sweet and cooing baby in the manger is only part of the story. The rejoicing and the angels and the gift-giving are only part of the story. The main part of the story is that God’s providence for us always involves a necessary upheaval, the work of uprooting love of self and the world when they have settled in the wrong order and planting them back where they belong, as a support for mutual love. Even a welcome pregnancy is still an upheaval, it is just one we are expecting and waiting for. And this is why the Advent lectionary usually includes a healthy amount of John the Baptist. His whole deal is “get ready, prepare the way.” He doesn’t mean settle in with a cup of cocoa. He means get ready for a necessary upheaval. He means prepare yourself for the work of changing what needs to be changed.

Both women’s songs come during a time when Israel was struggling. In Hannah’s time, Israel was still a nation of tribes, suffering under corruption and disunity. In Mary’s time, Israel was captive under Roman rule, no longer captain of its own fate. Yet, into these troubling circumstances, these women spoke of a God who saw those struggles and cared about them, who stepped in to support a change of circumstances.

Hannah would give birth to Samuel, a great prophet, who would preside over the establishment of Israel as a kingdom. Mary would give birth to Jesus, who would transform our ideas about God and jumpstart a new religious movement. But we must notice though, that God doesn’t just change the circumstances themselves, wave a magic wand that suddenly makes everything perfect. God supports change by uplifting the process of new life, of birth. In each of these stories a child is born, who would go on to make choices that would have an amazing impact.

So too is the picture of our inner lives. God doesn’t just change the order of our loves like moving chess pieces on a board. Let’s be honest, we would just move them right back to where they were. God steps in by helping us to take advantage of situations where we can grow. God steps in by saying to us, “Would you like to grow this new life, this new way of doing things, inside of you? Here is a way that you can do it. Do you accept?” And the choice is ours. We can choose whether or not to give birth to something new that will change the way we see the world, and the way that we act within it.

And the way that we act within the world, collectively, makes a difference to all of us. What is so moving about Hannah and Mary’s songs is that they are not just talking about their own journey, they are not just talking about individual people, but systems of power. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap. Those who were full hire themselves out for food, but those who were hungry are hungry no more (1 Samuel 2:5, 8). This speaks to physical, social and spiritual realities all at the same time. The necessary upheavals in our own spirit play out in the choices that we make, and the choices that we make act together to create the world we live in.

This is what makes scripture so powerful, that we can see the levels of connection. We can see that Hannah and Mary are speaking of themselves *and* Israel, as well as speaking of us and our own time. We can see that the workings of their spirits are connected to our own, our own strivings and stumblings and triumphs. We can see the world they spoke of, in essence, still resembles the world we live in. And so the mighty question of Advent is not “how will be celebrate the birth of our Lord?” but “how will we be changed by it?” What necessary upheaval will we say yes to this year?

As we consider this question, we remember from Hannah’s song: But those who stumbled are armed with strength (I Samuel 2:2:4). This is the promise of Advent, a promise that we all need. The life of the spirit, the discipline of the life intentionally lived in relationship with spirit, means the acceptance of the necessity of upheaval. There are times, like Hannah, when we are praying fervently for it, knowing it needs to come, making ourselves ready. And there are times we are more like Mary, surprised and puzzled to find it on our doorstep. But either way, the Advent call is to take a deep breath and say “Yes Lord: Reinvent me according to your will.” So then we might also sing: My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior (Luke 1:46-47).

Amen.

(1) Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Providence #78


Readings:

1 Samuel 2:1-10

1 Then Hannah prayed and said: “My heart rejoices in the LORD; in the LORD my horn is lifted high. My mouth boasts over my enemies, for I delight in your deliverance. 2 “There is no one holy like the LORD; there is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God. 3 “Do not keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance, for the LORD is a God who knows, and by him deeds are weighed. 4 “The bows of the warriors are broken, but those who stumbled are armed with strength. 5 Those who were full hire themselves out for food, but those who were hungry are hungry no more. She who was barren has borne seven children, but she who has had many sons pines away. 6 “The LORD brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up. 7 The LORD sends poverty and wealth; he humbles and he exalts. 8 He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor. “For the foundations of the earth are the LORD’s; on them he has set the world. 9 He will guard the feet of his faithful servants, but the wicked will be silenced in the place of darkness. “It is not by strength that one prevails; 10 those who oppose the LORD will be broken. The Most High will thunder from heaven; the LORD will judge the ends of the earth. “He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.”

Luke 1:46-53

46 And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. 50 His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. 51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. 52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. 53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful 55 to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.” 

True Christianity #394 and #395(3)

There Are Three Universal Categories of Love: Love for Heaven; Love for the World; and Love for Ourselves 

…these three categories of love are universal and fundamental to all types of love because goodwill has something in common with each of the three. 

Love for heaven means love for the Lord and also love for our neighbor. Love for heaven could be called love for usefulness, because both love for the Lord and love for our neighbor have usefulness as their goal. 

395[3] When these three categories of love are properly prioritized in us, they are also coordinated in such a way that the highest love, our love for heaven, is present in the second love, our love for the world, and through that in the third or lowest love, our love for ourselves. In fact, the love that is inside steers the love that is outside wherever it wants. Therefore if a love for heaven is present in our love for the world and through that in our love for ourselves, with each type of love we accomplish useful things that are inspired by the God of heaven. 

…if these three loves are prioritized in the right way, they improve us, but if they are not prioritized in the right way, they damage us and turn us upside down.