Readings: Luke 1:39-56, True Christianity 394, 395, 403 (see below)
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We began Advent with the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Today we fast forward a little in the gospel of Luke, past the angel Gabriel visiting with Mary and offering her the invitation to be the mother of our Lord. We will hear this text in our Christmas Eve service, but for today, we recognize that it ends with Mary saying “I am the Lord’s servant, May your word to me be fulfilled.”

And here is the where the two narratives in the first chapter of Luke converge. We heard three weeks ago about, how after many years of waiting, Elizabeth found herself pregnant with a child who would go on to be John the Baptist, an important prophetic precusor to Jesus himself. Elizabeth and Mary are related, and Mary rushes to Elizabeth to tell her her own good news. Their bond is so touching, underscored by the joyful leaping of Elizabeth’s baby in her womb upon seeing Mary, itself the first fulfillment of what the angel told Zechariah, that his child will be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Elizabeth proclaims that Mary is blessed, and then Mary herself speaks, giving us a window into how she understood what was happening to her, what she would be giving birth to. This section of prophetic text is referred to as The Magnificat, from the first line where Mary says my soul glorifies, or magnifies, the Lord.

Within this beautiful hymn, we hear about the effects of God’s coming. What is it that happens when God comes to us, then and now, in body or in spirit? The answer is three-fold. When God comes to us we experience blessing, reversal, and the fulfilment of promises.

First, a state of blessing. God will only ever regard us with love and care. Indeed, God is not capable of anything else, it would be against the nature of Divine Love. So, the first thing that comes into being when God comes to us is a blessing: worthiness, dignity, hope. We might think of Psalm 139 - we are fearfully and wonderfully made. God sees us: sees all our sacred potential, sees all our flaws, sees all our longings, sees all our striving and our mistakes and our misunderstandings, our apologies, our hard work. God sees it all, and values us. God in particular saw Mary’s humility, her grit, her determination, her loyalty, and in that moment of being seen and of being treasured, Mary’s soul rejoiced in her God.

Now, we might not always be capable of seeing this state of blessing and love for ourselves. There are many things that might get in the way, psychological things like our perspectives, learnings, trauma, self-esteem, or earthly things like our busy-ness or distractedness. But the reality is that God always comes first with blessing because God’s basic stance is always our worthiness. Perhaps we don’t always live into that. But God doesn’t waver on it. 

The second effect of God’s coming is reversal. It’s a good thing we started with blessing because now things get gnarly. Mary casts a vision of God’s power to change things. She spoke of those who are proud and superior being dispersed, scattered. Those who seek to rule over others are thwarted. Those who have accumulated riches at the expense of others ultimately experience emptiness. This is an earthly vision, yes, but we can easily see the personal spiritual levels upon which any earthly embodiment of this vision depends. For those who are proud in their inmost thoughts, as Mary says, proud or superior in the way the understand themselves, they will often act in ways that harm or disregard others. Those who rule because of the seductive personal power of the throne itself, as we see clearly in these days, rule capricously and cruelly. Those who are devoted to the never-ending accumulation of wealth for whatever personal reason often create the conditions of want in many many others.

We human beings get things mixed up, its just what we do. So God has to help us get things the right way around. Where we are proud and superior and avaricious and selfish God will help us cast that down and out and away. God will do this for every person who wants it, and the more people who want it, the greater chance the shape of our world will reflect it. 

Swedenborg puts this in terms of the four kinds of love that shape our lives: love of God, love of others, love of the world and love of self. When we have these loves in the right order within ourselves, then God can truly flow through us without impediment. Love of God doesn’t have to mean how much we go to church, but rather, how much we look to a higher power of love and wisdom to guide us, in whatever tradition, leading us towards growth, meaning, and purpose. Loving others is a natural extension of this, recognizing that divine love and wisdom confers worthiness, dignity, and connection upon us all. Love of the world is not so much affection for our earth, which is good thing, but rather a love of worldly things: wealth, prestige, reputation, power, and getting more of all. And the love of self is not a healthy sense of self worth, but rather the constant practice of putting our own needs and desires above everyone else, making ourselves the center of the universe where no one else matters. We can see that when this kind of love of self and love of the world are our highest ideals that it creates a world in which many will suffer. Mary could see this in her time, and we likewise see it in ours.

So the purpose of God coming to us is disruption. Birthing something (or someone) new is an incredible disruption to our status quo, as any parent knows, as anyone who has worked to create something meaningful knows. We cannot create newness in the ways that we were. We cannot create newness when we are stuck in harmful and selfish patterns, or when our priorities are upside down. But when we understand what we truly owe to each other as human beings, as Jesus’ ministry during his life worked to show us, these spiritual reversals within us will ultimately lead to earthly reversals.

And so the third effect of God coming to us is the fulfillment of God’s promises. For Mary, that took the form of thinking back to the promises that God made to her ancestors, in particular to Abraham, the father of her people. It prompts us to likewise think of the broader promises that God had made to us through that promise and many others. Such as the rainbow in the story of Noah, a promise that God will never harm us. Such as the invitation to journey to Abraham, a promise that God will help us grow. Such as the person of Jesus, promising that God is with us through everything we might encounter and that whatever feels like death and chaos can ultimately lead to resurrection. God promises us the peace of a heavenly life; we start with God’s essential blessing and we move through change and growth to get there.

Which brings us to the question of timing. Now, you know I like a list, but unfortunately, these effects don’t happen like on a list. They don’t even happen just once so they can be ultimately finished. They happen again and again, they happen in small terms and in broader terms, because yes, God came to us in person all those years ago, but God also continues to come into our hearts and minds even now. So, it might be helpful to recall our sermon from Ben Gunter two weeks ago, that lifted up Mary’s partner in this story of God’s coming, Joseph. Joseph is not recorded as saying anything in the biblical narrative, and this may well be because his spiritual gift was patience and listening. Of course we might want to rush through to the end of this list of effects, to open the present before Christmas as Ben shared, to get to fulfilment because surely that must be the best part! But only God knows how much time we need to spend at each stage, or how many times we might need to circle back, and this is true for ourselves as much as it is true for our world. 

Which finally brings us back to Mary, and what she brought to the picture. There is a modern Christmas song called Mary Did You Know? which always causes me to bristle, because yes, Mary clearly knew what Jesus was working towards, her Magnificat demonstrates this without a doubt. Which makes the courage of her almighty yes that much more inspiring. She was on board with God’s purposes, and gave of her very body to bring those purposes to fruition. But what Mary herself highlights here as being key to her rejoicing is her humility, her openness, her readiness to serve. The humility of both Mary and Joseph made them the ideal people to shepherd God’s coming, to receive blessing without twisting it into self-aggrandizement, to face disruption and reversal without discouragement or mistrust, to encounter fulfilment without with joy, gratitude, curiosity and patience. In all things, may we do likewise.

Amen.

Readings:
Luke 1:39-56
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!”
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.”
56 Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months and then returned home.

True Christianity 394 

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

True Christianity 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.
True Christianity 403

When the Three Universal Categories of Love Are Prioritized in the Right Way They Improve Us; When They Are Not Prioritized in the Right Way They Damage Us and Turn Us Upside Down.

Readings: Luke 1:5-23, Divine Providence #316 (see below)
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Today we visit with two figures early in the narrative of the gospel of Luke: Zechariah and Elizabeth. We are told they were righteous and blameless; good people doing their best to serve the Lord. They were both of the priestly line, diligently discharging their familial expectations, and all within the context of being an oppressed religious minority under Roman rule, and specifically under the empire’s proxy ruler, Herod, known for his scheming cruelty.

One day, as Zechariah is performing his duties at the temple, he is visited by an angel who declares that his wife Elizabeth will find herself with child. Zechariah and Elizabeth were quite old by this time, and had long given up hope of having children, and in this they echo many stories from the Hebrew Scriptures: including Abraham and Sarah, the father and mother of the people of Israel, and Elkanah and Hannah, the parents of the great prophet Samuel. Gabriel the angel tells them that their son will be a prophet in the spirit of Elijah and will be filled with the Holy Spirit before he is even born.

This son, who would eventually be known as John the Baptist, would famously preach in the days before Jesus began his own ministry these words: “Prepare a way for the Lord.” But it is interesting to note that, even after lifetime of service, Zechariah wasn’t prepared for the way that God was going to act into his life. 

In the Swedenborgian perspective, Zechariah represents the parts of us that are diligently trying to understand higher truths, trying to acknowledge that God is a power that is higher than the self. By contrast, Herod - the ruling power in Zechariah’s time - represents our lower nature, always working to make itself king. Herod would willingly destroy those around him in order to maintain power, just as our lower nature does not have time for anything that does not serve the self.

In this context, and crucially in contrast to Herod, Zechariah *was* actively submitting to a higher power, actively showing up for a life oriented towards service and devotion. And yet, Zechariah still had doubts. They were completely reasonable ones, the very same ones that his ancestor Abraham had in similar circumstances. Yet even as he went about his work, even as a literal angel shows up, he was unprepared to accept the gift of life that God was trying to give.

I can certainly resonate with that, and I wonder if you can too. A big part of my personality is trying to be prepared for things that might happen. I have lists upon lists. I game various scenarios out in my mind ahead of time. I try to have ready and available all the things that I think I might need for a task or project or trip, plus options for a Plan B if needed. And this can be a gift. It is a gift to my family when Thanksgiving, or a family vacation, or life in general goes off without a hitch and everyone can enjoy themselves. It is a gift to this church in the ways that it makes sure I have a sermon to preach each week, or in thinking through how we can accomplish our building restoration. So, on one level, it is a gift to others. But on another, I recognize that is a gift given to myself in response to my own fear. Fear of what? The fear of not knowing what might happen. The fear of having to rely on God.

News alert! Your pastor struggles with trusting God. I believe in God, and I love God, but I struggle with trusting God, because it means letting go of control, and that is hard for me. I *know* that I can rely on my own power, because that is (mostly) within my own control. Part of me remains doubtful that trust in God will actually be as effective as my own efforts. My mind certainly believes that God should be my higher power, yet my also mind demands: “tell me exactly how that is going to work? In detail, please, and in advance.” Then, and only then, will I be capable of trust.

And this rhymes thematically with the picture of Zechariah doubting what the angel Gabriel came to tell him. He needs assurance, wondering how he can be certain of what will come to pass. He protests that he and his wife are too old, signaling an inability to see new possibilities. And so, he becomes mute. He is unable give voice to the reality of God’s sovereignty, to the reality of what God is capable of, to the reality that trust is actually the *real* way of being prepared for anything that God is going to do. He cannot speak that reality, and so it is not able to be believed and lived.

But there is a part of us that can accept it, and this is represented by Elizabeth. As our minds demand explanation and assurance, our hearts know the truth. The truth that there is joy in letting God surprise us, the truth that there is peace in trusting that there is more to God than what we imagine we can control. Elizabeth receives the prophecy and allows for new life to be created within her. As this new life grows, Elizabeth is able to teach Zechariah what trust looks like. And as we will hear about in the coming weeks, Elizabeth will be the one who will birth John, the one who will pave the way for Jesus, and all the ways that Jesus will embody God’s love for humanity, and for each of us personally. 

However, speaking of Zechariah and Elizabeth separately like this belies the fact that we are of course always both of them. We are not supposed to choose between them; they are married, they are partners, working side by side. Our understanding is *supposed* to try to figure things out, supposed to try to be effective and wise. We all are able to effect so much good when we do. The problem is simply when our understanding starts clinging to its own power. The problem is when it becomes mute on the topic of trust because it has become so focused on effectiveness. We balance this with our heart-centered efforts to remain open and curious about how God is also acting beside us, being ready and willing to bring forth the new life God has in store.

In practice, a balance between our Zechariah and Elizabeth natures can often only come when Zechariah (our mind, our fears) stops speaking. When we can experience inner quiet. When the chatter of the outer world and all its expectation, all the ways that it is oriented towards Herod and his selfish ways, can cease for a moment. When Zechariah stopped speaking, that is when he found the clarity he needed. His muteness was not a punishment, it was an opportunity. It was a gift.

Swedenborg uses a different image to demonstrate what it looks like to mistake our own prudence as coming from ourselves rather than God. He says that it is like living in someone else’s house, with someone else’s possessions, and convincing ourselves that they are our own. Or, he says that being devoted to our own prudence is like living in a basement and seeing nothing through our windows except what is underground, while those who attribute their own prudence to God are like “people who live in a house and see the sky through their windows.” (1)

I love this image of seeing the sky through our windows. Of course we are supposed to inhabit the metaphorical houses of our lives, our vocations, our responsibilities, our relationships, our bodies, our minds. We are supposed to take care of them, show up for and to them, and use them to be effective and kind in the world to the best of our ability. We just shouldn’t mistake them for our own, and we shouldn’t go down to the basement and pretend that is the whole house. Yes, be in the house, but remember to look out the windows and see the vastness of God. Elizabeth had clearly been looking out through the windows the whole time, and was open to seeing what might arrive. Zechariah had wandered down to the basement for a moment and got a bit stuck there, forgetting that he believed in a God of the deep blue sky. But, as we will see in the coming weeks, he will find his way back to the window eventually.

So this Advent, amidst the Christmas lists, the entertaining, the decorating, and even the celebrating, let us remember to sit by the window to see the sky. Let us remember that God is dedicated to showing up for us and that we are about to celebrate how God did that, once upon a time. And let us remember that even if the Christmas story was a long time ago, that it reveals to us God’s ongoing nature, one that went to great lengths to reach us and still does even now. Let us sit by the window this Advent and trust in God’s life-giving nature.

Amen.

(1) Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Providence #309, #311


Readings:
Luke 1:5-23

5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron.
6 Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly.
7 But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.
8 Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God,
9 he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense.
10 And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
11 Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense.
12 When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear.
13 But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John.
14 He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth,
15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born.
16 He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God.
17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
18 Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.”
19 The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news.
20 And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed time.”
21 Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah and wondering why he stayed so long in the temple.
22 When he came out, he could not speak to them. They realized he had seen a vision in the temple, for he kept making signs to them but remained unable to speak.
23 When his time of service was completed, he returned home.

Divine Providence #316

The reason our own prudence convinces and assures us that everything good and true comes from us and is within us is that our own prudence is simply our cognitive sense of identity, flowing from our self-love, which is our emotional sense of identity. Our sense of autonomy inevitably lays claim to everything. It cannot rise above this. Whenever we are being led by the Lord's divine providence, though, we are lifted out of our sense of autonomy and see that everything good and true comes from the Lord. We even see as well that whatever is in us from the Lord always belongs to the Lord and is never ours.