Presencing, and those in it with us

 Mother Mary and baby Jesus together with Zechariah and baby John the Baptist, in 15th century painting by Lorenzo Lotto titled "The Virgin and child with Saint Zacharias and John the Baptist"

Luke 1:57-80

Yesterday a few of us gathered for brunch and before we knew it, 2 ½ hours had gone by. I had a moment in the middle of it of recognizing, while it was happening, the beauty of the timeless gift of simple presence.

 

We’re three weeks into our Advent experience with Mary, and our own practice of presencing. Last week Mike told us “presencing is is the ability to notice miracles and wonders, and the will to make an appropriate response,” like “Thank you” or silence or blessing. He called presence “The ability to feel awe, respect, and gratitude to God’s coming near, and to make some kind of answer.”

 

When the Angel Gabriel invited Mary to carry Jesus, to bear God as God comes in to love the world, she was invited have her life commandeered by love. With awe, respect and gratitude, Mary answered, Yes.

She wasn’t prepared for this and didn’t actually have what it took. That didn’t matter. God came into Mary’s impossibility with grace, and claimed her for the embodiment of love. And now, from that point onward, she must now see the world as loved by God. She can’t not see all other people as those to whom, for whom, God comes in, because it is through her own body that God is coming to them; it is by her hands, and words, and actions, and tears, and laughter that God’s love would reach into the world.  

 

And she would not be in it alone. From the moment Mary arrived at Elizabeth and Zechariah’s doorstep, she was welcomed into this truth. This small, unlikely trio became the first human beings to bear among them the coming of God into the world. They bore it song and blessing, awe and gratitude, silence and presence.  These three people were redefined as recipients of God’s grace, insiders in God’s scheme to redeem the world, and God formed them into the community of the cosmic promise to which we too now belong. 

 

Their lives were invaded by transcendence, and now right inside their human weaknesses and mundane realities, their aches and pains, their muteness or pregnancy cravings, their regular, daily existence, they were sharing together the secret of the universe’s redemption. Right up against their own impossibility and the world’s, they began learning together how to live from the “nothing is impossible for God” reality that undergirds everything, always. 

 

When the time came for John to be born, Mary was there, assisting with the birth. She was there to hear the astonishing trust and confident hope in Zechariach’s voice when his silence ended, and to witness the shock when he proclaimed the truth that God had incubated inside him for nine months, the vision of God’s future breaking in. 

 

She watched Zechariah hold that impossible little baby in his old and wrinkled hands, and she was listening the moment his mouth was opened and he announced with conviction, His name is John - his name is “God is gracious.  God is merciful, God gives us more than we could ever even know to long for”- that is his name.  

 

Look at this child! he sang out to his neighbors and friends. Look at how God’s promise to our ancestors is coming to fruition, we are part of it! I am holding it.  Oh yes, it is coming! There is no doubt that God’s salvation of us all is coming.  

 

Mary watched as Zechariah turned and gazed into the brand new, blurry eyes of this utterly impossible child in his first minutes on this earth and he said,

 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

 

And so, God was preparing Mary for what was to come. And all the while, only she, Elizabeth and Zechariah knew this savior was already among them in that room, quietly, patiently waiting to be born.

 

Soon Mary would make the long, slow, journey back home, back to a Joseph—whom we will see next week, was even at this moment being brought into this community of promise, welcomed by an angel of God into his own place and part in God’s salvation of the world, so that by the time Mary will arrive, Joseph will be ready to welcome her and the impossible child she is carrying.

 

When, a few months later, Mary and Joseph will set out for Bethlehem, they will follow again the same route Mary took back and forth, and eventually arrive at their destination, about four miles past Elizabeth and Zechariah’s town. 

Then, while they are there, the time will come for the baby to be born. 

 

And just to correct our modern, individualistic, Western winter barn myth—where Joseph and Mary are all on their own, knocking on hotel doors, and being turned away by strangers while she’s ready to give birth any second—imagine instead the communal, first century, hospitality-committed, middle Eastern reality that archeologists and scholars describe. Here they will stay, for days or weeks, with countless relatives and neighbors, in the typical, modest, one room house, with a guest room on the roof, and a manger carved into the floor next to the lowered portion of the home that served as a kitchen in the daytime and a safe place to bed the animals at night. When God comes into the world and into their arms, they will not be alone; they will be surrounded by those to whom they belong, supported in community.

 

And so, undoubtedly, Elizabeth, Zechariah and baby John will be present. Elizabeth will attend to Mary as Mary did with her, and Zechariah will attend to Joseph, with the deep wisdom and presence formed in silence and contemplation, and the trust formed in watching the promise begin in the world through the birth of his own impossible son. 

 

The world is broken, and we live with impossibility every day. You and I can’t fix what’s broken. We can’t bring redemption. But we can be here for it. We can be with each other, ready, waiting, present to the God whose presence who comes to us as gift.

 

And tonight, we can simply acknowledge that we’ve been brought in too. Our lives, too have been commandeered by love. We too are recipients of God’s grace. We too are becoming insiders in God’s scheme to redeem the world, those who can’t not see all other people as those to whom, for whom, God comes in. 

 

We too are invited to recognize that it is by our bodies and prayers, our words and silence, our actions and stillness, our tears and laughter, that God comes into the world. In our own living and presencing, Christ is born among us.

And we too are not expected to have anything to offer to the project except our own willing selves – because, as we’ve seen over and over in the lives and stories of those gone before, this happens in impossibility and vulnerability.

 

And we’re not in it alone. We too are welcomed into the community of the cosmic promise, drawn into the now vast and timeless group of that includes people, right now, all throughout God’s beloved world, and these ancestors, and Mother Mary. And inside this small expression who gathers here, just like God gave Mary Zechariah and Elizabeth, God has given us each other, so that together we too might navigate the deep toll it takes to live in such stark awareness of being so very beloved, among and alongside all these other deeply loved humans on this planet for whom God comes in. 

 

So, tonight, as we practice presencing, and consider the appropriate responses that arise in such willingness to notice miracles and wonders, we’ll add to Mary’s “yes” and Mike’s list of thank you, silence and blessing, joy, which is perhaps the most instinctive and uninhibited response to noticing of God's presence.  

In other words, as we’re learning to live from the “nothing is impossible for God” reality that undergirds everything always, we will embrace the same readiness to deep delight and nearness to giddy awe with which angels will soon deliver to unsuspecting shepherds the good news of God’s coming near.

 

Let's move into our time of prayer with this poem by Madeline L’Engle:

"First Coming" 

 

God did not wait till the world was ready,

Till ...nations were at peace.

God came when the heavens were unsteady,

and prisoners cried out for release.

 

God did not wait for the perfect time. 

God came when the need was deep and great.

God dined with sinners in all their grime, turned water into wine.

 

God did not wait till hearts were pure.

In joy God came to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.

To a world like ours, of anguished shame

God came, the Light that would not go out.

 

God came to a world which did not mesh,

to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.

In the mystery of the Word made Flesh

the Maker of the stars was born.

 

We cannot wait till the world is sane

to raise our songs with joyful voice,

for to share our grief, to touch our pain,

God came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

 

 Amen.

 

The holy work of Advent

Luke 1:26-56

 This past week has been a hard week for hope, for me, and I anticipate this coming week, peace will feel like a challenge.  Which is why Advent is such a gift.  If I had to look at the circumstances in the world, in the lives around me, and feel hopeful, or say they speak of peace, I feel hard-pressed to do this.  

My kids’ school has been torn apart by incidents of racist and homophobic hate speech, with two students suspended and whole grades rising up in student-led protests decrying hate and demanding further action.  But through the week, the rhetoric and tone of the students began to change and escalate into a mob mentality of punishing, vigilante justice. It’s become a tangled mess of sin, which is to say, of people forgetting that we belong to each other – at every level –hate being met with hate, fear amping up fear. Revved up teens and exhausted, tense adults are facing off with no clear way forward, certainly not one provided by our culture, which offers nothing resembling mercy, practices vengeance in the name of justice, and persists until lives are destroyed, or until our attention gets grabbed by the next commotion.  

Our kids are doing what we’ve taught them to do, and they’re doing it to a couple of their own.  And that has been breaking my heart this week. Then the drama culminated with the announcement early Friday morning that restroom graffiti was discovered warning of a school shooting on Monday, which means hardly anybody showed up to school on Friday and school will be closed tomorrow, and now we are all suspended, in this state of tension and division. 

 

This, in the shadow of the school shooting in Michigan – the 28^th school shooting in America this year. We are averaging more than two a month, you guys, so all the administrators closing schools in an abundance of caution are not wrong to do so.  And yet another community is suffering unimaginable loss and grief. 

 

 Meanwhile, this morning’s headline read “Omnicron plunges the world into collective uncertainty.” As if we haven’t already been living in collective uncertainty for coming up on two years.  And so far we have no idea what this variant means or doesn’t mean, but that doesn't stop us from dooms-guessing.  So we let our already weary and tense selves get worked up and worried about what might be coming. And I don’t know about you, but once I get started, the apprehensions start to flow, and they’re hard to stop. Andy pointed out yesterday that I have a tell, a catch phrase that once he hears it, he knows I’ve handed over the reigns and anxiety is running the show.  It is when I start to say, with urgency and strain in my voice, how badly the dog needs her nails trimmed. 

 

So thank God for Advent. Thank God.

I welcome Advent’s demand that I wait in darkness for the light of God. Because there is darkness - around us, within us.  I believe this, I feel this, I struggle against this and often I succumb to it.  And I need to be told it’s ok to notice it and let myself feel how heavy and terrible it can be.  And yet, I also need to hear there is no darkness into which the Light does not shine; there is no darkness that can overcome the Light, and one day there will be no more darkness at all.  And that does give me hope. I am told to wait for peace, to expect it, to seek it and join it, and work for it, because I can trust that it is coming, that it comes. Into the darkest places, the most hopeless situations, God comes in.  This is what God does.

 

This story before us today pulls us back to the big picture: God comes into this life. 

It’s the continuation of my favorite story in scripture – last week we left silent Zechariah and pregnant Elizabeth, keeping mum about her pregnancy for the first five months too, because who could begin to explain? And who could she tell that would believe or understand?  Last week we jumped ahead to finish their part of the story. But that’s not how it happened – this part is what came in the middle, what shaped the next part, ultimately bringing them to tiny baby John the Baptist’s birth, and the end of Zechariah’s silence with his great proclamation to his startled neighbors, that culminates with exactly the words my soul needs to hear today:

By the tender mercy of our God,
   the dawn from on high will break upon us, 
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
   to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

 

So while Elizabeth and Zechariah are suspended in a state of uncertainty, Gabriel appears to Mary and invites her to share in the redemption of God, to let go of all that she though her life would be and step into this new role, God-bearer.  And when she is just as confused and questioning as Zechariah was about how the impossible could happen, Gabriel has a little more patience for her, and says, Even now your relative Elizabeth, who was barren, is in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible with God.  

 

And it doesn’t say that the angel tells her to go to Elizabeth but what else would Mary do? She immediately sets out on the 100-mile journey to visit the person she can share this with completely. And when she arrives, tired and hesitant, at her word of greeting, fetus John flip flops inside Elizabeth and kicks her out of her own silence to welcome Mary with joy and wonder, like a personal gift from God, Who am I that the mother of my Lord would come to me? She blesses Mary and her experience and trust, and Mary declares back to Elizabeth God’s greatness and what God is about to do. And right there the community of mystery-keepers and hope-bearers is formed: these two women, proclaiming the fulfillment of God’s promises with words and by their very bodies, and silent Zechariah taking it all in in wonder and witness.  Being together in this is what makes them able to trust that it is real. Bearing it together is what vanquishes fear and stirs possibility, what breeds hope and helps them anticipate the fullness of God for us all.  

 

We’ve said before that these three were church before there was a church. Even as Christ’s body was being formed, they are the nascent Body of Christ, helping each other remember the real reality breaking into this world, to see it unfolding right here in their very own lives, even. Together they are able to imagine the future God is bringing, can literally see in each other what God is doing for the future of the world, and proclaim it with confidence and trust. Together they move from suspended tension to hope-filled waiting.

 

No matter what unfolds in the world around us, in our own lives and bodies, in our communities and country, in the midst of whatever impossibility we are facing, or anticipating, or fearing, God is always breaking in. There is no life, no moment, no violence or horror, no despair or stuckness, no division, tension or uncertainty that God is not breaking into, not right alongside, not underneath and within. 

 

And we are given to one another- community to bear this reality together for the whole world, to remind each other of hope, to practice belonging and trust, to help each other watch God breaking in, and help each other live into the future that is coming. 

So we wait together in darkness for the light of God, and remind each that it’s ok to notice it and feel how heavy and terrible it can be.  At the same time we watch for the light and we seek peace, because the light shines in the darkness, and we trust that God comes in to bring redemption and life. That’s what God does. That’s who Jesus is: Emmanuel, God-with-us.  

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

 

Amen.

 

Yes to God's Yes

Luke 1:26-45

This week I was introduced to a gorgeous poem by Denise Levertov, called "Annunciation," that I carried throughout my week.  It suggests that we all have annunciations in our lives.  Moments of divine announcement that invite us to be part of something more.

That’s hard to imagine in the midst of daily traffic and business meetings, home improvements and political fiascos, global suffering and parenting challenges.  That we are invited by the divine into something extraordinary?

But imagine this is true. (Because it is).

And imagine for a moment how we might greet these annunciations.

Lots of people, this poem suggested, do great and valuable things in life without any awareness of or appreciation for it. They go through life unaffected, oblivious to the conspiracy of redemption unfolding around, and indeed even sometimes through, their own lives.

 

Others come to their annunciation moments with definite awareness, and so also fear and trembling at the terrible toll that risking will likely take on their equilibrium.  They back slowly away from the moment of change and choice, turn away and sit back down in their perpetual risklessness, preferring the delusion of safety, the illusion of inertia, to reckless trust.  And those people don’t get to be part of the marvelous things beckoning them to life.

But Mary.  She was open and ready when God’s Yes came.

God said, I am about to do the unfathomable.  You, Mary, will be in this with me.

And she met the moment.

What is it to say Yes to God’s yes?

To meet your annunciations when they come?

To allow yourself to take them in - to be taken in - with bewilderment, curiosity, willingness, and courage?

How can this be? Mary asks, explaining to her celestial visitor the biological impossibility of the thing he is announcing. 

But impossibility is how God always chooses to come.

So the angel tells her about Elizabeth.

He could have told her about any of the barren wombs or stuttering spokespeople, dead seas or impenetrable walls, invincible armies or lions’ dens, enormous giants, weak-minded monarchs, messed up protagonists, or hopeless, impossible situations through which God had been bringing salvation and hope to the world since the world began. But he doesn’t look back for his stories.  Instead, he says, Right now, even while we are speaking, God is doing this impossible thing.

And then the angel tells her about old Elizabeth, whose prayers had dried up, who is even now already bearing this great in-breaking of salvation.  

Nothing is impossible for God, Gabriel answers Mary.

And Mary says Yes to God’s Yes.

She steps into the story.

Meanwhile, the moment Mary is meeting with the angel, hearing of this thing that she will be part of (that will definitely destroy her equilibrium), Elizabeth, the one who was too old to bear children, is at home, five months further along in this divine collaboration.

God has taken away my disgrace! She had said when the miracle began. Even so, she still hasn’t made her condition known to the neighbors, preferring to keep her secret safe under wraps while she sorts it all out.

Mary answers the angel, Yes. Here am I. Let it be as you say.

And the first thing she does, as soon as she can arrange it, is to go to Elizabeth, a week’s journey away. Her first move in this Yes-saying, God-bearing life is to go be with someone who is also living this reality, someone who is part of the impossible too.

This is the joy week of Advent.

Joy is the miraculous in-breaking of God that bypasses logic and reaches you at your deepest self, filling you with delight, abundance, enough-overflowing. It’s when you touch transcendence, or rather, transcendence touches you. And for a moment, if only a moment, you are complete, and part of the completeness of things.

Joy is gut-splitting, thigh slapping laughter, and eye-shining, heart-swelling gratitude.  Joy is clutter-clearing, laser focus on deep beauty and transcendent love that most often comes, paradoxically, in the midst of profound pain and suffering.  Or joy meets us unexpectedly in the simplicity and utter ordinariness of tiny fingers wrapped around your own or the sigh you know as deeply as your own.  Or joy sweeps over us in those experiences beyond words, like soaring music, penetrating silence, or nature’s majesty that takes your breath away completely for a moment.  Joy recognizes God’s eternal Yes and then our whole being, body and soul, directly responds back, Yes! Oh my God, Yes!

When the door to Elizabeth’s largely silent and hidey hole home opens to the road-weary Mary, and Mary calls into the dimly lit room, “Greetings favored one!,” that little prophet in-utero flips upside down and thrashes around with joy.  And transcendence touches Elizabeth, and she is filled with delicious and complete knowing. 

“How is it that the mother of God comes to see me?!” she exclaims in joy, doubling over in laughter and tears. “How blessed is she who believes what God promises and acts on it! Here you are!”

Then contagious joy explodes and embraces them all, and then Mary knows too!  Her heart is thrown open and she sings out the great hymn of God’s eternal Yes, the Magnificat,:

‘My soul magnifies the Lord,

⁴⁷   and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

⁴⁸ for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

   Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

⁴⁹ for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

   and holy is his name.

⁵⁰ His mercy is for those who fear him

   from generation to generation.

⁵¹ He has shown strength with his arm;

   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

⁵² He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

   and lifted up the lowly;

⁵³ he has filled the hungry with good things,

   and sent the rich away empty.

⁵⁴ He has helped his servant Israel,

   in remembrance of his mercy,

⁵⁵ according to the promise he made to our ancestors,

   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

And for the next three months the two women share life side by side. They stew together in this new reality.  And within and between them grows the promise for all the world, until Elizabeth delivers the baby who will grow up to be the announcer of God’s coming in.   

Because it is the electricity of our belonging to God and belonging to each other, Joy is not a solo act. When this most astounding of things is about to happen, it must be shared.

And because God is about to enter in to share it all with us, sharing it with each other is how it all happens.

In the midst of whatever other questions and worries and wondering they bear, they do not bear any of it alone.  Their fears about the world and the future, their struggles with the daily grind, their ins and outs and ups and downs of life and death that often feel like the biggest and realest things, they share these.  And together they watch the slow, mysterious in-breaking of the divine right in the midst of it all. God is here, God is coming, and we get to be part of it!

They were, before such a thing existed, Church.

This pregnant elderly woman, her old, mute husband, (let’s not forget him), and the unwed teenage mother who showed up on their doorstep were the Body of Christ even as his body was taking form in their midst.

These three said Yes to God’s Yes, and they shared it with each other.

They said: I see you in this, please see me in this.

God has met me, how has God met you? 

I am part of what God is doing. You are part of what God is doing.

I have glimpsed what is to come. Tell me where you’ve glimpsed what is to come.

This is Church – this posse of unlikely people saying Yes to God’s Yes for the world and sharing it with each other.

Today, on this third Sunday of Advent, we will baptize little Andrew into this posse of unlikely people who say Yes to God’s Yes and share it with each other.  We will lift up our hearts, and this little one, to God, and recognize and receive God’s YES over us.

God’s Yes is for the whole world and everyone in it. But when we baptize Andrew, God’s Yes gets spoken over him specifically, and poured onto him deliberately, and pressed into him by our prayers and promises. And the Spirit of God meets us here with annunciation,  and invites Andrew into a life of reckless trust, to welcome God’s Yes.

No matter what Nos he shouts back to the heavens in the years to come, no matter what Nos the world tries to dismantle him with, no matter what Nos make him feel alone or afraid, or try to convince him that death is the biggest truest thing, the Yes of God that we receive over Andrew today is the first and final word of his life, the word of truth and hope and love that can never be rescinded. 

And we will tell him of this as he grows. You belong to God, Andrew. And you belong to the people around you, and to this precious world God has claimed for love.  Love your God. Love your neighbor. Live your Yes to God’s Yes. 

And when he forgets, like each of us frequently does, we will remind him, and ask him to remind us too, that our belonging, our being, begins in God’s love and will return to God’s love, and in between, living is filled with opportunities beyond measure to say Yes to God’s yes. Every. Single. Day. And we will pray for courage for Andrew to face his annunciations, when God invites him into the great Yes, for Andrew to meet those moments and receive the invitations. 

God came, God comes. In a baby, who came into the world like every other baby, but was God with us.

This is why we do this thing today, and make this impossible claim that that love is the power that transforms everything, that our lives are part of a great unfolding. Because God did this, Andrew, and you and I, are drawn into the story. Like Mary and Elizabeth and Zechariah too, we invited by the divine into something extraordinary.

And we help each other notice our annunciations and say Yes to God’s Yes when we share it with each other:

I see you in this, please see me in this.

God has met me, how has God met you? 

I am part of what God is doing. You are part of what God is doing.

I have glimpsed what is to come. Tell me where you’ve glimpsed what is to come.

How blessed are those who believe what God has promised and act on it!

Whatever else this week brings, whatever weariness or anger or frustration or hope, may it also bring flashes of joy, tastes of what is and will be.

And when God’s Yes comes to us, may we be open and ready.

Amen.

Premembering

Luke 1:39-56

Last week we met with Zechariah, who, in his forced silence, held on behalf of the whole world, reverence, awe and honor for this thing that was unfolding.

This week we are hanging out with Elizabeth.

At the moment Mary was meeting with the angel, hearing this thing that she would be part of, Elizabeth was at home, pregnant, already five months into this thing, perhaps having a quiet cup of tea and knitting some tiny outfit, with silent Zechariah by her side. 

Five months of hiding quietly at home. God has taken away my disgrace! she’d said, but it’s not clear exactly what it’s been replaced with. How in the world would she explain this to the neighbors? Walk her pregnant self into the shops? Send the silent Zechariah instead, raises fewer questions. It’s simpler to stay home and share the quiet wonder of all of this with the one other person on the planet who can understand it – to the extent that anyone can understand such a thing –  her mute husband.

When Mary asks the angel ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’

The angel answers, “God will do this! Even now your super old relative is pregnant! See! Nothing is impossible with God!” Perhaps what Mary heard, what she'd needed to hear, was, Elizabeth is in this too, Mary. Someone else knows what you are going through; someone else will understand. Say Yes and you wont be in it alone.

Mary answers Yes. Here am I. Let it be. And then immediately sets out for Elizabeth, a week’s journey away.  While Elizabeth and Zechariah hunker down at home and wait, Mary's first move is to go to those who understand, to share this astonishing reality with others.

This is the week of Advent dedicated to joy.  Last week we said “peace” means wholeness and fullness – life as God meant for it to be. Joy is when the deep wholeness, that absolute connection to God and each other, is felt with a jolt.  A sudden recognizing life as it was meant to be.  It causes laughter and euphoria, deep contentment, pleasure and delight. Joy happens when our whole being, body and soul, directly responds, Yes! Oh my God, Yes! Anne Lamott “Peace is joy at rest. Joy is peace on its feet.” 

Joy is a deep, delicious, knowing, in the core of you, what we’ve called “pre-membering,” which is tasting for a moment the future that is to come as though it is here in its fullness already.

We are talking a lot this Advent about how God comes – in outrageous impossibility, with the unexpected and unsuspecting people taking center stage.  And here that comes again - no human knowledge or insight directs this next scene.  No words are needed to bring the unborn prophet, his startled mother, his mute father, and the young mother to be of God-with-us together.  Joy alone is the language, when the Fetus John, already inhabiting his prophetic role of recognizing and pointing to the Messiah, flails and kicks inside Elizabeth at the approach of the Embryonic Jesus inside of Mary.  Joy! Oh my God, YES! It is real; it is coming! God is here! Aaah!

And joy is nothing if not contagious. 

John’s joy sets off Elizabeth, who is suddenly filled with the Holy Spirit and knows what is happening, which is to say, she is filled with joy, and she blurts out loudly, “Oh! ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” And the joy spreads, and then Mary knows too; joy opens up Mary’s heart and she sings out the great hymn of premembering, the Magnificat:

‘My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,

 for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.

   Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

   and holy is his name.

 His mercy is for those who fear him

   from generation to generation.

 He has shown strength with his arm;

   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

 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.

 He has helped his servant Israel,

   in remembrance of his mercy,

 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,

   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

And for the next three months the two women share life side by side, growing within and between them the promise for all the world. 

God is about to enter in to share it all with us.  So when this most precious and astounding of things about to happen, it must also be shared. Joy is not a solo act – because it is the electricity of our belonging to God and belonging to each other.  Whatever other questions, and worries, and wondering they bore, they did not bear them alone, and so neither did they taste eternity alone.  This pregnant elderly woman, her old, mute husband, and the unwed teenage mother who showed up on their doorstep, in the midst of what looked for all the world like an impossible situation, knew JOY. God is here, God is coming, and we get to be part of it!

*       *      *       *       *      *       *       *        *        *

Advent Evening Prayer: 
Tonight we join Elizabeth and her posse in the waiting.  

Tonight we bring whatever is on our hearts - whether heavy or light, we bring it to God. Our own places of impossibility and the world’s, our own darkness and the world’s, our own sadness or tiredness, wondering or worry, and that of the world.  And we let God who is here, and who is coming, meet us now.

Prayers for Joy you can do at home:

1- Contemplative Joy Walking Prayer: 

Get outside! 
Before you begin walking, pause and breathe, begin in rest.

Recall a time you felt joy with abandon.

As you walk, let yourself go back there in your mind. 

What was going on around you?

What were the sounds? Smells? Sights?

Where do you feel it in your body? 

Let yourself feel it as you walk.

Let this feeling and memory guide you.  

When you feel full of joy, begin noticing all around you, what are the sounds? Smells, sights? How does your body feel right now? 
Imagine walking each step inside God’s own joy.

When your walk is complete. Give Thanks.

2- Advent Joy World Prayer:

The world belongs to God.  

At every given moment, in every given place, there is at least one person who is feeling deeply connected with God’s reality – being guided by love, in touch with what God is doing, willing to feel it and celebrate it. 

 The Kingdom of God is here, and one day will fill all in all.  

As an Advent form of prayer, we wait for the fullness of God, and often we pray in sorrow and longing.  This prayer is a way to wait for that fullness by giving thanks for the fullness of God that already meets us, even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Directions:

Pull up an image of a map of the world - either on the computer, or use a globe or paper map.

Where would you normally pray for God to come, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ with sorrow and longing?

Pray for that place, but this time, picture God already there, already doing something, in and through the people in that place, holding them in love, bringing healing and comfort. 

Whether you feel a sense of peace and trust, or you simply wish you could, Place your finger on that place and say aloud: Someone here is feeling joy right now.

Keep doing this until you feel your stomach unclench, and a sense of trust arise. Or when you feel ready to put it down.

3- Reflection/Action Joy Prayer:

In a journal or on a piece of paper, consider, What gives me joy?  

Brainstorm and write a list.

Do not read the next direction until you've completed your list.

(seriously, don't read the next part until you've written a list...)

When you are finished – read on.

These things you've just listed point directly to your particular calling in the world.

We feel Joy when we are connected to our true purpose –

living the way God has made us to share in

God’s love in the world.

Which one of these things will you do this week?