December 24, 2006: OUT OF TOWN GUESTS
Luke 1:39-55, Hebrews 10:5-10
Eileen Parfrey - Springwater Presbyterian Church

 

The Tuesday prayer group and I discovered that praise is hard work. It's easier to apologize to God, to ask for help, to say thanks. But to tell God in detail, "You are really wonderful!" That's hard! I figured a pastor oughta be better at praise, so I decided to practice. It's slow going, but you'll see my learning process on the take-home insert. I use one praise word a day from St Francis' prayer, The Praises of God, and I got to "courage" this week. Thursday was "compassion," Friday was "courage."

I knew that humans needed courage, but I'd never thought God needed it. It was a stretch, but I tried the praise-God of courage. Burdened as God is with compassion, I suppose it's courage that keeps God from blasting us to smithereens when we mess up, keeps God in relationship with us. To love us when we do our best to make it difficult to be our Lover. To love us in spite of our efforts to prove our loveable we are. To stake the gift of salvation on the actions of a few people. To risk Sarah and Abraham leaving home and waiting for their baby. To risk Hannah surviving harassment for her barren-ness until Samuel came along-and then to give him back. To risk Elizabeth accepting her husband, speechless after Temple duty, as the father of her son, John. To risk Mary's consent-unmarried, too young for mothering-to become the mother of God.

That God would have the courage to be reduced to a few cells in an ordinary woman's body, growing and differentiating in the normal way, until they could move and breathe and eat, only to be expelled from that safe place, bloody and watery. Squalling for food, uncomfortable in diapers, maybe colicky, taking on burps and runny nose and all. A normal human with courage to follow the rules or face the consequences. Courage to die without a guarantee as to "what happens next." Courage to risk everything. For the sake of a deep and abiding compassionate love that can see a deeper conclusion to the judgment righteousness demands. Courage to risk God-made-human. Surprise and miracle! God might be for us, after all.

And what kind of person is in on the ground floor of this revelation of God's splendor? Who does God choose to get the good news first? Certainly not religious professionals, those in the business of understanding and explaining God, theologizing and doctrining. The first ones to get the surprising news are two women who don't even possess the marginal value of "real women." One barren, the other not-yet-fertile. Second-class humans whose value is only potential until they become mothers. Nobody important. A subversive story to pair with Hebrews today. Hebrews calls to the Jewish reader's mind the old prophets, the ones who portray the legal dispute between God and Israel that God pursued as the kingdom fell into idolatry. It's a life-or-death lawsuit, in which God is accuser, judge, prosecutor, jury, witness, jailer, bondsman, executioner, and defending attorney. Not surprisingly, the prosecutor wins the case, and most of Israel is disbursed to the ends of the earth, while a remnant is sent into Babylonian captivity. But wait! Now comes another role for God as judge/jury/jailer/executioner God. In Jesus, God settles the suit. He either serves the sentence or pays the fine or erases the conviction from the books.

Maybe that's what Jessy Moore thought. Moore is the convicted child molester who was released by the Multnomah County Jail last week after his sentencing. "Early Christmas!" he must have thought as he was released after hearing his sentence would be 54 months in jail and then got his walking papers. Debt to society-paid up? The sheriff vowed to hunt him down and catch him, sending Jessy on to prison. Which is what happened. But even if Jessy had walked, unless he receives help, he is condemned to offend again.

The miracle of God for us means we will be neither hunted down and made to pay, nor will we be condemned to offend again. If we choose. Which means we have to face our questions and doubts, do the tough work of discovering the truth about God's contentions against us, experience God's courage on our behalf. That we must choose is why the splendor of God-become-human is first revealed to people who are unimportant, ordinary, normal. People like us. People who probably have to learn praise, one word at a time. People who make their same mistakes over and over, stuck in generations old patterns of self-destruction. Whose parents didn't give them unconditional love. Whose lives are filled with dissatisfactions. Whose marriages are less-than-wonderful. Whose children don't meet their expectations. People who take the edge off the grief and disillusion with a bottle or pack of cigarettes. Whose distractions overwhelm them. Just regular folk.

One writer admitted that she sometimes finds herself praying for something because she thinks she "ought to," not because she really believes God will or can meet that request. She writes of a conversation with her spiritual director about her discomfort, praying under those circumstances. Was she arrogant or disrespectful or negative or faithless to continue to pray when she didn't really believe God was hearing her? Her director replied, "I think we are supposed to come to God with the faith we do have, not the faith we ought to have." As she pondered God's acceptance, she realized God is pleased with what we bring. Coming with the faith we've got-that is enough. Approaching God with our concerns is pleasing to God, perhaps more than the amount and content of our faith. Not the spiffy face we put on things, our flowery Bible-quoting prayers, our attendance prizes, our theological clarity. Relationship is not about "thinking good thoughts." Or even right thoughts. It's about presence and integrity.

The incredible, ludicrous miracle is God-become-human. Miracles of any kind are preposterous-babies for the barren, belief for the doubter, freedom for the addicted, unstuckness for the one trapped. Miracles are counter-rational. The point is surrender to them. It isn't just that Mary and Elizabeth's surrender to the counter-rational. The miracle is that God comes. God comes. We don't have to understand what God's up to in order to participate in it. We only need to accept it, to experience God's presence. Miracle doesn't depend on us. It depends on God, whom we cannot understand or contain. But like the two women in our story, we can add our own, "Glory to God!"