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Sing a song of hope and resilience
Fourth Sunday After Advent ● December 22, 2024
Rev. Jeff Wells © 2024
You can view the full worship video recording at:
Scripture Readings:
Luke 1:26-38 and 1 John 3:16-19 (Inclusive Bible)
The texts of the readings are in the worship bulletin linked here.
Earlier in the story we just heard, Mary had experienced a call from God to bear and raise a son who would become a leader for his people. Mary was a very bright girl. She must have known some of the risks involved in accepting this call and the big challenges she would face and her son would face going forward. But Mary said “Yes!” to God’s call. According to today’s part of this uplifting story, while she was visiting her cousin, Elizabeth, Mary was inspired to break out in song. And this was no ordinary song. This was not just a song of joy over being pregnant or because she was with her beloved cousin, who was also pregnant. This song reminds us of the proclamations of the Hebrew prophets. In this story, Mary sang as though the events she described were something God had already accomplished. Yet, the truth is that in the era when Mary became pregnant and would have sung this song, God had not scattered the proud or deposed the mighty from their thrones and raised the lowly to high places. Herod was still the puppet “King of the Jews” and Caesar Augustus was still emperor of Rome. The Jewish people were under the oppressive and violent rule of the Roman Empire. And Herod and the Jewish religious leaders collaborated in exploiting the Jewish people and keeping them in line on behalf of Rome. God had not filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. The rich were getting richer and the peasants and the poor were suffering. Yet, Mary sang a song of confident faith in God’s desire for justice and thriving – a vision God was trying to inspire her people to work toward. Hers was a song of hope and resilience.
The “Hebrew Bible” does not consistently present an all-powerful and controlling God, although that is certainly one significant theological strain in the Jewish scriptures. The way Luke presents her, Mary believed that God could, at least sometimes, intervene and single-handedly make things happen – or prevent something from happening. God was in control – at least of major events. But we have a different theological perspective. I think most of us believe that God’s love is very powerful and persuasive, but that what God desires to see happen requires the cooperation and collaboration of creatures – including, but not limited to, human beings. As with Mary, God beckons or inspires us and we have to respond. We are not forced to say, “Yes!”, but if we are listening attentively and openly to God, we are often able to grasp the wisdom and the appeal of saying, “Yes” to God’s beckoning call.
When I said “Yes,” 24 years ago, to God’s call to become a preacher and pastor, I could not envision all of the hard challenges or the great joys I would experience along the way. I could not have known the pain and sadness I would witness or endure or the gratification I would feel and the tremendous ways I would learn and grow. I lived through many periods of very great difficulty and often could not predict how things would turn out. I did my best to listen to God’s leading along the way and responded the most loving and brave ways I could. To use today’s metaphor, I learned to sing songs of hope and resilience, no matter what the circumstances of the moment.
Currently, we are all facing what seem likely to be very challenging, risky, and even painful times ahead in the next few years and decades. We can’t say with any certainty what lies ahead, what ways we will require God’s help to find strength and courage within ourselves. We do not know the particular ways we might need to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others, but we know self-giving love will be required. We do know that God will call on each of us to contribute to promoting and increasing love, justice, compassion, care, and goodness in the world. And individually and communally, we will need to be attentive to God’s inspiration and be courageous and take initiative even when we are not sure where God is leading us. And it’s not always easy. I am certain that sometimes what we sense God calling us to will be something to which it will be very difficult to say “Yes.” We may feel God is asking too much of us – that it is too risky or we don’t have what it takes. Yet, in my experience, God always helps inspire us to grow into whatever is demanded of us in the moment. And, whatever God calls us to is worth the risk, because responding to God’s call to give ourselves for others in love, justice, and compassion is one of the key things that give our lives meaning and purpose.
Writing this message made me think of three persons who felt called by God and took a courageous stand in the pursuit of love and justice. All three of them lost their lives to that cause while they were still in their 30s. They were Jesus, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King Jr. We know Jesus’ story and Dr. King’s story well, so I won’t repeat the details here. If you are not familiar with Bonhoeffer, he was a German pastor and theologian, who was a key leader in the opposition to the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s. In particular, he founded the Confessing Church movement to struggle against the German Lutheran Church’s collaboration with Hitler and the Nazi regime. For this and other actions, he was arrested in 1938 and executed by hanging in 1945, just before the end of World War II.
Jesus, Bonhoeffer and King all died far too young. They did not live to see the fullness of what saying “Yes” to God’s call meant for humanity. Imagine what more they might have accomplished or contributed had they lived longer. Yet, the truth is, that none of us get to witness the full impact that our lives have had or see the complicated ways our actions have combined with those of so many others to move the creating, evolving order of the universe in more positive directions. And we have to realize it is not all about us as individuals, but what we can accomplish together with others.
I wish the world were in a better place. I wish the struggle for love and justice were not so hard. I wish we could play offense more often than defense. But we must not allow our circumstances, no matter how difficult, to drive us to despair or hopelessness. In that state of mind, we will not be able to hear or respond to God’s call. We can become paralyzed by despair or fear. Then, we will not be able to summon the will or the courage to act when it is most needed.
When I am feeling discouraged, I remember that followers of Jesus, and people in general, have endured really terrible times before. And my belief in the God of love, goodness, and justice gives me the strength to struggle on. My study of history has taught me great things have been achieved against the odds, in unexpected ways, and sometimes when we do not expect it. So, I am prepared to do whatever needs to be done. I am prepared to say yes to God’s call. “Yes,” even to the point of giving my life for my friends, as Jesus described the ultimate cost of discipleship.
Just as Moses did not get to enter the “promised land” and Dr. King said getting to the mountaintop was enough for him, we have to be satisfied with the part we play, gratified with the contributions we are able to make. Theologian Reinhold Neibuhr taught Christian social ethics at Union Theological Seminary from 1928 to 1960 and was an important mentor to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and so many others. Neibuhr famously wrote the following often-quoted statement:
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime. Therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history. Therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore, we must be saved by love.
Our God is a God of infinite hope. So, let us dare to hope and imagine the world the way it could and should be and that very act of hoping and imagining will transform us and help us to transform the world. Let us believe that another world is not only possible, she is on her way.