Two Women

Two Women

Grace and peace from the Mystery in whom we live and move and have our being. Two women meet.

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.”

Luke 1:39-55

Two women meet. Two women meet. Both know cultural shame at a very deep level in their lives. One, Elizabeth, has lived with the shame of not being able to get pregnant for most of her life; the other, Mary, is living with the shame of being pregnant too soon in her life. Apparently for women, it’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Two women meet

Two women meet. Two women meet. Here at the beginning of the Jesus incarnation it is two women who introduce the coming kingdom, which is kind of interesting when you consider the culture of the time. And then, guess what, it will be a group of women who are the first to introduce the risen Lord to the world at the end of the Jesus incarnation. Women at the beginning! Women at the end! Women it seems, are the Alpha and the Omega of Jesus. So, why is it that for almost 2000 years we told them to keep quiet about God things, God talk and living in Mystery? Why is it that the institutional church, from Roman Catholicism to evangelical fundamentalism, refuses to let women speak from their highest places, their thrones of power?

Why it’s almost as if God is bringing the mighty and proud down with these two women and raising up the humble and lowly of heart. Nahhh, the Mystery would never do that.

Why, we can’t have the Mystery playing favorites, can we? We can’t have the Mystery taking sides, can we?

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.”

Does the Mystery play favorites?

Why, we can’t have the Mystery playing favorites can we? We can’t have the Mystery taking sides, can we?

But yet, here’s the thing. When my boys were younger, they used to watch the Power Rangers on TV, I’m sorry, The Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. And after the show was over they would beat the snot out of each other because that is what the Power Rangers did to the bad people, monsters, whatever, and so they would do the same. Which I always found curious, because after they watched Barney and listened to the “Clean Up” song they never helped clean up. Still haven’t figured that one out.

Anyway, while they were smacking each other around the older one almost always won because he was bigger and stronger. And I would have to intervene and guess whose side I would take; guess who I would come to rescue. Yeah, the younger one, the smaller and weaker one. Now, I am sure that my older son thought I was playing favorites, but I wasn’t. I was simply trying to save myself some medical bills I couldn’t afford. But I have no doubt he thought at that point I loved his younger brother more than him.

And that is how it can seem when you are on top, in a position of power, and you hear these words of Mary.

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.”

Is God taking sides?

Why is God taking sides? That is how it can seem when you are on top, in a position of power, and you hear these words of Mary. Because when entitlement is your baseline, equality feels like oppression.

When entitlement is your baseline, equality feels like oppression.

And don’t just ask me, ask any straight white male how he is feeling these days what with the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements to name a couple. Because, you see, when entitlement is your baseline, equality feels like oppression.

Two women meet. Two women, and they speak of the Mystery

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.”

Throughout history, poor and oppressed people have often identified with this song — the longest set of words spoken by a woman in the New Testament (and a poor, young, unmarried pregnant woman at that!).

The Magnificat

Oscar Romero, priest and martyr, drew a comparison between Mary and the poor and powerless people in his own community. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian who was executed by the Nazis, called the Magnificat “the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary hymn ever sung.”

Revolutionaries, the poor and the oppressed, all loved Mary and they emphasized her glorious song. But the Magnificat has been viewed as dangerous by people in power. Some countries — such as India, Guatemala, and Argentina — have outright banned the Magnificat from being recited in liturgy or in public.

You see, there is something transformational about this one who comes to us. And things are not left the same.

Richard Rohr writes in his book, Breathing Under Water

“All societies are addicted to themselves and create deep codependency on them. There are shared and agreed-upon addictions in every culture and every institution. These are often the hardest to heal because they do not look like addictions because we have all agreed to be compulsive about the same things and blind to the same problems.”

I want to repeat that line,  “we have all agreed to be compulsive about the same things and blind to the same problems.”

Addictions and Codependencies

Rohr continues,

 “The Gospel exposes those lies in every culture. The American addiction to oil, war, and empire; the church’s addiction to its own exceptionalism; the poor person’s addiction to powerlessness and victimhood; the white person’s addiction to superiority; the wealthy person’s addiction to entitlement.” … “The Gospel exposes those lies in every culture.”

So writes Richard Rohr.

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.”

There is something transformational about this one who comes to us. Things are not left the same, and they can’t be left the same if we are to be healed. How we respond to this passage says much more about us than it does about the Mystery.

And I’m not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, I am fully aware that I am not among the 1% and so I kind of like the idea of bringing the mighty and powerful down, but I don’t have to drive more than a few minutes from here to realize that to a great many people, I am the proud, the powerful, and the rich.

Good news, bad news

Sometimes I feel like this passage is the beginning of a cosmic joke that begins with, “Mother Mary walked into my life and said ‘I’ve got good news and bad news for you. What do you want first?’”

“Give me the bad news.”

“You’re going to be brought low.”

“Great, what’s the good news?”

“You’re gonna be lifted up!”

Well, that is certainly ‘good news’ as long, of course, as I’m not lifted up like Jesus was. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the being brought low and the lifting up aren’t two different things. Maybe they are the same thing. Maybe it is in the being brought low that we are lifted up.

Maybe that’s what those in recovery are trying to say to me when they say how thankful they are for their addiction. Maybe that is what my sister means when she says she doesn’t need to be healed from her MS because the MS has healed her.

“My grace is sufficient for you.”

Maybe that is what Paul means when he writes in response to the Christ saying to him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  And Paul writes in response, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness so that Christ’s power may rest on me, for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Personally, I’d much prefer the strength without the weakness but that’s just me, and probably you.

So maybe what Mary is talking about here isn’t two different kinds of people — me and THEM, me and THOSE people — maybe what she is talking about is me and the crazy mess and mixed up person I am, in my highs and lows, my arrogance and humility, my pride and low self-esteem.

And in those highs and lows, arrogance and humility, pride and low esteem, the Christ is with me working to bring healing to me in all its dimensions so that the laying low is also the raising up. And the Christ is with me through it all.

Emmanuel

You know, I think I have a suggestion for Mary on what to call this kid…

How about “Emmanuel,” “God with us.”    

But then again, maybe that woman, Mary, already knows what I’m just learning.

Wouldn’t that just bring me down from my throne! And raise me up to a new way of living!

Amen.

Wednesday Respite is a 30-min contemplative service of scripture, prayer, music and a Spirited Touchpoint by Spirit in the Desert faith mentor, Rev. “Bro. Jim” Hanson.

Touchpoint is a reflection on where God’s story touches our life story. It is a short homily based on a biblical story of people in the Old and New Testaments and their relationship with God. Our spiritual ancestors’ experience of God’s grace connects with our lives in the present and our relationship with the Divine. Previous Touchpoints are available as PDFs or on SoundCloud.

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