On Sunday 14 December 2008, the 3rd Sunday in Advent, Port Adelaide Uniting Church celebrated the 140th anniversary of the current church building. During the morning worship service Val Bennett gave the following Reflection on Mary’s Song of Praise, the Gospel Reading from Luke 1v47-55.
Reflection
God’s intervention into human history hangs upon this moment. A moment in real time – in the little-known & ill-regarded town of Nazareth. But also a moment out of time when God asks for space to become born in human form. We believe that the Christian redemption story hangs upon the consent of a young girl in Israel/Palestine, Mary, who is engaged to be married to a local carpenter called Joseph. We can imagine Heaven & Earth holding their breath as the angel Gabriel awaits Mary’s reply.
Each Tuesday morning we have a Bible Study group that looks at the Scriptures set in the lectionary for the next Sunday. Last Tuesday, one of our number commented… I wonder how many other girls God asked? I wonder how many knocked God back! I was once attending a course entitled ‘Men, women & the Bible’. (It was long ago when we needed to have such titles) when a young woman burst out ‘How can you Christians follow a God who raped a young girl?!’. But it wasn’t like that… we’ve just heard the story 3 times… in 2 songs and from our sacred book… God asked and Mary made the choice!”
If we want to, we can distance ourselves from this story and put Mary into a glass case, surround her with flowers & veneration, and avoid the personal consequences of this moment. Because God asks, not just Mary of Nazareth, but every one of us, to make Christ a human home, in our own bodies, minds, hearts & lives, where His redeeming work may continue. He asks for the broken threads of our own, personal, human experience, and promises to weave them into His dream for all creation.
God asks you… God asks me… will you give birth to My love, in your own life, so that all creation might be restored to wholeness? The question is put to us over and over again as we live out our lives. Sometimes we say “yes” with wholehearted assent. Sometimes the fears win & we hold back. God will never use force to persuade you. For God loves us. In Jesus, God has come to earth & opened Godself to all the raw brutality, as well as the warm tenderness of human life.
Symbolically we all carry the seed of the Christ-Child within us. We are, in a way, pregnant with the ideas, the creativity, the work, the dreams, that God wants done in this world. I invite you to sit quietly now, thinking back over this remarkable story…trying to get in touch with Mary’s experience… imagine yourself carrying the Christ… how do you tend it, nurture it, so that a healthy birth will happen, in the fullness of time. And what dreams of God do you carry now? What might God be asking you to dream, and plan for, and do! 2000 years ago, Mary said a resounding YES! to God. How that YES changed our world! 160 years ago refuge seekers from far across the other side of the earth said YES to God here in Port Adelaide. See how that has changed our world! And now it’s our turn. Are we saying YES to Christ living God’s vision in us?
Regular walking for just half an hour, preferably every day, can make all the difference.
