Today we enter the last week of Advent. There are two choices for a lectionary text today: one focuses on Joseph’s response to learning that Mary, the woman to whom he is betrothed is pregnant; the other focuses on Mary’s response to learning she will bear the Child we know as Jesus. In one way they are different; in another, the same.
What is the same is that both Mary and Joseph are surprised. What is different is that Joseph in Matthew’s story has no voice; he is passive. In Luke’s story, Mary has a voice and her song becomes prophecy of what Jesus will mean to all of us.
Mary’s song, as recorded in Luke is a promise of tor justice and equity for all. Although many artists have painted the pregnant Mary as passive, she is not that in the Gospel. As we consider what the birth of Jesus means to us, we, too, should not be passive but active in the service of love and justice.
Prayer for the Day
Images from another time and place fill our mind, O God,
As we contemplate the meaning of biblical texts;
You have promised equity and justice to all peoples,
But we know that neither come without pain and labor.
Grant, O God, that we, too become instruments of your justice
As did the young woman who bore a child so long ago.
In the name of the One who points the way,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
When she heard infinity whispered in her ear, did the flashing scissors
in her fingers fall to the wooden floor, and the spool unravel,
the spider’s sly cradle tremble with love?
- Kathleen Wakefield, American poet, from Mary’s Song
Welcome! All wonders in one sight! /Eternity shut in a span.
Summer in winter, day in night, heaven in earth and God in man.
Great little one! Whose all-embracing birth,
Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav’n to earth!
- Richard Crashaw, English poet and cleric (1612-1649)
And Mary said: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;
For God has looked with favor on the lowliness of God’s servant….
God has brought the powerful down from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich empty away.
Luke 1:46-47, 52-53