Bearing the Light in a Disturbed Time

I'm glad to be back from break. Our leaky roof and living room ceiling are repaired and all of the plastic and buckets are out of the living room. It feels overwhelming to land back at work in the middle of yet another more intense and escalating national crisis. Like you, I am angry and upset about many things. I am particularly upset about the murder of Nicole Renee Good, a mother, poet, and member of the Queer community in Minneapolis, and the escalating violence in our nation that is being driven by irresponsible leadership, non-existent moral compasses, lies, greed, and incendiary rhetoric. I am aware that more than ever, we at UCH need to take deep breaths and root ourselves and our actions in our values and in the values of Jesus Christ: values like empathy, compassion, peacemaking, justice seeking, boundaries, table turning, spiritual practice, and love of God and love and care for our neighbors and ourselves. (Link to values statement here). The Holy Spirit wouldn't leave me alone last Sunday and didn't seem to care that I was on vacation. I know Jackie beautifully celebrated Epiphany with you. And I'm grateful for that. So here's a piece of my Epiphany sermon I didn't preach but felt in my blood and bone. I love you'all.  May the words of Mother Mary bless and inform our steps in the coming days.  

Herod leaves a trail of lies, death, and destruction because he is terrified of losing power. He is a desperate, mentally compromised, cruel, and vindictive man with a history of misusing his office, sowing chaos, parading and flexing the Legionnaires garrisoned at Caesarea Maritima, and destroying everyone around him who opposed him (or who he thinks might be disloyal like his wife Miriamne). He also had a familiar to us habit of self soothing by knocking down and building up very large buildings in his own honor as noted in historical (Josephus) and archaeological record.

There is a very good reason that Matthew's Gospel tells us, when "King Herod was disturbed. All of Jerusalem was disturbed with him." He doesn't care how his actions affect others, especially those who are most vulnerable. I'd wager that folkx in Judea were perpetually exhausted from living in a constant state of being disturbed.

Is anybody here disturbed? Is anyone here exhausted from being disturbed, or pondering the next violent self-serving move by our very own 21st century Herod?

Maybe that is one reason Mother Mary, in Luke's account, starts singing with God in the tradition of her ancestors. Women do odd things like this when we are exhausted, pondering, and disturbed. And Mother Mary had a lot to ponder and be exhausted and disturbed about as she said "yes" to the work of carrying God in her womb. But unholy empire, unjust rulers, and the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice (as Dr. King would have put it) seem to be very much on her mind.

May her words , her utterance, her song of calling down power in the midst of exhaustion, pondering, and disturbance be so. And may we say a resounding "yes" with her to bearing the light of Christ unapologetically in the face of imperialism and white Christian nationalist evil:

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for God who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is God's name.

And God's mercy is for those who fear them from generation to generation. She has shown strength with her arm; God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; she has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. God has helped me, God's servant, in remembrance of their mercy, as they spoke to our ancestors, and will speak to their descendants forever.”