4th Sunday of Advent
4th Sunday of Advent
December 21, 2014
Joining God’s Project of Salvation
Fourth Sunday of Advent – Year B
2Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16
Ps 89:2-3, 4-5, 27, 29
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38
The verses we sing in today’s Responsorial Psalm are woven with glimmering strands of gratitude, awe, timelessness, and belonging. Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord could be Mary’s words throughout her life, or David’s words, or Paul’s and hopefully, they are our own. The psalm comes in the midst of the Liturgy of the Word, deepening the water course for the flow of salvation history, the story of God and the people of God from ancient days down to our own time, thickening the narrative of God’s covenant with us and how to trace it through David and Mary, mapping the course of the promise of a kingdom, the promise of a homeland, the promise of a Messiah, a blessed one, a liberator.
We treasure this relationship with God and use language of kinship to describe it because that’s what’s deepest in our hearts and that is the way God has approached us, has energetically struggled to get through to us, from the beginning. In 25 Windows into the Soul: Praying with the Psalms, Joan Chittister, OSB identifies Psalm 89 as a psalm of relationships, and in her own lectio divina, emphasizes verse 12: The heavens are yours, the earth is yours: the world and it fullness you have made. We, God’s people, are part of that fullness of the exuberant earth, part of the swirling heavens; we each are an integral part of the mystery Paul strives to uncover and to promulgate. We each have a part to play in this story of salvation.
But, when you look a little deeper, psalm 89 is a much longer composition. It is actually a song of community lament, the anguished prayer of a people struggling because the anointed one and the homeland are being destroyed. This is not hard to understand if you have Internet, TV, radio, and take in the mayhem that is part of the story of our world today. Or maybe you do not need the external media, perhaps your own home, workplace or neighborhood is offering up enough chaos all on its own. Not only this psalm but some Christmas music of past and present refers to this confusion – we are loved unconditionally by God, we are saved, and great turmoil with its accompanying suffering continue to operate, apparently unchecked.
Yet in the midst of all this, rather than lose faith, the psalmist’s approach is to encourage the people to reach deep into memory and history, to remind God of God’s promise, not doubting its veracity, but claiming their stake in the covenant between them. What does that mean for us? If we are to fulfill our own prophetic role, by the obedience of faith, as Paul suggests, we do well to pray, deeply and reverently, the psalm verses just as they appear in today’s liturgy. They are sustenance for the journey, guiding lines, threads of hope and intuition which illumine our own discernment. They prepare us to respond as Mary did when she was invited to step into the dance of salvation history and on each day of her life thereafter.
As we absorb the psalm verses, they become much more than a musical bridge between readings; they become our response to life and to our God, the giver of life. They encourage us, put heart into us, strengthen our hearts for whatever is needed and we encourage one another when we chant them together. The glowing thread of encouragement is woven throughout these readings. Nathan encourages David, the psalmist encourages his beleaguered community, the angel encourages Mary, and Paul encourages all of us. We know that some of Jesus’ favorite lines are “Peace be with you” “Don’t be afraid.” These words of encouragement are not meant to soothe us, but rather say “Take heart; you can do it. I’ve got you; I always have and I always will.” And the angel says them to Mary as well.
To understand what we are being encouraged to do, we look to Mary; we study at the scene of the Annunciation. Mary provides a model of how to follow Christ. Hopefully, it’s encouraging that Mary was a young girl, quite powerless in her world, in an out of the way town, quite powerless in its world. Her story is similar to other Bible stories of the announcement of surprising births, particularly that of Zechariah learning he will be the father of John, although the angel has learned better manners by the time he visits Mary. And that is key to this story because it shows Mary as deeply in communion with God and in relationship with a loving God who wants to be her covenant partner and seeks her acceptance of the plan. Vatican II reiterated this concept in Lumen gentium: “Rightly therefore, the Fathers see Mary as not passively engaged by God, but as freely cooperating in the work of (our) salvation through faith and obedience.” Paul’s letter urges us to turn to God who can strengthen us, encourage us, to bring about obedience through faith, to empower us to say yes, as Mary does, to what God asks of us as unique and beloved individuals.
In Truly Our Sister, Elizabeth Johnson further develops this idea of obedience, reminding us that the root of obedience is “listen” so Mary, listening with the ear of her heart, chose her response, making it more a case of personal autonomy. After considering her options; she decided to go for it, to join God in this project of salvation. Elizabeth Johnson beautifully presents the angel’s message: The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you as a one of encouragement to Mary, that she assume this prophetic role as the Mother of God, showing how frequently, when used elsewhere in scripture, these very expressions convey God’s empowerment and protection of the prophets and of the people of God in their lives. In this message, Mary encounters directly the God of loving kindness and finds enough faith in God and in herself for the project, enabling her to say yes. Trust is a word we may understand better than faith when it comes to our own relationships. So in the midst of whatever our own personal joys or calamities are this Advent, these scriptures urge us to trust and believe that God is strengthening, protecting, and loving us. Imbued with that knowledge, what risk are you willing to take to heal, to restore, to create, to reconcile, to liberate, wherever there is need in the out of the way corner of the planet where you find yourself these days?
