(Editor’s note: The following is a submission to The Recorder’s weekly column, “Faith Matters.” Each Saturday, a different faith leader in Franklin County offers a personal perspective in this space. To become part of this series, email religion@recorder.com or call 413-772-0261, ext. 265.)
By REV. MOLLY SCHERM
St. Andrews Episcopal Church
I love Advent, the four weeks in which Christians prepare ourselves for Christmas, for many reasons. In Advent we sing great music and light our Advent Wreaths, always on the lookout for the first real snow.
More important, it is a time of hopeful anticipation as we get ready to celebrate once again God’s entering into the world of human experience in the birth of Jesus.
We hear beloved words from the Prophets promising that God is doing a new thing, at work bringing about a realm of peace, mercy and justice when, in words we heard on the first Sunday of Advent, “they shall beat their swords into plough shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks;… they shall study war no more.”
This Advent, as we work at recovering from an ugly campaign season and worry about deep political, social, religious and economic divisions in our country and our world, we need positive images and messages of hope.
Possibly the best thing about Advent, and one of its predominant messages of hope, is the story of Mary learning from an angel the role she is to play in the world’s redemption. Traditional piety has often portrayed Mary as “meek and mild,” emphasizing her humility and submission in response to the angelic visitor’s announcement that she is to give birth to the promised Messiah. To the contrary, more recent theology has helped us to reclaim Mary as a powerful model of empowerment to inspire us all.
The young woman receiving the angel’s news would have been poor, living in a Jewish province of the Roman Empire. Her life would not have been easy, or her prospects encouraging. She was disadvantaged by her poverty, her age, her ethnicity and religion, and her gender. It seems to me that what is important about the Annunciation story is Mary’s response to unexpected news. She so easily could have focused on the discovery of her pregnancy as yet an additional burden, a further experience of helplessness and powerlessness. Instead, in her moment of learning the unexpected, Mary embraces opportunity.
She believes in the power of the God of Israel and, as did others of her time, looks for God to break into human history to bring about a new world.
What is remarkable in the Annunciation story is Mary’s willingness to recognize that she has a part to play. In the declaration she makes to her kinswoman, Elizabeth, shortly after the angel’s visit, Mary speaks in daring and unsettling images of change. She does not accept the status quo in which she lives, nor is she daunted by the limitations of her own position in the social order. She looks for the familiar patterns of human history to be transformed. She has faith in a God who “does great things,” who brings down the selfish and the arrogant, and lifts up the lowly. She praises a God who “fills the hungry” and “sends the rich away empty.” She believes that change is possible, that it is coming and, most remarkably, that she is the agent through whom God is acting.
As was Mary’s, our world is torn by inequalities, injustice, violence and human blindness. The arrogance and self-centeredness that Mary called for God to reverse in her time are still so very much with us. I think most of us long for something better than what we see around us, but easily feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of change that is needed. We long for change, and we are terrified of it.
In this and every Advent, Mary’s story teaches us that it is our opportunity and our responsibility to be the agents of the changes the world needs, and in so doing, to bear God into the world. It is through us that God acts. It is through opening ourselves and looking beyond ourselves that we can glimpse God’s broader vision of what is possible. It is through our choices to serve one another and to stand for truth that God transforms the world.
This is the wonderful and hopeful message of the Advent season, and why I love it.