Advent 4 in the RCL: Luke 1:26-38
Let us begin with a short discussion that takes us a little afield. I often think of Zoo Story, the play by Edward Albee, which contains the line: "Sometimes, you have to go a long way out of your way, to come back a short distance the right way." This may be one of those occasions.
So: I don't feel like I belong in church.
I have had the unusual privilege of touring congregations lately, visiting and exploring and seeing what they are about. And again and again I'm discovering something: I don't feel like I belong in church.
Perhaps part of the reason is that, about half the time, I can slip into a new church and have no one speak to me. Don't misunderstand--I don't try to avoid people. I even stick out in a crowd, partly because I'm a little tall and I'm often the only person in the room in their 20s or 30s. I tend to sit toward the back because I'm usually late. I participate actively in the service--worship is fun, after all--and I don't usually bother to open the order of service because I know it. I sing confidently, if not always beautifully, and if the hymn has a good tenor line, I hunt and peck until I find it. But about half the time, no one speaks to me--perhaps at the peace, those nearby will shake my hand and mutter something or other. However, being ignored is, for me, the smaller problem.
The bigger problem is that I have so little to connect to in the worship services. Now, it's true, I love liturgy and singing and preaching. But, where I have been (here and all over the country) few people sing in the congregations, small or big, racially diverse and un-. At a guess, roughly 90% of the sermons I've heard were bad, sometimes because they lacked a central point, sometimes because they were irrelevant, and once because I saw someone snowball every bad sermon technique into 28 minutes of non-stop torture. Most congregations seem bored to be there--that's the feeling in the air, whether they feel that way in their selves or not (I hope they don't feel that way). As for me, I have a terrific thirst for meaning and gospel at this time. I want to know more about God, contemplate God in silence, speak with God about many things. But when I visit a church, I mostly feel the distinct sensation that I don't belong--I'm too young, too thoughtful, too much wanting to express my individual voice, too much wanting to hear others.
I've tried to think of an image of this experience. Here's one for you--I like it, so follow it through. It's like being 15 and entering a nursing home where you've come to visit your grandmother. It's not that there's anything wrong with nursing homes, at least in principle. Older folks need care at certain times in their lives, and sometimes families or the people themselves cannot care for them as they had hoped at other stages.
But as a 15 year old, even knowing those things, even having come to visit your grandmother whom you've loved your whole life, the nursing home is most emphatically a place where you do not belong. It smells funny. No one speaks your language. People often ignore you, or when they do speak to you, you can't tell if they're really talking to you or someone from their past they've projected on top of you (this happens to me in almost every church). If you spend much time there, the nursing home is incredibly boring. The actions of those working there seem perfunctory but organized, following a calendar you can see on the wall (filling socks for the homeless on Wed; Friday is bingo night!) but that has no relationship to your calendar. People shake your hand your hand when you enter and leave, and everyone comments on how sharp you look and wonders where you go to school, but no one really sees you. You'd go there to visit your grandmother--it's the best place to see her. But you wouldn't stay. You wouldn't want to go back. It would be something to be tolerated as part of 'grandmother-visiting.'
And by the image, I do not mean that churches are full only of the elderly. Often, the younger adults and middle aged are the strongest nursing-home participants. Worse, many of the churches that I have seen that claim to be welcoming, or relevant, or hip, or young, are worse than the others. They're like elitist nursing homes, where if you feel like you don't connect, it must be because the problem is you.
Now, while all of this does make me question my call to be in church, I do love church. I love the liturgy, the scripture, the sacraments, the Holy Spirit of the whole affair. I connect to those things even as I feel like I don't belong, so I manage. But I do manage even while I feel alienated. And sometimes, I wonder whether I could recommend church to anyone I know outside the church. I don't feel like I can, not in good conscience. If a friend visited and said: it was like being part of a bizarre and ancient social experiment in ostracizing foreigners, I couldn't help but agree. I long for community and church that is engaging, thoughtful, energetic, contemplative, heart-filled. I well know that this doesn't happen every Sunday in any community, but you think it'd have to happen sometimes. Or that that kind of community would at least be a goal. Mostly, folks seem content when I visit church.
So, why such a long reflection on this experience? Partly because I'm always curious if others feel this way, and I suspect that others have and maybe even for different reasons. Perhaps this will spur some reflection on our practices. But mostly because I want to share a bit how an insider, like me, can feel like an outsider. I want to show that someone who is quite privileged, who is in the inner circle, can also not belong, can want something that is entirely outside my power. I suspect many of you have had similar experiences--being both an insider, and outsider.
Because it is in that insider/outsider split that I relate best to Mary. It's the theme that dominates her life. In our lesson today, we hear that great emotional story, the call of Mary to be the mother of Christ. The story is so emotional that most hymns on it are operatic, Ave Maria, flying all over the scale in various harmonies as with these words whole worlds move and are changed. We hear Mary say: but how can this be, for I am a virgin? Now, when we hear this, we think mostly about sex. How can Mary conceive a son without sex?
But, if we were to read the text more closely, I think we would find that sex is not the important thing here. The problem is not a mechanical/biological one, the question of where sperm is going to come from in the operation. The real question Mary is asking is this: Gabriel lets her know that her son will be Son of the Most High. Mary's objection is not that she hasn't had sex. It's that she's just a human, a 15 year old who suddenly feels way out of her depth. What does she know about raising a child? What does she know about raising a child to become royalty? What does she know about raising a child who is God? Not much, probably, to all three questions.
But Gabriel promises that God will carry this through, overshadow her, and make the thing work out. And so, she agrees.
She begins the story as an insider and an outsider: she is a child of Israel, a chosen people. But she is also an outsider--she lives in a country under imperial rule, and so she has become a foreigner in her own land. She is from a chosen people, but she is also a woman, lacking in many of the things that being 'chosen' should bring because of her gender.
By the end of our story, Mary has become a peculiar kind of insider with God, party to all kinds of information most others do not know--she joins Elizabeth and Zechariah. But she has also become an outsider, an unwed pregnant teenager, a "condition" even less welcome in her society than ours. She sees the heart of things, but she is an outsider.
And the theme will continue throughout her life. When prophecies are spoken at her son's circumcision, she will hear both of the salvation coming to everyone and of the sword that will pierce her own soul She will be, in her own way, a follower of her son, and yet spurned as her son proclaims that real families are made by faith and not by blood. She will be at the crucifixion, watching from a distance. Insider, and outsider.
That is the message we hear today, the complex way Mary is both insider and outsider. In the world but not of it, her son will say. We hear the ways that we as Christians have become insiders to the salvation that is coming, to the forgiveness given, to the reconciliation and making new of all things, to the great acts of goodness and kindness perpetrated throughout our world. We are witnesses and participants in resurrection. But we are also witnesses of and participants in crucifixion, seers and perpetrators of the great evils of this world.
So today, we hear Mary's story and know that it is our story. Swords in souls and new life from the dead, crucifixion and a kingdom of peace without end, and not one without the other. No wonder that, after her son is born, Mary sees all the things around her and ponders them in heart.
Christmas will be here shortly, and there will be plenty of time and space for the good news of great joy that is coming. We can look forward very much to rejoicing in those days. But for a short while longer, it is still Advent, and we stand with Mary. We too are both insiders and outsiders. God is not offering to remove that tension for us--it is part of the experience of life offered to Mary and us. God very well may not make us feel like we belong in those places where we are outsiders. In fact, following the example of Mary, God is offering to prolong that tension, that out of that tension something fruitful might grow, a holiness. Today, we stand with Mary, both inside and outside, waiting to see what will grow in the empty space in ourselves.
Have a blessed rest of Advent.
