The stories within the Advent liturgies of the Christian tradition recount situations when humanity is most lost in its own greed, tribalism and violence and the victims are those most outside, vulnerable, and powerless  These stories include a remarkable cast of very human characters who played pivotal roles in God’s extraordinary interventions into human history.
 
They are us.  The sacred texts hold a mirror up to the hearer not only urging us summon the courage the be faithful servants, but also challenging us to recognize the villain within ourselves.  These stories call us not only to be watchful and alert, but also to be proactive in the divine plan.  Today, we conclude with postscript of sorts in the story of Stephen, the Ready Martyr.

Saint Stephen
(from the Ora Pro Nobis series)
oil on canvas
Daniel Kennedy
2000

Sorry to kill the holiday cheer!  But it is not just me; the liturgical year does not even give us a chance to catch our breath from the festivities before we get the gruesome story of the stoning of Stephen.   This back-to-back sequence of birth and homicide is not chronology, but rather intentional theology.  In retrospect we should not be surprised.  The whole of the Advent season has pointed repeatedly to the high cost of discipleship. 

Daniel Kennedy’s Saint Stephen comes from a series of images of holy people that lined the walls of a theological school library.  In this rendering, Stephen is only glimpsed in a silver outline as if he is merely memory.  In one hand he holds a stone and in the other a laurel branch … his death and his victory.  He is clothed in a dalmatic, the symbol of his ministry of service, and a halo surrounds his head.  But the outline of the martyr recedes in this rendering.  The dominant element of Kennedy’s composition is not the person, but rather the blood-red wounds and the liturgical refrain “ora pro nobis”.  The artist captures the theological reason for the startling sequence of these days in these two elements.

“Ora pro nobis” (pray for us) is the congregational response within the ritual calling of the saints on significant holy days throughout the year.  This liturgical prayer is a form of memory/anamnesis or making present the gifts and graces of a past events.  The congregation’s response to the invocation of each named saint has a two-fold purpose; to both ask for intercession and to celebrate their willing participation in the divine plan for all God’s creation.  The cadence of this call and response is a communal chant that literally folds time and space to bring saints of the past together with the saints of the present.  In this ritual action all God’s people find their strength and their purpose in a time-defying and multi-era communal event.

Stephen, like a whole group of early witnesses to the gospel, when confronted with the alternative of renouncing their faith or suffering death, many voluntarily embraced the death prepared for them.  While this action might seem to some to run perilously close to recklessness (or even suicide), the passions that motivate these actions are at the very core of the commemorations we celebrate in the shadow of the nativity. Stephen was not simply protecting some private claim to win his salvation, he was convinced that the good news of the gospel could radically change the way the world could see itself.  He knew the transformative possibilities of love and therefore renouncing his faith in that promise was unimaginable.  Out of his great love, God had intervened in human history and Stephen was an inheritor of that vision … and that vision was worth dying for.  The self-sacrifice and the blood-red wounds were not personal triumph, Stephen saw himself as a warrior in this great reawakening.  Stephen’s self-sacrifice in the cause of love, justice and social transformation is not death … it is life eternal.  Now that is a nativity!

"She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it."

In Toni Morrison's Beloved, Baby Suggs begins her sermon in the clearing with an invocation.  She calls the people to gather with laughter, dancing, and crying in an urgent celebration of bodiliness, a manifestation of incarnate grace.

"We may not reach the ending but we can start slowly but truly mending, brick by brick, heart by heart. Now, maybe now, we start learning how." -  "Beautiful City" from Godspell

Jesus told his disciples that God's reign is among them, in the midst of them, within them.  The learning, building, and mending begins here and now.

What can you learn from the life and death of Stephen?  How do you embody grace?  What are you learning, mending, building?  How will you respond?
 
Suggestions for further exploration:

• Read and meditate on the daily readings for the Feast of St. Stephen.
• Explore the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Perhaps begin with Letter from a Birmingham Jail or Strength to Love.
• Work your way through My Grandmother’s Hands.  In this book, Resmaa Menakim explores how racialized trauma manifests in our physical bodies and offers practices and exercises to begin healing and recovery.
• Spend time with the poems of Mary Oliver.  Much of her work reflects on embodiment, grace, and awareness of the present moment.  Perhaps begin with Mornings at Blackwater, Mindful or The Journey.
  

The stories proclaimed within the Advent liturgies of the Christian tradition recount situations when humanity is most lost in its own greed, tribalism and violence and the victims are those most outside, vulnerable, and powerless  These stories include a remarkable cast of very human characters who played pivotal roles in God’s extraordinary interventions into human history.
 
They are us.  The sacred texts hold a mirror up to the hearer not only urging us summon the courage the be faithful servants, but also challenging us to recognize the villain within ourselves.  These stories call us not only to be watchful and alert, but also to be proactive in the divine plan.  This week, The Unlikely Liberator.

Sacrifice
oil on canvas
Sr. Mary Grace Thul, OP
2008
 
We treasure the memories and events that shape our lives and our ethical outlook. They come to form the core of our tribe’s identity.  We seek to preserve them for ourselves as well as pass them on to later generations.  They become the honored stories retold at family gatherings, and mementos find places of honor in our homes. 

Regrettably, the love and reverence we have for these stories can become misshapen in our enthusiasm to preserve them.  We see this in the frame shop all the time.  Folks bring in memories of people or events or places that have shaped their lives and formed their identities.  At the heart of the client’s desire for preservation is to have a tangible and visible expression to keep the memory an ever-present reality in the complexities of a life well lived in this generation and hopefully in the next.   

But too often the well-intentioned embellishments of this conservancy can misshapen the memory.  The memento, the photograph, the article of clothing, or the letter is placed behind glass and surrounded by a decorative frame.  This new presentation often shifts the memory from a living event to an object of veneration.  We physically remove the memory from its engagement with its tribe.  We look at it, but we do not touch.  We admire it, but we do not participate.  A wall of separation is built between us and the memories that shape us. 

The same wall is built with the ornamentation, embellishment, and gloss bound to the stories of the season of Advent.  Like us, the ancients embellished their memories in their enthusiasm to preserve them.  Tales of royal courts of great kings and queens, generations of hereditary leadership, a people set apart for favor, and mighty and ever-lasting kingdoms become a decorative frame that can literally remove us from the foundations of our tribe’s story and identity.  At their core, the Advent stories are so much more unpretentious, and filled with a very real, and a very ragtag cast of characters.  When we side-step theses embellishments, we get the true heart of the memory that past people of faith desired to pass on.  These characters are us, and like them, we are called to be more than onlookers in the divine plan for humanity.

It might seem strange to spotlight Sr. Mary Grace’s image Sacrifice when so many churches are placing the baby Jesus in the manger on this Sunday in Advent.  I appreciate this image because it is about memory and memento without any embellishment or gloss.  Like the unwed teenage mother from last week, or the outsider mystic from the previous week, or the angry rants of an ignored and misunderstood prophet that underpins the entire season, Mary Grace’s Jesus is stripped bare to the raw essentials of the story of salvation.  This unlikely liberator is the reason for the season.  He is not separated from his tribe.  Emmanuel is touch-able. This is a real memory/moment in time, and we can have first-hand experience of God’s intervention in the beloved creation.   A new kind of ruler has come to live (and die) among us and remind us of our required participation in the work of salvation.

In speaking about Exodus, midrash scholar Avivah Zornberg says, “I think one of the important issues is…the need for those who have to be liberated to achieve in themselves some sense of the possibility of change…the story of the Exodus is one in which… one of the most important themes for liberation is the need for a process of growth within the persecuted if they are to have a history.” In this powerful anthem from The Greatest Showman, the “sideshow freaks” from P.T. Barnum’s circus imagine the possibility of change when they find their voices, take a stand for their humanity, and proclaim their self-worth. 

In the Liturgy of the Hours, evening prayer on the final days leading up to Christmas features a series of antiphons preceding the Magnificat.  These short verses bid the coming of God’s liberating action with a rich use of imagery addressing each character with the vocative expression “O” – O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Radiant Dawn, and so on.  Thus they are known as the “O” Antiphons.  These texts are most familiar in the Advent song, O Come Emmanuel.  Here is a setting by Sufjan Stevens.  Find a comfortable seat and settle as you listen and reflect on the lyrics and music.

How do you experience God as liberator?  What is your role in the work of salvation?  How will you respond?

Suggestions for further exploration:

• Read and meditate on the lectionary readings for this week.
• Explore the myth of the Exodus by listening to this interview with Avivah Zornberg.  Her work reframes the roles of the characters in the story – Moses, Pharoah, and the Israelites. 
  
• Honor the Winter Solstice with restorative meditation or movement.  As we mark the shortest day/longest night, it is helpful to explore ways to intentionally tune into winter.
• Pray the O Antiphons in the final days of Advent.

The stories proclaimed within the Advent liturgies of the Christian tradition recount situations when humanity is most lost in its own greed, tribalism and violence and the victims are those most outside, vulnerable, and powerless  These stories include a remarkable cast of very human characters who played pivotal roles in God’s extraordinary interventions into human history.
 
They are us.  The sacred texts hold a mirror up to the hearer not only urging us summon the courage the be faithful servants, but also challenging us to recognize the villain within ourselves.  These stories call us not only to be watchful and alert, but also to be proactive in the divine plan.  This week, Mother & Child.

Wild Eyes
mixed media
Matt Sesow
2010

On a hot summer evening at an airfield near his home in Nebraska, eight-year old Matt Sesow was struck by the propeller of a landing airplane.  The accident resulted in his left arm being severed and the loss of his left hand.  With the help of family and friends, Sesow learned to excel in both athletics and academics.  It was not until he was working as an adult in the tech industry that Sesow discovered painting.   In the evenings and on weekends he played with painting and ultimately developed his hobby into a path of healing and a mission in life. 
 
"My paintings are the emotional response to a traumatic past, the road to healing, and the confidence of finding a new language to express feelings felt but never shared.  While some people see my paintings as angry or aggressive, many of my collectors and fans (including myself), see my work as hopeful, joyous, and eager to take on the world!"
 
Matt Sesow’s Wild Eyes expresses what any new mother might feel. This wild-eyed mother holds her child close as she looks toward a future she knows will be filled with both struggle and hope.  The child in her lap with a severed hand is more than an autobiography.  Sesow’s image is a universal message of family, protectiveness, and faithfulness.  It is about a journey from brokenness to wholeness. 
 
In what will become her great song of praise, the mother that dominates the Advent stories accepts both the pain and hope of a journey she is destined to take with her child.  Her strength for this task comes from her knowledge of the long prophetic traditions of her faith.  Even at her young age, she knew the stories and songs of a God who empowers those of humble estate (from every generation) to scatter the proud in their conceit and bring the mighty from their thrones.  While this mother knew she was unprepared to be in the middle of this great cosmic drama, she also knew that she would grow into the role as all new mothers or prophets do.  God and family and friends would provide.
 
But maybe more heroically, she understood from these same stories and songs the ultimate cost of this discipleship and this journey.  There would be much sorrow before vindication.  The real courage of faith is simply saying yes to the call to be a player in the divine spectacle of deliverance.  Faithfulness is the place where faith is worked out in actions and where even the most banal of actions and gestures achieves profound meaning and significance. In the actions and gestures of this woman/mother are the aesthetic expressions of an ethical worldview lived out.

“In you the journey is.”  Tony Kushner begins his epic work Angels in America with the funeral of the grandmother of one of the main characters.  In this scene, the rabbi (yes, portrayed here by Meryl Streep) describes this Jewish refugee as “not a person but a whole kind of a person.”  Such a person’s actions motivated by a drive for survival and sustained by faith and perseverance, cultivated the ground from which her descendants grow their own futures.

Mary exclaims that all generations will call her blessed and in doing so she affirms the upside-down character of God’s reign – valleys raised up, mountains made low, a little child leading.  Her blessing does not come from seizing worldly power but rather from relinquishing a safe and normal life to play a pivotal role in Gods divine plan.  This does not mean that she gave up agency or self-worth. On the contrary, she stakes her claim by actively consenting to help overturn the status quo and bring about justice.  As Rory Cooney’s setting of Mary’s song, Canticle of the Turning (sung here by Katherine Moore) proclaims, “My heart shall sing of the day you bring.  Let the fires of your justice burn.  Wipe away all tears.  For the dawn draws near and the world is about to turn.”

What do you learn from Mary's story?  How do you experience the call to participate in God's reign?  How will you respond?

Suggestions for further exploration:

• Read and meditate on the lectionary texts for this week.
• Listen to Steve Thorngate's After the Longest Night:  Songs for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany.
• Practice walking meditation to bring mindful awareness to your movements and actions.  Like mindful breathing practice, walking meditation brings focus and awareness to a common action that is often taken for granted.   Such awareness helps in gaining a greater sense of understanding of thoughts, feelings, and actions and leads to more constructive ways to respond. 
• Watch this TED conversation with Marian Wright Edelman reflecting on her lifetime mission to fight childhood poverty. She says, "The reinforced lesson from (my parents) is that 'God runs a full employment economy' and that if you follow the need, you will never lack for a purpose in life."
• Give of your time and resources to support local organizations that serve women and children. Find out more about The Bedford Christmas Station, Bedford Domestic Violence Coalition, Bedford Community Health Foundation, and Bedford Area Family YMCA.

The stories proclaimed within the Advent liturgies of the Christian tradition recount situations when humanity is most lost in its own greed, tribalism and violence and the victims are those most outside, vulnerable, and powerless  These stories include a remarkable cast of very human characters who played pivotal roles in God’s extraordinary interventions into human history.
 
They are us.  The sacred texts hold a mirror up to the hearer not only urging us summon the courage the be faithful servants, but also challenging us to recognize the villain within ourselves.  These stories call us not only to be watchful and alert, but also to be proactive in the divine plan.

What sort of person ought you to be,
conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion,
waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God,
because of which the heavens will be dissolved in flames
and the elements melted by fire.
But according to God’s promise we await a new heaven and a new earth
in which righteousness dwells.
Therefore, beloved, since you await these things,
be eager to be found without spot or blemish before God, at peace.
 
The 2nd Letter of Peter

Spiritual traditions throughout time have addressed humankind's relationship with money and possessions.  Greed and attachments are impediments to right relationships with others and with God.  However, the drive to consume more than we need and to want more than we have is integral to the human condition.  With a contemporary prophetic warning, Tracy Chapman's Mountains O' Things gives a first person view of this struggle.

What does repentance look like?  Padraig O Tuama, in his poem Twisted, offers that it requires us to "twist our spines to the truth and see behind us."  And in doing so, we take in the consequences of our actions on ours and others lives. Watch O Tuama read his poem below.

I will hear what God proclaims.
Kindness and truth shall meet.
justice and peace shall kiss.
Truth shall spring out of the earth,
and justice look down from heaven.
 
Unnamed Lyricist of the 85th Psalm

Wait, Repent, Renounce, Twist, Hear.  How will you respond?

Suggestions for further exploration:

• Read and meditate on the lectionary texts for this week.
• Listen to Krista Tippett's interview with Bryan Stevenson.  Stevenson's work explores mercy and redemption in American culture.
• Spend some time with Sister Joan Chittister's book, The Time is Now:  A Call to Uncommon Courage, in which she offers a series of brief reflections about the characteristics of prophets and urges readers to abandon complacency and work for justice and peace.
  
• Experience the physical sensations of twisting.  Try a basic seated twist or practice a more advanced reclined yin twist posture.
  
• Learn more about Padraig O Tuama and about the work of the Corrymeela Community to bring peace and reconciliation in Ireland.