The Rev. Noah Van Niel
The Chapel of the Cross
December 20th, 2020
Advent IV: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Magnificat; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38
Hold on, just a little while longer.
Everything will be alright.
Hold on…just a little while longer…everything will be alright. These words come to us from a traditional African-American spiritual which, like most spirituals, emerged out of the experience of slavery in these United States. There are more verses that follow: Hold on, Fight on, Pray on, and then finally, Sing on. There is an intensity in its simple melody and repeated refrain that houses a kernel of confidence that defies explanation. For, how could anyone living through an experience as awful as slavery, “hold on just a little while longer,” let alone say that “everything will be alright?” It is a song of victory for the simple fact that it is being sung at all. It is a song of strength and power and endurance. It is a song of hope. But most of all, it is a song of faith. Faith in the faithfulness of God to give them the strength they needed to survive even when, especially when, they had no more strength of their own to rely on. In that way it was a ferocious faith, forged in the fires of affliction until it was indestructible; like a diamond, pressed beneath the weight of the earth.
It is not my intent to compare 400 years of slavery and racial oppression to nine months of a pandemic. But I do think this song has a message for us today, in this time and this place, as we wearily walk into what will be the hardest week of this whole year. Hardest because of the physical toll of illness and death that is following the surging cases around the country. And hardest because this week is meant to be one of light and laughter and joy surrounded with people you love—the “most wonderful time of the year.” But if my inbox is any indication, instead of presents, this year it is pain that is piling up. As one of you wrote to me this week, “Like the light of the days, my patience is getting shorter and I’m less resilient, it seems.” Another of you, quoting Yeats, wrote, “Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.” We are weary, and we are worn. And yet, in the distance, there is reason for hope. It’s far off, but not so far off that you can’t see it. We’re in the closing miles of this marathon, but like runners who have hit the wall, we are going to need to find a way to dig deep and tap reserves of spiritual, mental and emotional resiliency if we’re going to make it through these next few months. To finish the race, we are going to need some of that toughness, that tenacity, that unbreakable spirit, that fierce faith, exemplified by those who came before and suffered more, so that we too, can hold on, just a little while longer.
Toughness, tenacity, suffering, strength. These sound like words you hear in Holy Week not Christmas Week. But they are there if you look for them. Right in the heart of the Christmas story, in the heart of the heroine without whom none of this would have been possible: Mary. Don’t let the carols, or the fine art fool you. Mary was not a placid princess, robed in blue. She was no gentle lady, meek and mild. Mary was as tough as nails, with her own ferocious faith that gave her the strength to say yes to a mission that very well could have cost her life.
Let’s start with what we know. Mary lived in the country, in the tiny village of Nazareth, which sat in the hilly deserts of northern Palestine. This was not a cushy place grow up. Not only was it an unforgiving landscape, but it was also occupied territory. The Jews were living under Roman rule. So, Mary knew what it was to have her already difficult existence constrained by the power of the state. We don’t know what she did in Nazareth, but very likely she was put to work at a young age to help the family get by. One could not afford idle hands around the house in a tiny desert village. So erase those artistic renderings of her in fine robes, and palatial quarters, where she’s passing her day reading or at prayer. She probably spent most days with her sleeves rolled up, dust on her simple clothes, dirt on her face, callouses on her hands. But while she may not have spent her days in study and prayer, she was, by all indications, a devout Jew. We hear about her making the proper pilgrimages to Jerusalem and we read that Elizabeth, her cousin, was a descendant of Aaron which was the priestly line of ancient Judaism. So, Mary probably knew her people’s rituals and stories very well. And that becomes very important when Gabriel shows up and starts talking.
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” he famously says. The Gospel today tells us Mary was “perplexed” by these words and “pondered” them. In actuality, the Greek for perplexed is more literally, “wholly disturbed” or “agitated.” And while “ponder” is a nice soft word, the Greek there is more akin to “deliberate,” or “debate.” You see how already her rough edges are being smoothed down in translation? She is not meek and mild in this moment, she’s worked up. Gabriel continues. And he starts talking about how she will conceive, and have a son, and name him Jesus and how great and important he is going to be. And then he starts talking about how he will sit on the throne of David and reign over Israel and of his Kingdom there will be no end. Now, if Mary was the devout Jew the Bible indicates she was, this language would have been sending alarm bells off in her head. Because while Gabriel doesn’t say it, this language meant her son was going to the long promised, long expected Messiah; the one to restore the fortunes of her people. She is being told she has a pivotal role to play in that story, a story that runs all the way back to Abraham, the father of the faithful. And rather than run away, or cower in silence, she takes all this in, keeps her wits about her, and comes back with a question. A legitimate question: “How is that going to work, exactly?” And Gabriel answers that the Holy Spirit will overshadow her and somehow—don’t ask exactly how—that will result in a pregnancy that will result eventually in the birth of the Messiah. And what does she say? “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Her words of acquiescence have, for ages, been portrayed as humble obedience, an example of submitting to the will of God, allowing herself to be freely used for God’s purposes. But there is another way to interpret her response. She is no passive participant in this plan. She’s a soldier. We’re talking about a revolution. And she’s enlisting. She knows that in order for the fortunes of Israel to be restored, the yoke of Roman rule would have to be thrown off, and the only way that could happen was the hard way.
You may think my imagination is running away with me but just look at the Magnificat, that song of joy she sings to her cousin Elizabeth. What is it she is rejoicing over? That the proud will be scattered, the mighty will be cast down from their thrones, the rich will be sent away, and the lowly – Mary and her people—will be lifted up. That God will remember his promises and invert the current world order, that’s what she’s singing about. But if that revolution is to come, she’s going to need to sacrifice: her body, her reputation, her marriage. She could have been stoned for an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, so she was essentially being asked to put her life on the line for these promises to come true. That is what she is saying yes to. So rather than a humble bow, with eyes cast demurely to the ground, I envision her standing at attention, gathering up her strength, looking Gabriel straight in the eye and saying, “Okay. I’m in.”
Where did such strength come from for such a lowly country girl? It came from her fierce and abiding faith –that same fierceness of faith that gave slaves the inexplicable strength to hold on, and fight on and pray on and sing on just a little while longer. It came from having lived her whole life being told about promises of power and blessing while living in a world that gave her anything but. And yet she would not forget those promises because she believed God would not forget those promises. She clung to them, would not give up or give in, so when the day came for them to come true, she was ready to say yes, she was ready to risk her life, because deep down in the core of her heart she had that indestructible diamond of faith that allowed her to believe that “nothing will be impossible with God.” “Blessed is she who believed,” Elizabeth says about her. Her strength came from faith. Faith that opened up reservoirs of resiliency that defied explanation and empowered her to take on all that was being asked in that moment and then some. That Mary then suffered the difficulties of travelling 85 grueling miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem while very pregnant, giving birth in a barn, and, not having a crib on hand, settling for a feeding trough to lay the baby in, only confirms the extent of her strength; the extent of her faith.
I know we are all exhausted. I know our hearts are as broken as our lives right now. I know our patience is thin and we want to give in to forces of despair and anger. And I know that at Christmas we’re supposed to pray that Christ may be born in us anew. But this year, I’m asking for Mary to be born in me as well. Because we’re going to need some of Mary’s strength to make it through the next few months. We’re going to need her toughness, her grit, her courage. But most of all we’re going to need her ferocious faith. Faith that no matter how stressed, or lonely or scared or sad we are, no matter how hard it feels to go on, how impossible it seems, “nothing will be impossible with God.” Which means that we can do this, we can finish this race. We can hold on, just a little while longer. We’re lucky—Mary had nothing but a promise to go on. We’ve got a light at the end of our tunnel; we’ve got vials of vaccine already crossing the country. Hope is on the horizon. But the truth remains that this is not going to be a warm and cozy Christmas. It’s going to be a hard Christmas. In many ways probably a lot more like the first Christmas which was neither cozy nor comfortable nor safe. But I promise you, if you can hold on and fight on and pray on just a little while longer, then by the grace of God one day not long from now, we’ll be together to sing that “everything will be alright.” Yes, “Everything will be alright.”