Fourth Week of Advent
The Gospel reading for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Luke1:26-38, is also one of the readings in today’s Daily Office lectionary. This passage,
the story of the Annunciation, bears repeating well! There is great mystery in
this holy conversation between the angel Gabriel and Mary; there’s a mystery in
the sense of knowledge beyond our capacity to reason in the beginning of the
Incarnation, and there’s mystery in the sense of something we simply don’t know
with certainty when we consider the different ways in which we might read Mary’s
responses to Gabriel’s words.
Mary asks, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” This is sometimes interpreted as Mary asking
a question about the mechanics of Jesus’ conception, but given the rest of the
conversation, considering this a sort of “That’s interesting; how will this
work?” question doesn’t quite fit. Perhaps it’s more of an exclamation of
wonder. We ask/exclaim “How can this be?” when we see or experience all sorts of things
we don’t understand. That exclamation doesn’t mean we necessarily expect to receive
an answer, or even that we think an answer is possible. It means that we have
met up with something we recognize as being beyond our comprehension. We might
say “How can this be?” when we receive very joyful news or when we are taking
in a landscape of exceptional beauty; we might also ask “How can this be?” when
we receive bad news or witness a catastrophe.
People who write about climate science have been sharing
recent news about methane bubbling up through the thawing permafrost in the
Arctic, releasing into the atmosphere carbon that has been buried for 30,000
years. The thawing of the permafrost is the result of global warming; the
effect of the methane being released is expected to be increased and
accelerated warming. As noted in an article in the New York Times about the scientists
studying what is happening as the permafrost melts, “in the minds of most
experts, the chief worry is not that the carbon in the permafrost will break
down quickly… but that once the decomposition starts, it will be impossible to
stop.”
In recent weeks, we have seen a report from the
International Energy Agency telling us that we have five years to begin
addressing climate change in a significant way before it becomes irreversible;
we have seen the climate summit in Durban fail to put anything in place to do
that work within the next five years; we have started becoming aware of the
extent of the carbon being released as the permafrost melts. The past month we
in the church have been observing Advent, preparing our hearts to meet Christ
anew. As Christmas approaches, Christians who are aware of what is happening to
our environment are preparing for our celebration of God coming to live among
us while painfully aware of what we have done and continue to do to the world
in which Christ was born. We have simultaneously the hope of Advent, the discouragement of
knowing what is unfolding around us, and the despair of the silence that all
too often is the reaction to this news.
A reflection by Christina Villa published yesterday on the United Church of Christ website looks at those times
when personal loss leads us to say with regret that Christmas “will be
different this year”. For people who have been directly affected by the storms,
floods, droughts, and fires associated with climate change, Christmas will indeed be
different this year; for others of us, the simple awareness that the security of
climate stability is ending gives a different feeling to Christmas this year.
Christina Villa concludes that those years when loss or hardship makes
Christmas feel different can be years when we understand something of the
deeper meaning of Christmas:
Christmas is about the coming of love and light into the world, which we would not need to celebrate if life were free of loss and darkness. That's what makes Christmas a serious holiday. It's not all tinsel and eggnog. Jesus, a messiah bringing love and light into the world, was also "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," says Isaiah, putting it mildly. The serious mystery of Christmas is God's answer to the losses we accumulate, the best answer we have and the very one we need.
I read about the melting permafrost and ask, “How can this
be?” If this is a question about the mechanics of it all, scientists can give
me the answer: The carbon released by the burning of fossil fuels has raised
that earth’s temperature enough to allow the melting of the permafrost. But if
it’s an exclamation to indicate that the full implication of what is unfolding
is beyond my comprehension, then Christmas is exactly what I need. When we meet
something like this, we don’t need Christmas as a pleasant distraction. (I
suspect if we look to the celebration of Christmas as a pleasant distraction to
get our minds off our worries, we will come up empty.) We do need Christmas as
the answer, as the opportunity for a deep encounter with love and light in a
world where we sometimes run into greed and darkness.
Mary put her trust in what God was doing even though she
couldn’t understand the mystery of it all. Trusting God didn’t keep her from
the sorrow of seeing her son on the cross, but it allowed her to witness the
joy of Easter. Trusting God won’t keep us from the very real consequences of
our actions, but it can help us walk through this with meaning and hope.
