How are your Christmas preparations coming along?

Are you getting into the Christmas spirit?

Thank God Spirit is here whether we feel it or not!

This is typically a challenging time of year for many of us. . . .

(More so now because of the state of our economy.)

Part of our spiritual practice is saying "yes" to whatever is. (Yes with compassion and acceptance. . . .)

Another part of spiritual practice is to enjoy and give thanks for our many blessings. . . .

The Magnificat: source of beautiful music through the centuries . . .

Some have said that this is the text that has most often been set to music.

It is surely one of the most glorious canticles praising God's justice and compassion.

This is an example of Luke using an ancient scripture/psalm to interpret and express his understanding of Jesus.

The Magnificat is based on the song of Hannah which is found in I Samuel 2:1-10

Both Hannah's song and Mary's song praise the God of justice who exalts the lowly, liberates the oppressed, gives honor to the disreputable and makes a home for the outcast.

The particulars of God's strength all involve reversals of society's conventional modes of status and power.

Both of these texts express an ancient Jewish understanding of God as viewed from the underside of society. Divine love can not be separated from social justice.

I have read several differing interpretations of Hannah's story this week. One of them in particular intrigued me. It was an essay written by Cynthia Ozick and found in the book, OUT OF THE GARDEN: WOMEN WRITERS ON THE BIBLE, edited by Christina Buchmann and Celina Spiegel. In her essay titled, "Hannah and Elkanah: Torah as the Matrix for Feminism," Ozick maintains that in the story of Hanna we have a very early declaration of the intrinsic value of personhood. In order to understand what this means, we need to recall the story of Hannah.

Hannah has been married to Elkanah for quite some time and the two of them have not been able to produce any children. In that society and time a woman's personhood was defined by her ability to bear children, particularly a son who could carry on the patriarchal family line and inheritance. Her husband had taken a second wife who had borne many children, adding to Hannah's shame. In the midst of her despair and humilitaion Hannah wept and refused to eat. Her husband Elkanah tried to console her and said, "Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?" (I Sam 1:8)

Ozick points out that,

Ozick considers this to be a tremendous metaphysical and transcendent moment: the expression of a radically new idea that goes against the grain of society's view of women as valuable only as instruments of social continuity obedient to the rules of patriarchy. Elkanah realizes that Hannah has value in herself, as an expression of her own personhood, apart from whatever she may or may not produce. He views her as a human being, made in the image of God, an end in herself.

I cannot help but wonder if anything similar happened between Mary and Joseph centuries later. Did Joseph realize that Mary's intrinsicness, the value and goodness of her personhood, outweighed whatever social stigma might ensue from her bearing a son that was not his? We can not know. But I do believe that this realization has been the basis for healthy relationships long before our day and age.

So here we are approaching Christmas, a religious festival that has become so ingrained in American culture and commerce that we forget what it is really about. This holy day has been a part of religious celebrations long before Christianity appeared on the scene, and it has many layers of meaning. But it seems to me that the unique contribution Christianity made to this festival lies in the concept of God becoming incarnate in human flesh. That's at the heart of a Christian understanding of Christmas. And it isn't limited solely to one particular event that happened two thousand years ago - it includes each and every one of us in the ongoing incarnation of God in humanity here and now. God dwells in our intrinsicness, in our personhood.

This incarnation of the Divine into human flesh and blood has never been easy, clean or unambiguous. We humans are the proverbial mixed bag. Sometimes we manage to live and act out of our innate goodness, and sometimes we don't. But the incarnation proclaims that always God is there.

The following story was told to me by a friend and colleague who pastors a UCC church in Wisconsin. He read it in playwright Moss Hart's autobiography. When Hart was ten his family was living in New York City. It was Christmas eve and his family was very poor so the young boy was surprised when his father said to him, "Let's go downtown." They set out for 149^th Street where lots of venders had push carts full of toys lined up for last minute shoppers.

It was clear that his father intended to buy him a Christmas gift. Moss also knew that his father had very little money. When they got to where all the vendors were, they went over to each cart and Hart pointed out all the toys that he liked. But when his father asked the price it was always too much and the pair moved on quietly to the next cart. This continued as they went from cart to cart, his father with one hand in his pocket fingering the few coins he had saved up. Nothing the boy wanted was within his father's means. Here is what Hart wrote years later as he recounted his feelings that night:

There is something essential here about Christmas. The desperate desire of a father to give his son a gift he can not afford, all the while not knowing the best gift he could give didn't require money. The empathy of the young boy as he sees his father's disappointment and the love that he feels when he realizes his father is so much like himself: a person struggling to find and express the deep connectedness that binds us all together. Sometimes saying "yes" to the hard reality of what is lead us into a deeper realization of an even more fundamental reality that unites us all in this wondrous, joyful and sorrowful, glorious and tragic journey we call life.

Perhaps the gift that we most desire is the recognition of the simple goodness of our connections with one another, the affirmation of our own inherent goodness as persons who were created for love, peace and justice and are destined to share our wisdom and light, our sorrow and our joy with the world. May our hearts and our lives be open to the gift we most need, both to give and to receive, this Christmas.

And Mary said,

"My soul magnifies Yahweh,

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

For God has looked with favor on the lowliness of this servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

For the One who is mighty has done great things for me,

And holy is God's name.

God's mercy is on those who revere God

From generation to generation.

God has shown strength

And scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts,

God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

And lifted up the lowly;

God has filled the hungry with good things,

And the rich have been sent away empty.

God has helped Israel, God's servant,

In remembrance of God's mercy,

According to the promise made to our ancestors,

To Abraham and Sarah,

And to their descendants for ever."