4th Sunday of Advent • 12/20/15 • Leora Weitzman
Micah 5:2-5a, Hebrews 10:5-10, Luke 1:39-55
Today’s readings are full of comfort and encouragement, a welcome contrast to the not-so-good news heaped on us by the media. This very contrast invites us into a theme present in all three readings, which could be called the theme of the two covenants. I prefer to call them two orders or levels of experience.
At the first level, the media have it right. The mighty get mightier, and there is no such thing as mercy or a free lunch. Everything is win-lose, either-or, one-up/one-down, and God is keeping score. We pay for each mistake, and suffering and sacrifice are the coin of these payments. I would call this the world of fear and control.
At the second level, everything is gift. The lowly are filled, the little clan gives birth to the ruler, the “mighty” of the first level are shown to be empty of what really matters, and God takes no pleasure in sacrifice. What God really wants, as we shall see, is relationship with us. We could call this the world of co-creation and grace.
In today’s translation of the letter to the Hebrews, the first level of experience is represented as the first covenant. The original Greek, however, simply says, “takes up the first in order to establish the second,” without using the words “abolish” or “covenant.” It would be unfair to the historical Hebrews to paint them all with the first-level brush of obsession with rules and payment. Micah himself, not long after the passage we heard today, gives us these beloved words (6:6-8):
With what shall I come before the Most High
and bow down before the exalted God?…
7 Will the Most High be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 God has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Most High require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly[a] with your God.
And the letter to the Hebrews introduces the second “covenant” with a paraphrase from the Hebrew scriptures—Psalm 40: “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me.”
A body? Is that just another sacrifice? No; for the letter and the Psalm continue, “In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will.’”
So a body is something with which to do God’s will, to “act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with God.” A body is not a sacrifice but a means of incarnation and relationship.
Though Micah and the psalmist recognize God’s preference for relationship over sacrifice, the specifically incarnational slant was sneaked in by the author of the letter to the Hebrews. For the original psalm does not say, “a body you have prepared for me.” It says literally, “ears you have dug for me.” The Psalmist is saying God gave us the ability to listen—and would rather have our listening, our active and attentive relationship, than our sacrifices.
We might think of the desire to sacrifice as a stage in the ego’s grieving as it comes to grips with the fact that it’s not in charge. You know the stages: denial, anger, bargaining… Can’t I give you a few thousand rams and keep doing what I’m doing? No: the news is both better and worse than that. We can’t keep doing what we’re doing. We can co-create with God.
That we can co-create with God is illustrated in the story of Mary’s pregnancy, made beautiful by her generosity and courage. Despite the social, physical, and emotional risks, she gladly lets God into her life, into her very body, to make possible the birth of a reality that depends on human cooperation with the Divine.
What might this look like in our lives? The past few weeks have given me some chances to practice what I’ve come to think of as “letting the miracle in.”
First, events I cared about were stacked so close together that I had to sustain a pace well beyond my usual stamina. As you can hear, it eventually caught up with me, but I made it through the essentials despite the odds. Letting the miracle in consisted of repeatedly noticing my obsession with how impossible it was going to be, asking God for help, trusting, and returning to the present moment. The miracle came as gifts of strength, love, and insight in each moment as they were called for.
Second, I got mad at someone I had to work closely with. In this case, letting the miracle in consisted of being vulnerable enough to ask for what I needed while accepting responsibility for my unfounded original expectations. The miracle took shape as my feeling all over again my love for this person and being able to step out of my judgmental win-lose stance into an experience of compassion for both of us.
These examples may not look much like virgin births. But I knew something was happening I couldn’t create alone, and I knew it was happening because, with my permission, something wiser and stronger could work in and through me.
Letting grace in, as Mary did, is the wormhole that takes us from the first level of experience, where might prospers and everything has a price, to the second level, where mercy abounds and all is grace.
This second, gracious, level of experience is the birthright of all of us, “according to the promise made to our ancestors, to Abraham and Sarah and their descendants forever.” God has prepared a body for each of us, and has dug ears for each of us, so that we may walk in living relationship with God, knowing the Incarnation from each moment to the next in our own lives.