God comes in humility...

One of the ideas I will be exploring this Sunday - the 4th and final Sunday in Advent - is one that comes from both the gospel lesson and the writing of Frederick Buechner: God comes to us in humility. The scripture puts it like this - a tale I love because it describes the little baby John the Baptist dancing for joy in his momma's womb - from Luke 1 which includes this wonderful song of faith and humility from Mary:

Mary didn't waste a minute. She got up and traveled to a town in Judah in the hill country, straight to Zachariah's house, and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby in her womb leaped. She was filled with the Holy Spirit, and sang out exuberantly, You're so blessed among women, and the babe in your womb, also blessed!

And why am I so blessed that

the mother of my Lord visits me?

The moment the sound of your

greeting entered my ears,

The babe in my womb

skipped like a lamb for sheer joy.

Blessed woman, who believed what God said,

believed every word would come true!

And Mary said,

I'm bursting with God-news;

I'm dancing the song of my Savior God.

God took one good look at me, and look what happened—

I'm the most fortunate woman on earth!

What God has done for me will never be forgotten,

the God whose very name is holy, set apart from all others.

His mercy flows in wave after wave

on those who are in awe before him.

He bared his arm and showed his strength,

scattered the bluffing braggarts.

He knocked tyrants off their high horses,

pulled victims out of the mud.

The starving poor sat down to a banquet;

the callous rich were left out in the cold.

He embraced his chosen child, Israel;

he remembered and piled on the mercies, piled them high.

It's exactly what he promised,

beginning with Abraham and right up to now.

This is all about God coming to us in humility - and also I think an invitation to be about humility, hope and compassion in pursuit of God with others, yes? Buechner builds on this idea when he writes:

This story that faith tells in the fairytale language of faith is not just that God IS, which God knows is a lot to swallow in itself much of the time, but that God COMES. Comes here. "In great humility." There is nothing much humbler than being born: naked, totally helpless, not much bigger than a loaf of bread. But with righteousness and faithfulness the girdle of his loins. And to US came. FOR us came. Is it true - not the way fairytales are true but as the truest of all truths? Almighty God are you true?

One of the hardest choices I face everyday in this ministry is being patient with myself and others who have confused their habits, biases, weaknesses, bigotry and critical dispositions with the will of God. I hate it when I discover this happening in myself. And I am stunned when others act as if they have never heard of confession - people acting like their habits and small worldviews are the totality of God's convictions - souls who are clueless about how hurtful all of this can be. Perhaps that's why Buechner writes:

It is a still and dark world, in some ways darker than ever before, but the darkness is different because he keeps getting born into it. The threat of holocaust. The threat of poisoning the earth and sea and air. The threat of our own deaths. The broken marriage. The child in pain. The lost chance. (I would add the arrogance of oblivion born of privilege...) Anyone who has ever known him has known him perhaps better in the dark than anywhere else because it is in the dark where he seems to visit us most often.

I give thanks today that despite our collective arrogance God still comes to us humbly and in humility. This is genuinely shocking - a sign of unimaginable grace - and realize that it is a sweet and hopeful promise. Like one I loved said so long ago...