With Rested and Joyful Souls

December 16: Third Sunday in Advent
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Luke 1:46-55

The soup bowls had been washed and neatly stacked away. Shopping carts and paper bags with years' worth of collected string, cans, broken umbrellas, and other street items had been dragged in out of the snow and were parked in the church's foyer.

In a corner of the fellowship hall, a small circle of women sang "O Little Town of Bethlehem," slightly off-key, while others pulled sleeping mats onto the floor. When the singing ended and the 30 mats were in place, the women selected their spots for the night.

It had been a fairly quiet evening. Dinner had progressed smoothly. The singing had awakened the memories of women who had not sung carols for years—some had cried—and reminded us all that Christmas was just a week away. There was a warm spirit at the overnight shelter that evening, and I hoped for a quiet night.

Not long after I thought the women were settled, however, I heard voices at the far end of the room. Soon a shouting match erupted. One woman accused another of stealing her coat when she had closed her eyes to sleep. In order to avoid such situations, many of the women wore three, four, five layers of clothing—all they owned—even in the summer and when they slept.

In her defense, the accused woman began calling the other names, amounting to a long string of synonyms for "prostitute." The accuser told her she was a "no-good good-for-nothing." And the accused responded, "Oh yeah? I'm better than you'll ever be. I'm royalty—I have the Rothschilds on my mother's side and the three Wise Men on my father's!" End of discussion.

I was a bit amused at the interchange. I thought immediately of the Magnificat, Mary's words of praise to God while she carried Jesus in her womb. For, in some sense, the mighty were put down from their thrones that night.

Suddenly the absurd seemed not so unbelievable. After all, if the son of a humble Jewish maiden and obscure carpenter could claim King David as part of his lineage, was this woman's claim so far-fetched?

The point is not the truth of the woman's statement, but the absurdity of the circumstances of Jesus' birth. Gabriel announces to an unmarried Mary that she and the Holy Spirit will conceive a son, who will be the savior of the world, and that furthermore an elderly and barren Elizabeth has also conceived a son. And, because it all sounds so unbelievable, he ends his announcement with the words, "For with God nothing will be impossible."

Nothing will be impossible. "God has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich God has sent empty away."

Mary knew as well as anyone the significance of the birth in which she was about to participate. It was a significance that was not lost to the powerful. Shortly after Jesus' birth, feeling threatened, Herod ordered a mass slaughter of the male infants throughout the region. The threat of Jesus—the simple threat of justice—shaped the response of the rich and mighty right up to the cross.

The message is still today a warning to the rich and a comfort to the marginal. It is good news to the broken-hearted and the captives. It is good news to women without homes, who eat soup in shelters every night and keep their meager possessions in brown paper bags.

Isaiah promises that the "devastations of many generations" will be repaired. We see the devastations in individual lives, generations of poverty and.neglect, endless cycles of grief. We see it, among others, in women who have been prematurely released from crowded institutions and forced to the streets, unable to care for themselves. There was no room for the infant Jesus in the establishments of his day, and there is no room for these poor today.

These are the ones who mourn, but Isaiah says that the Spirit of the Lord God has come "to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit."

Jesus comes with compassion and removes the rags—layer by layer—gently. He replaces the rags with the "garments of salvation" and "robes of righteousness." This Jesus, who had no home, makes his home among the poor, bringing a message of hope and celebration.


December 23: Fourth Sunday in Advent
Psalm 89:1-4, 14-18 Luke 1:26-38

Psalm 89 speaks of God's "faithfulness to all generations" and "steadfast love established forever." The early expression of this love was the covenant God made with the Israelites. It was a promise that, come what may, God would be faithful to God's people, through all generations.

The biblical record shows that the response of the people was sometimes strong, many times shaky, and often downright rebellious. Old Testament history is marked by the cycles of faithfulness and faithlessness of God's people.

Twenty-six generations after the first promise, the covenant finds a different form. The angel Gabriel makes an appearance to a young woman in the town of Nazareth. His message is that she will bear the world's savior.

Her first response is a natural one. She is afraid. And then she is incredulous. But Gabriel persists and promises her that the Holy Spirit will be with her, that God will be faithful to her and the next generation.

Mary has the chance to refuse to believe, or to give in to fear, but instead she responds with her own promise of faithfulness: "I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." We all know the ending of the story, which was really just the beginning.

Most of us do not look for visitations from angels—or burning bushes or parting seas, for that matter. But God nonetheless enters into a covenant with each of us by offering the simple promise of faithfulness and asking for the same in response. And God gave us Jesus to seal the promise.

One of my favorite stories comes from the black civil rights struggle in the South. It happened during the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, when blacks were refusing to ride city buses in protest of racial segregation.

As the boycott dragged on, its organizers grew concerned about some of the people who had to walk a long way to their work. One organizer encountered a woman, a domestic, on her way to work, and said something like, "Ma'am, you are old, and it's a long way to walk. It would be okay if you took the bus." The woman looked at him and with determination replied, "My feet are tired, but my soul is rested."

God had made a covenant with this woman, and she knew that God was with her in her yearning for justice. She believed justice would come, and she kept on walking. She had a vision like that of the psalmist:

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of thy throne;
steadfast love and faithfulness go before thee.
Blessed are the people who know the festal shout,
who walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance.

God goes before each one of us, shining light on the path. Dark and long and tiring is the journey. But we have a vision, and the light leads us there.

We can walk the way of God—the way of justice and mercy and peace—with confidence, knowing that others have walked this way before. We can walk with rested and joyful souls, as "people who know the festal shout."

Joyce Hollyday was an associate editor of Sojourners magazine when this article appeared.