I thought it would be, well, different …
And that was the beginning of my disappointment.
Some of the girls in my all-girls high school sparked up our grey and blue uniforms by wearing cable knit Shetland wool sweaters in delicious pastel and candy colors: butter and lemon yellow, sky and cobalt blue, mint and emerald green…Oh, how I wanted a sweater like that!
Fast forward to one Christmas morning. There, under the tree, were three—3!—boxes from Lord and Taylor, a fashionable store that certainly sold beautiful cable knit Shetland wool sweaters in every color imaginable! Did I mention there were three boxes?!
With great expectation….I untied the white satin ribbon and unfolded the rustling tissue paper to reveal…a beige, flat knit crewneck sweater that was ever so scratchy in its wool and nylon blend. I was crushed!
Surely the next box held a lovely cable knit sweater, perhaps in baby blue? I pulled gently at the soft ribbon and lifted the cardboard box top. More tissue and ! a baby blue flat knit crewneck sweater—in the same scratchy blend…Oh. Thanks. It’s blue…!
My hopes were pretty low but not quite dashed as I opened the third box. It was….!...the same sweater again, only this time in white.
It’s hard to be a teenager and fake gratitude.
My mother probably stood on a long line and spent more money than she had planned, but understanding her generosity did not transform my disappointment into appreciation.
There isn’t much more to say about those sweaters other than I wished and hoped they would be different, and they weren’t. I was attached to my expectations and, as the Buddha would say, that is the beginning of all suffering.
It seems silly and petty to me now, looking back. Though I realize that sometimes my expectations are still just a little too high—of myself and of others.
Recently—and this is not to blame anyone or hold anyone up as an exception—I have heard that some of us imagined that, in a church community, people would be different than they are in the “real world.” That we would be a little more “holy”…
You are not alone if you expected that, at church, people would be nicer than they are, say, at work… Kinder. More patient. Unstintingly generous. Grateful for everything. And unfailingly forgiving.
Wouldn’t that be nice…?
Well, that led me to think about my Christmas message for this morning, and what is on my mind is subversion…
Let’s return for a moment to the words of the responsive reading. They are taken from the book of Luke and are referred to as the Magnificat—the Advent song of Mary.
When Mary--an unmarried teenager--discovers she is pregnant, she runs away from her village to stay with her cousin Elizabeth in a Judean hill town. Elizabeth is an older married woman who is also pregnant under unusual circumstances. Instead of cowering in embarrassment or fear at Elizabeth’s door, Mary is surprisingly empowered by her experience. Echoing the words of Hannah from the Jewish Bible, she greets her cousin, saying:
“My soul magnifies the Lord…for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;…He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty…
Mary takes her, frankly, disappointing circumstances and transforms them, subverts them, changes them from below—within her heart—and creates something new. With her words, Mary demonstrates a profound acceptance of the way things are—even though she cannot understand them fully, and they certainly don’t fit the picture of the way things should be. Her radical acceptance leads to her own transformation; she moves from being a victim of circumstances to being the bearer of hope and possibility for her world!
Mary grew up in an oral tradition—hearing stories and songs from the men and women of her village. These oral traditions shaped her life, and molded her expectations. Our stories and songs have no less effect on us. But we do have some choice about which stories, which messages will mold our expectations….
When I think about our contemporary culture’s stories and songs about Christmas, it seems to me that impossible expectations have been set by influencers like Martha Stewart and Hallmark and Sharper Image catalogues. It is important, at Christmas perhaps more than any other time of year, for us to subvert the messages we are receiving from popular culture. I maintain that it may be here, in this community, that we are creating a place where we can chip away at the commercial and cultural crust that keeps us from the meaty sweetness of possibility. We are a community that believes in the subversion of power and oppression and the restoration of hope and peace.
I like that as a Christmas message…!
How can we subvert the messages and the expectations of this season into something that is meaningful, useful, pregnant with hope and possibility for our world?
How can we turn it around from below…
Let’s start with what we are: a church full of human beings. We start by accepting that we are who we are, just as we are. We are the same person out in the “real world” and here in the sanctuary. We do not leave our personalities or our expectations outside when we come in to Sunday morning services or committee meetings or Learning Community. We bring our whole selves—even the sometimes disappointed or cranky parts—because all of who we are is welcome here.
Tired, energetic, rich, poor, young and older.
At the very beginning of our spiritual quest, or at some steps along the way.
Single by choice or experience, or partnered for many years.
With gifts to share and gifts yet to be discovered.
You are here. And welcome.
What does shift, I think, when we come inside this sacred space and join this spiritual community, are our expectations. And I want to subvert them just a little, this morning.
What if: rather than imagining that we come in here as fundamentally good or perfect people who sometimes mess up, make mistakes, or hurt someone’s feelings …what if we understood ourselves and each other to be fundamentally flawed, broken, in need of help and support and forgiveness?
I believe that we enter this sanctuary in the first place because we already know (or at least suspect) this truth about ourselves, and we yearn to accept that truth—and to learn how to take the next step.
And we come because we hope that through courageous seeking and practicing compassion for ourselves and others, we will be empowered, like Mary, to understand that we are not only capable of healing and transformation, but that, quite possibly, we are the bearers of hope for the world.
How magnificent! How our souls and hearts and imaginations would be blessed—magnifying the possibility that we could be that community we dream and long for: a community of hope and forgiveness, radical acceptance and transformation, justice and peace!
But I don’t want to raise your expectations too high….After all, it’s Christmas—and who wants to hear a subversive message? AMEN!
