Micah 5:2-5a
Canticle 15: Magnificat
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-45
Throughout
Advent we have been considering how by engaging with the past, how by looking
back, we can not only make sense of our present but also find ways and means
into the future. In large part, this is
a process of conscious contemplation, of intentional listening to the voices of
peoples and situations that have gone before.
It is a process which allows us to hear echoes of past experiences in
our own, and thus to discern meaning out of our experiences, to discover
something meaningful we can say in order to address our own time and circumstances,
or to express what believe to be most true.
As we contemplate and amplify what we have inherited of the past, we add
our lives and experience into the stream of history; and as Christians, we
believe, into the ongoing stream of God’s revelation.
The
Book of Micah presents us with such a situation. The prophet Micah was a contemporary of
Isaiah; both lived in the latter part of the 8th century BC. Their careers corresponded to a period when
both the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were coming under increasing pressure
from the aggressive and expanding Assyrian empire which would eventually
conquer them both. However, only the
first three chapters of Micah are specifically from that period. Most scholars believe that the last three
chapters of the book were actually set down within the context of the
Babylonian exile, the Jews eventual return from captivity and the rebuilding of
the Temple – some 300 years after Assyria’s rise. So, as the Jews faced a new crisis in the
form of the Babylonian Empire they re-worked and expanded the prophecies of
Micah to reflect their contemporary circumstances. Those living under the pressure of Babylon
discerned echoes of their experiences in the voices of their ancestors living
under the pressure of Assyria. They
discerned echoes of those voices, and found a language of hope, words enabling
them to remain faithful to God’s promise: “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one
who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days….[H]is
kindred shall return to the people of Israel…and he shall be the one of peace.”
(cf. Micah 5:2-5a) Certainly God’s promise in the midst of the
Assyrians, must be the same as in midst of the Babylonians, and so echoes of
the past brought the Jewish people more deeply into the contining unfolding
narrative of God’s salvation and redemption.
This
dynamic of listening to echoes of the past was not lost among the early
Christians, and Luke particularly makes ample use of it as he relates the
events surrounding Jesus’ birth. The
figures of Elizabeth and Zechariah, the parents of John the Baptist, are
figures created out of the collective memory of Judaism: the faithful and
dutiful older, barren couple – think Abraham and Sarah, or less well-known Elkanah
and Hannah, the parents of the prophet Samuel who – not coincidentally like
John the Baptist – prepared the way for a king.
Then the there is the Magnificat – the Song of Mary – which is today’s
gradual and which the choir so beautifully sang. It finds its inspiration in Hannah’s prayer from
the first book of Samuel in which she exults the Lord for having blessed her
with a child, and vindicated her in the face of those who lorded over her their
success and strength: “My heart exults in the Lord,” she cries, “my strength is
exalted in my God….The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble gird on
strength. Those who were full have hired
themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry are fat with spoil….The
Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low, he also exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts
the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat
of honor.” (1 Samuel 2:1, 4-5, 7-8)
With these words and images – and many others – the early Christians listened
to the echoes of the past so as to make sense of God’s revelation in
Jesus. In God’s choosing Mary in her
lowliness, they heard echoes of how God had always lifted up the poor, the
downtrodden and the enslaved. In God’s
granting a child to Elizabeth and Zechariah they heard echoes of how God had in
the past brought about surprising, unexpected events. In God’s raising John the Baptist as herald
and fore-runner of the Messiah, they heard echoes of all those in the past who
had proclaimed and awaited God’s revelations.
Like the later editors of the book of Micah, those first Christians
listened to and amplified the echoes coming through from the inherited
tradition, carrying them into the present conversation about what God might be
doing. As they did so they experienced
their lives, the events of their present, as linked into the big picture, the
overriding narrative of redemption, God’s story of salvation for humanity.
One of
the pitfalls of modern living is how dis-jointed we are, not just from our past
but from so much of the world around us.
More than ever we seem to live episodic lives – that is to say, that so
many of us often experience our life as series of episodes rather than a
cohesive narrative, rather than seeing the events of our life as directed to a
particular end or purpose. Yet, our
Christian faith and inheritance would teach us otherwise. Our lives are not simply a series of
disjointed, disconnected episodes, they are part of the story God is trying to
tell. It is God’s story we discern as we
read the Scriptures year in and year out, and it is God’s story we seek to join
as we as we gather week by week to worship, and as we direct our homes, families
and relationships according to certain principles. Still we are not always good at listening
carefully and sensitively to the echoes of the past, the voices and actions of
our ancestors in the faith which help us to tell God’s story. But if our faith is to have any meaning at
all, we must learn to better hone our ears and our senses, because if we do not
we may find ourselves unknowingly basing our religious and spiritual lives
simply on our own particular, idiosyncratic preferences or prejudices. As we move through our lives as individuals
and as a church we must always be willing to ask if we are still telling the old,
old story, God’s story, albeit amplified according to our present
experience. This is what it means for
Anglicans that we are grounded in Tradition, Scripture and Reason. Scripture and Tradition bear for us the
echoes of our shared experience as the Christian famly, and it is Reason which
allows to make sense of that inheritance in ways still consistent with it,
while at the same time being alive, present and active. Without these, our faith becomes either an
ananchronistic fossil or something we invent with every passing change, a series
of disjointed, personalized episodes.
We
sometimes think that all this talk we Anglicans – we Episcopalians – have about
Scripture, Tradition and Reason is some new-fangled thing we made up. Hardly true.
It’s simply the Anglican way of explaining how we listen to and engage
with our past – its voices and echoes.
The Jews did it in their own way as they tried to make sense of the
vicissitudes and upheavals attendant on the political scene of their day. And the early Christians did it too as they
tried to understand the revelation of Jesus within the wider of narrative of
salvation history, a history they had inherited and of which they saw
themselves a part. At the heart of this
engagement is the reality that we are part of God’s unfolding plan, God’s
ungoing story, and that each generation
links itself to it by engaging with the past while moving into the future. St Hippo Augustine of Hippo in describing his
conversion to Christianity and to the love of God prayed: “Late
have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!” What is true of God is true of God’s story –
so ancient and so new. As we prepare ourselves to
tell the old story of Christmas, how are we engaging with its voices and echoes
in order to say something about God’s continuing revelation in the
present? How are we allowing its truths
to carry us into the future? How are
seeing our lives as a part of God’s unfolding narrative, God’s story – ever
ancient and ever new.
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