Songs of Justice; Songs of Hope

 My Friends, 

 

This weekend marks the beginning of the season of Advent. The word “advent” is the Latin term for “coming” and the Season of Advent is the time that we spend deliberately preparing for the coming of Jesus on Christmas. It is the tradition here and in many Christian churches to spend the four weekends prior to Christmas preparing for our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day celebrations. (We do not typically have worship on Christmas Day, but this year Christmas is on a Sunday, so we will!) 

 

For this season, we will be looking at four “Songs” in Luke’s story about Christmas. Perhaps they are not songs proper, but they are poetic in nature, something you can see visually when you read your Bible and the words are arranged in poetic meter, rather than in prose paragraphs. 

 

The songs that we will read together are Mary’s “Magnificat,” Zechariah’s “Benedictus,” Simeon’s “Nunc Dimittis,” and the angels’ “Gloria.” Generally, I don’t like using Latinate terms because I associate the prevalence of Latin with that part of the church’s past when the radicality of following Jesus was compromised as the church became the official religion of the Roman Empire. (That process, the association of the church’s missionary movements with colonization, and the use of Christianity to support racism in the US are what I consider the three greatest sins of our church history.) But, alas, Latinisms are so tightly bound to the history and language of the church that they cannot always be avoided. So, I use the term “Advent” and these titles for the songs with ambivalence. I appreciate the faithfulness that our tradition has handed down over the last two millennia, and I grieve the brokenness and sinfulness that has always been a part of our tradition.  

 

Mary’s “Magnificat” is so called because when her song – which begins with the words, “My soul magnifies the Lord” – was translated into Latin, “Magnificat” is how the word “magnifies” was translated. Likewise, Zechariah’s “Benedictus” is the Latin translation of his opening word that is translated in English Bibles as “Blessed.” (It’s a different word from the first word of the Beatitudes.) And then there’s Simeon’s song, historically called “Nunc Dimittis” because that’s the Latin for the first words, “Now dismiss.” And finally, the angels sing, “Glory to God in the highest,” the first word of which in Latin is “Gloria.” So, there’s Latin all over this Advent season for us. My two whole weeks of studying Latin in graduate school better pay off! 

 

We are calling this time of preparation, “Songs of Justice; Songs of Hope.” And here I will share a story that I’ve shared before, but it is golden: Soren Kierkegaard once went to a Christmas worship service and noticed that the wealthiest people were there, dressed in finery and seated in their paid seats in the ornate sanctuary. Then, someone began singing Mary’s Magnificat. You can find it in Luke 1:46-56. It speaks of God bringing down the high places, lifting up the low, filling the hungry and sending the rich away empty. Kierkegaard began laughing and expected everyone else to join in. But, as he looked around, nobody was laughing with him and he was perplexed. Surely they must have been hearing Mary’s words as a joke, because if they were serious words the people gathered on that day were hearing of their own demise. No one laughed, but it appeared that no one took Mary’s words seriously either. Is that really what we expect with the coming of the Christ? 

 

Kierkegaard was on to something. Mary’s song is about justice. It is more akin to a protest song from Woody Guthrie, or a spiritual that decries slavery than a beautiful aria that displays vocal prowess. It stirs the imagination, loosens our grip on the status quo of inequality, and equips us to see all persons living without excess or deprivation. So, too, are all the songs in Luke’s story. They are songs of justice and songs of hope. 

May God give us ears to hear, mouths to join the song, and hearts that are ready for the great transformation that Jesus’ birth brings. 

 

Mark of St. Mark

Supporting Our Answer to God's Call

Quick Note: This week I have an essay that was published on a blog called The Politics of Scripture. My essay is “Christ the King and the Challenge of Symbols” and you can find it here. 

St. Mark is a unique church. There is vibrancy and joy in the air when we gather. There is purpose and meaning to our worship experiences. There are children of all ages who know that they are the church. We say, “All are welcome” as an extension of God’s steadfast love, which overcomes all of our barriers and welcomes our differences. We hear God’s call to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly,” so we give generously to local service organizations, refugees, farmworkers, schools, and homeless services locally, while supporting an orphanage and girls’ school in Kenya, as well as medical ministry and community organizing partners in Nicaragua. We walk alongside local service organizations to encourage and empower their work. We take the Scriptures seriously and find in them the “words of life,” not just rules and traditions. We support the arts in many varieties. We pray for those who are grieving or dance with those who are celebrating. We coalesce our voices to make a difference on matters of LGBTQIA rights, honoring Black lives, Indigenous lives, Brown lives, and standing up against Asian American/Pacific Islander hate. We write letters to support the struggle against hunger, gun violence, and the suppression of women’s choices. We work to ensure health care, nutrition, and access to viable food choices no matter where one lives. We support mission partnerships in the Presbyterian Church (USA), as well as with some of our sister churches in Orange County. We make mental health resources available to all ages. We study deep issues of foreign policy and personal issues of mindfulness or relationship-building. Phew! That’s quite a litany.

 

I’m not bragging. I’m certainly not bragging about myself and not even bragging on you (which I like to do!) I am simply presenting the span of topics that our Elders oversee month after month and our Staff empower week after week. But note this: Many churches are vibrant. Many churches are committed to justice. Not many churches are both. That’s a harsh truth. I’m not kidding when I say that St. Mark is truly a unique church. 

 

Your contributions enable us to do all these things and do them well. And in order to be open to where God is taking us in the future, we need three things: A facility that is fully operational; a staff that is fully compensated; and a robust mission budget that reflects our priorities. Those are our three largest budget items and we need all three of them to be fully funded. 

 

So, how can you help that happen? First, please hold the pledge card that you received this week and ask yourself, “How you I ensure that our church remains both vibrant and dedicated to justice?” We need generous folk in order to do our work well. Second, consider the church in any estate planning you may do. Our Finance Commission can guide you if you have any questions. And finally, pray. Pray at the beginning. Pray without ceasing. Pray while listening. Pray with your feet. Pray with your checkbook. Pray with one another. 

 

And may God bless you as you continue being the unique church called St. Mark.

 

Mark of St. Mark

Alternative Christmas Market

 Friends, 

 This weekend will be filled with joyful and meaningful activity at St. Mark. On Saturday, following worship, we have our “Meet Me at Muldoon’s” gathering, which is always full of joy and energy. Then, on Sunday, following worship, we will host our Alternative Christmas Market, live and in person! Both of these events are meaningful parts of our community life here at St. Mark. The gatherings at Muldoon’s offer us a chance to “be the church” offsite, remembering that the church is the people and not the building site itself. Today I want to focus on the Alternative Christmas Market, since it is an annual event that we have not been able to enjoy in all of its in-person glory for too long. 

 

The number of organizations, volunteers, and even children from St. Mark who have been working hard to make this year’s market a success is remarkable. Under the skillful leadership of Diana Light and Denise Christensen, with able assistance from Sue-Ann Wichman and Judith Hug, and a lot of extra effort by Alex Cardenas and Jeremy Smith, in addition to the volunteers, and guest organizations, this event is an “all hands on deck” phenomenon. The beauty of it all is this: All the preparation, activity, and purchases are signs of our commitment to justice. We will have a chance to purchase fair trade products, products that benefit those who do the work more than those who monopolize the industry, and products that are created with the earth’s safekeeping in mind. This Alternative Christmas Market allows us to participate in a new way of being, even if just for a day.

 

There is a large grocery store in Iowa where I know of two different people weeping in the aisle. The first was a guest from El Salvador who was simply overwhelmed with the plethora of choices, meats upon meats, vegetables upon vegetables, processed foods upon processed foods, all stacked neatly, with constantly rotating stock, in shelves, refrigerators, display buffets, and endcaps. The sheer enormity of the choices for someone who’s morning usually began by walking in the dark to get water from a well, was simply too much. So, she wept. 

 

The second person I saw weeping was in the cereal aisle. It’s no small thing that there is a “cereal aisle,” but this person was not weeping due to the overwhelming excess. She was holding a box of a corn-based cereal that cost $3.69 for puffy cereal that actually contained a small amount of corn. As I was trying to be politely present but not interfering, she looked up at me and said, “The difference between what this company pays us for this corn and what they charge for it is just criminal.” 

 

Those two sobering grocery store encounters displayed something about the system of production and sales in our marketplaces that we easily take for granted. And that was before an app could ensure that we can have goods on our doorstep within minutes. The convenience, choices, and ease of the market is admirable, a gift that serves us well in many ways. But it also hides the hands that create, harvest, and prepare the goods we order. It hides the exploitation of those who work with raw materials and the enrichment of those who exploit them. My suspicion is that if either of those two persons who so prophetically wept in the grocery store were to enter our Alternative Christmas Market, they would weep tears of joy. And that’s what I invite you to do this weekend. Come see the faces and hear the stories of those whose products we can purchase. It is a way of doing justice together. 

 

Mark of St. Mark