Saying Yes from the Margins

Two weeks ago, my pastor asked me if I wanted to preach the sermon one of the Sundays in Advent, and he invited me to choose any of the ones I wanted.  I chose yesterday, since our off-lectionary reading would be the story of Mary and Elizabeth.  I knew that if I got in a jam, I already had done a lot of thinking and writing about that story.

But I challenged myself to say something new.  So I talked about how my friends who have struggled with infertility find it a painful story.  I talked about my own discomfort--these women get their starring status in the story because of their wombs, not because they are fabulous on their own.  And I do realize that in Biblical times, that would be the only way they'd get a starring role.  But it's still worrying to me, given the history of women and wombs and how interested everyone has been in these wombs.

I ended by talking about God's expansive vision and how we are cramped in our imaginations.  I talked about the reason why many of us say no to God is because God's vision, while wonderful, can be very disruptive.

I said that the story of Mary and Elizabeth is one of severely marginalized people--and our entire Scripture shows us that God's work often happens through people who are living on the margins of the margins.  In this story we have Mary:  an unwed teenager, a woman living in a distant outpost of the Roman empire.  Elizabeth was even more useless in the currency of her time period:  past her child bearing years, unable to have a child.

But because they said yes to God the history of the world changed.

We, too, get invitations from God, if only we would pay attention to hear.  So, I told my congregation, if you've been feeling too old, too poor, too mired in addictions, too powerless:  God can use you in the remaking of the world to be more of what God has in mind for us.