November 29, 2009 – Advent 1
Rev. David Boyd
Two weeks ago I was attending the Evolve Youth Conference at Shaughnessy Heights United Church in Vancouver. Rachel, Jenna, Lois and I went down for the conference. There were 200 young people and I have to say that with all of that energy I felt a bit old. There were 4 streams at the conference: a junior youth stream, a senior youth stream, a young adult stream and a youth leader's stream. I was a little nervous as I made my way to the workshop for your leaders; I thought I'd be the oldest person there in a room of young twenty-something youth ministry leaders. I needn't have worried; while I was one of the older people in the workshop, there were others older than I.
Sarah Arthur, a young woman from Michigan, was our facilitator. She has a master's degree in English Literature and has taken a theology degree; she was not ordained or commissioned to ministry, but has been a youth leader over the years. Now, she is a writer writing about youth ministry. She's a wonderfully engaging speaker and her theme was story, the power of telling stories and the power that stories have for re-enchanting our world and our lives.
Sarah began the Friday night session with a quotation from CS Lewis' The Narnia Chronicles. I have to confess that I groaned because I am not a CS Lewis fan, nor a JRR Tolkien or JK Rowling fan. I never got into fantasy or allegorical writing when I was younger. So, Friday night didn't work for me and I began to wonder if this workshop was going to be worth my time. Well, it was. Through Saturday and Sunday, Sarah talked about the power of story and especially the power of the biblical story. She talked about the power of story to draw us in, to engage us fully and to deliver us again into the world as changed, new human beings.
At the same time I was attending the Evolve Youth Conference, I was reading a wonderful book called, Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia. Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest. It is edited by Douglas Todd, the religion editor for the Vancouver Sun newspaper. Each chapter is written by a Cascadian resident. It is absolutely worth reading as it is about this place where we live. Cascadia is defined as the bio-region of Oregon, Washington, parts of northern California, parts of the Alaskan panhandle and British Columbia. I was reading section 4 of the book, Cascadian culture and a chapter called The Divine Brushing Against the Natural: Pacific Northwest Magic Realism as I was listening to Sarah Arthur in our workshop. This chapter in Cascadia was about the literary genre of Magic Realism. The likes of Rushdie and Jack Hodgins were named as Magic Realist writers. That might explain why I found Rushdie hard to read when I was younger. And Jack Hodgins, who is a BC, Vancouver Island writer, taught English in my old highschool, Nanaimo District Senior Secondary School. I tried to read his book, The Invention of the World, and found it very hard slogging. I don't think I understood well enough what Magic Realism was all about. Gina Ochsner is an Oregon writer who said this of Magic Realism:
It sounds like a good definition of biblical stories! Sometimes when we read the biblical stories we get caught up too much in what they mean. What do the details of the story mean? We rob them of their Magic Realism. We rob them of their sacred dimension. We focus too much on theology and meaning and not enough on the story and how we are drawn into the stories.
The Advent stories are a perfect case in point. The stories of the dreams of Joseph and Mary, the visit of the angels and the Christmas story of shepherds, Magi, a stable, the adventure of going to Bethlehem. We break these stories apart and think about whether they are true or not and what they might mean for us. But if we let them just be stories, they are powerful stories of God's inbreaking and indwelling love. They are very human stories infused with a sacred dimension that lifts us up out of our ordinary lives and changes us, transforms us. Hear the story of Mary:
This story could be about any one of us. It is infused with the power of the divine. We could be Mary, or we could be the one that Mary talked to. It is about regular stuff, giving birth to a baby. It is about being open to things that we can't explain. It is about the ordinary and how God breaks into the ordinary to bring about change in the world and in lives. We see ourselves in this story and as we are drawn in, we are changed and made new.
And that's what the story of Advent is all about, changing us, drawing us in and making us new. The trick is to be open to the Spirit like Mary, open to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, open to see the sacred in the secular, the holy in the profane, the grace in the midst of fear, the hope in the midst of despair. We begin the Advent story today with a promise to Mary, a promise that is made to all of us, that overshadows us and makes us pregnant with hope. And over these next 4 weeks, we allow the story to grow inside of us, to grow and become real; the promise of love, the promise that God is part of this sometimes messy, sometimes joyous, sometimes fear-filled, sometimes glorious world is the Advent hope that changes us and leaves the world different.
Have a blessed and enchanting Advent in preparation for the birth of the Christ in our life and in the life of this world in which we inhabit! Amen.
"In these stories, the extraordinary occurs in the context of the ordinary, pitched against the ordinary backdrop of ordinary human lives and human psychology and what we see is the supernatural overlapping, sometimes colliding with the Natural. The supernatural here is a fact, but it displaces nothing Natural..."(Chapter 10, Cascadia, p190)
{Mark 16:26}In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, {27} to a young woman engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The young woman's name was Mary. {28} And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! God is with you." {29} But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. {30} The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. {31} And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. {32} He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the God of Hosts will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. {33} He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." {34} Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" {35} The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. {36} And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. {37} For nothing will be impossible with God." {38} Then Mary said, "Here am I, God's servant; let it be with
me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her.