December 21, 2011

Texts: Luke 1:46b-55, 1 Samuel 2:1-10, Mark 11:1-11

The triumphal entry (Mark 11:1-11) snaps Hannah and Mary’s song into sharp focus. On the one hand, with it being Christmas week, most people (even Christians) want to focus on Santa and the Baby Jesus. It is much more complicated to focus on the reality that Jesus brought. God’s move in Christ was a decisively political move.

We tend to prefer that our religion and our politics stay separate; this division is rarely - if ever - successful. On the one hand, groups of people want the 10 Commandments present in the courthouses and prayer in schools. At the same time, churches enjoy exemption from taxes, meaning it is part of the political system in which they do not participate. I think what we sometimes fail to see is that, when politicians fear God more than they fear man, when defendants and prosecutors keep their oaths to tell the truth, when justice and goodness prevail, when we make decisions that preserve life, when we do not take that which is not ours, the 10 Commandments are present in our courthouses, whether or not they appear there physically. When students hear of tragedies happening in other schools, of their friends taking their own lives, of friends experiencing the death of a parent or loved one, and they bear each other’s burdens, then prayer is present in schools. We can reinstitute prayer in schools and place the 10 Commandments in each courthouse in the country, but they do us no good if they are not present in our hearts.

We must return to the text. So often, we are tempted to read Hannah and Mary’s words as words of beauty but not as words of power. We read them as words proclaiming God’s reality but not words that change the present reality. The words are deeply political, taking the structures that exist and turning them onto their heads. It is when we read of the triumphal entry, we realize the destination of Mary’s song. The destination is a cross. This baby, whom she carries within her, is a baby of promise. The Messiah - it was hoped - would be a political leader who would overthrow the Roman government. We must ask: what does successfully overthrowing a government look like? As we glance at the situation in Syria, in Egypt, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, it seems political upheaval is complicated. On the one hand, people joining in advocacy for those on the margins and the least of these is filled with beauty; it, however, also bears the stench of burning buildings, of tear gas canisters: it bears the memory of those who died in hopes of a better future. So often, we understand a greater political power to be the one that takes over the other political power by force, simply engaging a contest of strength. This, as we can see in our world, is rarely a simple indication of “success” or “not success”. It is more complicated than that.

Perhaps the complication of Mary and Hannah’s song is that they came true. Jesus, in fact, did show strength and power. It was the strength and power of God’s basiliea, the strength and power of peace; it was the strength and power of a baby whose future would make possible the future of faith. It was the strength and power of one who would become mortal that we might become immortal, who would be baptized into our system of sin that this system would never again have the final word. This is a deeply political move, but, what is more, the object of this move made by God, was our salvation. It was a move that made possible relationship: to God and to the “Other,” regardless of which side of the political fence they find themselves on.