Asking Our Way Through Advent

Rev. Dr. Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder

I like questions. Interrogatives entice me. Answers are low-hanging fruit. Social media lends towards making everyone an expert, and experts tend to have all the answers. However, questions can change the course of a conversation. Inquiries make room for new ideas, new practices, new programs, and new ways of being. There are questions wedded to conflict and queries paired with conundrum that do not always lend towards resolution. As Maria Rainer Rilke says some moments call for us to “live the questions.”

Advent is the time where we wrestle with and celebrate God’s dwelling among humanity and Divine inter-being and intervening in human dis-ease, dissonance, and disenfranchisement. Preachers, teachers, lay persons, and any number of interpreters take an annual examination of the same biblical texts for hermeneutical exploration, homiletical explication, and theological application. We may already have some of the same answers, but it is integral to unlearn so to relearn. Thus, we dare to ask some different questions. Such is Holy One’s gift of grace in human inquiry. As “Advent” is God’s OMW or “on my way,” here is a time to probe what this “coming to” meant to persons in the holy writ and ask what this “coming toward” means now.

The Gospel of Luke records at least three questions as essential to one’s journey during this season of expectancy. I posit Luke’s literary, social, and gender reversal lend towards readers reversing their completely solution-oriented approach. In 1:18, 1:34, and 1:43, the author brings to the stage the curiosity of Zechariah, Mary, and Elizabeth. The first century context of Luke’s Gospel is replete with Roman imperialism and domination. It is in the environs of patriarchy, patrilineality, and patrimony that the author gives agency to persons subject to the emperor’s rule. The Gospel presents questions in conflict and queries of conundrum.

Luke 1:18

Zechariah receives news that he and Elizabeth are to be parents. Despite their age and barrenness, an heir is finally---on the way. Although much of his lot has been spent interceding for others in the temple, when the Holy comes intervening on his behalf, this priest takes a stance of disbelief: “How can I know that this will happen? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” Having spent so long going through the motions, Zechariah’s mouth elicits a question, not an expression of gratitude. Such is the making of a traumatic context. Imperialism is designed to lull one’s expectation. The domination playbook is coercive adjustment to the status quo; its design is to bury. In what may be a move of emasculation God’s messenger, Gabriel, punishes and silences Zechariah for asking what was in his heart. 

Luke 1:34

Gabriel continues making his rounds and now visits Mary. Akin to the Zechariah saga, Mary voices hesitancy when informed that she will give birth to the Son of the Most High. She replies, “How can this be, since I am only a virgin?” More appropriately Mary is asking “Why should this be?” She is a pre-teen living in Nazareth, a context where conditions are ripe with female sexual assaults, and maternal mortality rates are extreme. Thus, her body is on the line. What may appear as resolve is an agency of ambivalence as Mary is not wholly free nor loosely enslaved. In light of the “Holy overshadowing” that is soon to overtake her and so not to venture through the streets of Nazareth alone, Mary immediately seeks the wisdom of her cousin Elizabeth.

Luke 1:43

Elizabeth receives Mary with joy, and I would add concern: “And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” Luke’s “Lord” usage is another reference to the supposed Peace of Roman or Pax Romana. Mary and Elizabeth help each other deal with public shame. Society deems Elizabeth solely responsible for Zechariah not having a son. Mary is pregnant and according to Luke’s narrative alone as her family and Joseph are nowhere to be found. Although they are of different classes and distinctive geographical, familial, and economic backgrounds, these two mothers find communal comfort. In an act of intergenerational engagement and parental sojourning, Mary seeks Elizabeth’s guidance, and Elizabeth nurtures Mary as she learns to be Mom of the Most High.

Asking our way through Advent makes space for pause. Such pause compels us to consider the complexity our current personal, local, and national conundrums. In pondering we get in position for “what is to come.” There will be answers. Yet, may we find solace in the queries and a degree of peace in the questions.

A Live Wire

Rev. David A. Shirey

“When I saw that, I just shook my head. I knew we had a live wire.” 

Linda was remembering an early sermon. I was retiring and, as was her custom, she was calling to check in. She began with “Hi boss, it’s your prayer deacon” and then asked the litany of questions she posed each of the 400+ weeks I served Central: “What are you going to preach on Sunday?” “What can I be praying for?” “How are you and Jennie?”

Linda pushed her walker across the parking lot to the church from the apartments next door whenever the doors were open. Disabled? Don’t even go there. Central’s prayer deacon was blessedly abled – abled to live 70+ years with a dignity, perceptivity, knowledge and understanding leavened by a joyful faith. Large print bulletin in hand, she would ease down the sanctuary ramp, greet me, then take a seat in the second pew, pulpit side ­– my one-woman Amen Corner.      

The sermon Linda remembered recalled the Israelites at the Red Sea. With Pharoah’s army advancing, they cried out to God. I proclaimed the preacher’s prerogative: Good News. "Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance the LORD will accomplish for you today” (Exodus 14:13,14). 

I then pointed out one of those Aha! insights preachers never tire of stumbling upon. God told the people to “go forward” (14:15). Go forward where? Into the water?

Then followed the telling of one of those stories we preachers find that are gifts of revelation. Rabbis of old say God was unwilling to part the waters until the people evidenced their faith. How? By wading into the water. A man named Nahshon walked in up to his knees, waist, chest, neck. The sea parted. Said the rabbis, we can’t wait passively for God to do everything. God will deliver, but we’re invited to participate by taking the first steps.      

Well, call it the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Call it foolishness. Call it what you will, but I stepped out of the pulpit and cast off my robe. I traipsed to the front of the communion table and took off my shoes and socks. I rolled up my pant legs to my knees and carried on for who knows how long inviting everyone to join the Fellowship of Nahshon by casting caution to the wind, hitching up pant legs, skirts, and dresses, and joining in God’s redeeming work.

I don’t know how many times in Central’s 200+ years somebody stripped on the chancel and cavorted like a blithering idiot – probably once. Someone snapped a photo that captured the moment. The choir’s faces mirrored the congregation’s: a mix of bemusement and bewilderment. 

What I remember is hearing Linda’s inimitable cackle and glimpsing her glee. Her encouragement permitted me thereafter to submit to the Spirit’s prompting uninhibited. I was free to accompany preaching’s spoken words with facial expressions and bodily gestures that magnified the text, to strip down to my vulnerable self by breaking into singing, lifting hands in praise, or allowing the catch in my throat to pause me mid-sentence.

“When I saw that,” said Linda of that fully embodied sermon, “I just shook my head. I knew we had a live wire.” 

One correction to what our beloved prayer deacon said. The “live wire” evidenced that Sunday wasn’t me. It was the Holy Spirit who kindles preachers’ study of the living and active Word that fans into flame some Sundays, inviting preacher and people to go all in, wading together into the wonder and work of shared ministry.