The Fourth Week of Advent

Call this Part II.

Last week I shared some of what I think the young Mary must have been feeling as she contemplated her pregnancy, her future, and her beloved. This week I offer similar thoughts on Joseph, but my path is a little more convoluted. Stay with me...

A couple of summers ago, I heard a sermon that began this way:

I fell in love with God at a church camp in Kerrville, Texas, while two camp counselors strummed "Kumbaya" on their guitars and fireflies danced around the edges of our campfire. I was twelve years old...and God's name was...Shelley.

Once I heard those words, I couldn't track the rest of the sermon very well. I had had the same experience! The first time I fell in love so completely that not only my skin tingled, but my very soul tingled, I suddenly understood the catechism in a whole new way. Patient, kind, unconditional, life-giving, transformational--these were holy words, and suddenly, my everyday words.

Over time, though, I gave in to the constant barrage of societal disapproval about this great love, and I convinced myself that there was nothing sacred or spiritual about it. Further, I rationalized that God demanded my undivided devotion, not devotion shared with the great human loves of my life.

Thank God that I've come full circle on that.

If we're not supposed to live our lives in a delicious swirl of God's love and friends' love and partners' love and parents' love and on and on, then why did God mix it all up for us? Why did God choose messy, fleshy incarnation over, or at least along with, divine transcendence? Why has God chosen to be born in us, to be borne by us, and to dwell in us, and why has God commanded us to love one another as God loves us? Certainly it must be so that we would not create so many distinctions, separate our lives into compartments of sacred and secular, try to distill the human from the holy.

For the final time this season, let me share with you some words from Two from Galilee. In this section Marjorie Holmes gives voice to the agony Joseph feels as he wrestles with how to deal with Mary now that he knows she is pregnant. Joseph has been approached by Mary's father, Joachim, who has begged Joseph to deal mercifully with Mary.

Joseph's mother had been right. And Joachim. A man's honor and the honor of his family was involved. But neither Joachim nor any other who spoke of honor could conceive that there was a value even greater than honor--a man's love. However forsaken, bereaved, humiliated, a man's hopelessly abiding love.

He wanted her back, no matter what. Perversely, he wanted her back even more the more people talked. Yet it was so much greater than that, it went so far back and so far beyond. She was his life's purpose, his hope; she was his Messiah. At this time of miracles and magi, don't try too hard to comprehend it all. Instead, allow yourself to feel it...Emmanuel...God with us, in us, loving us, and happy to be loved by us as best we can...as best we can.

Peace and Much Love,