Advent 15 -- God in the Lowly

Our theme for this week is “God in the Lowly: Looked upon with Favor.” Today in worship we listened to the scriptures about Mary, an unmarried teenage girl from a small town in a patriarchal culture. She describes herself as lowly, and in that time and place, she was. Yet, we are told, she had found favor with God, who saw her not as insignificant or lowly, but as worthy to bear God’s son. Because ours is a God who lifts up the lowly.

            The lowly, the vulnerable. Our God favors these. But do we? Today is the two-year anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, where 20 first-graders and six teachers lost their lives. It doesn’t get more vulnerable than young school children. How have we honored their lives? Or the lives of the children killed – intentionally or unintentionally – by guns every day (based on CDC data compiled by the Brady Campaign, an average of 8 every day)? Those teachers gave up their lives for the children in their care. What have we given up?

            For change to happen, we don’t have to begin by agreeing on a solution. But we do need to agree that there is a problem.

            God wept on December 14, 2012. God’s weeping still. 

            But this Advent, may we sing with the teenage girl who agreed to give birth to the holy in her world: “our souls magnify the Lord” and let the seeds of change grow within us.

-- Rev. Christine Ng