Advent IV

Advent IV:
Luke 1:26-55: Possible and impossible hopes. (According to my official lectionary sources, you can swap out a psalm for the Magnificat this week, and I am so inclined.)

Maybe by this point in Advent you’re feeling burnt out. Maybe by this point in your year you’re feeling burnt out. Maybe by this point in your life and work, you’re feeling burnt out. Maybe by this point in American society you’re feeling burnt out- I can empathize. It seems to me things are pretty seriously bad out there, in the places that admit it and in the places that don’t admit it.

A lot of people at The Night Ministry talk about hope. We talk about trying to provide hope out on the nighttime streets, we talk about trying to cultivate hope in the stories of our guests and participants. But I think one of things that makes the hard work we’re doing out here worth it is the hope that comes upon us in the midst of things. I tell you: every time I get to do an event with, or hear from, one of the young people we work with, that’s pretty much enough to keep me going for a while. Sometimes it’s because I’m so hopeful, and other times I’m so angry, but Augustine says those are all in the same family.

In today’s reading from Luke, we get the story of a familiar soon-to-be-homeless young woman. We get a flash of her story, anyway, and then we get a blindingly-powerful verse of her song. Or it’s the Spirit’s song, that she takes up. Or it’s all of our song, and she’s our song leader.

I like a lot of versions of this song (particularly ‘Canticle of the Turning’, which we sang at my wedding), but sometimes the sparse words are most powerful, when I’m undistracted by melody or rhythm:

“God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty…”

It seems so impossible. It seems so beautiful. I cannot believe it on my own. But when I go to the Crib and hang out with people as they dance, or when I go hear poetry from our HELLO group, or when I see people welcome strangers at our Health Outreach Bus- I cannot believe these bold promises on our own. But I think we can believe it together.

-David Weasley