Dancing with Joy ... Welcoming Diversity ... Advent 3

I read a meme on facebook earlier this week that is quite appropriate to this morning’s readings:

It reads: Mary: He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and

                   lifted up the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things and                         sent he rich away empty …

          CHURCH: HEY!!! We don’t want any of that political stuff!!

          There is a Monty Pythonequeness to this meme … From the mouth of Mary, the mother of Jesus herself, there is a powerful and clear political statement – and not just one, but a sequence of them, as she contemplates the imminent birth of her child …

          Jesus was not born to be simply a meek and mild teacher who floated through life offering sage wisdom and being a light airy presence in the world. Instead, the Magnificat coupled with the words of John the Baptist last week, would indicate that jesus was born to be a political, social, economic and religious rabble-rouser in the fullest sense of that concept …

          And so on this, the Advent Sunday of Joy, as we hear the words of Mary and prepare for Christmas that is truly imminent, we are challenging ourselves to discern the path to True Diversity … this week, we place in the nativity scene, the Magi, the wise men … the learned men from afar who came to honour the Christ child.

          Traditionally, the wise man are given names, and histories along with the gifts of gold, frankinsence and myrrh … traditionally there are three of them, but the reality is that almost EVERYTHING we think we know about them is completely mythic … stories about the stories … details added later, not details from the Scripture passages themselves …

          Canadian painter William Kurelek in his rendering of the Nativity scene noted that NO WHERE in scriptures does it say only three magi – he couldn’t envision only three kings making the perilous journey to honour and pay homage to the Christ child, so in one of his paintings he had a long line stretching out to the horizon of magi and entourage coming to Bethlehem to visit Jesus …

          So, with the wise and learned and powerful coming to the stable alongside the rest of us, we have before us a clarion call to BE the Church in the same diversity as humanity itself …

          On the Sunday of Joy, as we light the candle of Joy and celebrate the deep joy that is expressed in faith, we acknowledge that joy is a gift from God, and that to experience it fully is to step wholly into the holy and to embrace the full diversity of humanity gathered together before God – not just the people we like, or the people we are comfortable with, but ALL people …

          And so, we begin with the acknowledgement that Churches are chosen communities – we chose to be involved, or we can chose to not be involved – but even in that, often diversity is a painful part of community when we find ourselves alongside people unlike us, people we may not be comfortable with or even like … but that discomfort is because our assumptions and biases are being challenged – we learning and experiencing unexpected things … it is extremely uncomfortable and discomforting …

          At the heart of it though, diversity is NOT about here (…) at all – diversity is about what we do from Monday to Saturday, not just what we do here … because the reality is that church – almost ALL churches gather as like communities with similar backgrounds, similar socio-economic profiles, similar geographic locales and so on … some denominations like the United Methodist Church in the US have struggled with the fact that as a denomination it is deeply divided on racial lines with a white church and a black church …

          Being called to a path of diversity reveals our blind spots – the places where we may not even see our resistance to variation, the voices we would rather not hear, the newness we would rather not embrace … but with diversity we are being called as a faithful people to look deeply into the lives  of the other and responding faithfully, lovingly, and with the fullness of our heart and soul …

          Diversity calls us to action – and diversity begins on day one, when the Christ child is laid in the manger and the assembled crowd gathers … that’s the point of this beautiful tableau … we know it likely didn’t happen, but this is the season when we stand in the darkness and we dare to believe it COULD happen, and we dare to KNOW why it should happen …

          Because with the arrival of this child – we are being called to expansive places – expansive places where discomfort is the norm, but where the discomfort guides us to healing and wholeness.

          John Pavlovitz notes that this discomfort is “the fierce crucible of redemptive spiritual community” the fierce crucible where we see, experience, and learn to incorporate our difference, where we learn patience with each other and ourselves, where we see and fully experience God’s infinite complexities and most importantly we find our greater commonality in Christ – that of BECOMING the Church …

          Becoming the Church, not being – being implies static and stationary, but becoming is dynamic – constantly changing, growing and evolving.

          It begins with embracing Joy …

          Not our culture’s slap on a happy face and revel in warm pink fuzzies joy, but the deep gut wrenching joy that embraces the fullness of life. When I want to speak of what joy is, I turn to something I wrote almost two decades ago that still embraces much of what joy is an isn’t for my understanding and experience of the world:

JOY is embracing life in its fullness and proclaiming with certainty that we are never separated from God’s love.
Among many things:
        Joy is being a child of God.
                Joy is being welcomed into the most intimate moments of life and being asked to pray, of just be present with family and friends.
        Joy is the opportunity to hold someone’s hand in a moment of tragedy.
                Joy is holding a new born baby, or baptizing an adopted child.
        Joy is weeping with the hurting and laughing with a Bible Study group.
        Joy is watching a baby discover, for the third time today, her hand.

Joy is seeing the world through the Holy Wow of a three year old child, who is discovering what a wonder creation is.

Joy is building Lego sets with a five year old, and wiping away his tears when he scrapes his knee falling off a bike.

Joy is crying over injustice and rejoicing that we have a community that truly cares about us.

Joy is having tea with an elder who shares her memories of a world seven decades away.

Joy is having a pop with a group of teens who think everything is “cool” or “awesome.”

Joy is struggling to find our way, and enjoying the journey as much as the destination.

Joy is asking the tough questions and sometimes agreeing only to disagree, but knowing that we love each other anyway.
        Joy is love eternal and everlasting.

Joy is knowing God’s love and being able to share it every day in some little way.

Joy is breaking bread and sharing the cup, then having a cup of coffee and a good chat afterwards.

Joy is planning a memorial service, and sharing laughter and tears as a life is celebrated.

Joy is trusting one another enough to share life’s joys and sorrows, knowing that together we share God’s love.
Joy is loving the unlovable.
Joy is praying for the sick and visiting the hospitalized.
Joy is making worship relevant, exciting and fun.
Joy is communication and community.

Joy is facing controversy and conflict and journeying to reflection, resolution and healing.
Joy is the ministry of all of God’s people.

Joy is being a servant of God journeying with God’s children and sharing the ups and downs of everyday life with openness, with honesty, and most of all with love.
Joy is making a difference in one life everyday.
Joy is the church, the children of God in action.
Joy is the journey of faith through all the twists and turns of life.

          To live with JOY – to be faithful to what JOY is, we need to dare to follow the path journeyed by that wee child of Bethlehem who embraced the controvertial and political in his life and ministry. Pavlovitz notes that Jesus didn’t dine with sinners to convert them to being Pharisaic, but he dined with them because God speaks as loudly through tax collectors and prostitutes as through you and I … they have something to teach us, just as we have something to offer them by our presence.

          Pavlovitz takes the idea of living joyously seriously, and offers a truly remarkable modern expression of what the CHURCH should be when he writes:

          For much of my life I’ve been a die-hard Prince fan. I didn’t start that way though … in 1985 in Syracuse NY “Look at those freaks” I thought to myself as I watched the purple throng filling the sidewalks. … I didn’t connect with Prince: the androgyny, the salaciousness, the stratospheric falsetto – I just didn’t get it. Fast forward a couple of years, and it all clicked. I’d moved to Philadelphia and as my world expanded with diversity I’d never experienced before, Prince became the most fitting soundtrack. His songs were my companion as I discovered how big life could be and just what diversity could look like. … I remember the first time (seeing Prince), I stood in Philadelphia’s Tower theatre, crammed tightly in the middle of a dancing, pulsating mass, thinking “these are my people” – It turns out I felt perfectly at home with the FREAKS. This was family. And among so many other gifts, this was the real magic of Prince. He brought completely disparate groups of humanity together and made them feel they fit. He transcended musical genres, and broke through colour lines, and challenged gender roles AND he boldly declared the dance floor big enough for ALL of us and open all night. And in that free and joyful place we ALL danced. When you were at a Prince Show you belongs. You were the right colour, the right shape, the right religion, the right YOU … in that space you felt at home in your own skin and were deeply connected to those around you in ways that defy explanation.

          AND HE NOTES: This should be what the Church gives people. It should give them a place. I should be the spot where all prodigals feel they’ve come home. It should be the building with the biggest table. We’ve been lead to believe that the goal of equality is to somehow make differences disappear, yet in reality it is to be profoundly aware of them, and to recognize them as beautiful and valuable and necessary. The virtue is not in ignoring our various distinction, but in celebrating hem; not in pretending as though they don’t exist, but in believing that their existence makes us a better version of humanity as we live together in community.

         

          The JOY of diversity is being able to be wholly ourselves while fully opening our community and ourselves to others, not with the intent of converting or changing them, but with the intent of welcoming them in, and by their presence enriching ourselves and changing how we see, experience and live within the world …

          As Pavlovitz notes: As a person of faith, distinctions all reveal the unlimited beauty of One who is the source of each of us, so this rich diversity is the very holy ground where God speaks. Bigotry doesn’t happen when we notice other people’s differences. It happens when we believe or act as if those differences make another less worthy of love or opportunity or compassion or respect. We need to learn to dance together …

          True diversity is about joyously dancing together as one people, who are diverse and different and wondrous … it is the heart of who we are to be as a church and a community of faith …

          Joy is dancing before God as a one diverse and holy family …

          May it be so … Thanks be to God … let us pray …