Zechariah s sings about this discontinuity when he talks about the dawn from on high that will break upon us.

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SPIRITUAL CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY December 20, 2015, The Fourth Sunday of Advent Luke 1: 39-55 Michael L.

1 SPIRITUAL CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY December 20, 2015, The Fourth Sunday of Advent Luke 1: Michael L. Lindvall, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York Theme: Healthy change includes discontinuity and continuity. God of Love, as you draw nearer to us in these Advent days, may we draw nearer to you. As Mary heard her cousin s greeting and responded with a song of acceptance and obedience, may we hear your word and respond with a like acceptance and obedience. And now may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen. It s dear Luke, writer of the third of our four Gospels, who tells us most of the Christmas story we love. Matthew adds his Wise Men and nefarious Herod. Mark and John begin their Gospel stories with the adult Jesus no baby Jesus at all. We know Luke s beloved nativity narrative well, those first twenty verses of Chapter 2 that begin, In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. But Luke s story of the birth and boyhood of Jesus is much longer than those familiar Christmas verses; it s actually two long chapters, most of which folks don t know like they know those twenty verses. In those two chapters about the birth and childhood of Jesus, Luke does an especially remarkable thing. Most of both chapters are prose, but they re not all prose. Three times, Luke has different characters in the story break into song-like poetry. It s almost like opera or a modern musical. Suddenly, when something deep and high needs to be said, the prose stops and the speaker offers truth guised in lovely poetry. These poems are often called the three songs. All three will eventually be set to music different melodies over the ages, time and again. All three will find their way into the worship of the Christian church as sung liturgical elements, in Latin and later in vernacular languages. Two of them are sung before Jesus is born, the third some weeks later

2 The first of the three is sung by Mary during her pregnancy. She s visiting her cousin Elizabeth who s pregnant with the child who will be John the Baptist. Elizabeth s child leaps in utero as she greets her cousin. Mary responds with the long poem/song Annie just read. It begins, My soul magnifies the Lord It will come to be known by its first word in the Latin version as the Magnificat. Our choir sang a shortened 19 th Century English version of the Magnificat as today s Choral Introit at the beginning of the service. In the very next paragraph of Luke s narrative, right after Mary s poem, Elizabeth bears her child, the child to be named John. Upon being presented with his son, Elizabeth s husband, whose name is Zechariah, also breaks into poetry and sings the second of the three songs. Zechariah s begins Blessed be the Lord God of Israel It also will be set to music and sung in churches. It s commonly known by its first word in Latin, as the Benedictus. The third poem is sung by an ancient prophet named Simeon. Simeon was in the Temple in Jerusalem when Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus there for the customary Jewish ceremony of dedication. The old man takes the babe in his arms and utters the third song. Simeon s begins, Now let your servant depart in peace It s best known by its first two words in Latin and is called the Nunc Dimitus. The Benediction Response that our choir will sing at the end of today s service is an American folk setting of the Nunc Dimitus. Well, it s maybe vaguely interesting that Luke s three songs the Magnificat, the Benedictus, and the Nunc Dimitus should wend their way into the worship of the church and be set to wonderful music by great composers. But that s not why I m laying them before you in this sermon. I m doing so because the three songs, different as they are, have something in common. And the theme they share is very, very important. Their common theme is a pairing of continuity and discontinuity. All three of songs are about the new thing God is about to do in Jesus Christ. They re each about something startlingly fresh; in this way, the songs are about discontinuity

3 Christianity is indeed a new faith; it s a new way of life. The church that will arise is something new under the sun; so the Christian faith is in discontinuity with the faith from which it came, Judaism. Mary sings about this discontinuity when, for instance, she foresees bringing down the powerful from their thrones. (Sounds pretty revolutionary!) Zechariah s sings about this discontinuity when he talks about the dawn from on high that will break upon us. Simeon sings about this discontinuity when he looks toward what his song calls a light for revelation to the Gentiles. But at the same time, all three songs emphasize continuity with the past. What is to come in Christ is indeed new, but it is deeply rooted in the old, rooted, specifically in Judaism. Mary sings about this continuity when she remembers our ancestors, Abraham and his descendants. Zechariah sings about this continuity which he invokes David and the holy prophets from of old. Simeon sings about this continuity when he speaks of your people Israel. This balance, this interweaving of discontinuity and continuity, is an essential part of what we believe and who we are. That is to say, Christianity is new, but it did not spring up out of nowhere. The New Testament is indeed new, but it is also in continuity with the Old Testament. The Christian Gospel in significant discontinuity with Judaism, but it is rooted in Judaism and in real continuity with Judaism. This dynamic is important for understanding our faith. But and this is really where I m trying to go with this sermon the balance of continuity and - 3 -

4 discontinuity is also extraordinarily important for life in general. Here s an historical illustration of what I m talking about. Compare the history of Russia with the history of Great Britain over the last several centuries. Russia underwent a radical revolution aimed at as much discontinuity with the past as possible. The communists worked to utterly eliminate most every aspect of the Russian past. Gone were the monarchy and the church. Traditional culture and arts were suppressed in an attempt to create a new humanity disconnected from so much of the Russian past. The end result of this hard revolution was a disaster the death of millions, economic collapse, and a culture of epic despair and moral corruption. Great Britain, on the other hand, has evolved in a way that has ushered in the new while retaining much hopefully the best of the old. Over time, British history has been a careful melding of tradition and innovation, a balance of discontinuity and continuity. Now, in spite of being something of an Anglophile, I have to admit that the result is far from perfect. But the end fact is that Britain s soft revolution created a lively and prosperous democracy without mass death and economic collapse. Here s a more personal example of this balance between continuity and discontinuity that I m probing. One of the greatest compliments ever paid to me as a minister was offered by a woman I barely knew as she bid me farewell on my last day at my previous congregation in Ann Arbor. She grabbed my hand, shook it vigorously, and said, Thank you for never changing the worship service here at our church. I did a double-take, smiled and answered, You re welcome. But the fact was that in the decade I was there, the worship service had changed. It had changed quite a bit. But the Worship Committee and I had done it slowly, a step at a time. We d carefully held on to everything that was good about the way it had always done. The service had changed, but slowly, and the new service was deeply rooted in the old service. Bless that lady s heart, she d never even noticed the change. I was deeply flattered

5 This continuity-discontinuity dynamic also gets personal. It matters in our individual lives. Example: very Sunday, you and I offer a Prayer of Confession in church toward the beginning of the service. Silently or in unison, we admit that we re far from perfect and could use some new and improved. Then the minister assures us that God indeed forgives us and just as importantly that God empowers us to amend what we are and to grow toward becoming new and improved versions of ourselves. In this season of expectation called Advent, you and I dare to expect something new in our lives. That is to say, we look for real discontinuity from those parts of us and our past we know we should move beyond. But who we are becoming by the grace of God is also in continuity with who have always been. I know that I, for one, will always be a mix of the old and the new, a smorgasbord of overlapping continuity and discontinuity. The good news is that God can actually use all that we are including the past, the old, even the imperfect in us to make us more, but that more is rooted in who we ve always been. The good news is that God can immerse all our weakness and foibles in the waters of grace and raise them up as strengths and talents. God s patient grace remakes the old into the new, gently or roughly, but it s a new us that is cast from the metal of the old. The Jewish theologian Martin Buber made this very point when he wrote a fictional line he gave to a great rabbi named Zusya. I ve quoted this before and doubtless will again. When contemplating his end, his final personal encounter with the Divine, Rabbi Zusya said, In the coming world, they will not ask me, Why were you not Moses? They will ask me, Why were you not Zusya? Our audacious prayer in this season of expectation is that God might be changing us, making us new, but not, please note, making us into somebody else entirely, rather remaking us into a more loving, a kinder, a more compassionate, a new and improved version of that person we ve always been. Continuity and discontinuity. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

universe. We don t live in some dark, hollow, godless void. This is the promise, not ease, but presence.

universe. We don t live in some dark, hollow, godless void. This is the promise, not ease, but presence. BLESSED INDEED December 20, 2009, The Fourth Sunday of Advent Luke 1: 39-45 Michael L. Lindvall, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York Theme: A blessed life means something deeper than