Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to comm.church for more information.

I'm delighted to be with you on this fourth Sunday of Advent, a Sunday where we light the peace candle. So, peace be with you. That's some of you got it. Let's try it again. I'm gonna say peace be with you and you're gonna say and also with you.

Peace be with you. And also with you. Thank you. My name is Bobby and I am a pastor on the team and I could not love that more. I really love it.

So, who's ready for a little bit of an advent confession? You are, I know it. Yes, someone in the back. Well, the longer I work at church, about twenty years now, the more Advent has become a time with some tension. I both love it and I feel a little taunted by it.

I find that what I want to do personally to prepare for Christmas is in some conflict with what I want to do professionally to prepare for Christmas. Mostly, I just don't have time for it all. I battle for time to write Christmas cards, preferring honestly to write Advent sermons. You're welcome. I want to sit by the glow of a Christmas tree, but really I find myself really fixated on my to do list.

I aim to get my shopping done and gifts in the mail but there's liturgy to shape and I am late with gifts again. But this year, this year, I made a plan to spread out the advent activities. I want to be intentional about doing to prepare for Christmas. I turned the plan into Bobby's Advent Calendar and I journaled it in my bullet journal like a true bullet journal nerd and I posted it on Instagram. To my surprise, this little calendar kind of blew up.

Some friends decided to follow it. My sister-in-law wrote me and said, print it. And Yelena even passed it along to group leaders for advent inspiration. Now, if I would have known, some of you would be joining me and watching Ali Wong's not at all g rated comedy special, Baby Cobra, I might have planned something different for December 3, but for the record, something about that special. As one reviewer commented, being fierce, filthy, and very pregnant made me think about the grit of motherhood and Mary.

And maybe connecting Ali Wong to the holy mother is a bit of a stretch for you, In which case, I wonder if I should have put a little more seriousness into Bobby's advent calendar. But then again, maybe all of that humanness, that accessibility, even a little bit of that irreverence is kind of what we need this year. Either way, the embrace of my advent calendar is a little bit of a mystery to me. I'm glad for it though. It reminds me how Advent is a season that we partake in together.

No matter our wacky practices. This Advent, we've been looking at different parts of the Christmas story through different literary lenses or what we've called Advent angles. So why all the angles? Well, it's easy to get bored with Christmas. Yes, I said that.

Most of us know the story of little baby Jesus just too well, And that's why we need new angles to get at deeper meanings. So the angle of tragedy in Jesus' family tree speaks of God's guidance when we name and overcome what breaks us down. And the angle of comedy in Joseph's confusion points out the humor of God made known in a baby. Jesus the joke who shows us how to be hilariously human. In the angle of fairy tale, in Elizabeth and Zechariah's old age, pregnancy gives hope to anyone who has given up, whether we read our lives as happily ever after or not.

And today, our advent angle is mystery. We are in Luke one twenty six to 38, the story of a divine messenger speaking a mysterious plan into the very body of a young woman named Mary. We're gonna talk about that mysterious messenger. We're gonna talk about a probing question, breath and shadows and slave. But before we dive in, let us pray.

Loving God, we take a moment to be still, to pay attention to our bodies. Is our posture rigid, tense? Is it relaxed, open? We pause to breathe in deeply And to breathe out fully. Remembering something of this most sacred story of God becoming flesh and moving into the neighborhood is alive in us too.

So Jesus who was once so small, just cells dividing and multiplying. And then after the water broke, a baby in the arms of his family. Won't you visit us again this year? With your trust in us to take care of your presence in the world. So spirit who shapes life and dwells in deep mystery.

As we contemplate the characters of the nativity be near to us. To those we love, to those who hurt this season, and to this big, beautiful world that you love. Together we pray. Amen. Luke one beginning in verse 26.

In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you. In our Advent journey, we are going back to this inciting incident.

And I like that because calling to mind the beginning can bring clarity. In a world where Jesus means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, let's remember how the story starts. Centering women, reimagining family, encountering a heavenly figure who speaks God's favor, not God's judgment. Now there are these interlocking layers in the story of the annunciation, and annunciation just means announcement to Mary. Biblical scholars frame these interlocking layers as typology.

And if you're like, Typo what, Bobby? I just mean the patterns and the symbols that connect across the Scriptures. Looking at typology reminds us that this story is ancient and brand new. First, we have this typology of Old Testament birth announcement, and the pattern goes like this. An angel appears, a person is perplexed, a message is given, a person objects in reassurance and a sign follow.

The story of Jesus's birth announcement is both familiar to the stories of Ishmael, Isaac, and Samuel, but it's also going into new territory. Second, we have this typology of the prophet call stories and the pattern goes like this. An ordinary person is going about their ordinary life. Moses herds his father in law's flock. Gideon beats wheat in a wine press.

And then the divine shows up as a burning bush or a messenger under a tree. And the person is directed out of their ordinary life to accomplish the extraordinary. And here Mary is on the same level as the prophets Moses and Gideon and yet she takes this story further. And third, we have this typology of reversal. In the Old Testament makes its bread and butter from reversals.

Smallest nation, God's most favorite. Shepherd boy becomes king David. And here, we have the reversal of place. In a world where power comes from Rome and religious authority from Jerusalem, Luke starts the story in Galilee. The divine subverts corporate and religious power through a baby born in a backwoods community, no one's seat of power?

And New Testament scholar Robert Tanhill says, the echoes of these old stories and promises enrich the experience of the new story. The recipients of Luke's story can say to themselves, It is like this, only different. The story of Jesus is old and it is new. So what makes us think that God will only speak to us with archaic language? Rules from another time and place, resolve that says, but this is how it's always been.

This is not how the story of Jesus begins. Yes, it honors the old. It traces a sacred memory, and then it moves forward. Maybe you feel like cultural change can't come soon enough. Maybe you feel like the world is just changing too fast.

Maybe you are confused about how to honor the stories of your past and brave new paths for your future. The mystery of being human is about honoring an important past and staying open to a better tomorrow. The mysterious ways of God are always ancient and yet brand new, deeply rooted and bearing new fruit, awkwardly traditional, and radically forward facing. And it's okay if that's hard to navigate. I know how hard it can be to move towards the unknown.

We are all doing that right now in a pandemic that just won't quit. But you have a tool. You can, like Mary, seek truth with your questions, direct probing questions as much to God or a messenger of God is to yourself. So verses 29 to 34. Mary was greatly troubled at the messenger's words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.

But the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the most high. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever.

His kingdom will never end. How can this be? Mary asked the angel, since I am a virgin. And I love the way Sarah Rudin translates this first verse in the section. She says, now she was thoroughly confused by the speech and was trying to work out what this greeting could mean.

This is a moment of profound disorientation. But rather than fight, flee, or freeze, Mary gets curious. It's like she's been to therapy. So let's consider the message and then Mary's question. Looking at the message, we need to be aware of the nature of this discourse.

There's a pattern here. The text begins with the particular and broadens by the conclusion. So first, the message is directed at Mary's own fear, then her favor. Next, a son will grow in her womb, then he will grow to be great. Finally, we're reaching to the heavens, an eternal throne of forever kingdom.

No wonder the message leaves Mary spinning. Mary gets her bearings though by investigating. And the Greek word for wonder here is Do you hear dialogue in it? It means to reason, discuss, consider, to reckon thoroughly, to deliberate, to muse. At first, even the words of an angel don't sit right with Mary Sochi probes.

There's a real human instinct here to hold what we comprehend with what we don't. You comprehend the particulars of your own life, names, mine's Bobby, my partner's Jonathan, my sweet niece is Emery. You know your family ties, I'm a Sockled, I married a Bate My niece is a hunt. You know the traditions that you come from. I grew up Catholic as a kid, my husband Protestant, my niece in this beautiful theology of love.

But after that, sometimes it feels like there's so much we don't know. Like the broader stuff, the shift in your emotions in any given moment. I mean, maybe you've been wronged but maybe you're just hungry. Greater meaning in the midst of pain. How an ancient story written in other languages is supposed to shape your spirituality.

The story of the annunciation, a messenger arriving to a poor girl and making mystery out of her predictable life, is a message for us this Advent. Just because you don't have all the answers or don't know exactly what you're supposed to do next or can't even imagine how all of this is going to work out doesn't mean you're lost or wrong or stupid. Not knowing and asking questions is about living with divine incomprehensibility. And Christians have always made space for what we don't know about God. Divine incomprehensibility is a legit doctrine in our tradition, so let's honor it.

The truth is that Mary will move forward without all the answers. This next part of the story doesn't have clear edges. It's about breath and shadows. So the messenger says to Mary, the Holy Spirit will come over you, and the power of the most high will send a shadow over you. The baby born to you will be holy.

We'll call him the son of God. Also says the angel, get a little of this Mary. Elizabeth, your relative, has conceived a son herself in her old age. She's already six months along. Everything God proclaims is possible.

Now, I actually wanna make some space for something that for years I ignored. From where we sit, a story of a God who sneaks up on a woman, not one who's asking to be special and says to her, I'm gonna put a special baby in you, feels terribly troubling. Am I right? Where's the consent? Is Mary violated?

Does it hurt her? But of course, those are modern questions of this ancient text, and we're always welcome to bring those along. Don't ignore your questions, but then let's get to work. Whatever Luke is doing here, he's not explaining Jesus' biology. This is a work of theology, how we speak about God.

Luke turns what had been a common and generic title, He's a son of God. You can be a son of God. We're all sons of God. And makes it specific and unique to Jesus. This, he says, this baby right here who grew up to be our friend.

This is the son of God. You wanna know what God looks like? Start here. And the truth is that neither of the verbs referring to what the spirit does with Mary are violent. They're just not.

As Barbara Reid and Shelley Matthews write in their wisdom commentary, the verbs come upon, and overshadow, have no sexual connotation. Rather, they evoke God's protection and empowering presence. But no matter how well we understand those verbs or the context of this pregnancy, there's mystery here. And while we could just throw up our hands and say, God is totally mysterious. Why bother trying to grasp breath or shadow of God?

I think we can do better because we have God given imaginations. We have intuition. We have poets. For a few years, I have been obsessed with Lorna Crozier's poetry collection called God of Shadows. And I could go on and on about how her poems open up ideas about God rather than close those ideas.

But why not let you experience one for yourself? So here's her poem, God of wind. Lean this God empty. No one has seen it as the poet says. Even in the heavens, it can't sit still.

It remains invisible to the rest of the pantheon, yet it moves more gracefully and swiftly than the ones with wings. This creates much envy. It doesn't like to find itself inside walls even those that form a circle. It lords over the four directions and the fifth direction that controls the heart. When it blows through you, your life's upended.

You think it comes from the mountains, the ocean? You think it comes from the West? Mistral, Papageo, Santa Ana, Willowa, the wind collapses, anything you choose to call it. Wither is its favorite question. What it loves most on earth is an inky lung of starlings tossed into the sky of the human body.

It loves hair. Mary knows this God of wind. She has lived the line when it blows through you, your life's upended. And I like to imagine Mary sort of smoothing down her wind blown hair as the strangest conversation of her life wraps up. There's still so much to make sense of.

Mary has a voice for that. And she will use it too no matter her self appointed spiritual status as slave. Verse 38, Mary says, I am the Lord's servant. May your word to me be fulfilled. Then the angel left her.

Ultimately, Mary does consent to be Theotokos, the God bearer. Even as Mary refers to herself as a slave of god, she shines with so much dignity and realness. Mary is not wealthy. Mary has been afraid. Mary has stood toe to toe with a divine messenger, and finally, she says, okay.

I'll do it. I'll be a part of a story full of mystery. Yeah. Count on me. Every year, when Christmas rolls around, you're going to wonder how much of this story is true.

And at some point in the holidays, you'll bump into Mary, her belly swelling, a look of steely determination across her face and yet there's this softness there too. Like any parent, Mary knows the way ahead will be challenging, rewarding, and like nothing she could have imagined for her life. She holds divine encounter inside of her and will give birth to so much more. Abraham Heschel says the question about God is not a question about all things but a question of all things. It is phrased not in categories of reason but in acts in which we are a stir beyond words.

The mind does not know how to phrase it yet the soul size it, sings it, pleads it. In other words, we live in mystery, but that doesn't mean you can't move forward. Embracing mystery helps you move forward. Don't let what you don't know slow you down. Listen to the divine voice in holy messengers, dear friends, total strangers, great books, advent practices on Instagram, your own body's knowing, and strange poetry, and then step out.

Step out like Mary does. Move forward with an act of forgiveness without knowing how it will make you feel. Move forward with an expression of trust without any guarantee that it will be returned. Move forward speaking up about what you need, trusting that your intuition is a place where the divine dwells. Because here's what I believe.

Your ability to live with mystery and action will make you more you. And if we learn anything from Mary, it's this. Being who you are brings God into the world. So let that be the mystery you ride in on Christmas Eve too. In order to welcome the Christ child in five sleeps, you need to know Christ already dwells in you.

And as you find yourself like Mary alert to mystery, may you move forward like a song. Something like the one Mary sings when she gets to Elizabeth's house. The sweet subversive magnificat. Mary sings my whole being glorifies the living God who looks at the loneliness of a slave, scatters the proud, brings down abusers, and lifts up the lowly, the lonely, the hurting, the desperate. God remembers us with compassion always in God's mind.

Let us pray. Loving God, thank you for strange mystery, for speechlessness, for those times we do find our voice, for curiosity, for awe, for belonging. On this final Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of peace, we take a moment to name some of the places we have known disorientation this year. In relationships, in our worry, in learning about variants, in our work lives, in our mental health, in our bodies. And we pause and we wait and we wonder how we can live with what we don't know.

And still move forward. The spirit of the living god, present with us now. Enter the places of our worry, our hurt, our struggle, and heal us of all that harms us. Amen.