Captive Daughter Zion

The icon that I've brought with me embodies the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, some of it's historical underpinning and my own angst:

Rose Sunday

In honor of the Ever-Blessed Virgin Mary on this Rose Sunday:

An Annunciation (Passover) Theology

God has shown strength with God's arm;
God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
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.
God has helped God's servant Israel,

in remembrance of God's mercy, 

according to the promise God made to our ancestors,

to the descendants of Abraham through Hagar and Sarah and Keturah forever.

"God has..."

The Virgin proclaims that God has already done all of these things, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, in spite of her present reality.

God has shown strength with God's own arm at varying points throughout Israel's history, and the memory, witness and testimony of their ancient scriptures and new psalms to God's strength, willingness and power to save in those times is enough for the present moment. In the face of the mighty Roman Empire, what God has already done is enough.

God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts in the songs and stories of old enfolded into the scriptures of Israel. Herod's arrogance goes yet unchallenged but God has unseated the proud from their thrones in their hearts and halls before and it is enough.

God has brought down the powerful from their thrones inside and outside of Israel, whether or not they were enthroned with God's blessing. God has deposed other gods from within their own realms. Caesar or any other would-be god, it matters not. God has done it before and can do it again. And that is enough.

God has lifted up the lowly time and time again. In spite of the biases of Israel's story-tellers and scripture-writers, the God of Israel visits and blesses women and children and slaves and foreigners. A peculiarly pregnant girl-child and her post-menopausal cousin with her own pregnancy predicament may be beyond the notice of Rome, but not God. And it is enough.

God has filled the hungry with good things in the before times and every once in a while in our time. People still go hungry, people still die in squalor, taxed to death by Rome and Romanesque imperial imitators, but God still provides unexpected and unimaginable blessings. Our people will not be starved to death and pass out of existence on God's watch. Some of us will survive and that is enough.

God has sent the rich away empty in our stories and songs and scriptures. The glory of Rome is not eternal. Ask the Egyptians, ask the Assyrians, ask the Babylonians, ask the Persians, ask Alexander the Great, if you can find him. God has done it before and that is enough.

God has helped God's servant, in our faithfulness and in our faithlessness. God has been faithful. In our history, in our memories, in our scriptures, God has been faithful and it is enough.

God has remembered God's promise and will keep it. Our prophets Miriam and Moses taught us to hold God accountable to God's promises. They bargained and argued with God and never let God forget God's promises to our ancestors or to us, their descendants. Even when the promises have not yet been kept, God remembers and that is enough.

Dayenu. "It is enough." This is a Pesach (Passover) theology.

Dayenu, is the refrain and title of what may be the most familiar and popular Passover song. The song says that if God had only... and lists the miracles God performed for the ancestors, if God had only done one and not these that followed, it would have been enough. Dayenu.

In 2011, the Feast of the Annunciation precedes Pesach, by less than thirty days. In some years they have overlapped more closely. And it occurs to me that the theology that the Ever-Blessed Virgin named for Miryam the Prophet of Exodus is proclaiming is Dayenu, Passover theology.

The Holy Mother of the Word-Made-Flesh is herself a Torah-sage and she teaches us. Her perspective on the yoke of Roman oppression that strangled her world is framed by the memory of what God has done for her people and her ancestors. And by what God is doing to and through her: Kedushat haShem, sanctifying the Divine Name. 

Kedushat haShem, sanctifying the Divine Name would come to be the way in which the actions or martyrs were expressed. For me, the Mother of Sorrows is also the Mother of Martyrs. And there have been enough. Dayenu.

Truly all generations call you blessed.

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 

for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of God's servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;   

for the Mighty One has done great things for me, 

and holy is God's Name.

Mother of God, Hear Our Prayer

The Ever-Blessed Virgin Mary is a shining light that illumines my faith. Her communion brings me comfort and grace.

Mirror of justice, pray for us. Seat of wisdom, pray for us.

Cause of our joy, pray for us. Mystical rose, pray for us.

Tower of David, pray for us. Tower of ivory, pray for us.

Gate of heaven, pray for us. Morning star, pray for us.

Because sometimes, I can't even pray for myself.

A Marian Gospel

Since it is true that:

“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  (John 3:16-17)
It is also true that:
The Ever-Blessed Virgin Mother so loved the world that she gave her first born Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, the Virgin Mary did not birth her Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Blessing the Virgin (A Repost)

15 August,
The Blessed Virgin Mary, BVM,
Ever-Blessed to me, Ever-Virgin to others
Mother of a Jewish martyr
Mother of God, Mother of Salvation, Mother of Redemption, Mother of Christianity
Her body, the intersection between Judaism and Christianity
Her womb a fountain of living waters
Paragon and archetype

I like to think that she was assumed in to heaven
In the scriptures, Enoch, Elijah and Jesus ascend
I like to think that she too tasted eternal life without the bitterness of death

It saddens me that so many have lost sight of the gift that is her life and witness. Accepting her as a human woman, with no supernatural element in her conception or birth – no immaculate conception – allows us to see her as fully human, fully woman. Not denying her sexual intimacy makes her more like us – we know that Jesus became like us but he was so different in so many ways from his conception to his life-after-death, we are not yet quite like him. There is, of course one way in which we cannot be like her, but none of us are exactly like another. We may not all be women, wives, mothers, or single parents (no one knows when or to where Joseph disappeared, but he never came back), but there is something compelling about her life and choices. And there is her love, the great love she shares with her son who loves us so dearly.

Elizabeth, the pregnant prophet composed the first lines of this prayer, another added the ending. These words give me peace and comfort in a way few others do:
Hail Mary, full of grace
the Lord is with you
Holy Mary
Mother of God
Pray for us now
and in the hour of our death. Amen.

In her own words that became the Word of God:
All generations call her blessed.
I do.

Holy Mary Mother of God

The word of God to the Blessed Virgin and to us...

Zephaniah 3:14 Sing aloud, daughter of Zion; 

shout, O Israel!
Rejoice daughter and exult with all your heart, 

daughter of Jerusalem!
15 THE JUDGE OF ALL FLESH has taken away the judgments against you daughter,
and has turned away your enemies daughter.
The sovereign of Israel,  

THE RULER OF THE HEAVENS AND EARTH,
is in your midst daughter; 

you shall fear disaster no more daughter.
16 …Do not fear daughter, daughter of Zion; 

do not let your hands grow weak.
17 THE EVER-PRESENT ONE, your God, 

is in your midst daughter, a warrior who gives victory;
Who will rejoice over you with gladness daughter, 

and will renew you in love daughter;
Who will exult over you daughter with loud singing

18 As on a day of festival, I will remove disaster from you daughter, 

so that you will not bear reproach for it daughter.
19 I will deal with all your oppressors at that time daughter.
And I will save the lame and gather the outcast,
and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.

The Fatherhood of St. Joseph

St. Joseph, Patron Saint of Fathers

Patron Saint of Step-Fathers

Patron Saint of Adoptive Fathers

Patron Saint of Dead-Beat Dads

Every year during Christmas and Advent, I think about St. Joseph. I remember a sermon I heard from his perspective more than a decade ago. The preacher-man was saying how hard it is for men to raise children that are not theirs, particularly when they feel that they have been deceived. It's one thing for a man to marry a widow, divorced mom or single mother, or for a couple to decide to adopt or even use a reproductive technology that involves donor sperm. It is an entirely different matter for a man to stay with a woman who has been impregnated by someone else after they made a commitment to each other. It must have been unimaginable for Yosef, Yusif, José, or Joseph to hear his woman saying that she had never cheated, never been unfaithful and was pregnant and the Holy Spirit - She! - was the Father.
I wonder if Yo thought Miryam or Mary or Maria was mentally ill. I'd like to believe that he loved her. That the quiet divorce was to spare her shame, protect her family honor and his, and to save her life. It's also possible that he wanted to annul their betrothal quietly so that he wouldn't lose face. Even if Yo came to believe Miryam's crazy [@$$] story - and let's not be so sanctified that we think that makes sense - even if he believed her,  his family and his boys wouldn't. They would say that he got punked; that he was a punk; that he was pitiful for staying with a girl that played him so badly, so publicly.
Yo doesn't get a lot of ink in the bible. But what he does get is continual reassurance from God through his dreams, for a while. God appears to him over and over again. And like his eponymous ancestor, he doesn't need anyone to interpret his dreams for him.
To his eternal credit and well-earned sanctification, Yo stays with his woman. But he doesn't touch her, for a while - a long while. I can't believe that he didn't feel bitter, betrayed and trapped at least some of the time. But he stayed.
Although he is absent from the Epiphany story. Where was he? Were they separated then? If so, they worked through it. And they had a real marriage. The scriptures are clear that they had four sons and an unknown number of daughters. (The RC perverse interpretation of the scriptures denies them their holy, healthy, God-given sexuality. And that is blasphemy.)
But Joseph eventually disappears. He may well have died. But that is not the only possibility. As the strange boy-child became an even stranger man-child it became more and more clear that he was a stranger. And in spite of all of that God-talk the memories of those dreams were faded memories. The boy was trouble, running off, getting lost, causing a scene in the temple before the elders, reminding everyone about the possibility that Yo had been cuckolded. Joseph left.
Miriam was widowed by death, by abandonment or indifference. When she needed him, he wasn't there. When her son - not his - was arrested; Yo wasn't there. When her son - not his - was executed; Joseph wasn't there. When her son - not his - was taken down from his lynching tree; Yusif wasn't there. When her son - not his - was bathed after his death for his burial; Yosef wasn't there.
José didn't come back when people started saying that her son - not his - had risen from the grave. Joseph didn't gather in Yerushalyim to see if her son - not his - would really meet his disciples including his mother, sisters and brothers for Shavuoth. Perhaps he was dead. Perhaps he heard all that miraculous, unbelievable resurrection talk and was ashamed of leaving, after all he had heard from God in his dreams.
The silence in the scriptures surrounding Joseph's absence at the end (and new beginning) of Jesus' life is intriguing. If he was dead, why not say so? If he was a great age when he married Miryam and impotent and had children from a previous marriage, why not say so?
But if he left, left God's son fatherless, how could that be explained? If he lost his faith, how could the rest of us come to believe?
I think he left. I think that the very humanity of Christ made the Incarnation harder and harder for him to believe. And I believe that as a saint who lost his faith, St. Joseph has much to teach us. Our faith is not rational. It is nearly unsustainable in the real world. I wonder if Joseph had other dreams that he disregarded. I wonder if having received his last divine visitation he believed he needed one more, and then another, and another, like an addict. I wonder if he ever really believed. I wonder if his pride got in the way of him asking Jesus the man, "Who are you really? Where did you come from? I need to know."
Perhaps the disappearance of St. Joseph teaches us that we have to invest in our faith on a daily basis, making ourselves vulnerable to ridicule and the scandal of the gospel. I have to believe that when God called Miryam and Yosef into service God knew that they were capable of living into and up to their calling. And, God knew that they were capable of failing.
St. Joseph's disappearance and likely abandonment of his family, God's family, the family that he had promised God he would nurture on God's behalf, also teach us that marriages fail and families rupture even when God is Incarnate in their  midst. And, we learn that a single mother can raise a child who will change the world by her [d@mn] self. And we learn that children from single-parent homes may be a little odd, lacking in a few social graces, but full repositories of God's gifts and graces.
St. Joseph, I'm not mad at you. I think I understand as much as I can how hard was your calling. I'm just glad you were able to hang in there as long as you did. You guided them to safety and saved their lives, risking your own. I honor you for that. And I think you can claim some of what he grew into. Your mark is on him and no one can take that away from you.

St. Joseph, Patron Saint of Fathers

Patron Saint of Step-Fathers

Patron Saint of Adoptive Fathers

Patron Saint of Dead-Beat Dads

I call your name. I bless your memory. Ashé.

The Magnificat

The Scandal of the Virgin Birth

Scandalous! The scandal of the Gospel may have been the crucifixion for Paul. But for far too many others it is the specific circumstances of the Incarnation. Human flesh and blood. Worse, a woman's flesh and blood - that she was not sexually experienced only mitigates the horror and shame a little.
Dr. Cornell West suggests that the scandal is the proximity of the Messiah to urine and feces. I suggest that the proximity of the Messiah to a woman's offal is even more untenable.
I've been having (or trying to have) a conversation off and on with some church folk about what it means (and meant) that Jesus of Nazareth was woman-born. And how that impacts how we understand the expression "Son of Man" in the Gospels in particular, but also in other parts of the scripture.
God uses the Hebrew expression ben-adam to address Ezekiel and remind him that he is only human.
Daniel sees the Aramaic equivalent bar-enosh in a vision that testifies that this child-of-human-flesh is no ordinary mortal.
The Gospels translate the Hebrew (and Aramaic) description into Greek: huios to anthropou, anthropological offspring. Jesus applies the term to himself seeming to mean both mortal - he will die on that cross and, more-than-mortal; he will transcend that cross.
The mortality of Jesus is inseparable from his humanity. And the historic creeds of the Church through the ages affirm that Jesus inherited his humanity biologically, from his mother.
What is at stake in proclaiming that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God and the Son of Woman is not some radical departure from the Gospel. It is the radical (radix = root) Gospel.
But if we call Jesus the Son of Man (in the generic sense of course), we don't have to think about that woman's body or the parts of her body with which Jesus had the most intimate contact.
The poet Frances Croake Frank asks:

Did the woman say,
When she held him for the first time in the
dark dank of a stable,
After the pain and the bleeding and the crying,
"This is my body, this is my blood?"

Did the woman say,
When she held him for the last time in the
dark rain on a hilltop,
After the pain and the bleeding and the dying,
"This is my body, this is my blood?

Well that she said it to him then,
For dry old men,
Brocaded robes belying barrenness,
Ordain that she not say it for him now.

To be continued...