Before Your Cradle – Before The Crèche: 
“YES!!”
Micah 5: 1-5a, 6:8 , Luke 1: 39-56
December 20, 2009 Fourth Sunday Of Advent
What do you really know about your family tree?  Can you name the generations that came before you?  Can you sum up your impression of any one of them in a simple sentence or two.        Can’t?  Well, know this…even though you may not know the family stories of those who came before you, they are playing out in you right now.  Family attitudes…sometimes about very specific things like loyalty at all costs, prejudices, favorites/unfavorites, even divorce patterns and the rights/privileges of children…..family attitudes and choices flow through the generations subconsciously and are present even if not told out loud or even known.  They affect you and often shape you and will be repeated by you until they are brought up in your consciousness for what they are, why they are….how to live with them not through them.  Soul Work.  We see this at holidays especially…and maybe thinking of your holiday traditions (and your responses to them) may spark some aha! in you around this assertion I am making.

       And what do you know of your own birthing story?  Do you know the circumstances of your birth?  Do you know what was going on in your family at the time of your birth?  The mood of your mother or father, the strains and joys that were present?  They were born into you as you were born into them.
        Stories matter.  Knowing the stories, we can see more clearly what has been forming us and then more dearly make life choices.
       Jesus and you have this in common.  The stories of the generations before him helped define himself, too.  BUT, when those stories were not helpful to him in standing in his own light and life with integrity, he moved out from them with courage and lived a new truth in his world family.  Born through Mary and Joseph, he was born to the Holy Family….of humanity.  
       Perhaps this season as we reflect on the context of Jesus birth, you will reflect on the context of yours…and how you are still being shaped by it…and how you may hold these stories differently now and now begin to re-define yourself.  
       And maybe this process will help you make sense differently of some of the wisdom teachings of Jesus about family…for as a grown up, Jesus often talks of family in somewhat harsh sounding ways…mother against daughter, son against father, respect your parents, leave your family, leave the dead to the dead and follow me….what is he inviting us to know about ourselves and the power we have to reorder our lives…and how this may very well be connected directly to our families?
       And, I invite you…if you have children…to think down the generations as well as up.  For there is a legacy…one you are now defining….one you can refine…..

Grandmother wisdom:  
Micah knows: Now you are walled around with a wall…ever feel that way?  Sometimes life feels this way.  And, sometimes we’re the very ones erecting the wall!  Walling ourselves off,   walling ourselves within old ways,    old perspectives,    patterns that no longer work for us,    old tapes playing in our heads,    taking on the same roles in our families that are expected of us… even when we know it just won’t work.  We are indeed under siege! 

      And then, from the most unlikely of places…like in Micah a savior from a little clam….from a little space inside us that wouldn’t seem important…. comes something ancient and old bubbling up, being born in us….wisdom!  (Jesus is wisdom personified and it’s in you, too!) It will lead us, if we will follow it.  To follow requires:  Doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God!
 …in our relationships, in our families, within ourselves as we make life-giving rather than life-stopping daily choices! You just never know from where new life will come!   Your worst day may just be what’s needed for a new day to dawn!  
     Most unlikely….Hannah,  Mary’s Mom…Anna, Elizabeth…all pregnant with possibility at the most unlikely time of their lives.  Mary, too!  Her, too young!  
     But….presented with the possibility, did they hang on to old perspectives, prevailing thinking, institutional directives?     No.  
     They knew something new was happening, and they resisted walling themselves away from possibility and said:  Yes!  
     Joseph said yes too!  As did Zechariah and Joachim!
     The generations that preceded Jesus formed a pattern of saying yes at unlikely times to unlikely happenings …this family expectation helped form him.  
     For him, it was largely a good generational pattern.  How about yours?  Even as good as it was, Jesus in time grew to need to put even this family expectation/pattern, even his very family aside in order to….
     do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with His God.
     And think on this: what was the real difference between Mary’s and Joseph’s Yes in Galilee and the Yes of Jesus in Gethsemane?  
     In a world filled with pain and suffering, these people say Yes to God’s desire for them, regardless of the seeming cost and uncertainty….trusting God’s desire for well being brings a fractured life together….
                                   the past, and present…..toward a future.
      The Birth of Jesus in Bethlehem said Yes to the world’s No…the Yes of peace to the No of the world’s ways and its warring at all levels of life…….redefining history, relationship, and what it now means to be whole.  And this Yes is now part of your family tree…for you are part of the holy family!
           And did you hear Mary’s joy in the Annunciation and Magnificat?  And she is joyful….but not from a place of privilege.  She is pregnant, unmarried, living in a small town where everyone knows everything…or at least they think they do!  No doubt there were many who judged her!  Mary, unmarried, pregnant, having left her village and the prying eyes of neighbors, didn’t say woe is me, but “My soul magnifies the Lord…
         the Lord…not the gossip, the situation, a pity party.  She didn’t get hooked by the others but kept her focus on what was life-giving to her…
       a healthy emotional triangle of Mary, Joseph, with God’s LOVE.  In fact, if you want to see Jesus more clearly and his birthing family, look to the young teens, outcast, coupled on the margins.  If we could only connect with them! Like a great wheel, Mary turns history upside down…much as her son will do decades later as he grows into His call.  Jesus was rejected by his hometown folk for saying God is going to proclaim liberty to the captives.  And it will happen to you, too! 

For you too will be challenged and sabotaged by your family and friends when you free yourself of their expectations to act in new ways, with new understanding….
for they may not have caught the vision yet….
they can…but maybe they never will…but it’s your life you live….not theirs!  
      In the end, Jesus’ grandmother’s and mother’s hearts were broken by the choices Jesus made, but he made them.  
        Will you make them….even if it breaks your mother’s heart…your family’s expectations….
and align yourself with God’s intentions for your life….for personal fulfillment?
So…the stories are filled with all this Yes! 
I hope you’ll add your Yes!  I pray it!
To what?  For what?
They all said YES!....for a child. 
For the child of Jesus who says Yes to the child in YOU!
        And we know:  “Nothing you do for a child is ever wasted.” 
                     Nothing you do for the child waiting to be born in you is ever wasted! 
When you turn toward God so you can grow up again, you won’t get “that look” or “I told you so” or some woulda, coulda, shoulda. 
        You will get acceptance, protection, a listening ear, and open arms…..like Elizabeth for Mary, like us for you…for we are all part of that one Holy Family now!
       Mary’s soul is magnified.  So is your soul! 
            The question is: What is it magnifying? 
As you have now moved through Advent, what is magnified? 
What is stirred?  It’s suppose to be! 
Advent, contrary to secular culture’s lure, is not a time of fun and games and laughter. 
        It is a time of heart felt frustrations that bring us to the realization that we can’t fix what is broken on our own…all our best thinking, planning, won’t do it! 
            It is a time when, often in desperation, we are to turn toward God’s possibilities, embrace God’s way as revealed in a growing up Jesus…and do the day differently! 
    The original Advent color was black as in a funeral…not royal purple. 
It is time you laid to rest, permanently, the old ways….for you get to be born again into the manger of life’s possibilities and take your place in your rightful family:  The Holy Family!