Dear Friends:

This coming Sunday, we will read the story of Angel Gabriel’s annunciation to Mary from the Gospel of Luke and hear the beautiful Magnificat she sings afterwards, when she visits her elder cousin Elizabeth. “Blessed is she who believed” says Elizabeth, “that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her.”

As I began to ponder this beloved story of outrageous hope coming to life, the weekly meditation from Jan Richardson’s Illuminated Advent series landed in my inbox. As you know, we have been using her inspiring artwork and blessings to guide our faith formation programs during the season of Advent, so I thought I would share her reflection on Mary’s Magnificat with all of you.

“A seed in the ground. A flame in the darkness. A hand outstretched. A child in the womb. Hope starts small and overtakes us, stretching the borders of what we have known.

One “yes” to an angel, and Mary becomes a revolutionary…After receiving Elizabeth’s blessing, Mary pours out a song, a cry of hope that echoes the one raised by her foremother Hannah after giving birth to Samuel. The powerful brought down from their thrones! The lowly raised up! The hungry filled with good things! The rich sent away empty! But Mary sings about these things as though they have already happened! A tiny child in her womb, and God has transformed the world? What sort of outrageous hope is this?

Mary knows in her soul, in her womb, that radical hope is found at the boundary where the outrageous gives way to the possible. A child given to her aged kinswoman? The courage to say yes to Gabriel’s invitation to her, an unwed woman? Well, then God might as well have turned the world into one where all things are possible! Even justice. Even freedom.

Mary knows that some things are so outrageous that sometimes we have to talk about them as if they have already happened in order to believe they could ever come about. And so, if we believe that God has brought justice to the world, we live that justice, and we share in making the world more just. If we believe that God has brought healing to the world, we live that healing, and we share in making the world more whole.

Hope starts small, even as a seed in the womb, but it feeds on outrageous possibilities. It beckons us to step out with the belief that the action we take will not only bear fruit but that in taking it, we have already made a difference in the world. God invites us, like Mary, to open to God’s radical leading, to step out with sometimes inexplicable faith, trusting that we will find sustenance. “Hope,” writes W. Paul Jones in Trumpet at Full Moon, “is the simple trust that God has not forgotten the recipe for manna.” The hope of God contains the promise that we will be fed, even if we never see the fruit of our hope-filled actions.”

In the hope of Advent,

Amelie+