Sermons

Christmas Eve Tuesday

Breath of Heaven (Mary’s Song)   Amy Grant

I have traveled many moonless nights
Cold and weary with a babe inside
And I wonder what I've done
Holy father you have come
And chosen me now to carry your son

I am waiting in a silent prayer
I am frightened by the load I bear
In a world as cold as stone
Must I walk this path alone?
Be with me now Be with me now

Breath of heaven
Hold me together
Be forever near me
Breath of heaven
Breath of heaven
Lighten my darkness
Pour over me your holiness
For you are holy
Breath of heaven

Do you wonder as you watch my face
If a wiser one should have had my place
But I offer all I am
For the mercy of your plan
Help me be strong

Source: LyricFind - Songwriters: Chris Eaton / Amy Lee Grant - Breath Of Heaven (Mary's Song) lyrics © BMG Rights Management

“Real courage is being afraid but doing it anyway.” ― Oprah Winfrey

REFLECTION

I have traveled many moonless nights
Cold and weary with a babe inside
And I wonder what I've done
Holy father you have come
And chosen me now to carry your son

I am waiting in a silent prayer
I am frightened by the load I bear
In a world as cold as stone
Must I walk this path alone?
Be with me now Be with me now

When I first heard these words sung by Amy Grant about Mary, I was stunned.

Finally, this is Mary’s story. Not Luke’s story or Matthew’s story or the Christian Church’s story; it is Mary’s story…. in her own voice.

The honor and glory and stupendously unbelievable stories surrounding the conception and birth of the Christ Child has made Mary, the young woman from Galilee, a super-blessed, super-perfect, super-sized version of God’s chosen woman. She has been made invisible and silent. In seeing her as the handmaiden of God, we have rendered her human experience irrelevant. She is the vessel of the sacred fertilized egg that becomes the baby Jesus. Her glorified image has become immortalized and she has been elevated to divinity – the Blessed Virgin Mary – the BVM as we called her as high schoolers.

In a time of #MeToo and mansplaining away almost everything women accomplish and national leaders who mock and ridicule women who speak truth to power, … oh my gracious, let us hear from Mary in her own words and from her own experience.

She is young, pregnant and unmarried.
She does not know, really, who she is now that she is to birth the child of God.
Promised to a man who is kind but who does not understand what has happened to her, or to him.
She is alone, cold, rejected, and weary.
She is frightened.

And … she is strong, faithful and courageous.

She acknowledges her difficult situation.

“God has called me to courage.”

Courage. Courage is being afraid and doing it anyway.

What better word is there to describe young Mary as she struggles to cope with an unplanned pregnancy, a long and arduous journey with a man to whom she is promised but hardly knows, a wait – perhaps for days – in Bethlehem to be added to the national tax registry of a foreign power occupying her land, and finally going into labor without shelter or midwife.

With her life in complete disarray, she calls out for help to the only source she knows.

Breath of Heaven.
Breath of Heaven.
Be with me now.

What a wonderful image that is.

I’m not exactly sure what Breath of Heaven is, but I feel rather certain that it is strength and comfort in time of trouble.

Mary sings her song to the universe:

Breath of heaven
Hold me together
Be forever near me
Breath of heaven
Breath of heaven
Lighten my darkness
Pour over me your holiness
For you are holy
Breath of heaven

But I offer all I am
For the mercy of your plan
Help me be strong

She finds the courage she needs.
She fulfills her call, not without doubt, not without fear, but with faith and courage.

On Christmas Eve, we celebrate the baby who is the Prince of Peace.

Let us celebrate the girl, not yet into her fullness as a woman, who was

asked to do an impossible task with nothing more than her faith and the breath of heaven to guide her.

We see Mary as the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin, most blessed of all women. Statues are dedicated to her. Cathedrals are named for her.

Tonight, on this Christmas Eve, let us see not the glorification of the role she played, but the actual teenager who struggled with the assignment she was given – alone and afraid yet going on anyway.

Christmas reminds us that divine purpose can, and sometimes does, come to those who do not seek it and do not appear to the world as candidates for greatness. Too often, we overlook and silence and render invisible such servants of the Divine simply because they are such improbable choices for greatness.

And yet, because they have courage and carry the breath of heaven with them, they actually do deliver the rejection of immoral power and senseless cruelty, and they bring about a restoration of justice. Luke, the gospel writer, promised this holy reversal of the world’s rich and powerful through the words he attributed to Mary.

God has shown strength with God’s arm;
    God scatters the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
⁵² God brings down the mighty from their thrones
    and exalts those of humble estate;
⁵³ God fills the hungry with good things,
    and the rich God sends away empty.

Who are these unlikely divinely called and inspired servants of our world who come to us in humility and challenge us to Love One Another without judgement or condition?

They are women.
They are teenagers.
They are people of color.
They are refugees.
They are you.
They are me.
They are us.

Breath of Heaven, be with us now, be forever near, give us courage to be the people we aspire to be in a world that needs our love and care so much.

May it be so. Blessed Be. Amen.