Eco-Justice
Commentary on the Common Lectionary for Year C (2015)
Commentary by Dennis
Ormseth
Prayer Petitions by
Pastor Ingrid Arneson Rasmussen
Hymn Suggestions by
David Sims
The Fourth Sunday of
Advent in Year C (December 20, 2015)
Micah
5:2-5a
Luke
1:46b-55
Hebrews
10:5-10
Luke
1:39-45 [46-55]
The setting of the oikumene found in
the readings for the First Sunday of Advent prompted us to ask after the hope
that the Christian gospel might offer a world caught up in the global
ecological crisis of climate chaos. In spite of the "flattened earth"
and the "ax lying at the roots of the trees,"
imagery of the Second and Third Sundays of Advent, we have found ample
encouragement for care of creation in the lectionary for these first three
Sundays. As we wrote,
We are thus once again put on notice that
Christ's coming into our world entails a radical reversal of the fortunes of
the unjust powers that dominate human history, so that God's intention with the
creation might at the last be completely fulfilled. People of faith will be
oriented anew to the cosmos of which we are members as the creation of God
moves toward completion and even perfection, not on the basis of its own
inherent powers, but by virtue of the will of its creator (Comment on
First Sunday of Advent).
Even if this means confronting severe
ecological crisis on a global scale, these readings confirm, the theological
affirmations of these texts are a match for the challenge: The Most High of the
Lukan narrative is the sovereign creator of all who brings into being
"light and life, darkness and woe," from above, but who also
"from below, from the ground up,"
transforms "the desolate land into a veritable garden
paradise" (Comment on Second Sunday of Advent). Although John the
Baptist's call for repentance and reformation of behavior explicitly addresses
only issues of social justice, his
warning about the coming judgment in terms of the "ax lying at the roots
of the trees" opens up the text to provide a basis for addressing the
ecological crisis in our time with similarly appropriate responses to the
degradation of habitat and atmosphere across the earth. More powerfully, his
announcement of the coming near of the Lord employs the metaphor of the farmer
who comes with winnowing fork in hand, one who enlists the cosmic forces of water, wind, and fire for the restoration
of the earth. "The primordial elements needed for new creation are thus
gathered, and all the earth awaits the day when
'all flesh shall see the salvation of God'" (Comment on the Third
Sunday of Advent).So the readings for the first three Sundays of the Advent
season do indeed look forward with great joy to the restoration and completion
of God's creation; they enlist us in actions toward that goal which are
grounded in faith in God as the creator of all, and in the One who is coming
near to us in the midst of the crisis of the world.
We have also found that each set of texts
finds strong resonance with Pope Francis' Encyclical Laudate Si.' His careful consideration of the several
dimension of the crisis challenges his readers to ask fundamental questions of
the meaning of human existence. But if there is reason to see in the crisis
grounds for despair, there is also reason for hope. It is time, he insists, to speak of the integrity
of eco-systems and of human life together, in confidence that the Lord for whom
we wait in this season of Advent is one who "makes all things
new." This confidence, we found, is
grounded in a view of God that is consonant with Luke's "Most High", the
one who creates "our common home"out of love, and so values every
creature as they exist within a universe filled with possibilities for new
creation. He is clear about the "ax
lying at the root of the trees of our common home: it is an expectation of human mastery over
nature dirven by the technological paradigm.
But he is also clear that genuine
hope resides in the "stump" of an "integral ecology" that
can give rise not only to a restored relationship between humanity and nature,
but also great improvements in human society, especially on behalf of the poor.
But realization of that hope lies in an "ecological conversion," his
call for which rings with the challenge
of John the Baptist' call for repentance.
Now in the readings for the Fourth Sunday of
Advent, this good news is recapitulated in the meeting of Elizabeth and Mary,
and especially in Mary's Magnificat. As they meet, Elizabeth becomes a
spirit-filled reader of signs of the new creation: "the child leaped in
her womb" and, filled with the Holy Spirit, she identifies Mary as
"mother of my Lord." The verb "leaped," Luke Timothy
Johnson notes, "suggests an eschatological recognition (Ps 113:4 [lXX] and
Mal 4:2)"; Elizabeth understands that the child's leap is an expression of
"eschatological 'gladness (agalliasis)' promised by the angel to
greet John's birth (1:14)." With her response, "My soul magnifies the
Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior" (1:47), Mary joins and
enlarges on Elizabeth's pronouncement of joy: Mary's child is the promised
"savior." As Johnson writes,
In the Magnificat, Mary's praise for what God
had done to her personally widens out to include what God does for "all
who fear him" in every age, including what God is doing for Israel by the
birth of its Messiah . . . . One cannot avoid the sense that Mary is here made the
representative if not the personification of Israel." The mercy shown her
reflects and exemplifies the mercy shown to the people .
. . . We notice as well that the epithets applied to God in the
song are attributes as well of the son she is carrying. God is called
"Lord" and "Savior" and "holy." So Jesus has
already been called 'holy" (1:34), and "lord" (1:430, and will
shortly be termed "savior" as well (2:11). As with name so with function: God reverses
human status and perception: in a downward movement, he scatters the arrogant,
pulls down the mighty, sends the rich away empty. But God also, in an upward
movement, exalts the lowly, fills the hungry, and takes the hand of Israel
(Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke.
Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1991; pp. 41-42).
Nowhere in this recital of expectations is there an explicit
mention of care of creation as response to ecological crisis, of course. The
crisis of the oikumene is rather conceived in terms of
the conceit of those who seek domination over others. As David Tiede writes,
In direct contrast to the mercy which God
shows to those who fear him from generation to generation, God
scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts. God does not
deal with appearances, but "knows the heart" of all humanity without
respect to status, as does also the Messiah (see Luke 11:17). Thus, as in Gen. 6:5 where God "saw . .
. the wickedness of man . . . and that every imagination of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually leading to the flood,
so now the coming of Jesus will mean, in Simeon's words "that [secret]
thoughts out of many hearts will be revealed" (2:35)(David Tiede, Augsburg
Commentary on the New Testament: Luke. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishng
House, 1988; p. 56).
All things human do therefore fall within the
reach of this salvation. The salvation Mary envisions is in this sense
all-encompassing. As Tiede writes:
No dimension of human life or culture will
lie beyond the lordship of this Messiah.
All systems, ideologies, and social structures may be judged by this new
standard of divine justice and mercy—which does not mean that Jesus' reign will
simply displace all the social, political, or economic systems of the world, at
least not yet. But their claim to ultimacy of 'divine right' and their ability
to justify the rights and privileges of all their subjects have been challenged
by the prophetic word of Mary's son (Tiede, pp. 56-7).
The place of the proud at the center of the oikumene
will be taken by the "servant" (Isaiah 41:8) who fulfills God's
promise to Abraham (Genesis 17:7; 18:18; and 22:17).
That
the promised salvation does nontheless embrace all creation remains for this
narrative an inference to be drawn from the collected affirmations of these
texts, the most significant of which are the assignment of titles to her child
as belong to God, and, with a nod in the direction of our two lessons, the
"facts on the ground" of Mary's pregnancy (Micah 5:3-4) and the
"body you have prepared for me" in her womb (Hebrews:10:5). We
therefore return to the statement with which we closed the comment on the
readings for the Fourth Sunday of Advent in Year B of the
lectionary
Mary’s faith and obedience calls for a
radical re-orientation to the finite creation as capable of infinity (finitum
capax infiniti) from all those who
identify with Mary. Larry Rasmussen states the significance of this
re-orientation this way:
“God is in the facts themselves,” said Bonhoeffer,
asserting his conviction that God is amidst the living events of nature and
history. His favorite quotation from F. C. Oetinger said much the same: “The
end of the ways of God is bodiliness.” The meaning of finitum capax infiniti
is simple enough: God is
pegged to earth. So if you would experience God, you must fall in love with
earth. The infinite and transcendent are dimensions of what is intensely at
hand. Don’t look ‘up’ for God, look around. The finite is all there is, because
all that is, is there (Earth Community Earth Ethics, p.
272-73).
Put
differently in words that reflect Augustine’s understanding that our bodies are
“the dirt we carry,” the dust of the earth from which all living creatures are
made, Jesus included, reflects God’s glory, and calls for appropriately
infinite respect. The church came in due time to confess Mary as theotokos,
“God bearer.” She understood herself to be Servant of the Lord (Luke 1:38).
Those who care for creation will celebrate her service to the Servant of Creation,
who in his suffering on the cross served God by loving the earth and all its
creatures as God loves them.
Pope
Francis pictures Mary's role similarly, albeit in characteristicly Roman
perspective. The "Mother who cared
for Jesus," Mary "now cares with maternal affection and pain for this
wounded world. Just as her pierced heart mourned the death of Jesus, so now she
grieves for the sufferings of the crucified poor and for the creatures of this
world laid waste by human power."
She is attentive to the cries of
"our common home," who as Francis lamented in the opening of his
letter,
"cries out to us because of the harm we
have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with
which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and
masters, entitled to plunder her at will.
The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in
the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in
all forms of life. This is why the earth
herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of
our poor; she "groans in travail" (Rom, 220. We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust
of the earth (cf. Gn 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we
breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her water (Par. 2)
But
Mary is also "the Queen of all Creation" who "completely
transfigued,"
now lives with Jesus, and all creatures sing
of her fairness. She is the Woman,
"clothed in the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown
of twelve stars" (Rev 12:1) Carried
up into heaven, she is the Mother and Queen of all creation. In her glorified body, together with the
Risen Christ, part of creation has reached the fullness of its beauty. She treasures the entire life of Jesus in her
heart (cf. Lk 2:19, 51), and now understands the meaning of all things. Hence, we can ask her to enable us to look at
this world with eyes of wisdom (Par. 241).
And wondrously, in the Eucharist, her experience
becomes our own:
'The Lord, in the culmination of the mystery
of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through a fragment of
matter. He comes not from above, but
from within, he comes that we might find him in this world of ours. In the
Eucharist, fullness is already achieved; it is the living center of the
universe, the overflowing core of love and of inexhaustible life. Joined to the
incarnate Son, present in the Eucharist, the whole cosmos gives thanks to God
(Par. 236).
And so, as the season of Advent turns into
the Season of Christmas, we might join in singing not only Mary's Magnificat,
but also the canticle of St. Francis of Assisi, Laudato Si', mi' Signore,"
"Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains
and governs us, and who produces various fruit with colored flowers and
herbs."
A Petition for the
Fourth Sunday of Advent
|
Mary
sings of a world turned upside-down. The lowly are exalted. The hungry are
filled. The servant is never alone. May these holy refrains, echoing from one
generation to another, become our heart song. May the struggle for a new day
in the house of this world never take away the joy of our hope that finds its
home in you.
|
Hymn Suggestions for Fourth Sunday of
Advent
Title
|
ELW
|
GTG
|
Other
|
God
the Sculptor of the Mountains
|
736
|
5
|
|
Like
a Mother Who has Borne Us
|
|
44
|
|
Mothering
God, You Gave Me Birth
|
735
|
7
|
|
My
Soul Cries Out
|
723
|
100
|
|
My
Soul Give Glory to My God
|
|
99
|
CH
130
|
My
Soul Proclaims Your Greatness
|
251
|
|
|
Reckless
Extravagance, Laughter and Daring
|
|
|
SWMN
29
|
The
Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came
|
265
|
|
|
The
Earth is the Lord’s and the Fullness Thereof
|
|
|
SWMN
24
|
Touch
the Earth Lightly
|
739
|
|
|
Unexpected
and Mysterious
|
258
|
|
|
We
Are Not Our Own
|
|
|
CH
689
|
Who
Would Think That What Was Needed
|
|
138
|
SWMN
28
|
Womb
of Life and Source of Being
|
|
3
|
|
Sources:
CH Chalice Hymnal. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1995
EAS Earth and All Stars: Hymns and Songs for Young and Old. Herb Brokering.
Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003. (For Lois Brokering’s tune to “Everything
Is One”, see Augsburg anthem 9781451482898)
ELW Evangelical Lutheran Worship.
Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2006.
GTG Glory to God: Hymns, Psalms, and Spiritual Songs. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2013.
SBL Sent By the Lord: Songs of the World Church Vol. 2. The Iona Community,
ed. John Bell. Chicago: GIA Publications, 1990
SWMN Sing of the World Made New: Hymns of
Justice, Peace, and Christian Responsibility. Carol
Stream and Chicago, IL: Hope Publishing and GIA, 2014.