My Heart Shall Sing
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
December 15, 2019
This past Wednesday one of the very first things I saw after I woke up was that Time Magazine’s 2019 Person of the Year had been announced. The award was given to Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist. My eyes filled with tears. Sometimes, joy and amazement look like that.
Greta Thunberg is the young girl who just last year began skipping school one day each week to stand outside the Swedish Parliament building all alone, holding a sign reading, “School strike for Climate.” One by one people joined her, until a global movement has arisen, and the expression ‘climate strike’ has become common worldwide. In the past 16 months, Greta has met heads of state and Pope Francis, addressed the United Nations, and sailed back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean in a catamaran to highlight how our familiar life and our ways will have to change. Along the way, particularly on her recent return trip to Europe, powerful winds and rough seas made the voyage frightening. The Time Magazine article described Greta as ‘unfazed.’ (https://time.com/person-of-the-year-2019-greta-thunberg/
We are considering the complicated topic of Awe this month, and one lens we can use to examine Awe should be our awe for the courage and accomplishments of ordinary human beings. We often assume that the emotion of awe arises solely from the supernatural, or as we heard last week, from encounters with nature that remind us of our place within the cosmos. Awe does serve to remind us that we are a part of all that exists; part of the Whole. But awe, as I have said, is complicated, and has other facets as well. Today we will think about how awe manifests as fear or as joy, and how we humans can elicit awe within each other.
Certainly, our sense of awe can trigger fear as a reaction. Awe can often look and feel like fear. The vastness of the night sky can terrify some people. And consider our encounters with towering surf, or fierce winds; hurricanes or tornados. We would be wise to react with fear, to run to safety.
But sometimes there are moments, glimpses of something that we might experience that we cannot explain: sudden encounters that can leave us breathless, leave us with the sense that we have been in the presence of something we cannot name. Our sense of awe can leave us fearful then, too. How should we respond? Should we run, or remain curious?
The Christmas story, the story of the Nativity, begins with the story of an encounter between a young woman and the angel Gabriel. So often we forget to tell the whole story of the nativity: we join it on Christmas Eve, already in progress; with Mary and Joseph somewhere on the road to Bethlehem and wishing that they had found an Air B & B for the night. But the story truly begins with the Annunciation; the visit from the angel telling a young peasant woman named Mary, or Miryam, the news that God would favor her and that she would conceive a son. Now, as one of my seminary professors always likes to comment, the angels in the Bible must have been really scary. Every time they appear to someone, be it the Virgin Mary or the shepherds keeping watch in the fields, they have to begin by proclaiming, “Be not afraid.”
Mary didn’t appear to be afraid. The Bible, in what possibly might have been a massive understatement, observes that she was perplexed. The angel Gabriel went on to say, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.” And Mary’s response was, not to run for her life, but to be curious; to wonder how this could be, since she was as yet a virgin. Gabriel explained that the Holy Spirit would come upon her, and therefore the child to be born would be holy and would be called Son of God.’ And Mary’s response? She said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Mary, like Greta Thunberg, appeared unfazed. So here we have the stories of two young women, one current and factual, whose face and voice we recognize, and one ancient and mythical, shrouded in the mists of time and mystery. We have their stories, and we have our responses to these stories, our response of awe at their courage. For in each story, we encounter young women who responded to a call, to a request or a demand of some sort, by saying ‘yes’. They both said ‘yes’, and they changed the world.
Here during this season of Advent, we describe this time as a time of waiting. And of course we are waiting for many things – for the arrival of holiday time with family and friends, or for the return of the sun – more light and longer days; or for the inbreaking of the spirit – the appearance of the Holy among us. And one sign that the Holy might be appearing at any given time is through disruption. When and how does the narrative get turned on its head? A young woman in her home in Nazareth, visited by an angel. A young woman, a girl, really, home in Sweden deciding that she simply must do something by herself to try to save the world. And in each instance, something begins to happen: a new narrative. A new religious movement stirs to life, based on a message of God’s love for the world. Or today, an unlikely messenger raises a new voice, proclaiming that dramatic action must be taken to address the climate crisis, that business as usual will not save us, and in response millions of people take to the streets to demand action.
Be not afraid. Rather, be in awe of the courage being shown to us, the example being set. And recognize that in the moments of disruption, we, too, are called to respond to the example before us: to notice what is happening, first of all, to sense the disruption, and then to choose to act.
Sometimes awe looks like fear. And other times, awe looks like joy. I think back to the story I told last Sunday, when the scientist had a sudden encounter with a great blue heron taking flight, and how his response was to stand and applaud. His awe was expressed in joy.
And so we heard awe experienced as joy in today’s reading; Mary’s fuller response to her unexpected encounter with the divine. Known as the Magnificat, from the Latin translation, which begins, “Magnificat anima mea Dominum – my soul magnifies, or glorifies, the Lord – this song of praise and joy echoes down through time as a ringing statement of faith. Here she was: a young woman living in a poor province, Galilee, that was at the time firmly under the control of the Romans. Here she was: suddenly pregnant, unmarried, and in a poverty-stricken and occupied land. And in response she burst forth with this song that remains one of the most prophetic and subversive texts in the entire Bible. We see the holy disruption, and the joyful response.
Our anthem this morning, the Canticle of the Turning, paraphrases the Magnificat:
“My soul cries out with a joyful shout
That the God of my heart is great,
And my spirit sings of the wondrous things
That you bring to the one who waits.” (Canticle of the Turning)
Mary, of course, had no idea of what the disruption in her life would lead to. And Greta Thunberg has also set new things in motion whose outcome we cannot predict. The Time Magazine article commented, “She has succeeded in creating a global attitudinal shift, transforming millions of vague, middle-of-the-night anxieties into a worldwide movement calling for urgent change.” Whether you think that disruption is created by divine intervention or by the calling of a single human soul, what we are seeing today is that kind of disruption, a force that requires a response. Do we respond with fear, or with joy?
In Hebrew, there are different words for fear, describing different types of fear. One such word is ‘pachad,’ or the more elemental type of fear that our reptilian brains can create. This is the fear of something bad happening, or rejection, or danger. But in Hebrew there is another word for fear, ‘yirah.’ And this is the fear we experience when we realize that we are suddenly growing, changing, and becoming more of a force; perhaps it’s the fear that creates our desire to hide our light under a bushel. (found in Tara Sophia Mohr, in https://www.jonathanfields.com/is-it-fear-or-awe/)
The author Marianne Williamson talks about this second type of fear as well. She wrote, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us…” (Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”)
But what if we were to regard our own power with awe? What if we could embrace this power, and respond to it, not with fear, but with courage and with joy? What if we could move into the future perhaps perplexed, but also unfazed?
Back at the beginning I shared my reaction to the news of Greta Thunberg being named Time’s Person of the Year: that I experienced tears of awe of all that she has set in motion, and of joy that her voice is being heard. I am in awe of her courage, and in that moment my sense of awe felt like deep and profound joy, the kind of joy that produces tears.
We have also heard the ancient song of Mary, responding with joy and courage to what would have been a very difficult plight. “My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” (Luke 1:46)
“My heart shall sing of the day you bring,
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,
And the world is about to turn.”
My friends, look for the disruption, for the times when the story seems to stop and change direction, for when the world suddenly turns. Notice, and wonder. Look for the courage, and look for ways to respond to these twists and turns, to these calls, with a simple ‘yes’. For in your ‘yes’ there can be great and profound joy; the joy of awe and amazement. May it happen for you, and may your heart sing for joy.
Blessed Be.
Amen.
