SERMON given at St Mary’s Church, Boston Spa on Sunday 22nd December 2024 – Advent 4
Trigger warning: includes references to the Gisèle Pelicot case and Safeguarding failures in the Church of England
Readings: Micah 5:2-5a and Luke 1:39-55
Few can fail to admire Gisèle Pelicot whose bravery in waiving her right to anonymity and speaking out publicly has not only brought her justice for herself, but has blown the secrecy surrounding a culture of abuse, the full scale of which is not yet apparent. What an amazing woman, to step into the public gaze in these circumstances and bring into the light, malevolent acts veiled in darkness. Her voice has been heard, and the world is the better for it.
There is in any society a problem of privileging some voices over others. It is a problem because those with power are heard most. Elon Musk uses his wealth to amplify the voices of the rich and powerful to political ends. The UK media is selective in which politicians it gives air time and column inches to, with a preference towards the forces of power, populism and wealth. Part of the problem with historic cases of abuse in the Church of England has been a lack of willingness to challenge those in positions of privilege who are used to always being heard and respected. Those we now know to be abusers who operated within the Church of England were invariably confident, charismatic, well-connected men who were listened to, and used to being listened to, often uncritically, whose reputations were prioritized, and whose ministries were underpinned by a warped theology which reinforces inequality, exclusion and privilege. The voices of their victims were for too many years not heard, and the structures of the Church of England, historically, have worked against transparency and justice. Not all voices are equal in this world, and the Church of England must urgently get better at hearing the voices of victims of abuse, and the prophetic voices of those who are too often overlooked. This is not simply a trendy, contemporary matter: the Bible is littered with unlikely voices – voices of the powerless, the overlooked, the unlikely and the marginal through whom God spoke with great power. Abraham and Sarah, the unlikely elderly first time parents. Jacob the liar. Moses the stutterer. Ruth the Moabite woman. David the shepherd boy. Unlikely folk who were all key parts of the tale which leads to the birth of Jesus. And indeed that is how the message of the birth of Jesus came to us: unlikely voices of great significance.
Our Gospel reading centres on two amazing women: Elizabeth and Mary, each of whom is faced with life in a mess. Elizabeth has been childless but has unexpectedly become pregnant at a time of life when she thought this was impossible. Added to that, her husband is suddenly rendered mute, unable to speak. At the arrival of her relative, Mary, the baby within her leaps for joy and she is filled with the Holy Spirit. The whole situation is Inconvenient, Messy, and Weird. Then there’s Mary, who was visited by an angel – a hugely disruptive event in which she was told amazing news that she is to bear God’s Son and who reacted by saying “Yes” to God. Her life is turned upside down, and here she is visiting her relative, Elizabeth. These women’s lives are in a state of mess. Things are not as they imagined, this is not the life they had planned, but they each have a sense that they are part of something bigger than themselves.
So if anyone ever tells you that politics and religion should never be mixed, just point them to Mary’s words. We sing or say them in church as the Magnificat, regularly as part of Evensong and their familiarity can, I think, lead us to ignore how radical these words truly are. This young woman, faced with her life being turned upside down, faced with a pregnancy which is potentially socially shameful, faced with the astonishing weirdness of an angelic message that she is to be the God-bearer, she responds by rejoicing in God her Saviour. She acknowledges her lowliness before the holiness and mightiness of God; she exults in the way in which God promises to turn the power dynamics of the world upside down, to mess up the grand plans of humanity, to cast down the mighty, to exalt the humble and meek, to feed the hungry and leave the rich to their own devices, and in this Mary sees through the mess of her own circumstances to God fulfilling the promise to Abraham and the people of Israel through her and through the chaos of her life.
Christmas can be a disruptive time, a time of mess. Perhaps it’s a time of inconvenient journeys to see loved ones. A time of making up spare rooms and preparing for grandchildren to scatter paper and toys around your house. Maybe it’s a time of remembering loved ones who are no longer here to be with us around the table for Christmas dinner. For some, it’s a time of feeling pressure to spend more than we should, to do things we really have no energy for. Or a time of being rejected by members of your own family, perhaps. It can be messy. But the mess of our lives is what Jesus came to get involved in. The love of God was not revealed by an authoritative voice of privilege: not through a charismatic religious leader used to being heard unchallenged. Not a priest, prophet or king. The love of God was enfleshed among us through an unregarded, young woman who said “Yes” to God; who spoke prophetically to an audience of just a single, similarly unimportant, overlooked woman in words which resonate today; whose words welcoming God’s justice and peace we do well to echo.
The Church of England has to be ready to listen and respond to those who bravely step up to bring dark matters to light. We owe them the justice and peace of Christ in the way we respond to the abuse they endured. This is a matter of behaving prophetically and saying “Yes” to the justice of God which Mary said yes to, inconvenient and uncomfortable as it was for her to do so.
And you and me, as we prepare for Christmas, we need to ask whether we are ready to hear the voice of God in unexpected places. Are we ready to listen to the voices of the overlooked, the unimportant and expect to encounter the love of God through them? Are we ready to invite God into our hearts afresh, into lives which are not perfect, and parts of which are doubtless still messy? Like Mary, let us be ready to rejoice when God shakes our lives up. Let’s be ready to say yes to God, as Mary did, and to be bearers of Christ ourselves as we take the light of Christ into the mess of the world. Like Mary and Elizabeth, we are called to be prophets who welcome and rejoice in the justice and peace of God. May it be so. Amen.
Vicar of Villages 