Watch for the Holy: Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe

This is my sermon from our 5:30 pm service tonight. Peace and blessings to all on this holy day.

Tonight I want to tell you a story. This story is probably more legend than fact, but it is a true story.

This story has touched millions of people, and still touches them. We do well to hear their this story because it is their story. It can be ours if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Here is the story:

Nearly 500 years ago, an Aztec Indian with a Spanish name – Juan Diego – saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary. The local Spanish bishop, Juan de Zumárraga, did not believe Juan Diego and told him to bring back proof of this vision.

Juan Diego went to where he saw the apparition, and saw her again. She told him to return to the bishop, and when he did, he came back with his tunic full of flowers – Castilian roses – and the roses were blooming in winter. When Juan Diego poured the roses from his tunic, an image of Mary was imprinted on his tunic.

That image has become probably the most copied and venerated image of Mary in the world.

Today is her feast day - Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe – the Virgin of Guadalupe. This day in 1531 marks when an poor Aztec peasant brought roses to the bishop, and the bishop had to believe him.

Whether you believe in the story, or believe it happened exactly that way, is less important than what she represents primarily to the people of Mexico and Latin America; and what it represents to people in the border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas; and what it represents to to thousands of people who live here in Charlottesville who we rarely see on this corner except to trim the lawns and clean the toilets of UVA.

Her shrine near Mexico City is the most visited and venerated Marian shrine in the world. The Virgin of Guadalupe is sometimes known as the brown virgin – her skin color is that of the indigenous peoples of America. She is the Mary of the poor and the outcasts and those left behind or wiped out as Europeans colonized, industrialized and regimented the Americas.

Even the word “Guadalupe” has roots in native Aztec language, and many believe her image is filled with Aztec symbols.

She is the Mary of hope to the poor of the Americas, and these days hope is especially in short supply in Mexico these days.

There is one more level to this that I would commend to you, and I believe it makes this story of Guadalupe everyone’s story, and part of the Christmas story.

The Holy comes to us not just in male imagery – not just as God the Father and God the Son. The Holy can come to us as female, as a woman, as a mother, and she can and will touch us here in our heart in ways that will comfort us, give us courage and strength, and change us in ways we can scarcely imagine.

The Holy Spirit is like a wind that will blow where she will, and will show her face in ways that speak to us in the depths of our soul, and gives us strength and courage when we most need it most. The question is do we have eyes to see and ears to hear?

To me, this idea of Guadalupe is a reminder that not all of life can be understood by our intellect. That is an especially important message to us who work or study or live near this great university. Not everything lends itself to neat equations.
Much of life is inexplicable and can only be experienced as the inexplicable. Sometimes a legend or a poem is more powerful than a dense treatise.

The holy can come in surprising ways when we least expect it as a friend who listens, or in the quiet of the night, or as a woman bearing roses in winter, or as a newborn child.

The story of Guadalupe is part of the Christmas story, for she points to the messiah who is to come and is already here.

We hear John the Baptist in the Gospel asking what kind of messiah is here, and Jesus replies that his messiahship is not about power and violence. This is the messiah of the weak and lonely.

John the Baptist asks, and Jesus replies: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

In this season of Advent, as we go about our busy lives, as exams and papers come due, it is my prayer that all of us here – you and I – will pause and look for the Holy in our every day life. Look for the holy in the ordinary, look for the holy in face of the person next to you – and be ready to be surprised. Watch for the Holy, she is here now. Amen.

We who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life

I am preaching today only at the 8 am service. Please join us at 10 am and 5:30 pm to celebrate the ministry of The Rev. Neal Halvorson-Taylor and hear him preach.

My sermon at 8 am is based on John 14:23-29:

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Compline. It is one of the treasures of our prayer book, and you will find it beginning on page 127 [Online by clicking HERE].

The reason you many not know of it is Compline is a short service of prayers for late in the evening, and because we don’t usually have church services here late in the evening, we don’t usually conduct Compline.

The reason I bring this up is there is a particular prayer in Compline that has really tugged at me the last few days. And although it is now morning, I want to read it to you. You will find it on page 133:

“Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Lately this parish and this community have been buffeted by all sorts of changes and chances of this life. Some of these changes are relatively small. But even the small changes can feel like a tipping point – the proverbial “last straw” – when all the changes come all at once.

Other changes are quite large: A number of our parishioners are facing serious illnesses including some of you; we’ve had a wave of funerals and memorial services including three in the last two days.

As you are certainly aware by now, a University student – Yeardley Love – age 22 – was murdered this past week allegedly at hands of her ex-boyfriend, another student.

Her death is truly shocking on many levels, and raises serious questions about student life at Uva, including alcohol abuse and violence against women students. University officials will surely confront these questions in the days ahead.

On another level, Yeardley Love’s death strikes very close to home in this parish.

Her sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, meets here in our parish hall on Monday evenings, and I cannot quite get out of my mind that I probably walked right past her on many occasions as she and her sisters were going in or out of our building.

So I am also particularly proud and thankful that our Associate Rector, Ann, reached out to Yeardley’s sorority sisters this week, and she has been a rock of strength for them the last few days.

We opened our doors to these young university women so they could have a simple and private prayer service for Yeardley Friday evening.

That is what church should be about, exactly what this church should be about. That is exactly why we were founded.

Amidst all this, I don’t have any great words of wisdom about why someone so young, with so much life ahead of her, would be taken from us. I have no great words of wisdom about why her ex-boyfriend, someone with so much life ahead of him, would be filled with such rage that he would do something such as this.

To say that we live in a broken world is true, but not quite satisfying. To say that God cries with us is also true, but sometimes it is hard to feel.

And as much as we would like to ask God to please stop all the changes and chances of this life, we can’t, and God won’t. We may as well stop breathing.

Into this comes this spectacular promise from Jesus to stay with us as Holy Spirit, to fill each of us with love and grace, peace and rest, and to be faithful to us especially in our moments of darkness and pain. We hear of it in today’s gospel lesson from John:

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you,” he tells us. “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

Each of us can experience this gift of the Holy Spirit, and this gift comes to us in a way that will find us where we dwell, will speak to us in our own language, and will make sense to us in ways that only we understand as an individual who is beloved of God, who knows each of us by name.

Maybe we will understand this Holy Spirit in a traditional way right out of the prayer book, or maybe the Holy Spirit will be someone, or something else entirely who makes sense only to you.

Yet sometimes we don’t feel it. Sometimes we need to stop, close our eyes, and sit in silence to feel this sacred Spirit.

Other times, we can feel this sacred presence when we gather together to support each other, to hold each other up, to pray together, or to laugh or cry together. I am certain the Holy Spirit was with Yeardley’s sorority sisters and her family and her friends this week even if they might not have felt it.

I am certain the Holy Spirit is with those in our congregation who are sick or hurting, or bewildered or grieving right now. By worshipping together, we can feel the Holy Spirit more strongly. And when I don’t feel it, maybe you will feel it for me.

My hope for each of us today is that we will take the time to see and listen for the holy, to watch and wait for the sacred, and bring all who we are, and all we long to be, into the prayer of our daily life; and that we will set aside our fear and worry, and will place our trust in the life-giving Holy Spirit who is right here with us.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

AMEN

Art by Chiura Obata (1885-1975)