The Thin Places

Advent 4 Sermon, The Rev. Susan Astarita

• Audio Transcript

  [00:00:00] Good morning, everyone. Special day that begins as Advent 4, and a little later on, we celebrate Christmas Eve.

  Since it is this morning at the 9 o'clock service, I would like to take that moment on Advent 4 to honor Mary, the mother of God, in the gospel. I want to do it in a special way. I want us all, when we reflect together this morning, uh, think about Mary and the model she was for us and about ourselves and about our listenings, as she did, and where the places are that we do that listening.

  
  [00:01:00] That in the Christian tradition that is Celtic, are called the thin places. The thin places. And how we will respond to any prompts we might get in those places. So let's celebrate Mary. To say it ourselves, as I've just said, we're moving toward the mystical place. Where heaven meets earth and earth meets heaven in the birth of the child, Jesus, god's love expressed in the most wonderful way.
  We could, of course, spend some time on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day questioning the presentation of this event in Luke's Gospel. The beginning of God's earthly journey. Some people say they [00:02:00] prefer the Gospel of John, that the arrival of an angel is just too fantastic, and the story's details are just too hard to believe.

  
  They prefer the Gospel of John, written sometime later than Luke, of course, that talks about the Word or the Logos. Or the principle of God, that is, divine reason and creative order, and identified then with Jesus, who is incarnate. This Logos, in John's telling, also dwelt with us, and dwelt in God, eternally and personally.
  

  And then came among us in darkness, as a social being, his nature unfolding as he confronts the social relations and structures of the world [00:03:00] that do not confirm with John, with God's plan. It's a different emphasis. The word of God as a generative action to all of us. But today, I ask you to consider God's interaction with one faithful woman, one faithful individual, Mary, a Hebrew woman in the village of Nazareth in the region of Galilee.
  

  I've always, when I'm listening about Mary, have wondered where she was. Where was she when she heard Gabriel's words? Was she in a regular place of prayer? A place that was her thin place? That she always runs to when she wants to reflect, and where she [00:04:00] most often listened to the promptings of the Holy Spirit? Or was she in another random, random place of such sacred power that the separation of the material and the spiritual seems so full of God and so full of God's goodness that she could sense in her soul that she was receiving a very surprising message.
  

  God acts through Gabriel, and Mary reacts. She responds to the prompt that sounds outrageous and impossible. And so I'm gonna say, of course she's fearful and troubled. But if you notice, she stays the course. She stays in dialogue with God even as she senses the difficulties of God's request. After all, [00:05:00] think what she's potentially agreeing to do.
  She's agreeing to walk in the world of human and divine. Now when I was growing up, a lot of people around me talked about Mary's humility a lot. Humility maybe even to the point of passivity in the story of the Annunciation, but I want to tell you that is not my view. That is not my view. I see a woman of unbounded courage, accepting that she will, think about it, carry to term a powerful divine presence who will rule over all of Israel and beyond. She accepts that.

  
  She accepts that she will conceive through God's process of the Holy Spirit that is totally unknown to her. [00:06:00] She knows nothing about it. She's brave. She's brave enough to say yes. Brave enough to let herself be transformed from a simple virgin, betrothed to Joseph, to a person who agrees to be Theotokos or a God bearer and the Mother of God.
  She's also, in my view, what today we would call an active listener, right? She's an active listener. Gabriel goes on and on, but she listens to the whole of it. She heard that she would have a future that would live through the ages. She heard that she would have support from her cousin, Elizabeth, and that she would have support from the son that Elizabeth would bear.

  
  So God would be working through others all [00:07:00] around her as well as herself. So I think it was perfectly logical that she would say, "With God, nothing is impossible." Nothing is impossible. But back to the Celtic tradition. We have our own personal encounters with God, too... in the thin places. And the thin places are different for everyone.

  
  And we don't know when they're coming. A scholar says that in fact, some parts of space are qualitatively different from others. They're thinner and we're more in touch. An Apache proverb says that wisdom sits in the thin places. [00:08:00] I can tell you what the thin places are not. They're not tranquil and they're not relaxing.
  They're not.

  
  And nothing gets in the way of a thin space more than expectations that we've already planned how things will come out. Here's another thing. The divine is supposedly transcendent of time and space, yet we often seek it in very specific spaces at very specific times.

  
  We may find those places work for us, that they are thin, and they are sacred. And they may not be. They may not be. And some spaces are so freighted with history that they collapse because our [00:09:00] expectations are outsized. They collapse under the weight of our expectations.

  
  If I could be serious for a moment, I think that Jerusalem may be one of those places right now, so thick with animosity and heavy with grievances, that they would be problematic. It could be problematic as a thin space. But I hope, and I think all of you do too, that that, that, with God's help, will not always be so.

  
  So the thin spaces come upon us. They're gifts of God's presence. They can occur anytime. I also think in this time of conflict of a Christmas truce or a series of unofficial ceasefires that happened along the Western [00:10:00] Front, you've studied this in history I'm sure, in World War One.
  People felt called to cross the lines and cease fire. I hope for that too. You may find a thin space in a quiet corner or a conversation with a family member you've never known that much before. Or in your regular prayer space.

  
  In these spaces and why they are not tranquil, is because often you feel a jolt, a jolt. You're startled out of your attention to the details of life or earthly problems you cannot solve. But in that space, you tend to be transformed by the experience, renewed, able to act [00:11:00] differently or set out on a new path.

  
  When that happens, we know how Mary responded, don't we? We have her words. We sang them. They're in Luke, chapter 1: 46 - 55, and in our canticle this morning. "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God's my Savior." Our faithful response may be the same.

  
  So now, time to go forward. Time to go forward in faith at the end of the day. The coming birth of Jesus will bring the kind of hope and peace and understanding and insight and hopefully thin space for you that passes all understanding. That kind of understanding that only God can bring. [00:12:00] And we also know that with this light of love, the most love that can possibly be when Jesus comes into the world, that at the end of that ministry, he will be willing to suffer and eventually be resurrected so that he can redeem all of us, so that we can be free forever in eternal life.
  

  And I say, thanks be to God. Amen.