The Joy of Christmas
By Charles Rush
December 15, 2002
Lk. 1: 27
is morning we lift up the joy of Christmas, remembering the Magnificat of Mary and the simple joy that she has that God looked favorably upon her. It is true that in the Christmas story women are big players, without whom, nothing much can happen, but they are largely silent and in the background. It is the shepherds that lead the action; it is the three wise men. How different when we hear from the women. As a number of you have pointed out to me this season, if there had been three wise women, instead of three wise men, they would have 1) Asked Directions 2) Arrived on time 3) Helped deliver the baby 4) Cleaned the Stable 5) Made a casserole 6) Brought practical gifts and 7) There would be peace on earth.
That being the case, I've decided to shut up this morning
and just let our women sing our praises of thanksgiving for your edification.
And it is about time we encouraged the voice of women.
Last week I was stuck in the airport in Charloette, iced
in. There were half a dozen guys waiting for the same flight with me that were
Green Beret's in special operations that had just returned from several months
in Afghanistan. They were on the security detail that is supposed to help the
Afghani's in their quest for nation building. Naturally, I asked them for a
realistic assessment of just how difficult that task was going to be. One of
them summarized the political situation astutely, with respect for the Afghani
people. He said, “we are being asked to bring democracy and democratic values
to Afghanistan and there are two principal problems. The first is that we
are being asked to teach people about a system they have no experience of,
their culture and religion don't support and they don't think that they need.
The second is that the women do all of the work and the men have all of the
education and power. They then went on to describe a typical day for a woman
while the men sit around and watch them do it, in the most respectful and
polite adjectives.
I finally said, “That sounds horrible if you are a
woman.” And one of the officers said, “Sir, you don't want to be a woman in
that part of the world.” My prediction is that in the next several generations,
we will in fact have a worldwide consensus on democratic values and human
rights but it will not happen because third world nations are converted to
free-market capitalism or the American ideals, however persuasive they might
be. And it won't happen because the United Nations invests in development
programs, however important that they might be. And it won't happen because the
World Bank funds a series of educational opportunities, however important they
might be. It is going to come because, in the fullness of time, there will be a
world-wide women's movement that presses for respect for women in every culture
on the globe. That movement for respect will inevitably include moving towards
parity in power between the genders, and access socially to positions of
leadership culturally, politically, educationally, and religiously.
I can see the day when we have a woman that inspires us
with a moral and spiritual vision for women- but not just women, all of us-
everywhere much as Gandhi and Dr. King did in the last century. I hope my
grandchildren or great grandchildren get caught up in the inspiration of the
movement.
And the benefits for all of us will be as broad as they
are deep. Because herein lie the seeds that can form deep roots for genuine
participation and inclusivity. And real participation will support democratic
values in a variety of different cultural models and with a variety of
different religious traditions. If we dubbed the next century the American
century or the Free Market century, how few people would be directly impacted
and involved in that change. But if it becomes the Global Women's Century, half
of the world will be empowered and the other half… will be scrambling.
But they needn't be threatened, despite the fact that
they will have to sacrifice unilateral control and exclusive power. It turns
out, that hasn't helped us men rise to our highest potential either. Just as
the spiritual vision of Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi had a humanizing effect on
all of us, so will a woman's movement open up new doors of creativity we haven't
even imagined yet, even in the countries where women's rights have progressed
the most. What will actually happen is our great grand children are going to
say is, “what took you so long?”
We
have had great progress in certain countries in the West, but the World-wide
Woman's movement is yet to be born. Sometime, somewhere a charismatic figure,
an inspiring moral figure, will galvanize this new birth and capture the
attention of every nation and hamlet. Those Spirit filled moments in history,
when something new is born, something humanizing and including is born… those
are moments when long-suffering and grief are transcended by the joy of hope,
moments that as Isaiah has said “God will lift you up on eagles wings, and bear
you on the breath of dawn, and make you to fly like the Sun.” It is that
mystery of the movement of God that we sing about this morning, the joy that
God has drawn near to us through this ordinary peasant woman in Israel, and
that something new is about to happen in our midst, the full contours of which
we cannot really appreciate just now, but we can tell, we can just see ahead
that it will be profoundly good. So, Today, looking forward to God's Good
coming Kingdom, I ask you to join your hearts with our women's voices that
together we might give thanks and render humble prayer.
Amen.
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