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| Rosemary R. Ruether with Liz Moore |
How to bring a word of hope to an Advent liturgy in 2016, shortly after our hopes were dashed in the presidential election?
This was the problem I faced in November, having earlier volunteered to design and lead the December liturgy for the Women-Church gathering in Claremont, California.
Truly, I faced my own despair in November.
I drove to San Felipe, Mexico, to escape the United States, and there on the Friday evening after November 8, I received direction on how to design the liturgy with a modicum of hope and healing.
There I bought 22 colorful little ceramic boxes with removable lids, some in the shape of Our Lady of Guadalupe, others painted only with flowers and bright colors. My plan was to give one "God box" to each woman present for her to keep a wish or prayer written on a piece of paper in it. (In Alanon I learned about having a God box like this.)
As it turned out, Rosemary Radford Ruether attended the service for the first time since her stroke in August 2016. Her daughter Becky pushed her in a wheelchair from the skilled nursing facility at Pilgrim Place to Napier Center, where we hold our liturgies monthly.
I had included her words in the service, not realizing she would actually be able to join us. In past years she had presented to us orally the vision now recorded in her memoir, My Quests for Hope and Meaning (Wipf and Stock, 2013), p. 18.
Below you will find the text of the whole liturgy, including words to the three songs we sang. Feel free to re-use it and modify it in any way.
Advent:
Waiting for the Holy to enter our fallen world
December 4, 2016 –
Second Sunday in Advent
Women-Church Liturgy
at Pilgrim Place, Claremont, CA
Preliminary: Go around the circle to share names & where
you live or other identity marker.
Announcements: Next liturgy on January 22, 2017, 10 am. Planners, food providers…
Note: Rosemary Radford Ruether, who lives in Claremont and
usually attended the Women-Church liturgies, was brought to the liturgy in a
wheelchair by her daughter Becky, for the first time since her stroke in
August.
Call to worship: Psalm
42: 1, 5
As a deer longs for flowing
streams, so we long for you, O God.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
And why are you disquieted within
me?
Hope in God, for I shall again
praise Her, my help and my God.
Advent carol: Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel
Sharing:
“Comfort ye
my people says your God. Speak tenderly
to Jerusalem.” Isaiah 40:1-2
--written
while Israel is still in captivity in Babylon.
Write on a piece of paper a word or
two to represent any grief or sadness you are bearing. Share with the group and place the paper in
the red bowl on the table to be burned outside after the service.
After each person speaks, the group
responds: We pray for healing.
Then take a box from the table and
return to your seat. Write a wish or word
of hope on a piece of paper to keep in the box.
Scripture reading:
The Suffering Servant, Isaiah 42: 1-7
“Here
is my servant, whom I uphold;
My chosen, in whom my soul delights.
I
have put my spirit upon her:
She will bring forth justice to the
nations.
She
will not cry or lift up her voice
Or make it heard in the street.
A
bruised reed she will not break
And a dimly burning wick she will
not quench.
She
will faithfully bring forth justice.
She will not grow faint or be
crushed
Until
she has established justice in the earth,
And the coastlands wait for her
teaching.”
Thus
says YHWH God, who created the heavens and stretched them out,
Who spread out the earth and what
comes from it,
Who
gives breath to the people upon it
And spirit to those who walk in it:
“I
am YHWH. I have called you in
righteousness.
I have taken you by the hand and
kept you;
I
have given you as a covenant to the people,
A light to the nations
To
open eyes that are blind,
To bring out the prisoners from the
dungeon,
From
the prison those who sit in darkness.”
Reading: taken from “Bleeding Jesus or
Bulletproof Jesus?” by Rachel Elizabeth Asproth
Humans
crave privilege. We side with empire because we want to rule.
Jesus rejected the human
instinct for empire. He chose not to rule.
The powerful read the Bible looking for
confirmation of their right to rule… their hermeneutical priority is the image
and validation of power.
We serve a God who lost before ultimately
winning, a God who was conquered, broken and bleeding, slaughtered by empire.
A God who bleeds, however, who guards the
flock like a mother, is far too subversive for those who worship a white, male
deity, a bulletproof Jesus.
The marginalized know what it feels like to
suffer at the hands of empire. They identify not with a conquering King but
with a suffering Christ.
Those who suffer injustice see what the
powerful miss. Our God is both loser and ultimate winner… both a victim of
injustice and one who is justice, dying but forever alive.
The human instinct for empire is strong. It
can creep into our understanding of the Bible, blinding us to our own privilege
and to the message of liberation and justice in the gospel.
But a feminist hermeneutic subdues the human instinct
for empire… It calls for liberation over oppression, equality over privilege,
peace over violence, and justice over empire.
Reading: Rosemary’s Vision: The Great Mother from My
Quests for Hope and Meaning: An Autobiography by Rosemary Radford Ruether
(Eugene,OR: Cascade Books, 2013), p. 18.
…I remember sometime in my twenties focusing on whether or
not I really believed that God existed, in the sense of a male person outside
and ruling over the universe. At some
point I had a vivid experience, something like a dream or visual hallucination.
I experienced myself as standing in a great hall of a huge fortress. At the end of the hall was a staircase. I began to climb this staircase and found
myself going up level after level of stairs, throwing open a door at the top of
each level. Finally I reached what I
knew was the top level. I sensed that
inside was the throne room of God. With great
excitement and nervousness I threw open this door and saw inside a great room
with a throne, but the throne was empty!
I saw clearly that there was no God
sitting on a throne in a throne room at the top of a world system in the form
of a hierarchical palace. Instead, I
realized, the divine was quite different and existed elsewhere. God was a great nurturing and empowering
energy that existed in and through all things, sustaining and renewing
them. Although not in the image of a
human person (not anthropomorphic) this true divinity was more maternal than
paternal. The Great Mother or Holy
Wisdom seemed the right title for Her.
This was the divinity that was really there, that I experienced, could
pray to, be in tune with and who represented the source of all that is. I realized that I never had really believed
in God as an old man ruling from a throne in the skies. This founding divine energy of the Great
Mother came to be my operative understanding of the divine. The matrix of mothers who had nurtured and
empowered me as I grew up is the experiential base for this vision of the Great
Mother.
Responses/Reflections as time permits
Promises of healing:
“Blessed
are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the
reign of heaven.
Blessed are
they who mourn,
for they will be
comforted.” --Matt. 5:3-4, The Divine
Feminine Version: NT
“Come
to me, all you who labor and are sorely burdened,
and
I will give you rest.
Take my
yoke upon you and learn from me
because
I am gentle and humble in heart,
And you
will find rest for your souls
for
my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” –Matt. 11:28-30, Restored NT
Song: Come Healing by Leonard Cohen
Bread and wine:
Mary’s body broken to bring the
Holy One into our fallen world.
Remembering blood shed by Mary,
Jesus, and others to bring the Holy into our world.
Closing prayer:
Merciful God, who sends messengers
and prophets and even entered our human condition in the person of Jesus, give
us grace to wait and hope for signs of your coming as we move through this dark
month and this dark time in the history of our nation. Help us to feel your presence and to trust
that you suffer with us and will bring to birth a better time when we are
closer to your will being done on earth.
We pray these things in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Song: “I have decided to follow Jesus / He decidido
seguir a Jesus”
Passing the peace and hope
--liturgy
planned by Anne Linstatter
Oh, Come, Oh, Come Emmanuel
Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!
Oh, come, our Wisdom from on high,
Who ordered all things mightily;
To us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!
Oh, come, oh, come, our Lord of might,
Who to your tribes on Sinai's height
In ancient times gave holy law,
In cloud and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!
Oh, come O Rod of Jesse's stem,
From ev'ry foe deliver them
That trust your mighty pow'r to save;
Bring them in vict'ry through the grave.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!
Oh, come, O Key of David, come,
And open wide our heav'nly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!
Oh, come, our Dayspring from on high,
And cheer us by your drawing nigh,
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!
Oh, come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all humankind;
Oh, bid our sad divisions cease,
And be yourself our Queen of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to you, O Israel!
First published 1854 –
Veni Emmanuel from French processional
Translated: John Neal,
1818-66
Come
Healing from Old Ideas (2012)
O gather up the brokenness
And bring it to me now
The fragrance of those promises
You never dared to vow
The splinters that you carry
The cross you left behind
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind
And let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb
Behold the gates of mercy
In arbitrary space
And none of us deserving
The cruelty or the grace
O solitude of longing
Where love has been confined
Come healing of the body
Come healing of the mind
O see the darkness yielding
That tore the light apart
Come healing of the reason
Come healing of the heart
O troubled dust concealing
An undivided love
The heart beneath is teaching
To the broken heart above
Let
the heavens falter
Let the earth proclaim
Come healing of the spirit
Come
healing of the limb.
I
Have Decided to Follow Jesus
1. I have decided to follow
Jesus;
I have decided to follow Jesus;
I have decided to follow Jesus;
No turning back, no turning back.
2.
Though I may wonder, I still will follow;
Though I may wonder, I still will follow;
Though I may wonder, I still will follow;
No turning back, no turning back.
3.
The world behind me, the cross before me;
The world behind me, the cross before me;
The world behind me, the cross before me;
No turning back, no turning back.
4.
Though none go with me, still I will follow;
Though none go with me, still I will follow;
Though none go with me, still I will follow;
No turning back, no turning back.
Words
by Sadhu Sundar Singh, 19th C.
Tune:
Assam
He decidido seguir a
Cristo
He decidido
seguir a Cristo
He decidido
seguir a Cristo
He decidido
seguir a Cristo
No vuelvo atrás, no vuelvo atrás.
El
Rey de de gloria,
Me ha transformado
El Rey de de gloria,
Me ha transformado
El Rey de de gloria,
Me ha transformado
No vuelvo atrás, no vuelvo atrás.
La
vida vieja
Ya he dejado
La vida vieja
Ya he dejado
La vida vieja
Ya he dejado
No vuelvo atrás, no vuelvo atrás.
