Hope in a Dark Time

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

http://www.cbeinternational.org/blogs/feminists-take-cross-justice-over-empire

            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)

Leonard Cohen  1934-2016

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, 19^th 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.