The following is the text of a sermon I preached at Open Way for the third Sunday of Advent, Dec. 11, 2022, to conclude our sermon series on disability justice. If you prefer, you can watch/listen to it here.

I’m honored to preach the last sermon in our Disability Justice series,
after a series of four fantastic sermons from Jess, Sonya, Robbie and Caitlin –
please watch them on our YouTube channel if you missed any of them!

My task today is to sum up their wisdom,
and to also draw links between Disability Justice and themes of Advent and Christmas.
I’ve often nabbed this final sermon spot in past “On the Way” fall series,
because I love the joy of making those connections –
like in our refugee series, where we talked about Jesus the refugee child,
or last year’s climate justice series,
when I preached about Jesus, the King of Kin, born for all of creation.

The Visitation by Brother Mickey McGrath

This time, I’ll be using today’s lectionary text
that so many churches are preaching on this Sunday,
and it’s given me plenty to work with.

Before we read this familiar story
of Mary and Elizabeth,
I want to name something that’s been coming up for me
as I’ve been listening to the stories
of disabled and chronically ill folks
in our church these last couple months,
and gratefully learning about
what it looks like do the work of allyship
as a temporarily able-bodied person.

In a nutshell, I’ve been feeling super vulnerable.
Not just because I’ve become more aware of my ableism, which is a good thing.
I’ve also become more deeply aware of my own potential and actual fragility.
It’s that word “temporarily” before “able-bodied,” it’s our wider vulnerability as human beings.

Amy Kenny writes about this near the beginning of her book, “My Body is Not a Prayer Request”
which we studied together at Open Way this fall… she says:

“When we are young and nondisabled, it’s easy to buy into the myth that we are in control of our bodies, even though we know deep down that we’re not. Subconsciously, we realize that everyone’s physical ability is a temporary situation, and that frightens us… We, the disabled, bear prophetic witness about what is true about the fragile human condition. If only the church would listen to us.”

I wonder what you grew up learning about vulnerability.
I have grown up in a world that runs from vulnerability.
My White culture values perfectionism and rugged individualism,
my Evangelical church culture loves triumphalism and the spiritual bypassing of pain.
I am immersed in a capitalism that wants me to “live my best life,”
fearing scarcity and warding off insecurity through hoarding resources.

In that context, Amy Kenny is absolutely right, disabled people ARE prophets,
reminding all of us that we are worthy from birth,
and our dignity is not earned through some kind of self-sufficient productivity or so-called success.

The disability community prophetically reveals our shared human vulnerability,
and our deep need of each other,
revealing the more beautifully sustainable path of community care.

To be clear, I don’t believe disabled people exist simply to inspire able-bodied people like me to embrace vulnerability –
this series has reminded us to be wary of reducing disabled people
to the so-called “inspiration porn” they provide able-bodied people.
The truth is that disabled people don’t often get to choose their vulnerability.
And the people and systems they need are often fallible and broken, which turns their vulnerability into oppression.

But when able-bodied people do the work of ensuring accessibility
so they have the privilege of community with disabled people,
we all get the chance to build trust, to learn vulnerability and our need of one another,
and we can work together with the Holy Spirit to overhaul or overthrow those oppressive systems.
That’s my radical hope for Open Way.

With that said, let’s turn to this story of Mary and Elizabeth.
Even though it’s not specifically about disability, I’m going to examine at it through this lens of vulnerability and community care,
a lens this disability justice series has gifted me.
Just a heads up that I’m also planning on nerding out about the evolution of the octopus,
so prepare yourselves for that too.

Also just as a side note I was looking up “vulnerable” in the thesaurus and was struck by two synonyms:
one was “accessible,” and another was “pregnable.”
Two paths of vulnerable openness to the other.
This story comes right after Mary says “yes” to being pregnable by God, and the angel leaves her.
Let’s see what Mary does.

39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

46 And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47     and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has looked with favor on the lowly state of his servant.
    Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed,
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
    and holy is his name;
50 indeed, his mercy is for those who fear him
    from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones
    and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things
    and sent the rich away empty.
54 He has come to the aid of his child Israel,
    in remembrance of his mercy,
55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
    to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

56 And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

So we’ve got Mary, this young teenage girl, who has suddenly become vulnerable not only to God,
but to community judgment.
At best, she will become the local town scandal.
At worst, she and her child could be exiled, left to beg on the streets,
or she could be stoned for adultery before her child is even born.

Thankfully, the angel’s visit to Joseph, which isn’t narrated here,
and Joseph’s belief in Mary and choice to stay married to her does protect her somewhat.
Still, though, Mary prepares to leave town – the text says “with haste” –
and travel to her cousin’s home in the mountain town of Ein Karem.
The journey, likely taken with a caravan, was at least 120 km – similar to traveling from Vancouver to Hope on foot –
and involved a 1300-foot elevation hike through the hills, where there would be significant risk of robbery and assault.

Now it’s possible Mary’s incentive for this arduous journey is just to ride out the first 3 months of morning sickness
with her cousin Elizabeth, miraculously pregnant with John the Baptist.

But I think Mary may have had other motivations.
I think she needed someone to help her ride out the experience of being shamed.
Someone to provide her sanctuary from the gossip and ostracism.
Someone older and wiser, who knows what it’s like to carry stigma.
Someone like Elizabeth.

Elizabeth had carried the great stigma in her culture and time of being childless and infertile.
(I personally think it was Zechariah who was infertile, but in those days it was believed to always be the woman’s problem).
As Elizabeth commented earlier in this chapter, in verse 25, this miraculous pregnancy REMOVED her public disgrace,
kind of an ironic reversal of Mary, whose miracle baby BROUGHT disgrace.

Despite the fact Elizabeth can relate with Mary around public disgrace,
Elizabeth is also a very privileged person –
she’s the wife of a priest in Jerusalem, she’s known as a righteous woman,
and having her social standing increased by this long-awaited pregnancy
may have made her hesitant to risk her reputation by offering hospitality to an unwed pregnant teen cousin from a hick town.

I imagine Mary finally arriving at Elizabeth’s door after this long journey,
taking a deep breath, tentatively peeking in and saying hello…
cringing lest Elizabeth take one look at her and send her right back on the road…
but instead, Mary’s simple “hello” sets off this chaotically joyful, very EMBODIED chain of events.

As Elizabeth tells it: “as soon as my ears heard your voice, the baby in my womb leapt for joy.”
Then the Holy Spirit prompts a loud shout of blessing from Elizabeth!
(Has anyone ever shouted a blessing over you?)
Without even hearing Mary’s angel story, Elizabeth believes and understands it,
and treats this teenage cousin with more honor than herself, blessing her for her faith, for saying yes to God.

And Mary responds in song.
It’s almost as if Elizabeth’s blessing unlocks the song in Mary.
Mary begins by calling herself blessed – internalizing Elizabeth’s blessing and claiming her dignity with her own agency,
and then she turns the attention on God’s work in past and future.
More on that song in a bit.

But first, I want us to notice that both women are making themselves vulnerable.
Mary is risking being seen, risking asking for help, needing Elizabeth.
Brene Brown talks a lot about how being shamed makes us want to isolate,
when what we really need is to open up and share the experience with trustworthy people who will understand.

As for Elizabeth, she takes the risk
of believing and blessing Mary
when few other people would do so,
and gets to participate
in this burst of creative prophetic joy.

Two women two thousand years ago,
risking vulnerability,
acknowledging their need of each other,
pre-empting shame through empathetic community care,
and forging an essential connection across generations.

And of course,
they also became two of the first people to hold a bigger secret –
that their God was, like them,
embracing vulnerability and neediness.
Their God was willing to be attached
to the uterine wall of a rural teenage girl,
completely dependent on her body for nourishment,
a God protected only by amniotic fluid for 9 months,
a God risking travel through a birth canal
before the arrival of modern medicine,
a baby God who could not even hold up his head, threatened by a king who wanted him dead.

This God was demonstrating that love always requires mutual vulnerability,
even when one party is divine and one is human.
This Messiah was going to bring transformation not through triumphant violence,
but by becoming an embodied, vulnerable creature.

Immanuel, God with us, God in flesh, taking this risk of vulnerability,
putting Themself in need of their very creation,
unleashing creative and redemptive potential through empathy.

This is such good news, but it is also such hard news.
The word “vulnerable” comes from the Latin word for “wound.”
Vulnerability leaves us – leaves even God – open to being wounded.
Some of us have had our vulnerability taken advantage of.
I think of my queer community this past month, with the murders at Club Q,
drag shows and drag storytimes canceled over threats of violence,
and just weeks ago in Hamilton, at Redeemer University, a Christian college,
homophobia leading a Bekett Noble, a queer student, to take their life.
We feel so viscerally the dark painful side of vulnerability, the potential for wounding and abuse.
I do not believe Christ causes or endorses this suffering,
though he has felt similar wounds and is present with us in them.

In order to survive this pain of wounding, we might return violence for violence,
or we might numb and armor ourselves - putting up our guard,
never wanting to leave ourselves unprotected again.
These are understandable strategies in the short-term,
but over time, they end up damaging and diminishing us and others.

The hard truth is that vulnerability is the avenue for wounding
but it is also the only avenue for our healing.
After taking the time we need to rebuild trust, we need to open ourselves up again,
risking making ourselves accessible to God and to community
to allow our healing to happen,
whether healing looks like physical or emotional healing,
or whether it looks like restoration to community,
because Robbie and Jess reminded us that is also a form of healing.

Risking vulnerability,
acknowledging our need of each other:
the pathway to healing.

In hopes of my own continued healing,
I want to practice being vulnerable with y’all
and tell you about how vulnerable I’ve felt lately,
as I’ve been coming to terms with pastoring next year post-Mark’s-retirement.
As a queer female pastor,
I felt so much safer, less exposed, less fearful
when co-pastoring with Mark, this seasoned straight/cis man,
than I do heading into next year
without him as my partner in crime.

I still believe co-pastoring is the best model for us at Open Way:
it’s one way we live out our value of queering power,
and I can’t wait to team up
with more co-pastors moving forward.
AND I am realizing that co-pastoring
has also been a convenient way
to sidestep my big fear of vulnerability, critique and failure.
And that’s something I believe God wants to address in me,
regardless of whom is pastoring alongside me in the future.

I try to tell myself that y’all aren’t looking for an authoritative pastor
with all the right answers,
or with all the most visionary plans and strategies,
in fact, some of you are here because you DON’T want that -
but I still carry so much internalized patriarchy and homophobia
that it makes me feel like my vulnerability is a liability.

That’s why I’m grateful for leaders like Caitlin, whose sermon last time reminded me
that God “knowingly chose softness, weakness, frailty and pain,”
and called humans who regularly experience these things to be leaders –
women, gender non-conforming people, queer people, disabled people.
Caitlin, thank you for inviting me to “see [your] disabilities
as reminders of [my] own belovedness,” in the midst of my own fragility.

You and other folks with disabilities are retraining me to see my vulnerability
as the key to being receptive to the God who chooses vulnerable love,
as the key to being able to empathize and connect with all of you,
so we can co-create a community that’s joyfully aware of our deep need of each other.
Vulnerability as the pathway to joyful co-creativity.

It reminds me of the evolution of the octopus. Stay with me here.
I’m grateful to Andrea Gibson for reminding me of this recently.
The bigger family that includes octopi, known as cephalopods,
evolved very slowly for millions of years, because they had a hard protective shell around them.
Shells limit evolution – for example, turtles have barely changed in millions of years.
(Not that we hold that against them!)

Then, 140 million years ago, this shell-less cephalopod we now call the octopus
branched off the main evolutionary line with a soft, defenseless body.
To survive without their usual armor, they had to develop radical innovations,
like camouflage, huge eyes, and strong, flexible arms.
Creativity borne from shell-less vulnerability.

It reminds me of one of the cool things I learned during this Disability Justice series:
just how many technological innovations have resulted from assistive technologies
inspired by the needs and ideas of disabled people –
things we use every day, like bicycles, texting, touch screens, audiobooks.
Creativity for increased access that now benefits everyone.

Of course, there’s the other example of creativity in our text today –
and that’s Mary’s song, also known as the Magnificat.
As Mary’s vulnerability is met with the blessing and care of her cousin,
Mary bursts into what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called
“the most passionate, the wildest, the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung.”
Mary’s boldness reminds me of a disability activist slogan I saw this week:
“No spoons left – it’s all knives now!”

Her song is so radical that singing it has been banned by governments and militaries
at least three times in recent history –
during the British rule of India,
in the 1980s in Guatemala,
and during the Dirty War in Argentina when Las Madre (“the mothers”)
postered the capital plaza with the words of the Magnificat to protest their 30,000 missing family members.

In this dangerous song, Mary claims her inherent worth and blessedness,
again, much like the disability community has been doing for decades.
Then she names what God has always been like, what God has always done,
and spells out how God is going to show up,
braiding the past into the future.

The Glorious Visitation, by Lucy D’Souza-Krone

It reminds me of the Syrophoenician woman
whom Jess preached about –
this song is definitely not “settling for crumbs.”
And to riff off Sonya’s sermon –
Mary isn’t singing about inclusion,
about marginalized people being welcomed to the table.
Mary isn’t even asking privileged people to let go of the table –
her song simply and boldly FLIPS that table.
She sings about God inverting power structures
in favour of the oppressed.

This God shows mercy
to those whose vulnerability has been abused.
God will make sure they are lifted
and filled with good things.
Even if they seem insignificant and small, like Mary,
they are valuable to God,
and their song will be heard.

And I believe Mary’s song shows the mercy of God
for the rich and overfed too,
even though it might not feel that way at first.
But being brought down from power, experiencing emptiness –
this is how we get in touch with our human vulnerability
and recognize that we really do need each other and God.

Of course, our identities are complex and intersectional.
In some aspects of my life, I’m the underdog.
I’m the one whose song needs unleashing,
who needs to claim the blessing and power of God.
And in other situations, I’m the one with more power.
I’m the rich one that will be sent away empty, the mighty cast down.
In those situations, I’m invited to be like my namesake, Elizabeth,
to treat the so-called lowly with honor, to believe their stories,
and to learn when to be silent
and make room to hear the song that needs singing.

I wonder… in what ways do you feel vulnerable this Advent season? this lifetime?
What part of that vulnerability do you feel invited to lean into?
Where do you hear the invitation to stop numbing and armoring yourself
and step into the “octopus creativity” and Christlike empathy that vulnerability can foster?
And on the other side, what part of your vulnerability is exacerbated by oppression
and longs for justice and liberation?

Is there anyone who is scandalized by you, like they were by Mary?
Perhaps even some family members you’ll see this Christmas?
Who are the “Elizabeth”s who are reminding you of your blessedness?
Who are the “Mary”s you can be an “Elizabeth” for, reminding them of their blessedness?
In the face of these attempts to shame you and those you love,
what radical, defiant songs are you singing?

This is my prayer for myself this Advent –
that I would become a pastor who leans into her vulnerability,
who learns to love her own vulnerability.
That this would create more safety for all of us to risk vulnerability
and practice needing and caring for each other,
following our vulnerable Messiah through the unavoidable pain
and into mutual healing and liberation,
following the way the disability community has modeled for us.

I am learning my main job is to believe your stories of how God is showing up,
and to bless each of you (maybe even with shouting!),
to remind you of your deep and unshakeable beauty and worth,
and then step back and get to witness first-hand the way you each creatively imagine and express
the vision of what the world looks like when caught up in God’s justice and mercy,
the way you prophetically resist perfectionism, triumphalism, capitalism,
and call out the broken systems that need repair…

If I could hear and amplify your own radical, vulnerable songs that need singing,
your own Magnificats of queer justice, of racial justice, of climate justice, of disability justice,
and the songs you amplify as allies,
if I could witness just how strong we are together,
caring for each other in our vulnerability, in this community of radical joy,
then I would consider myself very blessed indeed.
Amen, may it be so.

The Radical, Vulnerable Song that Needs Singing