Our friends with A Sanctified Art, the clergywomen who wrote this year’s Advent and Christmas liturgies, remind us that “Advent is a season of endings and beginnings. As the calendar year comes to a close, a new church year begins. Christ’s birth ushers us into new ways of living and loving; and yet, the world as we know it spins madly on. In many ways, pregnant Mary was surrounded by endings—large and small, personal and political.
But Mary proclaimed hope in a God who was and 
is making all things new. Christ’s birth offered a beautiful new beginning for shepherds and Magi alike—all the while, King Herod tried to bring Christ’s story to an end. When we ourselves navigate seasons filled with endings and beginnings, we need reminders. We need words that can feel like steady ground, like a path for our feet to find as we step forward into the unknown.”
As a result, they’ve “crafted an Advent series filled with blessings, with the words we need to hear again and again as we begin a new season.” Together, we’ll imagine the words Mary would speak to her newborn son. What scriptures and stories would she impart to him? What lessons would she teach him as he grew? Our weekly themes may feel like the lessons we teach to children, but these are lessons we continue to learn and relearn even as adults.
In reflecting on their creation of this year’s resources, they write: “When our team went for a walk to brainstorm our Advent theme, Words for the Beginning came to us with almost complete ease. We began rattling off an endless list of reminders we wanted for our children, our families, friends, and communities, no matter what beginning they were facing.”
These blessings are intended to comfort, encourage, challenge, transform, and uphold us for our Advent journey and whatever lies beyond. They are words which can wrap us up and hold us tight no matter what a new day or new year may bring. These blessings remind us that love is our beginning, so it seems fitting that we start with: You Are a Blessing.
Before she speaks these words to her newborn son, this is Mary’s blessing, spoken to her first by the Angel Gabriel—“You have found favor with God”—and affirmed later by Elizabeth—“Blessed are you among women.” The reality which we must remember here, though, is that Mary is neither wealthy nor powerful, yet she is chosen to bear God’s child.
Mary of Galilee is an unlikely partner for God’s incarnation. As one scholar reminds us, “Jewish ears must have burned when they heard Luke’s Gospel mention a girl from Galilee” (Kelley Nikondeha). The northern region was known for uprisings and protests, and they were considered “lesser Jews” because many were uncircumcised, or did not worship in the temple, or married non-Jewish people. So from the beginning of our Advent journey, we hear of a “God who goes to unexpected places—to the north, when all expect south; to lowly priests with no sons—this God can go to an unlikely girl in an unlikely place shaped by resistance and maybe even trauma.
[And this is where] God shows favor, demonstrating again and again in infinite reversals that human taboo and stigma don’t limit the Spirit” (Kelley Nikondeha 48). Mary’s encounter with Gabriel enacts a promise and a prophecy of a miraculous birth in unbelievable circumstances; this story subverts every expectation of what a coming King’s arrival could or should look like.
It can be all too easy forget that important dynamic or to romanticize other elements of Mary’s story. As another pastor describes it:
We have let our popular imagination run wild creating a Mary who is mild and meek, tender, bearing sweetly and stoically her role in keeping the silent night silent. Mary is fragile yes, but she is, to borrow a phrase, not fragile like a flower. She is fragile like a bomb. From her first questioning of Gabriel’s news, through the [alternative] anthem that is the Magnificat, Mary’s words ring out as deeply, gloriously radical. —Laurie Lyter Bright
With the Angel Gabriel’s invitation to Mary and her consenting response, any conventional notions of who God favors and calls are shattered along with our own potential reasons for why God might not favor and call each and every one of us:
In those simple words, “Let it be…” and with all that follows, Mary is giving all who would follow a better glimpse of who God is. She joins a great lineage of folks who have heard God’s voice so clearly that they learn to trust their own, and declares boldly for the world to celebrate – THIS is who God is.
And in this moment Mary sets a whole new life in motion. She shows us the way to be what each of is called to be – a theotokos, a God bearer, living faith out loud with a clarion call that rings across the ages….[Mary] is here to show us how to live into the risky and radical love of saying yes to God. —Laurie Lyter Bright
Mary reminds us that we say yes to God’s call to bear God’s love in the world not in spite of, but because of, who we are. All of who we are, including those parts we might be inclined to diminish or hide; those parts which bring us insecurity or shame; those parts we wish might fit more neatly in socially acceptable boxes of one sort or another. Indeed, “This [story] reminds us that, what some may see as discarded scraps, the Maker of heaven and earth calls beautiful and blessed.
Mary, an ordinary girl from the obscure corners of Nazareth, was not cloaked in power or prestige—but was blanketed in belovedness. And that was enough. Advent invites us to reflect on how we, like Mary, are invited into God’s redemptive narrative—no matter how ordinary or small we might feel—for each of us has the potential to carry God’s love into a weary world” (Sanctified Art). For that is how we embody the promise and prophecy of a kingdom that will have no end for the son that Mary will bear and birth, the Christ child who she will nurture and scold, the beloved one she will follow and mourn.
Just as Mary’s story begins with blessedness, so does ours. The prophet Isaiah reminds us that we are claimed by a God who calls our name. Hear these additional Advent words from the 43rd chapter—
But now, says the Lord—
the one who created you, Jacob,
the one who formed you, Israel:
Don’t fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
when through the rivers, they won’t sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire, you won’t be scorched
and flame won’t burn you.
I am the Lord your God,
the holy one of Israel, your savior.
Because you are precious in my eyes,
you are honored, and I love you.
Don’t fear,
I am with you.
Bring my children from far away,
and my children from the end of the earth,
everyone who is called by my name
and whom I created for my glory,
whom I have formed and made.
We are a blessing because we are made in God’s image and we belong to God. As our friends at A Sanctified Art remind us:
We often feel compelled to earn or justify our worth and belovedness, but the One who grants each breath affirms our inherent worth. In light of God’s infinite love, we are beloved, the very fibers of our being woven with care. We can’t work our way to receiving God’s compassion. It’s already there—as present as the twinkling stars in the sky, as near as the clouds of breath on a cold night.
You are a blessing because the One from whom all blessings flow sees you, knows you, and calls you by name.
By embracing our inherent blessedness as a starting point, we open our hearts to recognize and affirm the blessedness in others, which transforms our interactions and communities. God’s perfect love invites us to live out our belovedness by transforming our world with love and entering into the good work God’s hand began weaving many years ago. This Advent, consider your sacred place within the divine quilt (Kayla Craig).
For you are a blessing. So that is where we begin. May it be so, dear ones. This day and each day. Amen.
Breath Prayer:
INHALE: In you, O God,
EXHALE: I find my worth.
Charge/Blessing: You are a blessing—known, chosen, and called for a purpose. May you boldly live into this truth, recognizing and cherishing your inherent worth so that you may honor God’s image in others. Trust in your belovedness as you enter the redemptive work God has invited you into this Advent season.