Boss A** B**** (A Ted Lasso Advent - Part 1)

This past week, before Thanksgiving, I was scrolling my social media when I stumbled across this post that a friend had shared:

.

It is a thought provoking quote and one that draws me to think about not only Luke chapter 1, but also the Apple+ TV show Ted Lasso.

Episode 3 of Season 2 titled "Do The Right-est Thing" finds the owner of the soccer (forgive me international friends) team Richmond AFC, Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham) being job shadowed by her best friend's daughter Nora (Kiki May). Rebecca finds her voice as the team owner with the help of the teenaged Nora. In one scene Nora helps Rebecca write an important email standing up to the team's biggest sponsor. Nora dictates crude and overly direct language, which is re-translated by Rebecca into business speak. That is, except the signature. Rebecca signs the correspondence exactly as Nora suggests, "Sincerely, Boss A** B****."

That Ted Lasso episode about female empowerment featuring a teenage girl speaking truth to power is not unlike the opening chapter of the Book of Luke. When we begin our advent reading by reading Luke 1 we can see the plan of God unfolding through two empowered women. 

When Luke starts telling the story the first thing he wants his readers know is who has the power. The political power was in the hands of Herod the Great. 

Next in Luke's story an angel appears to a priest named Zechariah and tells him that he and his wife, both past child bearing years, are going to have a baby. Zechariah has his doubts, and as a punishment can't speak till the baby is born. Zechariah's wife, Elizabeth, responds, not with doubt, but by giving thanks to God for her pregnancy.

Meanwhile, the angel (who is rather busy in this chapter) also appears to Elizabeth's young relative Mary. The angel tells Mary - who is a virgin - to expect a baby and that Elizabeth is also with child. Mary asks the angel "How can this be?" and by the end of the angels explanation is saying "Let it be!" Mary goes to see Elizabeth and that is where things get good.

When Mary arrives in at Elizabeth's house the baby she is carrying (John the Baptist) leaps in her womb and she says to Mary:

    “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this           

     granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound         of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she 

     who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

After that greeting Mary sings a song, and it is not a song King Herod would have liked so much. 

    “My soul magnifies the Lord,
        and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
        for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
    For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
        for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
        and holy is his name.
    And his mercy is for those who fear him
        from generation to generation.
    He has shown strength with his arm;
        he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
        he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
        and exalted those of humble estate;
        he has filled the hungry with good things,
        and the rich he has sent away empty.
    He has helped his servant Israel,
        in remembrance of his mercy,
        as he spoke to our fathers,
        to Abraham and to his offspring forever.” (Lk 1:46-55 - ESV)

While Mary's song is the most direct statement of what is happening, this chapter is loaded with clues to what is going on. Zechariah and Elizabeth are the new Abraham and Sarah. John is the new Elijah. Mary sings a song of triumph, much like Miriam after the Red Sea crossing. A new deliverance is a foot, and like that episode of Ted Lasso, there is an older women and a teenage girl at the center of it all speaking truth to power.

In the Advent and Christmas season we to tend to focus on the Virgin Mary as the young woman who is treasuring and pondering in her heart (Lk 2:19) all the things taking place. But the reality is the Mary is not just quietly introspective, she is a using her voice to announce that God is using his strength to scatted the proud, bring down rulers from their thrones, lift the poor and humble, and accomplish his plan of salvation, redemption, and the restoration of all things. Mary is boldly proclaiming that the revolution is here! Now!

In a sermon a number of years ago I stated that Mary is not the silent, peaceful woman in a blue and white robe with her head tilted just so gazing at the baby Jesus in the manger, but rather a young teenage girl wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt kicking off the rebellion against the powers of this world and the spirit world. She is defiantly declaring what Jesus was and is bringing.

This time of year we hear a song often that asks "Mary did you know?" The answer is YES, she knew!!! She knew exactly what was taking place and was the first one to sign up for the for the movement. She gave the first rally speech. Mary was not the meek and mild women of the hymns, but rather a revolutionary. Mary was a Boss A** B****!

In Support of All Saints Day (and a few quick thoughts on Reformation Day and Halloween)

Throughout my life the end of October and the beginning of November has been a disputed space. With three special days - Halloween, Reformation Day and All Saints Day - crammed into two days there is a lot going on.

Growing up in the 1970's and 1980's Halloween was viewed skeptically in my evangelical Christian community. In that era, with its paranoid mania about all things satanic, I remember halloween parties often being re-cast as "harvest" parties. While trick-or-treating was viewed as demonically fraught, hay-rides were a harvest celebration. In the next decade, as a young adult, the church I worked for decided to throw a costume "harvest party" with the rule that you had to come dressed as your favorite Bible character. In more recent years Halloween has often been a celebration of our neighborhood and the children that live in it. In fact my daughters sat around our table this past Sunday night retelling the stories of by-gone years of trick-or-treating and parties. Halloween, like a trick-or-treat sack, has been a mixed bag for me throughout my life.

Woven into the end of October is also a thread of history. My formative years were spent in a Dutch Reformed context. This reality meant that each year the well-meaning amateur religious historians in my life were quick to remind anyone in ear shot that October 31 is not Halloween, but rather Reformation Day. For those who did not share my upbringing, it was on October 31 that Martin Luther nailed his 95 Thesis to the door of the Wittenberg All Saints Church in 1517. This action touched off the Protestant Reformation. Luther was rightly protesting against the Catholic Church and its practices at the time. However, Reformation Day has a mixed legacy in my mind as well. Despite being made to watch overly dramatic black and white movies of Luther's life in school, I support the Reformation solas (meaning alone) - scriptura (scripture), fide (faith), gratia (grace), Christo (Christ), Deo gloria (Glory to God). However, there is a sola that Luther unintentionally triggered that reaches into our contemporary world as much, or possibly more than, the other five - sola schisma or splitting alone. Perhaps this would be more aptly put semper schisma - always splitting - to go with semper reformanda (always reforming).

In the first 1500 years of the church history there was one schism. In 1054, in what is called "the Great Schism," the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches of the church split. In the 500 years since Luther sparked the Reformation, Christianity has continued to divide into somewhere around 30-45,000 denominations world wide. (1) Born in division, one of the legacies of the protestant branch of the church is a seemingly never ending division - sola schisma. I wonder how much this constant division over "truth," and how we understand that truth, plays into the rampant divisiveness we see in all areas of life in our current historical moment. So Reformation Day is a bit of a jumble for me too.

Which leads me to the third of the special days packed into October 31 and November 1, All Saints Day. In my tradition this third day is the least of the three, but it is the reason the other two observances exist at all. Luther posted his protest paper on the Eve of All Saints day knowing that worshippers would be showing up en-masse to celebrate All Saints Day the next morning. Halloween's long and complicated history can be simplified into the fact that it is the Eve of All Saints Day (or All Hollows Day in older vernacular). Put simply All Saints Day is the remembrance and celebration of all the believers that have gone before us. It is a day to remember that we are part of "the true Christian church of all times and all places." (2)

We protestants have no real practice or sense of Saints. In my context we sing "For all the Saints who from their labors rest..." but it is balanced out with warnings that our church does not pray to saints but only to Jesus. Our historic aversion to artistic expression as part of religious practice also doesn't help either. However, my understanding of saints began to change a number of years ago when I read James Alison's thoughts on Mary. (3) In essence Alison says that the gift of Mary is that if she, a created being, was used to bring God's new creation into the world, so can we. However, where the the shift really hit home was as I walked across England this past summer.

In each town that we traversed along Wainwright's Coast-to-Coast trail in Northern England there was a church. Our group, and myself in particular, began going into these old places of worship. In nearly every case, to get into the buildings one had to walk through a cemetery. In many locations those that had gone before were buried in the floor of the church. The stain glass windows, the monuments on the wall, the statues and art, even the ancient age of the buildings all pointed to those that had gone before. Those that gathered to worship in these places were surrounded with all the saints that had worshipped in that place before them. This stands in contrast to many of the worship spaces in protestant America which are removed from the graveyards and have no art depicting those who have believed before us.

James K.A. Smith writing on the work of Charles Taylor states “…in our secular age, believing doesn’t come easily.  Faith is fraught; confession is haunted by an inescapable sense of its contestability.  We don’t believe instead of doubting; we believe while doubting.  We are all Thomas now.” (4)  This sense that faith is hard to find and often comes with questions in our world is what makes the saints come alive for me. If I need to borrow some faith from someone else when mine is weak, or I am in doubt, looking to the Saints can be a source of comfort, inspiration and encouragement. Often we think about our communities of faith carrying us, but what if we expand our community of faith beyond just those living souls we share Sunday's with to include all of those that have gone before? What if we can look to those that have come before as examples of what it means to have faith, struggle, endure, overcome, etc.?

This All Saints day I find myself thinking about those that have gone before. Some bear the official title of "Saint" others do not. Some are enshrined in art and stained glass and others live on in stories and memories. All of these saints have something to teach me. They all have something to offer me in times of certainty and in doubt. We need those that have gone before to guide us and to loan us their faith when ours is weak.

So happy All Saints day! Who are the saints - the believers in Jesus - that have gone before you that you are remembering today? Who are you celebrating? Who are you grateful for? Who are you borrowing faith from?

Joel K

(1) https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12052-010-0221-5   &   https://www.livescience.com/christianity-denominations.html

(2) This is a foot note to the footnote added to the Christian Reformed Church version of the Apostles' Creed. https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/creeds/apostles-creed

(3) 'Living the Magnificat' - in Broken Hearts and New Creations: Imitations of a Great Reversal. James Alison (2010) London: Continuum Books.

(4) How (Not) To be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor.  James K.A. Smith (2014) Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. pg. 4.