Spending time this Advent with Mary, and women in general, we can discover women are powerful. We would not know that power from today’s Old Testament reading. It promotes atonement, meaning it promotes “sin” and “guilt.” The Gospel reading does not promote atonement but does address it John in the desert. He proclaims “a baptism of repentance” to cleanse one of sin and guilt. But atonement with its emphasis on sin and guilt curtails power, certainly of women. Thus, the Gospel moves forward from John the Baptist and ends with a promise of power through one who will “baptize you with the Spirit.”
Still today, the ancient Biblical theology of atonement, emphasizing sin and guilt, drains people of power, women specifically. The theology forces women to live at-one-ment with traditional patriarchal values and thus domineering and punitive dictates. Respecting one’s self as free of the atonement tribe and its patriarchal traditions is to live as a woman of power. Our power will be attacked as sin, usually pride, by atonement’s dictators. They will subsequently force guilt, more so shame, upon emerging powerful women. They will call us haughty or uppity or disobedient or simply, sinful to achieve Atonement’s purpose to deny us being Spirit filled power living independent from them. Yet that is quite the revolutionary nature of life in the Spirit. It can be a fearsome thing to live in the Spirit with the force of all culture, civilization, and history dictated against us. It requires we be courageous, creatively birthing our personal lives. So too, creatively birthing our social lives, gathering with other powerful women who also live in the Spirit, creatively birthing their lives. Encircled in the Spirit, we give birth to communion, love, and healing power. We women begin our circle of power together in what have been called the red tent, the witches coven or moon circle, the quilting bee, the coffee klatch, the she shed. It is the circle of power in which Mary of Nazareth lived. It is the circle of power in which Mary raised Jesus. In such a circle Mary gives life to a powerful child. A child who learns from women how to live that same creative life with other creative people who keep growing their powerful Spirit-filled circles. 2,000 years ago Mary’s son lived as women had always lived, Spirit-filled with the force of all culture, civilization, and history dictated against him – and he did so as a man teaching other men to do the same. Mary’s and Jesus’ Spirit-filled circle lives on. It is an ever-widening circle the world over in which we give birth to communion, love, and creative healing power together.
“Welcome to our circle… Our threads of lives have woven to connect our kindred souls… A movement amongst us – a revolution… Tune into the rhythm as you breathe. Sit in wonder, quiet and peace, Embody the powerful release. In our growing numbers we share a calling, To step up and lead as a new world is dawning.” (Kami Guilder)
Prayer: Spirit, move us to risk living as powerful Spirit-filled people.
Question: When have I lived in the power of the Spirit with an opposing force dictated against me? Who is asking me to do so now?
December 6, 2020 Gospel Mark 1:1-8 Second Sunday of Advent