"Everything as it moves, now and then, here and there, makes pauses.
The bird as it flies stops in one place to make its rest and in another to rest in its flight.
In the same way, God has paused as well.
The sun which is so bright and beautiful is one place where God has paused.
The moon, the stars, the wind - God has been with them too.
The trees, the animals are all places where God has stopped, leaving the touch
       Of the holy in all these things.
We, too, have had God pause in us. We too have the holy touch in our being.
Let us now pause ourselves and listen for the voice of God in our hearts."
Lakota teaching

Mary's song, the Magnificat from the gospel of Luke, reminds us of God's insistence on human beings as tabernacles of the holy. When - and if - we respond to God's voice in our lives then we are also a part of the magnificat, becoming greater than the sum of our parts, says Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloister Walk and Amazing Grace.

Biblical scholars doubt that an illiterate young peasant woman could ever have made such a song, she says. Garth suggested in his sermon this morning that the magnificat is perhaps the song of a mature Mary. I wonder about that. Young women, adolescents according to Western standards, may indeed long for reversals in their lives. Perhaps Mary and the voices of the young women quoted in our first reading tonight from Africa, might reflect on a God who has paused and marked them in their bodies. Perhaps at that time, in their experience of life, they long for a world that is radically different, pulling forward a prophet's promise, a foremother in faith's song (Hannah).

A relatively new field of biblical interpretation says that social location has a good deal to tell us about how the texts are heard. Our social, cultural, ethnic, gendered orientations continue to revolutionize our faith. Where our bodies are, where God touches us can bring forth a new word, a new perspective and sometimes new actions.

That is one aspect of what happened to me and to a parish I served in the Boston area. Fourteen life sized body maps were painted by women living with AIDS in Africa. They were hung at Brandeis University Women's Research Center in the late Spring. The maps told the story of their bodies, past, present and future - and they spoke of hope.

One of my former parishioners, newly diagnosed with a bowel tumor, wanted to create her own body map in response to what she had seen. This is what the maps looked like: (photos and book of the maps from Africa were shared). While four women in the parish undertook the project in the parish all followed similar rules. In addition we decided that each of the parish body maps must answer the question, "where is God?" We gathered reflections during and at the end of the process; the support figures included in the body map project were also a deep source of spiritual reflection for most of the participants. Each map was unique - each had a different social location - each story perspective was as individual as the women in our first reading this evening.

The maps were hung in our worship space along with a life-sized icon of the suffering Christ; the red stole over his shoulders looked more like an AIDS ribbon on the evening we held an Art for AIDS event. With an African drum ensemble from Tufts University we spent time in response to the body maps that had been shared by the African women and learned a little more about incarnation and hope. Our small parish had promised the diocesan Jubilee outreach ministry $1000 to support an orphan feeding program and to fund home health care kits used by outreach workers. We raised over $4000.

The art opening was held at night when the Magnificat is traditionally recited at evening prayer, the time before sleep and dreaming - night time when the prophetic imagination might be at work. The magnificat asks each of us if we have responded in any way to God's call to us, to God's pause. Have we ignored it, relying instead only on our own power, wealth, intellect or self sufficiency. Or have we been willing to be tabernacles where God might dwell and so imagine new worlds, the visions and dreams of the prophets...

This is what we know - unlikely people hear and believe and respond to God. The hopeless become hope-filled. I like to think that the rich go away empty because they have emptied their pockets, and left their security to journey to far away places (or near ones) to offer themselves as icons of the One who dwells with us, Immanuel. It may be a Stephen Lewis, the AIDS officer at the UN who spoke to Carleton University a week ago; it may be a retired businessman or a midwife or a bishop from Massachusetts. It may be reaching out to friends right here as I know you have been doing.

In the United States the Episcopal Church was among the first to respond to those living with the virus in the seventies and eighties. We created faith networks, became family to the gay community, advocated for drug therapies, led retreats and educational workshops, believed that God had paused in each person, listened to scripture as it landed hard or easily, saw the holy in each one. We believe that our church has AIDS; we believe that our world wide family needs our help.

In the midst of this struggle, like Mary, we believe that God intends to liberate, to save, to give and sustain life. Mercy Oduyoye, a feminist biblical scholar, says in Readings From

This Place that women reading or hearing the Bible in Africa are doing so in an atmosphere permeated by death and death dealing forces. It was true for the young Mary as she fled to Africa. The goal then and now is to protect and nurture life, to believe that injustice will be overturned, that to offer hope is to witness, to mark where God is. Next to lament we place beauty. Our goal is the same not only in Advent but always. Amen+

     Amen.
The Rev. Linda Fisher Privitera+