Author: lakewooducc

I think in general, people like to congregation with people who are like them.  Maybe the people have something fundamental in common like ethnicity.  Or maybe they have similar thoughts about something, like politics.  Or maybe they enjoy a similar activity, like surfing.  

I’m wondering if we even notice one of the main things that keeps us ‘grouped up’ and that is income or wealth.  Class.  Often very rich people are at similar events, are together for doing activities, eat at similar restaurants.  Shop together at high end stores.  A billionaire is probably not dipping into Walgreens for a pack of smokes.  

And the rest of us ‘commoners’?  We’re kind of grouped together.  Day to day life. The grocery store.  The car line at school.  The doctor’s office.  The soccer game.  We tend to be around people who are similar from an economic standpoint.  Most of us don’t spend a lot of time socializing and hanging out in William’s Park.  Or at St. Vincent de Paul.  

In the Magnificat, there is the line, God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.  It’s kind of an enigmatic phrase.  There are some varying translations, but still, it’s a little vague.  Are the people actually scattered?  No more grouping up with those who endorse your world view and your values?  Or are their thoughts scattered, their plans upended?

When I think of the phrase ‘scattered the proud’ a scene from the movie  Mary Poppins comes to mind.  At the beginning of the movie, the Banks family is looking for a nanny.  A bunch of officious looking prospects are waiting in a long line down the walkway, out the gate, and down the sidewalk in front of the house.  But once Mary Poppins has been interviewed, a big wind comes and the nannies waiting outside are blown away in the wind.  It is a great scene!  The nannies are scattered.

Christmas is meant to upend our neat plans, arrangements, ideas, and assumptions.  A baby.  Born in a stable.  Attended by kings and shepherds alike, upends the world.  So this advent season, maybe we can let ourselves be scattered – be blown about a bit, have some of our tidy thoughts and conclusions challenged, get a bit mixed up, maybe even with people we don’t usually mix with.  Nature scatters seeds to grow and perpetuate life.  Maybe a little scattering with will help us grow in new directions.  

Prayer:  This advent season, may we encounter new people, new circumstances, and new ideas, that challenge some of our assumptions.  May we grow in the love that was gifted to us in the birth of Jesus. Amen.

This devotion was prepared by Rev. Kim P. Wells, pastor of Lakewood United Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, FL.

For centuries, there has been an image of women, subservient to men, being consigned to fulfilling their womanly duty – having babies.  Can’t work outside the home because they have to be home having and raising children.  They can’t get involved in the affairs of the wider world because their domestic duties, child bearing, requires their full attention.

So the wider world of power, decision making, economics, and politics, that was (is?) the world of men.  Men were intended to dominate the world outside the home.  Civic arrangements and such.  Women were to exert their power and influence inside the home having a kind of ‘second hand’ impact on wider society.  This has been a common construct of reality for thousands of years and across cultures.

So, Mary, for a woman of her day, was probably expected and expecting to be home,’barefoot and pregnant.’

But we are told of a God that is not limited by our limiting stereotypes and sex roles.  God uses this young woman to liberate the world.  God works through her to transform reality for all time.  Mary ends up influencing the lives of generations upon generations of people.  So much for a limited role, restricted to the hearth and home.

Prayer:  May the imaginations of our hearts explode at the wondrous things that Divine Love will accomplish despite our limiting stereotypes and false preconceptions.  Amen.

This devotion was prepared by Rev. Kim P. Wells, pastor of Lakewood United Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, FL and mother of three!

In preparation for this Advent season with the focus on the Magnificat, I looked at 13 translations of the Song of Mary from different Bibles.  All but one use the past tense in celebrating God’s liberation:  

You have shown strength with your arm

You have scattered the proud

You have deposed the mighty

You have raised the lowly 

You have filled the hungry

You have sent the rich away empty

This is not a song celebrating some future pie in the sky pipe dream.  This song expresses complete confidence in the power of God to transform reality here and now.  It’s already happened.  There is such hope and confidence that the writer celebrates God’s dream as a done deal.  

Just like the very real flesh and blood child that Mary will bear, this song celebrates the flesh and blood reality of God’s will, already done: On Earth as it is in Heaven.

Prayer:  This Advent season may we learn to trust in the power of Divine Love.  May we embody what God has already done in the flesh and blood reality of Jesus.  Amen.

This devotion was prepared by Rev. Kim P. Wells, pastor of Lakewood United Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, FL.

I have always been perplexed by the lines in the Magnificat:

You have deposed the mighty from their thrones and raised the lowly to high places

You have filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty

These verses sort of make me squirm a bit.  It’s so punitive toward the ‘haves.’  Why can’t there just be the raising of the lowly.  And the filling of the hungry?  Why the deposing of the mighty and the rich sent away empty?  Isn’t God’s love for everyone?  Doesn’t God want good for all?  Isn’t God’s love universal?  For rich and poor alike?

But when we think about it, the dynamics of human power arrangements create the haves, the wealthy, and the powerful, on the backs of the poor, the lowly, the regular people.  Statistics tell us that the wealth gap in the US has been widening significantly since the 1980’s.  There are more billionaires.  What can you do with all of that money?  And where does it come from?  It comes from financial and power arrangements that benefit the few over the many and that deprive the many of needed social services and benefits.  

Mary’s song is a song of liberation for all that can only occur when the current unjust economic and social power arrangements are dismantled and new economic and power arrangements that lift up those who have been forgotten are created.

A pipe dream?  Nothing is impossible with God!

Prayer:  Help us to be part of creating new arrangements for society that lift the lowly and fill the hungry!  And may we cultivate compassion for the mighty and the rich.   Amen.

This devotion was prepared by Rev. Kim P. Wells, pastor of Lakewood United Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, FL.

In the story of the annunciation, the angel Gabriel visits Mary to tell her that she is going to bear a special child.  In the angel’s opening words, Mary is told, Fear not.  Don’t be afraid.  

Experts tell us that the number one fear among humans is the fear of death.  I find this ironic in a way.  We’re most afraid of the thing that we know 100% is going to happen to each and every one of us.  Yes, there are terrible ways to die – a child that drowns, a loved one killed by an drunk driver, dying by suicide, a random, disease diagnosis.  But we all know that we are going to die.  Why fear what is most assured in life?  

Maybe more fearsome than death is an angel visitation?  The angel Gabriel seems to know that, so he begins by reassuring Mary, Don’t be afraid.

This is the season when we prepare to celebrate the birth of the one whom we believe inaugurates God’s dream of peace and justice for all of Creation.  So what is there to be afraid of?

Maybe what we need to be afraid of is not doing all that we can to celebrate the dream of God and make it a reality.  Maybe we might be afraid of not giving ourselves over fully and freely to creating a world of where every life, human and non human, is cherished. Maybe what we need to be afraid of is missing our opportunities to be part of creating God’s reality where:

the proud are scattered

the mighty are deposed from their thrones

the lowly are raised to high places

the hungry are filled with good things

and the rich are sent empty away.  

Prayer:  May we not be afraid to say yes to Divine Love!  Amen.

This devotion was prepared by Rev. Kim P. Wells, pastor of Lakewood United Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, FL.