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The dragon stood before the womanWednesday, December 12, 2018
From Revelation 11 This one in chapter 11 knocks our socks off. I want to see the movie, right? Bright black-and-blue sky is ripped in two. A mother, clothed with the sun, stands above the moon. She wears a crown of twelve stars. She is heavily pregnant and laboring to give birth. Her screams fill the sky. But she is not alone. A huge red dragon waits, eager to eat the baby as it appears. Covered with green eyes, marked with a hideous yellow gash of a mouth, its ten horns and seven heads crowned with sovereign jewels, the dragon's tail sweeps away a third of the stars in the sky. And sweeps again. It sweeps and sweeps, waiting to eat. Night? Day? Above the sea, above the land? The fear here transcends geography and time. The whole world below holds its breath. Everything hangs in balance, every hope and all our dreams. Life given, life removed? What now, death? Rebirth? Come, Lord Jesus. Frank Peretti turned this cataclysm into This Present Darkness, a novel of the twentieth century. What century has not been turned and polished by this battle between the maiden and the beast? Which one of us has not been smoothed and shaped by the baby? The baby who does, by the way, survive. Like Charles Dickens said about Tiny Tim, "The baby did not die." Mary's child was caught up to God and his throne. And she herself ... she fled into the desert (much like the land around Mexico City, around Guadalupe) "where she had a place prepared by God." Stories of Mary swirl around us in these days before the birthday of Jesus. Our Christ masses, our Advent services dedicated to praise and worship, are all grounded in Mary's simple words, which we do well to repeat, "May it be done unto me according to your word." Devil be-gone. Serpent be surrounded and defanged. The baby did not die. By your word, O Lord, we are made your brothers and your sisters. We too are born like you, surrounded by spirits who need to eat us, or think they do. We clamor for your protection and we receive your spirit, which always keeps watch, holds evil at bay, lifts us and keeps us, and makes its face shine upon us. We too, do not die. We live. |
For those of us inclined, this is a feast day to celebrate Mary in Guadalupe, Mexico. The endless and amazing stories about Mary call me to rise up and rejoice in mystery and things unseen. Even by the time St. John in his 90's was writing Revelation, stories about Mary, factually or mythically true, rolled off the tongues of Christ-followers gathered to pray and praise the Lord.