We feel like helpless pawns in an increasingly corrupt political process. Candidates' speeches and debates leave us feeling like witnesses of a game-playing reality show, and with the multiple vested interests influencing the money flow to candidates, we can't even trust that our best interests will be protected.
This feeling of being helpless nobodies with no worth in this world is contributing to widespread depression, especially among the middle class. Drug use among the young is at epidemic proportions. How can we continue to have hope? How can we trust that our lives are meaningful?
What can give us hope is this belief:
1) Have faith that we have immeasurable worth because we are the children of God.
2) Have faith that God marches ahead of us into battle for us.
3) Have faith that God alone gives us a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline as an antidote to the poison in our systems that tells us that we're worthless nobodies!
One of the - if not THE - most powerful women of all time was truly a nobody. Mary of Nazareth, mother of Jesus, was a young, first century Jewish woman from a farming village in Roman-occupied Galilee. Economically, she knew poverty. Roman land practices and tax policies exploited the people of her village. Politically, she knew turbulence and violence as the occupying Roman army put down rebellions. Socially she had no place of honor in her culture; she was probably uneducated like the peasant women of her time.
But Mary held on to one truth: God is always FOR the nobodies of this world. She knew the stories of God's powerful protection and guidance that her people had recited orally from one generation to the next. God freed slaves fleeing from Egypt. God protected the widow and orphan. God made known through the prophets that God's cry is for justice for the oppressed.
This young woman also knew the story of another woman: Deborah, a Judge in Israel, one of the rulers of her people before they chose Kings like Saul, David, and Solomon to rule them. To be a Judge was to fill an office that can be traced back to the time when Moses appointed assistants to help him resolve disputes among the Hebrews. The Judges would seek guidance from God through prayer and meditation before making a ruling. So many of the Judges were also considered prophets, people who were inspired by God to give the people guidance, comfort, and challenges when they strayed from God.
Deborah is the only woman Judge and prophet mentioned in the Book of Judges. She was married, but she gained renown on her own merit, not because of her relationship to a man. Mary probably revered her memory because Deborah also lived in a time of oppression and political unrest: Israel's people were being treated like slaves by Jabin, King of Canaan.
One day, Deborah summoned the warrior Barak and told him to collect a group of Roman warriors to battle Jabin and his forces, led by Jabin's General Sisera. Barak told her respectfully that he would not go into battle without her - so she agreed to fight beside him.
Mary undoubtedly remembered Deborah's ringing words to Barak: "Be off, for this is the day on which the Lord has delivered Sisera into your power. The Lord marches before you."
Deborah and Barak prevailed, with the help of another woman, Jael, who killed General Sisera. So, consider this:
Deborah, a "mere" woman, trusted that God had chosen her tiny nation and considered these near-slaves to have immeasurable worth.
Deborah trusted that if she followed the God-inspired plan she had developed that God would march into battle ahead of her troops and give them victory.
Deborah allowed God to give her a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline to purposefully incite a rebellion that led to forty years of peace for her people.
No wonder some call Deborah the "Mother of Israel"!
Mary knew that God came close to His people, cherished them, protected them, led them, empowered them. She recognized that God was issuing a call to a special vocation for her, as momentous as God's call to Moses and the prophets like Deborah, because of what happened to her:
The Voice of God through the angel Gabriel invited Mary to conceive and bear a son, and this Voice answered her questions, was grateful for her free risking, her free "yes." A "yes" like the "yes" of Moses and Deborah. Mary was told that the Holy Spirit would overshadow her. She must have thought of the creation story, and the Spirit of God blowing/moving/hovering over the waters, and the world coming into being! She must have thought of her people escaping through the desert, and God's fire and cloud leading them on their long trek. God was bringing a new world of life to being inside her.
Mary knew that she was a nobody. But she also knew, that like Moses and Deborah, God had called her to a special vocation - because God loved and cherished her as His daughter. God chooses the lowly in this world to accomplish His work! The "nobody" Mary would give birth to God's Son! Mary would become the Mother of the New Israel!
And so, visiting with her likewise-pregnant cousin Elizabeth, Mary sings a revolutionary song about how God's love will accompany the poor person and lead them to new life. She says that God has done great things for her, has regarded her even though she is "poor and a serving woman." This is her actual social position; the Greek Biblical term used here for "poor" refers to misery, pain, persecution, and oppression, the severe slavery of the people of the Exodus. Mary is a nobody like us, and she rejoices because God is using her, like Moses, like Deborah, to bring new freedom to her people - through the fragile holy child she bears within her.
"My soul proclaims your greatness, O my God," she sings. "and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior....for You, Who are mighty, have done great things for me......Your mercy is on those who fear You....You have put down the mighty from their thrones and have lifted up the lowly...You have filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty..."
We are nobodies, like Mary. But we also, like Mary, can take great joy and courage in the fact that we are nobodies - because we are the people whom God loves and protects the most, and calls to special roles! Martin Luther observed that "the mightier you are, the more must you fear; the lowlier you are, the more must you take comfort."
We may be "nobodies" in the eyes of those 62 billionaires. But if we have faith, we have God on our side. We can have faith that we are God's much-loved children. We can have faith that God marches into our battles before us and empowers us to step forward, to step up, to make changes that will benefit our lives and the lives of the people around us. We can have faith that God always regards us, His poor ones, and He the Mighty One will do great things for us!l God transforms each of us with a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline so that we can transform our lives and His and our world through radiating His justice, mercy, and love.