Two Pregnant Women & An Overthrown Empire

                                                          

                                                                      Visitation --  Br. Mickey McGrath

Recently Christian theologian and writer Diana Butler Bass tweeted out a great one-liner: "the only Christmas action movie I want to see is about two pregnant women plotting the overthrow of empire." This is a clever shout-out to Elizabeth and Mary, the cousins who are both improbably pregnant and faith-full women who get together to celebrate rather than commiserate. Mary goes on to offer a prophetic song of gratitude for the child in her womb and for the possibilities of a new world order which is often called the Magnificat. 

These past few days there have been a couple of important examples of how the powerful, the arrogant have been brought down. The Sackler family, former owners of Purdue Pharma, made billions of dollars producing and promoting the opioid painkiller OxyContin, knowing that it resulted in widespread addiction and destroyed lives for those who took it and those close to them. One of the best books about the Sacklers is called Empire of Pain. 

The Sacklers were financial benefactors for a number of arts institutions on at least two continents and their names were prominently displayed. Earlier this month the prestigious Metropolitan Museum of Art has removed the Sackler name from seven of its galleries, with the agreement of the family. It's the latest institution to distance itself from the family, joining the Louvre in Paris, the Tate in London and the Jewish Museum in Berlin in doing so.

While this is a powerful rebuke of a family that craved this recognition another, more important, decision was made. A federal judge overturned a roughly $4.5 billion settlement that legally shielded members of the Sackler family from declaring personal bankruptcy or facing prosecution. The criticism of this deal was that it effectively allowed the family to buy its way out of responsibility for complicity in the opioid crisis which continues to kill thousands across North America and has been exacerbated during the pandemic. They are still immensely wealthy despite that settlement. 

The Song of Mary in Luke's gospel declares that God works through the lowly and lifts them up while sending the rich away empty. We might pray for those who have died and those who mourn their deaths because of opioids. We can demand that our governments make addressing the opioid crisis a higher priority. And we can look to the signs around us that even those who seem untouchable because of wealth and power are brought down. 

Cousins John and Jesus, the children of pregnant Elizabeth and Mary, were born into this world to offer their prophetic voices for hopeful change. During Advent we heard that John draws on yet another prophet, Isaiah:

 "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 

Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"

Amen!

                                                      Artwork from the St. John Bible