December 20, 2009 - Advent 4, Year C (RCL)
The gospel according to Luke 1:39-55:
In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord."
And Mary said,
"My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever."
When I opened the lectionary to begin working on my sermon for this week,
I expected to find
the familiar reading from Luke chapter 1
where the angel Gabriel comes to Mary
and tells her
she is to have a son
and his name is to be
Jesus.
It’s a story that wants to be told, a story full of promise, a story full of hope,
especially as we know what the next chapter is,
the birth of the baby in a stable in Bethlehem,
with stars shining brightly overhead and angels singing and shepherds kneeling in adoration.
No wonder it begins
with an angel appearing in all his glory
and a young woman welcoming him, even with his message,
and her response, “‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
It’s the beginning of a fairy tale,
and thanks to Luke
we get to witness it.
Except I sometimes wonder
if our imaginations,
along with help of numerous of the great masters who painted that scene,
have overplayed it,
and it wasn’t such a fairy tale
after all.
Nazareth
was a long way from Jerusalem, four days of hard walking from the center of religion and government,
a small village in a valley
with farmland one side
and rocky hills the other.
It wasn’t a wealthy place;
there were better locations for trade and commerce,
and when Gabriel came to Mary
it was likely in a small hut
or out in the fields.
And if Gabriel was anything like the angels who appeared to Abraham by the Oaks of Mamre,
there was no white robe and wings;
instead just a man
with a strange story to tell her.
Mary seems to have shown remarkable composure and presence of mind during her conversation with him;
but you wonder whether her acquiescence
was really agreement
or simply and attempt
to cut the conversation short
and get away from him.
And if that’s the story
behind the story we all hope to hear this Sunday before Christmas,
then it becomes all the more important to hear the story we actually read today,
the story of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth.
You remember Elizabeth. She was married to Zechariah, who was a priest, one of many who took turns to serve at the temple in Jerusalem. One day, when he was on duty, he was chosen to go offer incense in the most holy place in the temple.
And as he was doing it,
an angel appeared, who later turns out to be Gabriel,
the angel appeared
and promised him a son, to be called
John, and not just any son, but a son who would be a great prophet and prepare the people for God.
Now Zechariah wasn’t stupid. He and his wife were getting on in years,
and they knew enough biology to know
that it was too late for them to have children.
And they’d more or less resigned themselves to the fact.
So when Gabriel made his announcement,
Zechariah wasn’t convinced. “How do I know that what you say is true?” he said. “We’re too old.”
And for that question,
God silenced Zechariah, and when he came back out of the sanctuary, he couldn’t speak, and everyone assumed
that he had seen some vision
and the shock of it was so great
that he had lost his voice.
Which must have been a shock for his wife when he came home from Jerusalem,
speechless, and even more of a shock when she found herself pregnant, with him unable to explain, let alone tell her how significant
this child would be.
All she knew
was that it was unexpected, and a wonderful gift,
though a worry too, with a husband who could no longer speak
and might well become a burden.
And for five months she stayed at home in the hills outside Jerusalem,
avoiding the gossips, and then the novelty of her pregnancy began to wear off,
and life began to return to something like normal, as normal as it can be
when you’re expecting a child.
And then Mary came.
Mary, who lived three and a half days’ walk away,
and had apparently heard nothing of Elizabeth's pregnancy
until the angel had chosen to visit her
with another promise of pregnancy
but this time
at the other end of her life,
and she had come to see if what the angel had said was true,
if her relative
was indeed pregnant.
Because of course, if Elizabeth wasn’t, then the angel was wrong,
and that meant Mary
could safely ignore
everything else
that Gabriel had said.
But if she was...
well then, Mary would have to reconsider.
Because if Elizabeth was pregnant,
than Mary had just said yes
to something she dreaded to think about.
When it came to gossip, Elizabeth’s pregnancy late in life
would be nothing compared to hers.
Unmarried, pregnant
she knew the whispering, the gossip
that would be in the background wherever she went,
she knew that she could be punished,
a whipping at the very least.
And worst of all, she knew she would have to face her parents’ disappointment, and her husband-to-be’s
sense of betrayal.
Because after all, who would believe her story
of an angel
and a promise.
Mary
arrived to visit
Elizabeth.
Kind of hoping
that her cousin would have
her longed for child
and kind of hoping
that it wasn’t true after all
and she could go on
with life as she had planned it.
And so it was with mixed feelings
that she came into the village where Elizabeth lived
and then to the door
of Elizabeth’s home.
Where Elizabeth met her,
and Mary knew
the worst
and the best.
Because Elizabeth’s baby
turned somersault inside her,
and Elizabeth knew
that something momentous had happened, that miraculous as her own pregnancy was,
Mary’s was even more.
Because if her baby
was to prepare the way,
Mary’s
was the one he was preparing it for.
And she cried out to Mary,
“You're so blessed among women,
and the babe in your womb, also blessed!
And why am I so blessed that
the mother of my Lord visits me?
The moment the sound of your
greeting entered my ears,
The babe in my womb
skipped like a lamb for sheer joy.
Blessed woman, who believed what God said,
believed every word would come true!
And suddenly Mary knew
that it would be
okay,
and not just okay, but wonderful.
God had blessed her,
she would have a child,
and no amount of gossip or whispering or even whipping
could take the good news away,
that God had called her to bear a child
that would change
the world.
A couple of days ago I was reading the blog of a friend who also happens to be a New Testament professor in Scotland. He noted that it was International Pippa Day, that is, the anniversary of the day they brought their adopted daughter Pippa home. I remember Pippa as a scrappy little kid with long hair and sometimes dubious taste in clothes - as is the case with many five year olds who insist on dressing themselves. And I remember her older brothers, especially Nate, who used to stand next to me in the choir. I haven’t seen them in years, but from what I’ve heard, they have all grown up into great and interesting young adults. But it wasn’t always easy. On Pippa Day, my friend wrote,
“...the best things Margaret and I have ever done have involved our spectacular, wonderful children, all of them. And those best things have usually seemed strange, impractical, daunting, lonely, frustrating in prospect — but I can’t underscore strongly enough how tremendously all those challenges are surpassed in the staggering marvelousness of [them all].”
And it seems to me that my friend caught something
of what it must have felt like for Mary -
even with the support of Elizabeth, because after all,
Elizabeth lived three days walk away,
and Mary would have to live those long months of pregnancy alone, surrounded by the whispered suspicions of family, friend and neighbor alike.
This thing that God had called her too, this thing she had accepted,
it was strange, it was impractical, it was daunting, it was lonely, it was frustrating -
and it was staggeringly marvelous
all at the same time.
I doubt that God
will call any of us
to bear a child
that will be the world’s Savior.
But God does call us, God calls us to live
as followers of Jesus,
God calls us
to be his people in this world.
To live out the good news of Jesus
that God is turning this world of ours upside down,
bringing down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifting up the lowly;
filling the hungry with good things,
sending the rich away empty.
And God is using us to do that.
Sometimes it will mean helping to feed the hungry
through our food pantry.
Sometimes it will mean demanding justice
by working through our legislators,
And sometimes it will mean
actually opening our mouths
with our friends and neighbors
and sharing with them
the good news of Jesus,
of forgiveness of sin
and the joy of new life.
Impractical, yes.
Daunting, yes.
Lonely, yes.
Frustrating, yes.
And staggeringly marvelous
all at the same time.
© Raewynne J. Whiteley 2009