Advent 4

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Advent 4
PROPER: C
PLACE: St. John’s Parish
DATE: December 21, 1997
December 24, 2000

TEXT: Luke 1:39-56 - Mary’s Visit to Elizabeth and The Magnificat. - “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.”

ISSUE: God works in mysterious and wonderful ways to bring about his salvation and hope. While women are seen by some to have been the cause of the Fall from Grace, as Eve at the apple and seduced Adam, Elizabeth and Mary are now seen as the channels of grace through which God’s redeeming salvation comes. Among the poor and lowly God fulfills his promises and a social inversion takes place. The passage awakens all of us to see that through our readiness to receive the savior, we also participate in being the channels of God’s grace in our world.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In these last days of Advent just before Christmas, we read the beautiful story of the meeting of the two women, Elizabeth and Mary. It is indeed a story of such great joyful expectation as the two pregnant women rejoice with one another. There is an ecstasy about the passage. I hope that you won’t miss it. Let me caution you, if I may. Many people today are often inclined to literalize the Bible and so many of the stories. A literal interpretation of the Scriptures causes us to miss so much, and trying to literalize it all raises for a lot of people many unanswerable questions. Often the profound stories of the scriptures come across as mere nonsense in a modern and scientific world. In fact, the Bible was not written as a literal presentation of everything that Jesus did and said. It is not a book of science, not a book of history (except for some Old Testament writings), and it is not a biography. It is not appropriate to ask if scriptural stories really happened, but rather the issue is what does the Bible and its wonderful variety of stories mean? What is the meaning? How is God revealed in the various biblical stories and accounts.
If we see this encounter of Mary and Elizabeth as merely Luke telling us that the two women met to chit chat about their impending deliveries, and that Mary is simply traveling around the country side pregnant, and breaks into a happy song, we drastically miss the point without looking deeper into the meaning of this special and beautiful encounter of two very special women, so far as Luke is concerned. The very idea that Mary is traveling Judea by herself in this period would have simply been unheard of. People in May and Joseph’s class in this period rarely traveled. If they did, they traveled in caravans. A woman traveling alone would have been very deviant and shameful behavior. What look wants us to know, I think, is that we need to look at these two women and try to appreciate the meaning of their lives and what they had to offer to all who would come to know them. He arranges a story which puts the two women together so we can learning something of the working of God through their lives.
The meeting of the two women reminds me of the Old Testament story of Adam and Eve. Early on in the story just after the creation, Eve is tempted by the serpent and succumbs to eating the apple. She then coaxes Adam also to partake. Think what you will about Eve, but Adam who is bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh and vice versa is equally responsible. However, in the story we see the Fall of humanity. Women and men are participating in disobedience. In the stories of Elizabeth and Mary you begin to see the exact opposite beginning to happen. Elizabeth, who is barren and old, is told she will bear a son. Her husband Zechariah cannot believe it to be true and is struck dumb temporarily. Elizabeth on the other hand is faithful and accepts the possibility that by the grace of God her barren state shall be redeemed.
Close in time, an angel appears to Mary who is told that she too shall become pregnant and bear and son, and she replies, “I am the Lord’s servant; may it happen to me as you have said.” (Lk 1:38) Notice that the turn around, the repentance, the conversion. While through the disobedience of Eve, a symbol of human fallen state, it is through women, Elizabeth and Mary, that the way is paved for redemption, for renewal, for the wonderful uplifting of humanity through the women who will become God’s chosen vessels to restore humanity from its fallen state. Both women respond in faithfulness and obedience to what God has chosen them to do. They are the instruments of grace who participate in the hope of a new garden, a new kingdom, the renewed paradise of God.
As for the men, Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah, comes to his senses names the child John as the angel directs and regains his speech. Joseph, Mary’s espoused husband, is converted in a dream and accepts Mary’s pregnancy. A new age is about to be come into being, an age of redemption, reconciliation, and age of hope.
I think that it is also important to point out that when Mary visits Elizabeth, the mother of the prophet John Baptist, she also fulfills a prophetic role when she says, “And why has this happened that the mother of my Lord comes to me? At the same time all this business about pregnancy and the leaping fetus in the wombs of their mothers speaks of life, vitality, hopefulness, excitement, joy. There is such vivid dramatic expression of something wonderful to come and to be. Luke is a bit of genius as he puts this story together of the meeting of the women. Furthermore, the very idea that the impending hope of the world resides in the wombs of these women was a startling concept for the period. Notice the change, the restoration, the place of women so far as the evangelist Luke is concerned in the early church. Elizabeth is bearing the last of the great prophets that calls the world to preparedness, and Mary shall be called “Mother of God.” God is indeed doing something brand new and profoundly wonderful. God is turning the world and its traditions upside down as God’s glory is about to be revealed.
There is more in the story. Consider the women themselves. Elizabeth is old and barren. In fact what’s more, she would have been considered as cursed for not bearing children for her husband. In the period male semen contained fully developed babies in miniature it was believed. Women were the field in which they were planted. If they didn’t grow it was the woman’s fault, not the husband’s. Barren women were cursed. Yet the story tells us that God could, can, and will do the impossible to reclaim his people. God can use the old, the barren and the cursed to accomplish His purposes. Luke is also implying that the Old Testament is not barren, that within them is the messages of hope that are about to be realized. the old is giving birth to something grand. What was thought to be dried up and cursed is pregnant with hopefulness and blessedness.
From the barrenness of Elizabeth, Luke’s story tells of the unwed mother, Mary. Unwed motherhood in this period was considered totally unacceptable. But in this story the unwed mother, what is seen as unacceptable, cursed, broken, sinful and demeaning, God has the power to change it into the miraculous hope and salvation for the world. While Luke talks about a virgin birth with its various interpretations, the people of the time saw Mary as simply an unwed mother who becomes betrothed to Joseph out of his great compassion. Mary herself is among the poor and the outcast, yet God can use her and she agrees to be the handmaiden, actually the bondslave of God to be the channel through which God’s grace may flow. A new age of hope and salvation for the poor, the disenfranchised is coming into being.
In the passage Mary breaks out in song. The Song of Mary, or commonly known as The Magnificat, which is sometimes sung in our worship services was not original with Luke. Mary proclaims, “My soul does magnify and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” The song is not original to Mary or to Luke for that matter. The song comes from the Old Testament. It is the song of Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel. (I Sam.2:1f) Hannah herself had once been a barren women and unmercifully teased and cursed by Peninnah, her husband Elkanah’s other wife. When her prayer for a child is answered she broke out into a song, which Luke uses and attributes to the virgin mother Mary. But the point and message of the song is that God will use the unusable who turn to him in faith. God uses the poor and lifts them up, and the rich (more accurately) the greedy, the proud are scattered.
Consider last week when John Baptist was baptizing in the Jordon. All the losers were coming out to him, pitiful tax or toll collectors, and Herod’s scruffy soldiers. They were looking with hope for something new, and John called them to a repentance and deep change of heart. Today we hear to two women, one barren and cursed, the other unwed and worthy of stoning. Yet through their faith and trust they become the channels of grace for one of God’s most mighty acts, the birth of a renewing prophet and the Savior of the world.
What does all this mean? It means that God works through his people. He asks us to turn to him in faithfulness and trust that we may become his servants, and that his grace and hope may flow through our lives. Tax collectors and soldiers say, “What shall we do?” Two women, one old and barren and the other an mere immature child, open themselves up to being the servants of God. It tells of how God needs and can use all that are broken, and fallen. God uses the poor and the afflicted, those who are or think of themselves as untalented to bring on the new Garden, the Kingdom of hope and peace.
Around us my good people the high and the mighty do often fall. Hitler failed. Communism is fading away. There are movements in the world to end weapons of mass crippling and destruction such as atomic weaponry, biological warfare, and land mines. The highly proud, the greedy, the corrupted whether they be clergy (TV evangelists), high priced lawyers, bankers, powerful politicians, sports celebrities in due time are brought low. God uses the poor and lifts them up into his arms. We’ve seen the great progress of the enslaved blacks in Africa and in our own country begin and continue to have and share in what is just, right, good, and lovely.
We all stand on the edge and verge of Christ’s coming again. Elizabeth and Mary turned their lives over to the presence of God. They in their poverty became the channels of grace and hope. Christ was born and revealed the loveliness of God in way never seen before nor since. The Christ came to show the way of love and forgiveness, of a passionate redemption on a cross, and gave a message of hope, renewal and resurrection.
And so it is our time again, to return in faith and obedience, to say, “I too am the Lord’s servant. Let it happen to me as you will. Let me be changed and renewed and incorporated into a ministry through which God’s love and grace may flow.” May God use us, even with our shortcomings and fallen state, our emptiness and barrenness, our failures and foolishness. May we be open to him and allow Christ to flow through our lives, finding in us a mansion prepared.