Both of these women are bearing children whose very coming into existence could be fuel for gossip and scandal. Elizabeth’s pregnancy stands out because she has been childless so long that she undoubtedly had been written off as forgotten by God and forgotten by a society that prized a woman’s fertility as her main contribution. Mary’s pregnancy, once it becomes obvious, puts her at the risk of losing the only thing she had as a poor peasant girl, and that was her good name—even though that also was more the property of her father than a possession she herself could benefit from.
Elizabeth also has embraced a future that includes raising up a prophetic rebel who will sneer at the powerful and taunt the complacent with the vision of restored divine justice that makes a mockery of preference and privilege for those who deck themselves in finery and claim the best places and the softest garments.
And Mary herself? She is often portrayed in art as a twenty-something, fair-haired, cool and collected like Grace Kelly. Yet the truth is undoubtedly less comfortable. She is probably in her middle teens. She is poor, ragged, uneducated, powerless by society’s standards.
But Mary’s family is left unmentioned probably because they didn’t bear mentioning, day laborers from peasant stock living from hand to hand—the reason why Jesus’s prayer later asks God to provide the daily bread. She was betrothed to a probably much older man. This arrangement was made by her father, probably and decreed by a society that saw this alignment of circumstances as optimal by maximizing a bride’s child-bearing years with a man’s ability to be established and support a family. Her yes to that probably didn’t exist. She was probably told what would happen after her father and Joseph concluded negotiations.
But then along comes the messenger of God before her, which is the first stunning development in her role in this drama.
The next stunning developments come the minute the angel opens its mouth: First, the angel calls her “favored one,” and from everything she has probably experienced until this time in her life, that probably had not been an adjective she would have used to describe her circumstances. However, in the Greek, there is a pun here: the root for the word “greetings” also means “grace” or “favor.” And it states that right then she is perplexed. The angel points out the previously childless Elizabeth’s good fortune—and that her pregnancy is well advanced. The miracle part is made explicit—this has all been God’s doing. That’s good salesmanship, there, for the next step.
Then the angel puts before a proposal, and contrary to what some people still claim today, God never forces us to obedience or belief, not even through fear or threat of smiting or awe or might. There is ALWAYS a choice—that’s what having the free will as part of our inheritance from God is all about. So Mary gets a choice.
That means we can’t take for granted the cost of that choice. Her yes comes with staggering potential for her own destruction. Unmarried, but engaged to another man, her pregnancy will condemn her in the eyes of the world—and if it is known that the child is not Joseph’s, death by stoning. She could be thrown out by her parents, denounced by Joseph, and killed.
But there is one thing she DOES have in abundance—and that is trust. So she assents—and the scene makes her sound meek and mild like the carol says. “Let it be with me according to what you say,” she says, with eyes lowered, we think. Yet what if her reply is also asserting that her only master is God, not any of the other people who might think they control her destiny as a teenaged Jewish peasant girl in occupied Roman territory. Perhaps not so meek, after all.
Elizabeth at this moment becomes not just the mother of a prophet, but a prophet herself: she knows Mary’s news even before a word is spoken. Elizabeth bursts into a brief song of triumph, speaking with awe about her younger relative that already shows the reversal in their hierarchical status. Elizabeth’s song has traditionally been mixed together with the words of Gabriel to Mary to create the opening to what is known to our Roman Catholic kindred as the “Ave Maria:”
“Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you,”
the angel intones, and Elizabeth expands and makes specific the observation:
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.”
Two things arise here: first, Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah may be a priest, but his silencing has caused a reversal, for this is a priestly blessing if ever there was one. Elizabeth finishes her thought with saying WHY she knows Mary is blessed, even before Mary has had the chance to tell her story. And then she blesses her kinswoman with a blessing that lies underneath the text of the Hail Mary: “Blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by God.”
Mary is blessed and favored and filled with grace by her trust in God. Because trust is really what belief as a theological term means. It doesn’t mean simply intellectual assent. It means being able to lean in and upon the promises of God. That promise called grace—the idea, as Nadia Bolz-Weber says, that God has said yes to us first, always.
Elizabeth continues in astonishment and prophecy, for both she and her unborn child know that the Mother of God, and the savior she will bear, have drawn near, bringing also nearer the kingdom of God.
Mary responds to Elizabeth’s song with one of her own, and it is a song of Joy, yes—but more importantly of power and of revolution. And so we are reminded, again, what cannot be repeated enough, and that the Rev. Shug has been exploring with parishioners during our Sunday adult forum on spirituals the last several weeks: Singing is not just an act of joy. Singing itself is often an act of resistance.
The victory songs we hear in our readings today predict a re-ordering of life from human injustice to God’s justice, the approaching triumphant flourishing of shalom foretold in prophets such as Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Deborah. And the important part for us, the challenging and yet also good news for us is this: WE are the agents of that revolution. Wanna change the world? Pray, sing—then ACT.
Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God calls us to serve as slaves to the causes of justice and peace that was woven into the very fabric of creation itself, yet derailed by humanity’s omnipresent arrogance and willfulness. As the outbursts of joy coming from Elizabeth and Mary at their greeting make clear, the approaching Spirit calls us back to the beginning. As God sang creation into being, so too the response elicited by new life and new creation experienced by Elizabeth and Mary is a powerful exclamation of anticipation, hope, and fulfillment. These are hopes that we ourselves cling to in the times in which we struggle against despair and strife in our own lives, and in our own communities.
How often do we grope and grasp for some reassurance of God’s presence in our lives, and struggle to hold on to hope when the anxieties and pressures of life seem to crush in upon us? The life-giving presence of the Spirit as manifested in the visitation between Mary and Elizabeth reminds us that God’s power breaks loose in the most unexpected times and ways. In response to the in-breaking of God’s Spirit into these women’s lives, they are given a vision of a new triumph of peace; structures of injustice and weapons of war have been shattered; the hungry are satisfied and at peace; the oppressed are lifted up and exalted, while the oppressors are humbled and crumbled. In times of struggle, hopefulness itself is an act of rebellion and resistance. Those who have been empty, without hope, have been, and will be, filled.
Mary shows us the pattern for our own journey of faith. Mary responds with trust and power, but never surrender. With a crown of stars swirling around her head, she responds:
Let it be for me as you have said. And let me play my part in turning the world upside down, in resisting the powers of oppression and inhumanity.
Preached at the 505 on December 18 and at the 10:30 Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.
Readings:
No comments:
Post a Comment