NRSV LUKE 1:39-55
39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
46 And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
50 His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”
It’s been a while since we last met for a worship service in which a sermon was required. Like three weeks. The snow really did a number on our Advent preparations. The season of calling people to “Prepare Ye (read “Y’all”) the way of the Lord,” has turned into non-stop activities even in the church. We had Lessons and Carols to prepare for, and then again as the weather cancelled one service and kept some folks – including some readers – from joining us in the other. Thank goodness for Choral Scholars who gave up part of their Christmas break.
But it still left us without much time to hear the Word of the Lord. For me, that was a bit of a break. Not just having one less sermon to prepare for. But for having to preach during Advent. This season is, well, one that puts us preachers – if we take our calling seriously – in a bad light. We have to play the bad cop. A great topic to mention on the Sunday when the congregation is voting on your terms of call. But it’s true.
We preachers have to call people to slow down, to take time to pray, to let go of – or at least slow down – their compulsive shopping, to remember there is more to Advent than rushing to Christmas. It’s not a role that people like very much. We are, after all, middle class US Americans who like our commercialization. I say we like it because we don’t seem to be too inclined to do anything to counter it. We just hang onto the thought that love can be bought, and the more you love someone the more you pile on the goodies.
The fact that the Bible says nothing about any of that and everything about giving things up – especially our ego needs to please people by buying for them – hasn’t changed our outlook, apparently. All of us – preachers included, let’s be honest – love to extend ourselves in demonstrations of love toward those who mean so much to us, and this is the season to show that love concretely by getting what our loved ones want.
Nothing inherently wrong with that – except that it begs for someone to blow the whistle on our mad dash to Christmas and remind us that there is a deeper meaning to all of this. There are other feelings to tap into this time of year besides compulsive shopping or emotional overloads every time “White Christmas” or “I’ll be Home for Christmas” comes on the radio.
There are a lot of ways to get to that deeper meaning. But one of the most enduring is wonder. This hit me as I read a meditation from a retired Austin Theological Seminary professor named Ralph Underwood, who was reflecting on John the Baptist – whom we happened to avoid this time around – and his message of repentance. Underwood wrote: “(People) had come seeking to be baptized into a new way of life, and they were thrust into a deeper sense of mystery. Like them we have been baptized for repentance, but our baptism includes being filled with the power and fire of the sacred presence John had foretold. In this season of Advent shall we not also be drawn into a more profound sense of wonder?”
The question bears some reflection because I wonder if we haven’t lost some of our sense of wonder, especially about Christmas. We want it to be all planned out and predictable. We get more excited about TV animated programs on Rudolph or Frosty, or Charlie Brown’s Christmas. We think this special day can’t come around without another round of egg nog or watching “Home Alone.” We get jaded about all those people who rush through the stores on Thanksgiving night, and then do the same when it is our turn to crash the stores. And through it all comes the annual refrain: I just can’t get in the mood for Christmas. It just doesn’t seem the same. It’s not the same Christmas that it was when…, and you can fill in the blank.
Of course some of that comes when we enter these emotionally charged days remembering special people in our lives who are no longer around. That is especially true if you are going through the first Christmas without a special one in your life. That grief is very real, very personal, and for many people, very normal.
But I think it needs to be said, dangerous though it is, that we have domesticated Christmas a little too much. We want to tame it, to put strict parameters to it by saying it can’t be Christmas until thus and so happens. That’s why Advent – these four weeks before Christmas – is so important. It gives us time to get ready, to prepare, to open ourselves up to the surprising new thing that God is birthing in our lives.
Christmas doesn’t happen because everything gets clicked off on our agendas. Christmas happens because God did something wonderful, something outrageous, something totally gracious – read, outside the lines of our expectation and control. Christmas can lose its power when we lose our sense of wonder. When we know exactly what’s going to happen, and why it is going to happen. Christmas has to retain the ability to surprise, to amaze, to give us wonder that this whole story of God taking on flesh and living among us is actually, faithfully, lovingly, true. And that it is transformative. It does not leave us the same.
If we need any guides to rediscover or to reclaim wonder, I don’t think we can find better ones than Elizabeth or Mary. We always hear the story of the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel coming to Mary, whenever we have our Lessons and Carols. But this one gets neglected – where Mary heads for the hills, literally and figuratively, to visit her relative Elizabeth. Why did she go? Did she want to check out and make sure the angel was right? Was she in need of someone who was in a similar positon as her, a woman whose pregnancy was sure to make the town gossips busy?
Whatever it was, didn’t you think it peculiar that Luke tells us that Mary entered Zechariah’s house? What is Elizabeth, chopped liver? Zechariah was the one whose doubting prompted Gabriel to shut his vocal chords for a while, hardly a paragon of faith and trust, whereas Elizabeth, for all we know, took it all in stride. I’m not sure Luke intended it this way considering the culture he was immersed in, but his words do display a sense of a time and place where women were shoved off to the side. Of course it is Zechariah’s house, Elizabeth is just his wife. But these women are part of a group of people who, though marginalized, are the ones through whom God will enter the world with grace and truth. They are the ones who will be the living embodiment of what has come down to us as the Magnificat, Mary’s wonderful and wonder-filled song. She sings of a divinely gifted world-transforming and earth-shattering presence that will turn everything upside down. That in itself is enough to evoke a strong sense of wonder.
But the wonder goes on. Elizabeth did not know about Gabriel’s conversation with Mary, but empowered by the Holy Spirit she gives up one gracious salutation after another toward Mary. She calls her “…the mother of my Lord…,” and we wonder how did she learn that? The babe within her leaps for joy, and how can you tell if a fetus jumps for joy, or jumps because of something Momma ate? We know it because when the Holy Spirit is on the move, wonder takes place. And wonder is often joyous.
But not always. Wonder can lead us to compassionate concern for these ladies, pregnant with God’s new life, because we know the rest of the story. We know what will happen to those children. Both will die violent deaths because they dared to speak God’s truth to power, they dared to be led by wonder in a world often oppressed by cruelty and predictability. In our wonder filled with passion for them we weep with them, because we know that the wonders of God can lead anyone into conflict with the patterns of our world that seek to control And control has no place in Advent preparations, at least not spiritually. We start with a recognition that this is all God’s work, and that God’s work is drenched with wonder, a wonder that defies explanation. Sometimes it just has to be experienced. And embraced.
I came across an interesting piece on Facebook last week that has a nice take on Advent and Christmas wonder:
Advent and Christmas have a face
No, not that obnoxiously handsome white northern European face
Most of us saw in our Sunday School classes growing up
But this season of expectation and fulfillment does have a face
Indeed many faces
Many shapes, many colors, many textures
The face of the season is the tired store clerk who has been yelled at by one too many customers
(one is too many)
It is the face of the ragged person sitting on the street corner with the sign
“hungry veteran”
It is the face of the harried mother
And the anxious worker who wonders if her job will still be there next year
(after the CEO gets his or her billion dollar bonus)
The face of Christmas is the pinched, angry, hateful face of the church goer who finds
People like ‘them’ distasteful (lazy moochers)
And who, in fear, draws in rather than reaches out
It is the face of the poor couple pulling up to the general hospital
To have a child they didn’t expect (and for whom they have no insurance)
It is the face of a young black man who is frightened when he sees a police car drive by
It is the face of the girl who is being followed by young men who threaten her with rape
So many faces
So much hurt and fear
pain and poverty.
This is the face of Christmas
But the face of Christmas is also the person who works in the food bank
And donates generously to the local clothing drive
The face of Christmas is the person who takes a hurting neighbor a warm meal
The face of Christmas is the one with the smile on it for the person of
Another culture or creed
The face of Christmas is smudged with dirt from cutting and stacking fire wood
And dressing out half an elk for a hungry neighbor
The face of Christmas is the tired nurse who still smiles when her rather impatient patient
Grumbles.
The face of Christmas is hope.
A sliver of light
Shining in the midst of so much darkness.
The first Christmas was truly a mixture of joy and pain
And so it continues
But thank God for that seed of joy
That comes from the heart of men and women
Who have found that love, and hope, and joy, and peace
That incarnation
The birth of the Sacred (and all that this Presence brings)
Is an inside job.
The mark of that inside job that God does with Elizabeth, with Mary, with you and with me is the sense of wonder; wonder at all that God has done. All that God is doing. All that God will do. And recognizing that it never stops.
That is how we move through Advent, and how we move to the next days of earth-shattering and life transforming news; that God would take flesh and dwell among us, in such a way that not even darkness, not even death, can stop our wonder. Amen.