Luke
1:39-45
Advent
4
December
23, 2012
William G. Carter
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.”
We took our pillow and went to the
birthing class. I was still a young man, thirty-one, curious about what kind of
coaching I could provide my pregnant wife. Those were the last days of
pregnancy and I was doing my best to be supportive. Frankly, it wasn’t my body
that had been invaded by the gestation of a new life. I was merely the observer.
The mother of our child was the participant. And until we walked into the room,
I had not realized how much she had been in seclusion.
That changed in the twinkling of an
eye. About twenty other pregnant ladies wobbled around the room, some holding
their distended bellies, a couple of them groaning quietly, most all of them
ready for the joyous event to come as quickly as possible so they can be over
with it.
The miracle of that moment is that
these pregnant women found each other. They met, they chatted. The chatter
increased, as their clueless men-folk stood pitifully by. We were the
pillow-holders, beginning to wonder what great mystery we had stumbled into.
Meanwhile the women spoke of
significant matters. Did you get sick?
Was there much vomiting? When did it stop? My ankles began to swell
immediately. This isn’t our first, but it’s harder than the first three. I’m
getting tired of these expandable waist slacks; I was a size four before he did
this to me. Well, I have a little soccer player inside my womb and we can’t
agree on when to settle down at night. Did you see that girl over there? Her
baby goes out straight, while mine gave me these enormous hips.
Twenty confused men stood by
helplessly, as women talked together about their pregnancies. There is a grand
conspiracy of silence about birthing. As one young mother summed up so
eloquently, “If my mama had told me what was coming, I would have thought twice
about doing it.”
Yet this is the biological mystery
of how the human race continues. This is how family lines proceed, how the
genetic dice are tossed. Every baby comes as a gift, some long anticipated,
some unexpected, some wanted, some sadly not. But each child is a gift that God
offers for the future of the world.
Two pregnant women meet in our Bible
story. They have a conversation with no men participating. One of them is very
old, the other is very young. The young woman traveled some distance to
initiate the conversation. She greets the old lady, and then the old lady does
all the talking.
Her name is Elizabeth. She was the
daughter of a Jewish priest. Her husband is a Jewish priest, and was the son of
a Jewish priest. It was probably an arranged marriage, as many such marriages
were. She supported her husband and his work, because it was the same family
business, so to speak. She knew what it required, as her husband tended to the
ministry of God.
But her life was marked by a great
irony. As her husband served a generous God, God had withheld the blessing of a
child from Elizabeth. In her fertile years, she had wanted a baby but the child
never came. The door stayed shut, as relatives and neighbors birthed their
babies and presented them for her husband’s blessing. Prayers for a child had
gone unanswered, and Elizabeth had long settled down into advanced middle age. This
was her life’s one disappointment. There is no evidence that she was resentful
or bitter, just disappointed. She learned to smile while she stayed empty
inside.
But then, about six months before, there
was that day when Zechariah came home from the temple. His eyes were wild. His
tongue was tied. Something had happened to him. What was it? He could not say.
It was clear from his pantomime that
he was deeply affected by a holy moment in Jerusalem. But what? She had helped
him prepare for a most significant event. Zechariah’s division had been scheduled
to serve as priests in the temple. While he was there, he was chosen for the
first and only time in his life to go into the holiest place on earth. Behind
the curtains, deep into the heart of the temple, into the inner chamber – it
was said that if God were to appear anywhere on earth, it would happen there.
And then it happened to Zechariah.
The awesome angel appeared and said, “Don’t be afraid. God hears your prayer.
Your wife will bear you a son.” In a moment of pure stupidity, the old Jewish
priest said, “I don’t know how this could happen. We are as old as Abraham and
Sarah . . .”
The angel said, “Oh, be quiet!”
Zechariah stumbled out of there, his face sunburned by glory. He staggered
home. Elizabeth caught him, held him close, asked, “Dear heart, are you OK?”
Soon after that, she was astonished by his vigor. Repeatedly she was
astonished. And when the morning sickness came, she was astonished again.
A child grew inside her, just as the
angel had said. She pondered this deeply. The first time she ever speaks in
scripture, she proclaims something profound: “God has replaced disgrace by
grace.”
Now it’s six months later. As she sorts
through the laundry, her distant relative’s daughter shows up in her doorframe.
The child in her belly gave a kick. Then another one. She dropped the laundry
basket and took a breath. As young Mary helped her scoop up the clothing, they
began the conversation that has been recorded in today’s text. These two
pregnant women speak of their mysteries. They find one another. Neither is hidden
from the other. On a purely human level, did they speak of the same surprises
that pregnant women share? Of course they did.
Yet the conversation we have is at a
different level. As Luke tells it, it is a conversation prompted by the Holy
Spirit. Luke loves to talk about the Holy Spirit. He says here, “Elizabeth was
filled with the Holy Spirit.” What does that mean? This is Luke’s way of saying
that she is full of God. When somebody is “filled with the Holy Spirit,” it
means God gets into them. The power of God fills up Elizabeth. The joy of God
overflows out of her. The breath of God fills her lungs and she exhales
blessings.
In the temple, her old man Zechariah
had his holy moment. This is now hers. God infuses her body and soul. God gets
into her, as much as God gets into anybody. Such moments can come to any of us.
I believe they can come at any time. They have come for others, they have come
to me. It’s an uncalculated event of pure grace, a moment when the Holy Force
of the universe becomes deeply personal, and we are affected and changed.
I recall a couple of years ago.
There was a person who was as angry a soul as any I have ever met. She stomped
around, created wreckage wherever she went. But that Christmas Eve, her heart completely
thawed, and she descended into a flood of tears. When she caught her breath, she
explained, “I was singing Silent Night by candlelight, and I couldn’t help
myself. I couldn’t help myself.” I think I know what it was. God got into her. Or
as Luke says, “Filled with the Holy Spirit.”
Nobody manufactures these moments.
They fall on us out of heaven. As Luke introduces us to the coming of Jesus
into our world, he says the Spirit of God gets into all kinds of people: Elizabeth,
Zechariah, their son John, mother Mary, old Simeon and ancient Anna. The Spirit
prompts the birth of Jesus, and then falls on him completely when he is
baptized thirty years later. As Jesus prays, preaches, heals, and feed, the
Spirit spills out of him for the benefit of other people. Then the Spirit comes
upon a frightened group of his friends and turns them into a bold and serving church.
In our text, the Spirit comes upon
Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, and she is no longer the same person.
She begins to speak while her husband the priest remains mute. Even if she were
a woman of her times, instructed by the male-dominated culture to be quiet and stay
out of sight, here she is, bubbling over with blessings, effusively honoring
the future mother of Jesus. There is something new happening in the world,
signals Luke: it’s time for the women to speak of God’s goodness. They are not
to be swept away in the old world of Jewish tradition. Oh no, not when the
Spirit of God comes upon them!
What we have here is a story about
the turning of the ages. The old Elizabeth – barren like Sarah, barren like Rebekah,
barren like Rachel, barren like Hannah[1] –
she is having a child because of the generosity of God. She stands for the
women of every age who are disregarded and dismissed because they cannot produce
for their men – and God provides what their men cannot provide for them.
It’s like the ancient vision of the
prophet Isaiah:
Sing, O barren one, who did not
bear;
burst into song and shout, you who have
not been in labor!
For the children of the desolate
woman will be more numerous
than the children of her that is
married.[2]
Something is happening through
Elizabeth – the barrenness of centuries of Jewish hopes is now being countered
by the grace of God.
And something is happening in Mary,
the young unmarried woman. Her child comes as a complete gift, unrequested,
unexpected, without the initiation of any man. The Spirit comes upon Mary, and
that’s all it takes to have a child. That’s all it takes. And this child of
hers will grow to honor women and men as equal children of God. He will push
aside the cultural restrictions of his day to speak to women, to heal them, to
welcome their support of his work. He counters the world’s disgraceful
assessment of women with God’s abundant grace. So it is the women who first
sing of his birth, and women who first share the announcement of his
resurrection.
How can this be? It’s because God
gives God’s own self to the world. God breathes God’s Breath as a way of
pushing open something new. Without the Holy Spirit – without God’s purpose or
presence in our lives – we are left only to ourselves. All we have is our own words,
our limited hopes, our restricted abilities. But when God comes into our midst,
we find ourselves players in some larger plan.
“Blessed is she who believes that
what God speaks will happen.” Elizabeth the old sings this to Mary the young.
With this burst of Spirit, the ages turn and something new is announced.
This is the promise of Christmas, as
we sing our carols, pray our prayers, and offer ourselves to the work of God. God
has a mission to this world. It is announced by Elizabeth’s child on behalf of
Mary’s son. God comes to say that every single one of us matters. If our lives
are barren, God has the power to fill them. If our hopes have frozen, God comes
to re-ignite them. If our work is hard and met with resistance, if faith is
shaky and energy is depleted, God comes in the blessing of the Holy Spirit.
This gift is not a birthright or a stockpiled asset. The Spirit comes and goes,
as wild as the winter wind. But the Spirit does come – and that is God’s blessing
– to Elizabeth, to Mary, and to us.
Watch for this, O beloved people of
God, for all of you are pregnant. You have the seed of God’s future planted
deep within you. Watch and prepare for the Spirit to fill you, to move you, to
lift you, to empower you, to increase in you. Prepare for a great and benevolent
force beyond your own to equip you to love strangers, to forgive enemies, to
create new possibilities for life where there were once only death and dead-ends.
Trust the good news of God. And remember
one thing more: belief is a muscle that needs exercise.
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