After two weeks of Gospel readings about John the Baptist
with his calling his listeners a brood of vipers, demanding fairness, and
threatening them with fire if they didn’t shape up, it may be a relief to let
the ladies have the floor, as they do in today’s Gospel reading. In today’s Gospel reading, Mary’s fiancé,
Joseph, is offstage, and while Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah is in the
background, he was struck dumb – unable to speak – by an angel of the Lord. And so Joseph’s fiancé Mary and Zechariah’s wife
Elizabeth have the microphone, so to speak.
In the patriarchal society in which these women lived, for their names
and their words to be recorded in Scripture for posterity is a rare honor
indeed.
Our reading today picks up immediately after the angel’s
announcement to Mary that she was to bear a son from the Holy Spirit, whose
name was to be Jesus, who would be great and called Son of the Most High. The angel also told Mary that her relative
Elizabeth in her old age had also conceived a son, and “it was the sixth month
for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with
God.” Mary told the angel, “Here I am,
the servant of the Lord; let it be done with me according to your will,” and the angel departed.
Today’s reading begins with the words, “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.” From Nazareth to a Judean town – that is to
say, a town somewhere just outside Jerusalem - would have been a journey of
something like 70 miles as the crow flies, but more like 90 miles on foot,
assuming Mary would have taken the long way around to avoid Samaritan country,
which is a reasonable assumption. After
all, Mary was traveling alone, which was already quite risky for a woman in her
day, and she surely didn’t need to run the risk of being accosted by hostile
Samaritans. This was probably at least four to five days’ journey on foot. And
so, for me, this sentence raises some questions: why did she go to Elizabeth? And what was the
hurry? What emotions were driving Mary to
make this risky journey – was it out of joy?
Curiosity? Fear? Some combination of the above? After all, as Mary’s pregnancy progressed, it
likely would have become known that Joseph was not the father – and had Mary
tried to explain that the Holy Spirit was the father, she’d have been laughed
out of town, or worse. Even without the
benefit of medical science, Mary’s neighbors knew perfectly well where babies
came from. So Mary’s hasty journey to
Elizabeth may have motivated in part by a desire to avoid the prying eyes and persistent
questions of her neighbors – and, of course, also by the joyous news of
Elizabeth’s own unexpected and unconventional pregnancy. Mary needed sanctuary and support, and
Elizabeth was the person to provide it.
And Elizabeth certainly did provide support. We’re told that when Elizabeth heard Mary’s
greeting, the child within her leapt in the womb. When the angel told Zechariah that he and
Elizabeth would have a son, the angels said that his son would be filled with
the Holy Spirit even before he was born – and so the child was. We’re told that Elizabeth herself, filled
with the Spirit, said to Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the
fruit of your womb.” Mary may have been
feeling a number of things – exhausted by her journey, uncomfortable from
carrying the child growing within her, misunderstood by her neighbors. Elizabeth reminded her that even in the midst
of all these feelings, Mary was blessed.
Elizabeth went on: “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." Blessed
is she who believed. Elizabeth know,
because she too believed what the angel had spoken to her husband Zechariah,
and she too was blessed.
Mary was caught up in Elizabeth’s words, saying "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.” Even in the midst of discomfort and
dislocation, Mary could see herself as blessed, as one of God’s faithful who
had received God’s mercy. And Mary went
on to tell of her dreams for the child within her: “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." Far from the image of “Mary meek and mild”
promoted by the church, Mary’s words are revolutionary, speaking of the poor
being lifted up and the powerful brought down.
John the Baptist spoke about mountains being brought low and valleys
lifted up – sounds like the results of an earthquake. In the same way, Mary’s words in the
Magnificat foretold a kind of societal earthquake. She surely would have known what it was to be
hungry and seen herself as being among the lowly. More than the other Gospels, Luke repeatedly
tells of Jesus’ care for the poor, his identification with the powerless, his
willingness to take on the powerful. In
Luke’s gospel, Jesus says not only “blessed are the poor” but “woe unto the
rich”. And these words of Jesus did not
just come out of nowhere or fall down from the sky. Mary’s gave voice to her dreams in the
Magnificat, and passed these dreams along to her son, Jesus. Jesus learned these things at his mother’s
knee.
Elizabeth called Mary blessed, and Mary said that all
generations would call her blessed. What
did it mean for Mary to be blessed? It
surely didn’t mean that her life would be easy or free of pain. She had to make the return journey to
Nazareth, back to her neighbors with their whispers about who was the father of
her baby – and those whispers would follow Mary all the days of her life. And then there was the trip to Bethlehem when
she was “great with child”, about to give birth. She lived in relative poverty
for all her days, both while she was married to Joseph and after his passing –
for Joseph fades out of the picture fairly early in the Gospels. She experienced moments of misunderstanding
between her and her son, as when Jesus at age 12 was separated from her and
Joseph and later found in the Temple, in discussion with the elders. Later Mary’s son left her to pursue his
traveling ministry. On one occasion,
Mary and her other children thought that Jesus had lost his mind and they tried
to corral him to bring him home. When
they found Jesus in someone’s home teaching, Jesus left them standing outside,
telling the crowds inside, “You who hear my words and do my will are my family
now.” That’s recorded in Mark 3:20-34,
and it’s not exactly a heartwarming Hallmark movie moment. And
then, of course, Mary would live to see her son be betrayed, arrested on
charges of blasphemy against God and insurrection against the state, tortured,
and executed.
For Mary, being blessed didn’t mean a life of comfort and
plenty. King Herod and the other members of his family who ruled the region lived
in comfort and plenty, and so did Pilate, and so did Annas and Caiaphas – and God didn’t
appear to any of them, and nowhere does Scripture call them blessed. For Mary, being blessed meant being a servant
of the Lord, being allowed to be a part of God’s great work of salvation. The word “salvation” sounds a lot like our
word “salvaging”, and so Mary was part of God’s work of salvaging and restoring
our lives and our world, the whole creation, from the effects of our sin and
brokenness. When I was a kid, my dad always had different projects going
on, woodworking and other projects – and it felt so good when I was able to
help with some small part of one of his projects. It felt so good to feel like I was helping my
father – even though he likely could have gotten the job done as quickly or
more quickly without my “help”. And this
is what it mean for Mary – and means for us – to be blessed – to take some
small part in God’s great work, to be where God’s action is.
“All generations will call me blessed,” Mary said, as she
made room in her life for the coming of Emanuel, God with us. May we too be blessed by being privileged to
be used by God in God’s work of salvaging and restoring our lives and our
world. May we too make room for Christ
in our lives. Let every heart prepare
him room, and heaven and nature sing.
Amen.
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