The Journey, Mary’s Visit to Elizabeth

Luke 1:39-45

December 13, 2015

Mark S. Bollwinkel

The journey to the manger of Bethlehem begins in a dry and dusty village in the middle of nowhere called Nazareth.   It is the home of a righteous and faithful carpenter by the name of Joseph, the kind of man who will do the right thing even at great cost.   The journey travels through the life of a young girl, Mary, betrothed to Joseph and impregnated by God with the Savior of the world.

The angel Gabriel visits Mary one night and explains why she is pregnant.  She asks, “But how can it be...?”  The angel answers that the life within her womb will redeem humanity.  She is a part of God’s ultimate act of salvation.  Faithful Mary answers the angel, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

But as we can imagine she's got to talk to somebody about all of this.  She's a young teenager, she is pregnant out of wedlock through no fault of her own.  She's got angels waking her up in the middle of the night.  She's got to talk to somebody!  [Who do you talk to when angels come calling?  Do you have someone in your life you can talk to, really talk to?  Someone who will listen without judgment?  Someone who cares about you even when you've blown it?   If you've got that kind of someone thank God and treat them with care!]

For Mary, just such a person is her cousin Elizabeth.  Off she rushes to the hills of Judea, to meet with Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah.  Traditionally considered the home of Elizabeth and Zechariah, the Israeli village Ein Karem is today the location of a variety of shrines and churches that honor Mary's visit and the birth of John the Baptist.  It is 80 miles from Nazareth.   Mary while pregnant would have walked nine days over three hill ranges to get there.  That is how important it was for her to have a trusted someone with whom to talk.

Elizabeth, an older woman, is pregnant herself, with none other than the future John the Baptist who will announce the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and who will baptize Jesus in the river Jordan.  Like Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 18:9-f), and Elkanah and Hannah (I Sam 1:1-f) Elizabeth and Zechariah have become pregnant long after all previous efforts had failed.  They are too old to be having children yet God has intervened for them to become parents.  

Remember that in those days to be childless was to live with and in shame.  God's covenant promise to the children of Israel was that their nation would as numerous as the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the beach (Genesis 15:5-6, 16:10, 17:2).  Childbirth equaled righteousness.  To be without children was considered a curse. 

While the priest Zechariah is on duty in the Temple of Jerusalem, an angel comes to explain that Zechariah's wife Elizabeth will have a child that will become the herald of the new messiah (Luke 1:5-f). Considering his station in life and the place of such an announcement one would think that the priest Zechariah would be pleased to hear such news but his response is just the opposite, "Are you kidding me?!" or words to that affect.   Can you imagine a male priest with doubts about a message from God?   For such insolence, the angel strikes Zechariah speechless.

When Mary finally gets to Ein Karem she enters the home of Elizabeth and Zechariah and the baby in Elizabeth’s womb jumps for joy.  Unlike her ordained husband in the face of such news, Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit.  She praises Mary and God.  Three times she calls Mary "blessed" because the predicament in which she finds herself will result in the transformation of history itself.

In response Mary…in all of the mystery and confusion of these events…this Mary sings.

We hear the lyrics of her song in these verses of Luke’s gospel (1:46-55).  Tradition has termed it the “Magnificat”, Latin for the first word of this text ”magnify”.  It has been the inspiration of musicians and artists for 2,000 years:

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…

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.

This is the song sung by Mary to Elizabeth and Zechariah, praising God for the work of salvation in her life.  The song echoes Hannah’s song over the Prophet Samuel’s birth a thousand years earlier (I Sam 2:1-10).  Much of what she says recalls the psalms of the Hebrew scriptures  sung in the Temple of Jerusalem that celebrated God’s victories (Ps 111:9, 89:10, 13).

The four weeks of the Advent Season before Christmas are to remind us of Israel’s faithful waiting for a new Messiah.   The people of Israel yearned for the fulfillment of God’s promises for the future, a world governed by peace, justice and love.  A new Messiah would usher in such a history and restore humanity’s relationship to God and to each other. (Isaiah 2:2-4, 9:2-6)

More than the four weeks of Christmas celebrations, during Advent we prepare ourselves for the coming of the Christ.  We open our hearts and minds to dreams for the future and God’s dreams for our world.  All we need to do that is to commit ourselves to the journey.

During worship these weeks we’ve been concentrating on the journey to Bethlehem by the characters of the New Testament nativity story.  Today we are considering Mary and Elizabeth’s role in the salvation drama.

Whether we understand the drama of Jesus’ birth as history or poetry, it’s an opportunity for each of us to evaluate where we are in the journey of life, the faith that we bring and our dedication to the things most important in life along the way.

There is a lot of singing in the Bible.  Moses sings (Ex 15:1).  Miriam sings (Ex 15:20-21).  David sings (2 Sam 22).  The prophets sing (Isa 5:1, Jer 20:13, Zec 2:10).  The apostle Paul sings (I Cor 14:15).  In Revelation we are told that “every creature in Heaven” sings along with the angels and the martyrs (Rev 5-6).

But why does Mary sing?

She is 13-14 years old!  She has been woken up in the middle of the night by angels.  She has become pregnant as a virgin.  She has threatened to disgrace her family and her future husband Joseph.  She is a nobody, from a nobody little town, in the middle of nowhere.  Her relatives are praising her and prophesying about her that she is about to give birth to the savior of the world.

Elizabeth calls her "blessed" but such blessings will include Herod's order to kill every male infant in and around Bethlehem, 2 years old or younger; Jesus, Joseph and Mary will become refugees to Egypt as a result (Matthew 2:16-18).  The gifts of "gold, frankincense and myrrh" (Matthew 2:11) that the Magi will bring are veiled references by the author and redactor of the gospel Matthew that this baby is born to die the death of a martyr; the three gifts each with death and burial traditions.

Mary's "blessedness" will include watching her son tortured and crucified by the men of Roman governor Pontius Pilate.   Mary's "blessedness" will include her son's tomb.

And she sings?!

Most of us have a very different concept of "blessing".  We thank God for our health and our wealth, our nationality and comfort as the basis of our blessings.  It’s only natural to do so.

Our Christmas gift giving traditions are supposed to be an exchange of blessings between family and friends.   It is estimated that we will spend $ 450 billion on Christmas this year, $854 per person (American Research Group).  If a family of four were to buy their estimated $ 3,400 Christmas on a credit card with a 10% interest rate and pay it off with the minimum monthly payment, it would take 17 years and five months to do so and that $ 3,400 would end up costing $ 5,467.27.   Those Christmas blessings would then become a curse.

The blessing that Elizabeth proclaims and of which Mary sings is the privilege to be a part of God's dream.  The Hebrew prophets foresaw the coming of the messiah as the day that love, peace and justice would govern the human society, as Jesus quoted Isaiah in his first sermon:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ (Luke 4:18-19)

Jesus' vision of the judgment day suggests that the blessings of our lives will be much different than the totals in our bank accounts, stock portfolios or the equity in our homes:

Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” (Matthew 25:34-36)

God's dream for our future is a world where everyone has enough, where everyone counts, where all children are safe.   To be a part of that dream is a blessing indeed.  Which is why the baby leaps for joy in Elizabeth's womb, why Zechariah can finally speak after Mary arrives, why Elizabeth calls her blessed and why Mary sings.

Don't be afraid of the proclamation in Mary's song that "the rich will be sent empty away".  Oh, we're "the rich" alright, anyone living on more than the average earthling's income of $ 2,000 a year are "the rich"; almost half the world, 3 billion people, live on less than $2.50 a day (World Bank).  The God's dream for the future envisions a reversal of fortunes where everyone will have enough, in other words we will all will be rich with access to abundance of God's creation (Mt 20:16, 26, Luke 14:8-11, James 4:10). Rather than fearing our loss we can rejoice and participate in God's dream that "...the hungry will be filled with good things..." (Luke 1:53).  

Here lies the wonder of Advent and Christmas.

There is nothing spectacular about Mary’s family tree.  She is not chosen to be visited by an angel and impregnated by God because of her piety.  She comes from a nothing little village, in a nothing little providence, in a nowhere place.  She is not rich or powerful or famous.  She has no education.  She has done nothing to deserve this visit by God and the blessings and honor that she will receive as a result.

She is a typical citizen of a world that had done absolutely everything to deny and avoid God’s love since the very beginning of time. A world just such as ours.

And to one such as Mary does God give the most precious gift.  Not to the powerful, nor the pious, but to a nobody just like you and me, does God give the Son. To people like us, who struggle and fail and falter comes the gift of God’s salvation.

The implications of this grace are almost incomprehensible.

Nobodies become somebodies with Jesus.

Darkness…any darkness…can be shattered in the light of God’s love.

And the world has never been the same since.

It is a blessing worth singing about.

Amen.