Restore us, O God of hosts; * show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved. (Psalm 80:3)
A couple of weeks ago, Sey and I traveled to Albany to help our granddaughter, Beth celebrate her third birthday. She met us at the door dressed in a Barney the Dinosaur T-shirt, a tutu and a crown on her head. Everything about her screamed—my day is finally here! She opened her presents a little bit at a time, jumping up to dance with her friends and show her gifts to her parents. But then she opened a particular present and before lifting up the gift from its box, she gasped, and with her eyes as round as saucers, she asked with breathless excitement, “For me?”
This is what we hear this morning on the final Sunday of Advent. We hear a story of two women, who cannot believe what God has done for them. They shout and sing with joy of the goodness of God. They are not necessarily whom you would expect to sing and dance. Both of them understand intimately what it means to be the least in their community and yet through them God has authored the transformation of our world. Elizabeth, the older relative of the young Mary, has faced a life of being shamed and excluded. In her culture, the primary role of women was to have children. Yet Elizabeth, even though she was the priest’s wife and descended from the priestly order; even though she and her husband were “righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord” (Luke 1:6) was unable to have children.
It must have been well known in this remote part of the Judean countryside. People would have talked, looks would have been exchanged, she would have been treated with pity. But then she finds herself expecting a child in her advanced age and she rejoices. “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.” Finally, she is given the joy of bearing a son with her husband.
In her sixth month she receives an unexpected visitor. Mary, her relative, has traveled from Nazareth in Galilee to where Elizabeth lives with her husband Zechariah. Why Mary has traveled such a long way, and we are told “in haste” by herself, we can only imagine—perhaps to share her own strange and great news, perhaps to rejoice with her relative who is pregnant. But for whatever reason, here the two women meet. And we are told that when Elizabeth hears the sound of Mary’s voice, the child in her womb “leaps with joy.”
Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, then speaks the prophetic word when she proclaims what Mary has not yet told her—that Mary, too, is expecting a baby. But there is a difference here. Mary is not yet married. Mary’s news would have been a scandal. She stood not only to be disgraced, but perhaps to face the harshest of punishment for the shame she would bring on her family and her community. In Matthew’s Gospel we hear how her fiancé planned to break off their engagement. Mary could expect only judgment and condemnation from her older and righteous relative. Instead, Elizabeth pronounces a blessing on Mary and on the child she is carrying. And through the Spirit, she knows who Mary’s child will be. She asks, “For me? The mother of my Lord has come to me?”
Elizabeth proclaims with a loud cry that Mary is “blessed among women” and also that the child she carries is blessed, she uses the term eulogemene/os which says that both present and future generations will praise her and her child. But then she also says, “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord” (v. 45) she uses a different word—makaria-the same word used in the Beatitudes when Jesus blesses the people. In this Elizabeth says, “Happy are you who believed.”
These two women, both of them marginalized, each of them shamed by their society in their own way, are the first witnesses to the incarnation of God in Jesus. Both of them look beyond what they have been taught in their culture, to see the unexpected gift of God. Both of them experience the great reversal that God has accomplished in these women—one beyond child bearing years who stands six months pregnant with a son who will be the prophet John the Baptist, and one who flaunts convention to carry the Word made flesh.
Standing in the light of blessing, Mary sings a song that speaks through the ages to all who suffer and struggle to hear the good news in this world. It speaks to those who may seem to believe that they are outside the realm of blessing. But Mary sings and we hear, “My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.” Mary gives thanks to God and then anticipates what God has done and will continue to do for the poor, the powerless, and the oppressed of the world because he has begun this work in her.
Mary’s song is a poetic summary from scripture, filled with phrases from the Hebrew Bible and praises to God who keeps his covenanted promises, bringing his word to fulfillment. In it you hear echoes from her ancestor Hannah and Miriam, but also the Psalms that praise God for what God has done for those who believe and trust. Mary proclaims in these glorious words that God in seeing her and honoring her has turned the world upside down. God has seen a simple woman from a small out of the way place and has raised her to be the mother of the son of God. What then is not possible? Those without hope are rescued from despair. The lowly are lifted up and put in a place of dignity, placed within sight and hearing so their voices and their lives are valued as instrumental in God’s plan. Those who are hungry are not just blessed—they are filled with food. Mercy has been extended to all who call on the Lord. No one is turned away.
But those who are too filled with themselves, their things, their power, they will be emptied so that there is room in them for God. They will be able to see those around them so that they recognize God’s goodness everywhere, not just in their own protected zone of comfort. Those who are powerful will be brought down so all will serve each other.
This young woman from a nowhere place, speaks a word that touches a chord in all who struggle in the darkness, all who suffer, all who are denied dignity. In this song, Mary rejoices, dances with joy, sings aloud that God sees us all and God’s mercy never ends.
Three years ago, Sey and I traveled to the Holy Land. We stayed at St. George’s College where we learned and traveled with a group from Australia, led by a professor of Old Testament and a Christian Palestinian who took us in and through massive security gates that cordon off Jerusalem from Palestinian territory. It was a trip that left us reeling from the harshness of the landscape and the lives of many of the people who call this place home. One of our stops was a place high on a hill where a church now stands that tradition says is the setting of this story. In the courtyard of Ein Karem, you are greeted by statues of Elizabeth and Mary. They stand as if they are ready to embrace, their bellies almost touching. You can see the lines on the face of Elizabeth and the youthful vulnerability of Mary. And behind them on the wall are 42 ceramic plaques with the words of Mary’s song written in 42 different languages. It is a powerful testimony to the importance of Mary’s words for the world. In a place where violence is an everyday occurrence, the words of the young Mary cry out to God’s desire that all see themselves as beloved children. It is a testament to the eternal hope that all will be brought into God’s mercy.
Our world today needs to hear these words. Each of us needs to hear these words. God sees each of us and loves each of us exorbitantly. God seeks to enter in to our hearts and be born within us. No one is too young or too old, too rich or too poor, to insignificant to be included in God’s concern and mercy. Mary’s song of hope looks forward to a vision of the restoration of the whole human family. She saw in the birth of her son the establishment of justice that makes it possible for all people to thrive, to reach the potential for which they were created, to experience the joy and the life that God intends for us all.
All of us are called to sing Mary’s song with joy and hope. And we do this when we join in lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry, and restoring those who have lost hope. Meister Eckhart says, “We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within me? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture. This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is born in us.”[1]
Mary prefigures in her song, her son Jesus’ mission statement when speaking in the synagogue he says,
“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 favour.’ (Luke 4:18-19)
Jesus came to bring God’s work of making all things new, of setting to right the wrongs, and lifting the burdens we all carry. In Advent and Christmas we are called to focus our attention on God’s work in this broken world. It is a time of looking for the salvation that God has promised, and a time of singing for joy over what God is doing among us. It is a time to celebrate the work of restoration God is carrying out in the human family—the whole human family. And it is time for us to join in that work.
In Advent we sing because we long for something better than the violence and suffering and injustice all around us. We long for the kindness and generosity and compassion of our God being fulfilled for all the peoples of the world. We sing because we long for “peace on earth, and mercy mild”; it is the heart and soul of our faith. We sing because of the good news that in Jesus the Christ God has entered this world definitively to set everything right and to make all things new. And we sing because in and through this marvelous event, “light and life to all he brings.”
This song of hope is what enables us to look past our fears, our doubts that we can make a difference, our being overwhelmed over the troubles of this world and know that God has and will do great things for and through us. This joyful faith is what gives us energy to sustain our love as we join in God’s work of transforming all creation by making a difference no matter our station in life, no matter our age or what burdens we bear. God looks with favor on us all. We like Mary are invited to make a place in us for God to be born. Christ is always with us, seeking room in our hearts. For us! May we in this time of Advent, as we move to the celebration of Jesus being born into our lives, experience the divine joy of believing that God will do what God promises. Happy are we who believe!
[1] Meister Eckhart. Oliver Davies (trans.) Selected writings. London: Penguin Books, 1994.