Luke 1: 39-55

4 Advent / Year C

24 December 2006

The Church of the Good Shepherd

Wareham, Massachusetts

 

Preached by the Rev. David Fredrickson

 

 

This morning I want to share with you some prose written by Dr. Susan Fleming McGurgan, a Roman Catholic academic who teaches at the Mount St. Mary Seminary outside Cincinnati, Ohio. In only a few words, I feel that she has truly captured the spirit of our gospel this morning, the very heart of that great meeting between Mary and Elizabeth.

 

Whenever women work

or laugh

or mourn a lost child

they are there.

Whenever women wait in pregnant hope,

one heart beating with another heart,

they are there.

 

Wherever women struggle and dream

and cry out for God’s justice; 

wherever emptiness longs to be filled;

they are always there.

 

Through the lives of two women,

Mary and Elizabeth,    

God’s song found a feminine voice,   

and the lowly were lifted up.

Through them,  

a promise to Abraham was kept,   

a prophet was born to lead the way,

and God came to live among us as a child,

to see the world with peasant eyes. 

 

And yet,

the hill country of Judea

was the last place you would expect to find

a prophecy fulfilled

or a miracle revealed.

 

It was a rough and stony land—

an obstacle to be avoided

rather than a shelter to seek out.   

It was, in fact,

about the last place

you would expect to discover God.   

 

Yet, as Joan Sauro says,

[in her book, Whole Earth Meditation]; No matter

where we walk,

we will find that God has been there before us.

God’s name is written everywhere,

on every layer.  

Go to the place called barren.

Stand in the place called empty.

And you will find God there.[i]

 

And so,

in those rocky and barren hills,

two unexpected babies

met

and danced to the beat

of their mothers’ joy.

 

When she was just a child herself,

Mary said ‘yes’,

and plunged headfirst into an adventure

that would take her

to the very edges of life and faith. 

 

She said yes,

and entered places of the heart and soul

where few have ever been.

 

On that journey,

she walked with God

through valleys of exile and pain.

She looked on the face of poverty

and explored the mysteries of an ordinary life

made extraordinary by faith. 

 

She was willing to risk everything she ever knew

so that God’s mercy

could reach from age to age.

 

When Elizabeth was old and tired;  

when her family and friends saw her as

barren,

useless,

an object of pity or scorn,

she also said “yes” to God. 

 

Elizabeth said “yes”,

and in a world where women could not legally testify,

in a world that often dismissed their words

or forgot their names,

Elizabeth became God’s witness.

 

When she embraced Mary

Elizabeth knew that everything had changed—

that everything her people longed for,

freedom,

salvation,

hope,

was now alive and living among them.  

 

Elizabeth looked out at a world

where people could be enslaved,

but knew that she had just encountered

the one

who could set both slave and master

free.

 

Today, the voices of Mary and Elizabeth

challenge us to be faithful,

to be open,

to be brave,

to work for justice,

to embrace a future

that the world might deny.   

 

Their voices give witness to God’s faithfulness,

even when the world says,

“You are too old.”

“You are too young.”

“You are barren.”

“You are scandal.”

“Your words don’t count.”

 

In our world, 

where the bodies of women and children

are too often abused and discarded, 

their voices remind us that our bodies,

all bodies,

are temples.

 

They remind us that we are wholly loved,

wholly blessed,

wholly redeemed.

 

They remind us that God’s glory still shines

on people and places

that the world might ignore

and that sometimes,

 

God surprises us.[ii]

 

Isn’t that a wonderful piece of prose. As Mary converses with her kinswoman Elizabeth, we witness two women who are having their worlds rocked by God. They each have a choice. They can refuse to receive the God who comes to them in this odd way. They can turn their backs upon the vocation of God and refuse to participate in the coming revolution. Or they can say, “Yes,” they can sing, as Mary in her song, “I do not know exactly what you are doing in all this, but I am willing to be part of what you are doing.” That’s the choice before us in this morning’s texts. Shall we, like Mary, receive this child untimely, rather embarrassingly born? Shall we be willing to receive God, not as we might have conceived of God – as omnipotent, omniscient, and all the other powerful attributes that we ascribe to the deity – or God as God is in the babe of Bethlehem?[iii]

 

In Jesus Name; Amen!