Prepared for Wesley United Montreal’s Sunday Service of Dec. 23, 2018; based on Luke 1:39-55 (Gospel and Alt. Psalm for Year C Advent 4).
I’ve been thinking about the Parkland shooting in February of this year, as I’ve reflected on what a challenging year 2018 has been.
Specifically, I’ve thought of all the courageous young people across the globe who’ve spoken out against violence and hate, against injustice and the degradation of our planet.
When columnists and pundits were reflecting on the “March for Our Lives” movement in the US, focused on gun-control and spearheaded by these young people, and observation was made.
What do you expect from a generation that was raised on books like Harry Potter and Hunger Games? Youth and young adult fiction that said resistance is possible, we can change the world together.
As 15-year-old Parkland shooting survivor Anna Crean told reporters, “We can make a difference because that’s what books and movies have told us since we were little.”[i]
***
Today we read a section of the Gospel of Luke. I imagine much of it was familiar to you. It is to me, I’ve read and heard it countless times before.
And, a number of folks have asked if preaching this Advent is different because I find myself in a state similar to Elizabeth and Mary.
In a way, yes. Because I was struck by this passage this year, in a way I hadn’t been before. But, what struck me more than anything, was the loud voices of Elizabeth and Mary.
How I had not heard them before? I had been so focused on those little lives, coaxed into being by the work of the Spirit, that I had missed something.
***
In our Christmas pageants, who do we cast in the role of ‘messenger to the Good News’?
Angels. Shepherds. Even the incredibly late magi from the East.
But, it was the women who were the first. Who recognized, in this budding life, a new creation being made.
Our text tells us Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, like the roaming prophets of the First Testament. And she prophesies to her cousin Mary:
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”[ii]
“Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord.”[iii]
Elizabeth echoes the words of the messenger, Gabriel. She affirms his declaration that Mary is “blessed […] among women!”[iv]
This is the woman who will raise John the Baptist, the one called to forewarn the world of God’s coming Kingdom. The angry man crying: Repent![v]
And I wonder, what stories Elizabeth told him at night… Did she recite stories of the old prophets, crying out in the desert?
Did she tell him, in quiet whispers, of the promise God made to her and Zechariah, of who their son would become?
A child raised on story, believing that God is working in this world—doing something new—that is the kind of upbringing that inspires world-changers. These are the mothers, the parents, who lift their children up, and tell them a better world is within reach.
John’s vocation as a prophet, comes not, in my opinion, from his father the priest. But, from his mother who, filled with the Holy Spirit, was the firstto declare God is at work here!
Where her husband is struck silent in his disbelief,[vi]Elizabeth feels the baby moving in her womb and believes.
***
Prophetic genes must run in the family. As we turn, now, to look at Mary: We see a young woman, a teenager not so dissimilar from Anna Crean, who sings a song of rebellion and liberation. How right it is that God’s new work would be declared by both an old woman and teenaged girl.
The Biblical stories are filled with images of women who are not passive, but active agents of God’s workings. And, it is so easy to read them as secondary characters in this great masculine epic—but we lose out on so much richness when we see them as a reprieve from the main story.
It is through the last, the least, and the littlest that God’s Good News is revealed.
Mary’s song is not just a prayer of thanksgiving but a declaration, a taste of what God’s coming Kingdom will look like.
She sings of a God who exalts the lowly, fills the hungry, and rejects the powerful; a God whose reign is known by justice and mercy.[vii]
Mary is a revolutionary; and, what a woman to raise the man we know as Jesus.
Did he listen to her ranting by the fire as she cooked? Calling out the imperial regime, and railing against the Jewish leaders who had aligned themselves with empire?
Did she sing him songs of resistance as he fell asleep?
Did she tell him, with awe in her voice, about Gabriel’s visit and who she dreamed her son would become? Of the promises God made her?
***
What a disservice we do to our faith when we skim over these pages. The Gospel stories show women, children, the disabled, and the elderly as God’s actors in this great revelation.
God chose the most vulnerable in society to reveal her great workings of love. And, these people didn’t go about their calling quietly. They sang and prophesied loudly, they cried out in the streets, and rushed to Jesus. And, he responded by calling them “blessed”.[viii]
It was the women, filled with God’s Spirit, who were the first. Who recognized, in this budding life, a new creation being made.
What a God, whose Christ’s coming would be announced by women, and whose resurrection would be declared by women also.
If you remember, when the women came from the tomb to declare that their Teacher’s body was gone, the disciples didn’t even believe them.[ix]
What a God, who chooses the Good News to be delivered by those society doesn’t even consider a worth-while witness.
God’s Kingdom is such an easy thing to miss out on, when we close our eyes and ears to those around us declaring God is at work here!
***
Mary’s song is a precursor to John’s own ministry, and both set the stage for the life and work of Jesus. Both remind God’s people of the promises made to Abraham and his descendants;[x]a promise which is extended to us.
And, in a while, we’ll sing together the “Canticle of Turning”, inspired by Mary’s song. It is a prophetic declaration that we join in singing, believing that God’s great work of love is still being revealed today.
We follow in Jesus’ example, believing he has shown us the way to join our voices with our foremothers, singing God is at work here!
[i]“How Harry Potter Inspired The Parkland Student Activists — And What That Means For The Future Of Children’s Literature” by Sadie Trombetta. Mar 27 2018.
