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Joy on the Journey
A
sermon by Dr. Jim Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
December 14, 2008
The Third Sunday of Advent
Luke 1:39-55
When the angel Gabriel came to visit the virgin Mary, he told her the
most incredible thing she had ever heard—incredible in the literal sense of the
word, in the sense that it was too extraordinary and improbable to believe—he
told her she was going to have a baby. "How can this be?" she asked. "I'm a
virgin." And so he told her something even more unbelievable: "The Holy Spirit
will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you;
therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God."
That’s a lot to take in all at once, and you will notice that Mary doesn't tell
Gabriel she believes everything he has told her. But whether she believes it or
not, she presents herself as the willing servant of the Lord. "Here am I," she
says. And if virgin birth is what it will take to accomplish God's purpose,
then so be it.
What Luke doesn't tell us is what happened between that moment and the
moment described in today's passage, the visit to Elizabeth. Do you think Mary
tried to tell anyone else about what had happened to her? Do you think she
might have said to her parents, at supper that night, "You won't believe what
happened to me today." And do you think, after she told them, that they might
have said, "You're right. We don't believe it." Think of the conversation that
must have taken place between Mary and Joseph, her betrothed:
"Joseph? Sweetheart? I had a strange visit today. An angel of the
Lord appeared to me and told me I was going to have a baby, a special baby, one
who would be called the Son of God."
"Really? Is this supposed to happen before or after we're married?"
"Um, before, I think. He didn't say."
"Did he say I was supposed to believe this?"
"No."
"Well, that’s good. Because I don't."
That may sound a little harsh coming from Joseph, but you will
remember that he did decide to break off the engagement. Apparently he just
couldn't believe what Mary was telling him. But could you, if you were in his
shoes? And can you believe, even now, that a virgin could conceive without the
help of a human partner? It just doesn't square with everything we've been
taught about conception and birth. Mary may have had her doubts, and that may
have been why Gabriel told her that her old cousin Elizabeth was already six
months pregnant with a special baby. Elizabeth, who had been told she could
never have children, was busy painting the nursery and knitting booties. "Just
so you will know," Gabriel added, "that with God nothing is impossible." Virgin
birth? No problem.
But even those who said their prayers to the Almighty every day
couldn't believe that he was mighty enough to do something like that. Mary went
to see Elizabeth, I think, because everybody else thought she had lost her
mind. If Elizabeth really was pregnant in her old age, then she might be a
little more open-minded than Mary's parents, or Joseph, or the people who
pointed at her on the street and whispered behind her back, "She thinks she's
going to be the mother of the Messiah!" Luke tells us that in those days Mary
went "with haste" to the hill country of Judea. She hiked up her skirts and
ran, away from a home where no one believed her and from a town where
everyone made fun of her. She went to a place where she might at least get a
hearing, and when she got there, out of breath, she called from the gate,
"Elizabeth?"
That's when it happened. Elizabeth had just pulled her chair up to
the fireplace and sat down to rest, had just balanced a teacup and saucer on her
belly when Mary called out her name. The baby jumped. It didn't just move or
kick, it jumped! Saucer, teacup, and tea went sailing into the air and crashed
wetly on the stone hearth in front of her, and as she was staring at the
wreckage, stunned, Luke says she was filled with the Holy Spirit. She leaped up
out of the chair, ran to the front door, threw it open and said to Mary,
"Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And what
have I ever done that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For as soon as I
heard the sound of your voice, the baby in my womb jumped for joy. And blessed
is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her
by the Lord."
In other words, Elizabeth didn't need much convincing that Mary was
going to have a baby, and that the child born to her would be called holy, the
Son of God. What good news that must have been to Mary, who was beginning to
wonder by now if she really were crazy. "Did an angel appear to me, or was it a
dream? Have I been getting enough rest lately? Have I been out in the sun too
much?" "NO!" said Elizabeth. "What you heard is true. Rejoice!" And then
Mary did rejoice. All that hope she had been nurturing, all that anticipation
she had kept inside, suddenly bubbled up and spilled over in song.
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.
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."
The song of Mary is one that celebrates the fact that God does
unbelievable things, that he brings down the exalted and lifts up the lowly,
that he chooses a poor, wide-eyed, woman-child, and not a queen, to be the
mother of his Christ. It's a song of wonder. It's a song of praise. It's a
song that ripples down through the ages to ours and asks the question:
Can you believe what God is doing?
Some of us can't. Like the people who pointed at Mary and laughed we
know that God hasn't intervened in human history for hundreds of years, at
least, not in ways that we could see. All around us is the evidence that God is
unforgiveably absent from the struggles of everyday life. We say prayers for
friends and family members who are dying of cancer, and they die anyway. We
pray that God would help us find work so we can feed our families, and still the
phone doesn’t ring. We beg God to bring us the love of our lives and then cry
ourselves to sleep night after night. Too often it seems that God stands back
with his arms folded across his chest while sickness or sadness has its way with
us. It's hard to believe, sometimes, that God has anything to do with the world
anymore. Where is he when you need him?
That's what the citizens of Nazareth were wondering. That's why they
didn't put much stock in Mary's claim of a divine announcement. For too long
now they had been waiting for God to do something for his people, to deliver
them from the Romans, to restore their nation to its former glory. For too long
now God had been silent. It had been 400 years or better since a prophet had
stood up and shouted "Thus saith the Lord." Had God lost interest in them?
Didn't he care anymore? Maybe they were afraid to hope, after all this time,
that what Mary said might be true. Maybe they found it easier to make fun of
her than to believe her. And maybe Gabriel's word to Mary about the pregnancy
of her cousin Elizabeth was a way of saying, "When no one else will believe you,
here's one who will. Go see her."
And so Mary did. And Elizabeth proved as good as Gabriel's word.
"Blessed are you," she cried, "the mother of my Lord!" She was one of these
righteous women—probably like some of the ones you know—who has lived long
enough to see the hand of God at work, one of these who nods and smiles and goes
on with her knitting while others argue about his existence. She knows. She
has experienced. "There were times," she says, "when if it weren't for God I
couldn't have made it. There have been other times when he has answered my
prayers. There are moments in the morning, before the day begins, when I can
sense his presence with me. And when I work around the house I sing hymns, I
talk to him, because I know that he hears me. And now look at this," she says
to Mary, smoothing her dress over the swell of her rounded belly. "I played
bingo at the Senior Center this morning and I've got a Lamaze class this
afternoon. It's like the angel said, 'With God nothing is impossible.’"
And Mary made a leap of faith, and came down on the other side of
doubt singing. "From now on," she sang, "people won't call me crazy, they will
call me blessed." And she was right! Driving through Louisville, Kentucky, one
afternoon I turned on the radio and heard a Catholic priest chanting, "Hail,
Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and
blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." He said it over and over again, and
in the background people responded with similar words of blessing for a young
Jewish girl who found favor in the eyes of the Lord and believed what was spoken
to her by the angel. She sang for joy for the same reason the unborn Baptist
jumped for joy: in spite of all evidence to the contrary, God was up to
something! He had rolled up his sleeves and gone to work in the world, and
Mary, and John, and Elizabeth, were all going to have a part in what he was
doing. What good news! What great joy!
Mary went to see Elizabeth for confirmation that what she had heard
was true, and she got it. Maybe you've come to church this morning for the same
reason. You have seen and heard so much evidence to the contrary that you can
hardly believe God is still at work in the world. You come here with the faint
hope that God still cares, that he still answers prayers, that he is still
somehow present with his people. If that’s true then let this story be good
news for you. Let it fill you with fresh hope. Join hands with Elizabeth and
Mary, look into their eyes, hear them say to you, “It’s true! You can believe
it! For with God, nothing will be impossible!”
Those next three months must have been filled with wonder, love, and
praise for those two women, Mary taking over more and more of the housework
while Elizabeth spent more time sitting in that chair by the hearth. Mary would
bring her a mug of hot tea and Elizabeth would look up with a weak smile and
say, “Blessed are you.” It doesn’t say so in the Bible. Luke only tells us
that Mary stayed for about three months. But if you do the math—remembering
that Gabriel came to Mary in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, and Mary
made haste and went to the hill country of Judea to visit her, and that she then
stayed three months—well, you get nine months total and a little bit more, just
enough time for Elizabeth to have her baby, for Mary to make sure all was well,
and then, with that miracle fresh in her mind, make her way back to Nazareth to
wait for a miracle of her own. If you ask me, I think Mary stayed right up
through the delivery because that’s when Elizabeth would have needed her most.
Luke doesn’t give us many details. He leaves it up to the memory of
every woman who has ever given birth to imagine what Elizabeth went through as
she struggled, at her age, to deliver a healthy baby body. The midwife was
there. Mary was there. And eventually, of course, John was there. When
Elizabeth’s neighbors and relatives heard about it they came to see for
themselves, and rejoiced in the way you would if you had witnessed a miracle.
You might begin to believe that if this could happen—if an old and barren woman
could give birth to a bouncing baby boy—then anything could happen, even the
miracle you had been secretly praying for. On the eighth day everybody came
back for the bris, when the rabbi would circumcise the baby and the
parents would name him. Only Zechariah, as you may recall, had been struck dumb
because he didn’t believe what the angel had told him. He couldn’t say a word.
So they asked Elizabeth what the child’s name would be and she said “John.” “What?”
they said. “John? There’s nobody in your family named John!” “Doesn’t
matter,” she said. “That’s what we’re going to call him.”
And so they turned to Zechariah to see what he thought about all this
and he motioned for a writing tablet. He wrote: “His name is John.” And they
were all amazed. And even more amazed when his mouth was opened, when his
tongue was untied, and when he began praising God for this wonderful thing he
had done. People were talking about it all over the hill country, as you might
expect, at every little crossroads, up every lonely hollow. They were asking,
“What do you think will become of this miracle baby? Who will he be?” For they
could see, already, that the hand of the Lord was upon him. As for Zechariah,
who had been so slow to believe in miracles, now he couldn’t stop talking about
all that the Lord had done, and all that he was going to do. He was filled with
the Holy Spirit, and prophesied, saying,
“Blessed be the Lord God
of Israel,
for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.
He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
and has remembered his holy covenant,
the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we,
being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear,
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.”
What Zechariah was singing
about, what Mary was singing about, was the good news that in spite of all
evidence to the contrary God had not forgotten his people, not for a moment. He
was watching over them, working through them, making preparations to come and be
among them as one of them, so that he could know what it’s like to be human, so
he could feel for us and care for us as never before. The next time you are
wondering if God hears your prayers, when you are wondering if he even cares,
remember that he loves the world so much he gave his son, and it was such good
news that it made young women and old men burst into song.
It still does.
—Jim Somerville,
© 2008
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