Go

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday December 20, 2009, the 4th Sunday of Advent. This sermon completes the series "Ready, Set, Go."

Micah 5:2-5a
Psalm 80:1-7
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-46

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

As a boy of the suburbs, I have had very little experience with milk straight from the farm. I remember having farm fresh milk once or twice, but it has been a long, long time. What I remember is that there were a flood of flavors that I just can’t get from a half-gallon of 2% from Price Cutter. The farm fresh was just so rich; its flavors so distinct and so full I can imagine that I remember, even if most of that memory was created.

But, in a day and time when dairy farms are huge operations shipping milk off to plants for processing and distribution, it is impossible to keep that farm fresh flavor. In fact, it’s impossible because milk straight off of the farm will turn a lot faster than milk that has been pasteurized. Pasteurization slows microbial growth[1] keeping milk fresher longer.

Still, what is lost is that straight off of the farm freshness. Well, given a choice between pasteurized milk and a game of Russian roulette every time eat cereal, I’ll take pasteurized milk. It is a pity though; pasteurization makes everything so consistent that for me the taste of farm fresh milk is lost to a vague memory.

There is a tendency in our lives to look at scripture through pasteurized eyes too. We are so used to reading the gospel and hearing it interpreted that it tends to become pasteurized. This loss isn’t exclusive to church members; it is a tremendous danger for ministers too. We see the gospel through academic eyes, historical eyes, denominational eyes, and theological eyes; it can get to the point that the farm fresh nature of the Word of God becomes as lost to us as the taste of milk straight from the cow.

For example, this passage is utterly absurd. Through the way 2,000 years of interpretation has pasteurized this scene, we lose how scandalous it was then and still is. We are used to thinking of it as a wonderfully somber candle lit meeting between two women whose sons will change the world, but when we look at it with unpasteurized eyes; it’s absurd.

In the movie, Elizabeth and Mary should be played by members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus! I imagine Graham Chapman as Elizabeth and Eric Idle as Mary. I can also see a place for a Terry Gilliam cartoon depicting the extra-super utero conversation between Jesus and John.

Let’s take this absurdity even further using names from the news. Imagine if you will Elizabeth and Mary’s conversation in this setting: Imagine a couple of months before her due date, the oldest woman ever to give birth sitting down for coffee with her pregnant cousin, a seventh grader. That’s what’s going on in our gospel reading.

Looking to a modern equivalent, in 2007 Maria del Carmen Bousada became the oldest woman ever to give birth at the age of 66.[2] When her true age was revealed, and it was discovered that she lied to a California fertility clinic taking ten years off of her age so she would be eligible for invitro-fertilization, the firestorm rang in the news for a week. Given the modern American news cycle, a week is an eternity.

Consider the younger end of this equation, whether Sarah Palin’s daughter or Brittney Spears’ sister, these high school aged girls giving birth was fodder for pundits for weeks. Even though teen pregnancy no longer carries the stigma it once did, the press, both liberal and conservative, was making hay with these young women. Whether a family values issue or an issue of whose family, these scandals were the talk of the airwaves for ages.

Consider now that these girls are about five years older than Mary and I can imagine Bill O’Reilly having a seizure talking about this meeting between two women who should not be first time mothers.

We’re all used to seeing the visit of Elizabeth and Mary as a meeting of peers, and nothing could be further from the truth. We have become so used to this story that we now fail to appreciate how absurd it really is until we look at it in a setting that’s closer to home for us.

So now in the name of absurdity, I have invoked Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Fox News, Pepper-Pots and Bill O’Reilly. Yes, I want us to get a firm grip on just how absurd this meeting really is.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “No priest, no theologian stood at the manger of Bethlehem. And yet all Christian theology has its origin in the wonder of wonders: that God became human. Holy Theology arises from knees bent before the mystery of the divine child in the stable. Without the holy night, there is no theology.”[3] What is wonderful and glorious about our reading from Luke is that it gives us a preview of Bonhoeffer’s theology.

In our reading, when these absurdly pregnant women come together, their children recognize one another before their birth. These cousins come together to celebrate, or perhaps at their respective ages commiserate, their pregnancies only to discover that their unborn children are all ready partners in the greatest of all scriptural prophecies.

Elizabeth cries, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Elizabeth knows what is happening, her son knows what is happening; they are able to see the glory of the Lord being fulfilled through this absurd situation.

Mary sings, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” Mary and her son too know what is happening and are able to see the glory of the Lord being fulfilled through this absurd situation.

These women come together, glorifying God and testifying the faith, in Bonhoeffer’s words the theology. They testify to the persons and work of the Baptizer and the Christ at the dawn of their birth. Their testimony is bold and dynamic; it’s filled with life in the midst of scandal. It is nothing like the pasteurized readings I have heard, and on occasion have given.

This is a problem with our lives and our faith in the eyes of Bonhoeffer’s theology. So often our knees fail to bend before the mystery of the divine child in the stable; our faith becoming pasteurized so it won’t spoil. We must resist this.

We testify God was born of a woman. We testify God lived the life of a Palestinian Jew. We testify he performed miracles. We testify he was crucified, dead, and buried; and on the third day he rose again from the dead. We testify he ascended into heaven without a second death all so that we may have eternal life. This is scandalous, this is controversial, and this is absurd; and we believe-we have faith that this is true. We have faith this is the truth.

Over the past four Sundays, we have come along the path of the Advent, the coming of the Lord. Over these last three, we have been going through the “Ready, Set, Go” of preparing for Christmas. We have made straight the ways for the Lord. We have repented at the behest of John the Baptist. And today as we go, we need to go knowing that what we testify, what we are all called to share with the world is wonderful and glorious and scandalous and absurd.

Thomas Heagle testifies, “In the human experience of Jesus, God became available to us as the depth of human life. Thus, a Christian believes that the experience of ultimate meaning comes not from a leap out of the human condition, but a journey through its dark waters.”[4]

God comes to us in the depths of where we are. Too often, we have added layers of piety that bind the Holy Spirit into a straight jacket that takes God out of those dark waters. I become party to this straight jacket when worship becomes more pious than God’s own self. More than once, I have left inadequate the wonder and the glory that is two unlikely mothers bearing their even more unlikely children.

Let us go into those dark waters with the story we hear year round, the story of the fully human-fully divine God of all creation. Let us share his grace, his peace, and his mercy so that all of God’s children will be able to see our Lord at work in us and even more importantly beyond us. The Lord will not be contained by what we consider to be absurd or common sense. Let us take the unpasteurized God into the world, sharing God’s life with God’s creation.

[1] Pasteurization, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization, retrieved December 13, 2009
[2] Woolls, Daniel, “Oldest Woman to Give Birth Dies at 69.” boston.com, http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/07/16/oldest_woman_to_give_birth_dies_at_69/, retrieved December 13, 2009.
[3] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, “I Want to Live These Days with You. A Year of Daily Devotions.” Louisville, KY: Westminster-John Knox Press, 2005, page 363.
[4] Heagle, Thomas, “A Contemporary Meditation on Hope.” Chicago: Thomas Moore Press.