Micah 5:2-5a
Psalm 80:1-7
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-45 (46-55)
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Melinda posted a new picture on facebook. It must be a 20 year old picture of the then children of the church performing what I believe is the annual Christmas Pageant. Oh, but to reach out and pinch one and all of those kids on the cheek.
One of my favorite Christmas Pageants was also one of the strangest I’ve ever seen.[1] The older kids had all of the lead roles, Mary, Joseph, the angel who made the announcement of the coming birth of the child. Of course the Christ-child was played by a doll that had been passed down for generations to play the role of Jesus. That’s both wonderful and a little creepy. How can any child be trusted to touch such a precious object?
The youngest children played, say it with me, the shepherds. There are no lines to get wrong. All they have to do is follow the star or the angel and make it to the untouchable doll.
What made this pageant different, or creepy depending on your opinion, was that this pageant had an Elizabeth . The Children’s Choir Director was in costume with the kids in front of the congregation. What made it kind of creepy was this 40-year-old Elizabeth , had a solo. That has always bugged me; an adult had a song in the children’s Christmas pageant.
For my money, the best part of the evening was the youngest child in the play, a little boy who could not and would not stand still. He would fidget and twist and twirl until he finally knocked the plywood sheep down the chancel stairs. Half of the people in the sanctuary were aghast! I was with the other half. I did resist laughing out loud, barely, others did not. The fact that this boy was the Pastor’s grandson made the aghast folks more aghast and the grinners grin wider.
Our gospel reading today needs a little from the beginning of Luke. We need to go back to the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah. Both Levites, Elizabeth was a descendant of Aaron. We learn that Zechariah was selected by lots to offer the incense in the temple of the Lord. When this happened, Zechariah received the word of the Lord prophesying:
“Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
The wonder and the glory of the Lord’s blessings were to come upon Zechariah and Elizabeth with only one snag, in Zechariah’s own words, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” I guess this is preferable compared to the King James which says Elizabeth is “well stricken in years.”
So what do you get for questioning an angel of the Lord? Zechariah is struck mute. He will not be able to speak; he will not be able to tell anybody what has happened “until the appointed time.” I think parents and mischievous children will recognize this conversation. Zechariah asks when he will stop being grounded, the angel answers “when I tell you.”
But this I think is the most important thing that needs to be shared from the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth:
“When his time of service was completed, he returned home. After this his wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion. ‘The Lord has done this for me,’ she said. ‘In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.’”
Remember, back in the day not having children was a sign of disgrace and shame. It was a social horror along with the terror of being unprotected by their children in old age.
Our reading picks up about a month after these events when Mary comes to see her cousin Elizabeth. Now we know that Mary is pregnant and we know her son “will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.” What we don’t really know from Luke’s gospel is if anybody else knows. Anything! At all!
Other gospel accounts have Joseph getting the news and in his own thoughts deciding to call off the engagement. Luke’s gospel has none of this. From Luke’s account of the gospel the only people who know of Mary’s pregnancy are Mary, Gabriel, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. That’s it. That puts this visit to Elizabeth in a whole new light, doesn’t it?
Mary hardly says a word, it’s “Ding-dong, Avon calling” and Elizabeth ’s son leaps and is filled by the Holy Spirit. Now that’s a fine how-do-ya-do.
With the news Elizabeth rejoices. Her cries are so wonderful and so glorious that our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters use them when seeking intercession. She goes on and on. She is so blessed by not just the presence of her cousin but of her Lord and Savior that she wonders why she is so favored by their visit. She finishes by saying Mary is blessed not for what has happened, but for believing that what the Lord has said will be fulfilled.
Let’s begin with Elizabeth ’s pregnancy. Zechariah is old but the good news is at least Elizabeth isn’t as old. I love how Zechariah has to explain to the angel why this just isn’t going to work. If there are two things angels do in scripture it’s foretell pregnancy and smite people who need a good smiting. Zechariah gets both while burning the incense in the temple of the Lord. So everything Zechariah does until the angel says so makes him act like the mime in the Little Caesar’s ad.
We all know that not having children in ancient times was more than a social blunder and loss of safety net; it was a mark that you are not blessed by God.[2] In the moment of her pregnancy, even as she is stricken with years, her entire life is changed. She will have a child, a son. The whispers behind her back that she is barren and stricken are gone. She is blessed. In this very act, God speaks without words to bless Zechariah and Elizabeth.
Someone whose words are mysteriously missing in our reading is Mary. Except for a fine how-do-ya-do, she doesn’t say a word. Based on Luke’s gospel her greeting is all she offers until verse 46, the beginning of Mary’s Song, “The Magnificat.”
How can we imagine what Mary was going through? In a day and time when unwed pregnancy doesn’t carry the stigma it once did, there is still the moment I can’t imagine; the moment when the woman shares the news with family, not just the man, but her parents. In our day there is still uncertainty in the sharing, in Mary’s day she would have become an outcast.
Mary’s fiancé might have ended the relationship leaving her without any support. She could not return to her father’s house either. There were no social structures available to help her either. Just imagine the time between when she heard the news from the angel and when she heard Elizabeth ’s cries of joy. Her silence speaks volumes.
She may say, “I am the handmaid of the Lord, may your word to me be fulfilled,” but she would have to be super-human not to consider or worry what would become of her if nobody believed her. In fact, her words “may your word to me be fulfilled” must have been an earnest prayer; if the word isn’t fulfilled then she is in big trouble. She keeps all of this to herself, choosing to hurry to her cousin Elizabeth.
Then in a true exhibition of “actions speak louder than words,” Mary is heard and the Holy Spirit turns John the Baptist into an acrobat in the womb. In a moment, the prophecy of the angel to Zechariah is realized. The angel’s words “he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born” are fulfilled. With barely a word Elizabeth and her son are filled with the Holy Spirit and what is to come is known.
Mary was all but silent, but Elizabeth ’s child heard with the ears of the Spirit. By the work of the Sprit, John tells his mother that everything has changed. As if everything hadn’t changed enough, creation was being renewed, reborn even before John and Jesus are born.
How’s that for speaking volumes without speaking words, creation is being renewed, reborn even before John and Jesus are born. How’s this for words that don’t need to be spoken, by the love of God, through the Triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit, creation continues to be renewed. Yet in this renewal he comes not as a high priest, but as the child of a single mother.
It is in this love that God wants us to welcome the Son into the world. Yes, the power of God could overwhelm all that is wary or evil in the world, but what is God without love but the Tyrant of tyrants? I prefer the King of kings my self! God in Christ holds back on exerting power on us so that we can come, returning in love out of gratitude; not out of cowering in fear. In love that speaks louder than words, God in Jesus calls us not just before we were born, but before He was born. That’s life being made new.
That speaks volumes.
This is the time for the warning: The Christmas Pageant I shared is nothing like the real thing. It wasn’t all clean and scrubbed. It wasn’t all neat and tidy. In truth, it was filthy and rank. Jesus wasn’t born in the wonderfully sterile setting of our crèche. The Holy Family arrived at night. It was cold.[3] Nobody at the inn bothered to make enough space for two more people. They went to the stable, a cave, not a barn like we usually see.
This cave probably wasn’t well ventilated. Sure enough the stable-boy showed up to clear the floor of livestock urine and feces in the mornings, not after dark. Let’s also consider that this stable held ox and camel as well as horse or donkey. The aromas are nothing we could ever have a grip on because we don’t know the time, the place, or the livestock. This is where Emmanuel, God with us, entered our world.
From the womb of a girl who feared for her life, lain in a crevice hewn from rock and lined with straw, this infant-the least powerful member of any society; our Lord came to Earth in the most precarious of ways. This is the message that should speak volumes to us. Christ is Lord, the all powerful God Almighty. Jesus arrives as the weakest amongst us.
This is Micah’s point, showing that the messiah will come from the most humble of origins to rule over Israel . From humble beginnings, “He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they will live securely for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. And he will be their peace.”
This is what Mary is blessed for believing. She is blessed for believing that in God truly all things are possible. With her very life at stake, she believes she is blessed by the coming child. When she needed reassurance the most, when her life was in the balance, she received the blessing not only of her cousin but of her cousin’s unborn child, another child of the promise. This is not the doll too precious to be touched. This is the Christ who was born to live to die to rise again.
Let the rich and powerful beware, this is the scandal and one of the unspoken lessons of the incarnation: Jesus doesn’t only sympathize with the weak; he came as the weak so that we may know his strength. Not by miracles but by his presence; he is Emmanuel. Come O Come Emmanuel, God with us. Just ask Elizabeth . Without words, Jesus speaks volumes by his presence and the company he keeps.
[1] True story!
[2] Don’t think this isn’t still true today.
[3] If you want to remind me that the December birth date was named as a point of celebration as a means of evangelism and not necessarily a historical fact I will remind you that in an arid climate the nights get chilly because of the lack of humidity to hold the ambient heat. Even if it wasn’t December, it was chilly.
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