Sermon:  “Heartbeat of JOY”

Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts and minds here together be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”

Every year about this time, we get to hear this “Annunciation” story from Luke –– the Angel Gabriel brings the “Good News” of the coming birth of Jesus to the young Mary.  And then off Mary goes to tell her relative Elizabeth.  Looking backwards through the rosy lenses of faith history, it appears to be a beautiful scene.  I love those glorious altar paintings of the Italian Renaissance that show Mary and Gabriel with all those rich colors and enormous gold frames.  They make gorgeous Christmas cards.  But with all those images and our 20-20 hindsight, we forget how bad it must have really been for Mary.

This year, when we were reading the story aloud again in our Thursday Bible study, I heard something I hadn’t ever heard before – this line, “³⁹In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, ⁴⁰where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.”  You know, that’s not the most quotable Christmas verse.  You’re not likely to find that one on a Christmas card.  That sentence kind of flies past us – like somebody else’s stage direction.  We don’t really notice it because it’s just a transition to get Mary to Elizabeth’s house, where the important stuff happens.  It’s too bad we don’t have pew Bibles with Mapquest on-line, because if we did, we could see what an incredible trip that would be for a young girl from Nazareth.  It’s probably 60 miles.

That week-long hike from Nazareth up into the remote Judean hill country – that would be a trip that a girl Mary’s age would only dare to take in a well-armed caravan.  I mean, young women in the Middle East today, in many of these countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, grown married women aren’t even allowed to be out in public alone – much less drive a car or go on any long-distance trip without a male relative to chaperone.  It would be unheard-of for a young unmarried Jewish girl to try that alone.

See, we have the benefit of 2,000 years of Bible stories, songs, sermons, and oil paintings to gloss over the reality that Mary had to face back then, when she had only one angel vision to convince her of this incredible prophesy.  Sure, the angel did say, ³⁷“nothing will be impossible with God.”  But don’t you think she would have doubted her own eyes and ears after a few days or weeks?  What Sally showed us as she played Mary years and years later, when Jesus is just beginning his ministry with his cousin John, is how hard it can be to hold on to the promises of God when the outcome isn’t looking very good.  Mary had God’s promise, but she did not know how exactly it all was going to turn out, or what suffering might be required of her before it was over.  The biggest challenge she’d have to face once people found out she was pregnant would be just staying alive!  Under Jewish law, she might be stoned to death, or at the very least, cast out of her family or village in shame. She had a small window of time between the Angel Gabriel’s visit and when people would find out about her pregnancy, so she needed to figure out quick what to do next.

So, that’s how it really was.  That’s what I realized.  We know the whole story and how it ends, but to her parents and their friends, to all of those people in Nazareth – when Mary “set out and went with haste” toward the south, toward Judea, she probably was seen as just another teen-age runaway.  She was on the run for her life.

In that light, the word “low” Mary uses to describe herself doesn’t begin to name how she would have been treated in her culture.  So when Mary arrives at the door of her relatives Elizabeth and Zechariah – Luke 1 tells us they are both from important priestly Jerusalem families – when she gets there, she has no idea how she will be received.  I’m sure the baby wouldn’t be the first thing Mary would want to talk about with her most religious relatives.  She might want to work into the subject of prophesy and angel visions kind of gradually – you know, to kind of sound them out first.  So Mary, pregnant but not yet showing, must have been astonished when she calls out to Elizabeth and the older woman responds, “blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

The text says, “Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ⁴²and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”   It’s no wonder that on hearing that Good News, Mary bursts into song!  ⁴⁶“My soul magnifies the Lord, ⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”  I mean, it had to be a real prophesy – how otherwise could Elizabeth know?  At that moment, Mary must have known it would all turn out OK.  How could she keep from singing?  The “Magnificat” is verse that probably was chanted – in the Jewish worship style – by Mary and by the early church.  It was music that came from deep in Mary’s soul, from the heartbeat of her joy. 

But how did Elizabeth know?  Somehow Elizabeth feels the baby in her womb leap for joy and her heart leaps with it.  This is how the Holy Spirit works, right – then as now?  The Holy Spirit moves – sometimes in a work of music, or in visual art, or in an inspiring moment out in nature, or during just an ordinary visit with friends and family we love –however it happens, we feel the heartbeat of joy and our souls get lifted up in a new way.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit, our joy gets restored and we feel the call to new life.  Mary and Elizabeth show us this miracle of transformation, through the joy they found in the midst of the hardship they faced.  If they could sing with joy and hope to their broken and oppressed world, so can we.  

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.

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Luke 1:26-55

²⁶In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, ²⁷to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” ²⁹But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³²He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” ³⁴Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” ³⁵The angel said to her, “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. ³⁶And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. ³⁷For nothing will be impossible with God.” ³⁸Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

³⁹In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, ⁴⁰where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ⁴²and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. ⁴³And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? ⁴⁴For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” ⁴⁶And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, ⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. ⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. ⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”