December 20, 2015 – Luke 1:39-45
Luke 1:39-45
Elizabeth Welcomes Mary
Fourth Sunday of Advent – December 20, 2015
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
It’s the season of gathering together and it’s the season of travelling.
It’s the season of making plans to get together and visit and catch up.
It’s the season for being intentional about getting together,
with family and friends and
with those we love and those we miss and those we don’t often get to see.
I don’t know if Mary knows it’s Advent and Christmas and if
that is why she seeks out her elderly relative Elizabeth.
Probably not because Advent and Christmas hadn’t been invented yet.
All the story says is that when she learns she is pregnant she goes “with haste” to
the hill country in Judea to see out Elizabeth.
And you wonder about that “with haste”: what’s the hurry?
She’s pregnant: maybe she has to pee!
Or was she just so happy she was pregnant that
she was going to share the good news with Elizabeth?
Probably not.
Here’s the thing: Mary is perhaps as young as 13 years old.
She is unmarried and she is pregnant.
Her prospects for a good marriage – or maybe any marriage – have just been dashed.
And without a marriage of some kind she would live a very precarious life in that culture indeed.
She has brought shame to her immediate family with this unmarried pregnancy.
And it gets worse.
In her culture the penalty for someone in her position could be being stoned to death.
Even worse: Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah is a priest, right?
That makes Mary part of a priestly family.
And the penalty for someone from a priestly family in Mary’s position is to be burned to death!
We don’t know why Mary chooses to go to see Elizabeth, exactly, and not someone else.
We don’t know what their relationship has been like up to this time.
But for one thing Elizabeth does have this going for her: she doesn’t live in town!
And Mary clearly needs to get out of town.
The further away the better.
Elizabeth lives a long way from Nazareth in Galilee: it’s not just the next town over:
it’s at least 60 miles away!
Which is long way to go back in the day, and a really long way to go on foot:
at least a couple days’ journey, a couple long days’ journey.
Even if you’re going in haste.
Far from the pleasant social call we often envision this to be, this is an act of desperation.
Mary needs to get out of Dodge.
But I think there is another reason why Mary decides to visit Elizabeth.
Mary is, in the eyes of those around her, a shamed and disgraced woman.
The butt of jokes and gossip and talking – a young woman now without honour.
The thing is: Elizabeth undoubtedly knows precisely what that is like.
Not because her shame is precisely the same.
Far from becoming pregnant out of wedlock, Elizabeth has never been pregnant at all!
In the ancient world, a woman’s primary role was the bearing and rearing of children.
Your worth was based primarily on your ability to have children:
If you couldn’t bear children you were of little worth.
And post-menopausal Elizabeth has been barren up to the age when
she presumably can no longer do that.
She has undoubtedly been the butt of jokes, and gossip, and talking.
She, like Mary, is a woman without honour.
She knows what it is to feel shamed.
And so Mary seeks out this relative, perhaps the one person who can understand how she feels.
Mary is an isolated woman seeking companionship in her distress with
someone who can understand it and feel it with her.
When Mary arrives, she finds Elizabeth 6 months pregnant with her own child,
just as the angel Gabriel told her.
That child will become Jesus’ preaching and ministry partner John.
When Elizabeth greets Mary, she does not criticize her, she doesn’t wag her finger,
she does not chastise her, she does not shame her, and she does not turn her away.
What Elizabeth does is welcome Mary –
And not unlike the way the father welcomes back the prodigal son.
And far from naming her Shamed, she names her the complete opposite!
She names her blessed! Literally it says she names her Happy! Makarios!
Happy for trusting that God is at work for life in this pregnancy!
And so Elizabeth takes Mary in and cares for her and rejoices with her.
The words that Elizabeth uses in calling Mary “blessed among women” echo a
famous old story in the Old Testament.
They echo the words of the prophet Deborah in Judges 5, who similarly names a woman
“most blessed of women.” (Judges 5:24)
Deborah praised a woman named Jael.
Jael is praised because as an Israelite woman she took the enemy general Sisera into her tent.
She treated him very nicely.
He asked for water and she gave him milk.
She brought him curds in a lordly bowl.
Maybe she batted her eyelashes him. I don’t know.
But what I do know is that when he wasn’t suspecting a thing she took a tent peg and
drove it through his head! Ouch!
The story says: “He sank, he fell, he lay still at her feet; where he sank, there he fell dead.”
Well, no kidding.
And so Jael is praised for protecting Israel through killing and named Most Blessed of Women.
But Mary, I think, is here contrasted with Jael:
whereas Jael attempted to bring peace through killing,
Mary is praised by Elizabeth for trusting God to bring peace by bearing life.
Mary is praised by Elizabeth for trusting God to be at work in her and through her,
for trusting God to bear life and peace through her.
Friends, it is the season of visiting and catching up and sharing news,
some of it good and maybe some of it bad.
Luke knows that none of us is free from distressing news.
Mary had distressing news – her future and even her life were in danger.
But she goes with haste to one person – just one – who will understand.
Who knows a little what it is like.
And that is enough.
For Elizabeth has the wisdom to recognize that that is not the end of the road for Mary.
That shame need not define Mary.
She welcomes Mary as blessed – she does not turn her away as shamed.
Luke is inviting us to welcome one another in our shame,
perhaps even those we think of as shamed.
Whether it’s a friend, or an acquaintance, or a relative, or a stranger, or even a Syrian refugee.
Luke is inviting us to welcome them – and see in them the potential for bearing life.
To see in one another not the shame, not the failure, not the disappointment:
but instead to see in one another the potential,
the ability we all have to bear life to one another.
Everyone one of us has it: that is the great good news in this story.
And the thing is: it will lead to more good news.
Elizabeth keeps Mary safe long enough for her to deliver her child.
And that child will grow to be one who, like Elizabeth,
welcomes the shamed and the dishonoured, and blesses them,
and sees in them the ability to bear life.
And even recruits them for the purpose of bearing life in
healing and feeding and forgiving and welcoming.
Today that child will do it again as he welcomes you to this table and
feeds and forgives and blesses and strengthens you – who does not turn you away,
but who instead promises to never let you go.
Who sees in you the potential to bear life, his life, the life of love he gives you here.
What does the carol say? Be born in us today: that we may bear his life, his love,
his blessing, his forgiveness, his honour.
And in some way, that welcome we receive from him here begins
in the welcome he himself received when
his mother Mary was welcomed by Elizabeth all those years ago.
This Advent and Christmas, when you greet one another, when you seek each other out,
when you visit with relatives and friends and strangers.
when you volunteer here at First Lutheran or elsewhere:
May you see in each person, no matter their circumstances, the ability and potential to bear life.
May you strengthen that ability in each person you meet.
May you bless them and rejoice with them, may you condole and comfort them.
May you extend the companionship you find at this table in the company of one who
himself was spurned and rejected and knows what that is like.
And in that welcome and in that extension, may you find peace, and life, and blessing and joy,
despite your circumstances, this Christmas and always.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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