December 23, 2018 – Luke 1:39-55
Luke 1:39-55
One Christian is No Christian
4th Sunday in Advent – December 23, 2018
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Why does Mary run “with haste” to Elizabeth when she finds out she is pregnant?
We can only surmise she is scared.
She has just discovered she is pregnant.
She is as young as 13 or 14 years old.
She is not married – and in Mary’s time and place, that is a precarious position to be in.
At best she will be an object of ridicule and scorn.
At worst she could be stoned.
Mary is afraid – young, and afraid, and seemingly alone.
Why doesn’t she run to her mother?
We’ll never know – but it might be for the same reason that pregnant unwed teenagers
even today hesitate to tell their parents about their condition.
Now here’s the thing.
She is experiencing her pregnancy as a bad thing, as a scary thing,
as maybe even a life-threatening thing.
But the angel Gabriel – who has just finished talking to her in the story –
has told her . . . it’s a great thing!
It’s a world changing thing!
He has called Mary favoured!
He has said she is favoured to have all this happening to her!
But she cannot experience this yet.
For her, this is difficult time, a tough time.
And so she flees, presumably, to someone she can trust, to someone who loves her.
She runs to her relative Elizabeth.
Now this is an act of desperation, clearly.
Elizabeth is not just in the next town over – she is 60 miles away!
It would take Mary – this young, pregnant girl – two days at best to get there!
Now, as Gabriel told her, she finds her relative Elizabeth pregnant.
Now for Elizabeth, who was an older woman who had not been able to become pregnant before,
the pregnancy is a blessing.
It was shameful for a woman not to be able to conceive in the ancient world.
So she is filled with blessing –
and the first thing she does on seeing Mary is call her, too, blessed!
Blessed are you, Mary! Blessed are you! she repeats.
Now the thing to note is that
it is not until Elizabeth blesses Mary that she can feel blessed herself.
She goes to a person who loves her, and this person who loves her tells her,
“You are making this day special by just being you. I’m right here with you, Mary.
You are blessed.”
After this Mary famously sings her amazing, utterly unlooked for song.
A song of revolution and hope.
A song that has been banned in some countries at certain times for its revolutionary fervour.
A song that announces that through the child Mary bears God intends to change the world,
and turn it upside down!
A song that invites the listener to imagine what the world would look like if Jesus were sitting on
Caesar’s throne rather than Augustus and what it would look like if he were ruling with
peace and gentle justice.
Yes: it is a blessing to bear this one into the world.
Yes, she is now finally able to say: I am blessed to be able to do this.
I am blessed to participate in this, to be able to bear something – someone –
beautiful into the world.
But it’s only after Elizabeth names her blessed that she is able to see herself as blessed.
The philosopher Blaise Pascal once said, “One Christian is no Christian.”
And that is most certainly true.
We need one another, and we need communities of people to fulfill the mission God gives us.
Most of all we need one another to name us blessed.
To see us as full of beauty – beauty that we can give birth to.
We need one another to name us blessed, worthy, dignified.
We need each other to name one another as being full of gifts to share.
We all need our Elizabeths to run to when we are afraid and when we cannot see the
beauty and potential of our lives.
We all need our Elizabeths who see the beauty in us.
We need a pastor who tell us, “You are making this day special by just being you.”
Because then we will see it ourselves.
And we will realize that Mary is not the only one pregnant with the divine.
We will see that each of us has the ability to birth something – someone –
beautiful into the world.
One Christian is no Christian.
We need one another.
Together we can make a big difference and bring something beautiful into the world.
We do it every week.
Every Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
But we also need each other to continue to keep on doing that.
Somebody said to me this week, Maybe people don’t realize what an important place our
Church has in the lives of its members and particularly in the life of this neighbourhood.
Maybe.
We are a small community but we impact literally thousands of lives.
It’s Christmas so hopefully we’ll all be watching It’s a Wonderful Life at some point.
This year, when you do, imagine that George (played by Jimmy Stewart) is instead
First Lutheran Church.
If there were no First Lutheran Church, there would be
no good news proclaimed and embodied here at Sargent and Victor every single Sunday.
No food banks every week, no free kids programs every Sunday of the summer,
no relationships nurtured week after week after week.
No hope for the world proclaimed.
No one to name you, and this community, and this neighbourhood blessed.
One Christian is no Christian – we need each other.
My PAR challenge is designed to help us pull together as a community in a tough time.
To help each of us realize that we are all part of something together,
and that we all have something to contribute – that we need each other.
That all of us have something to contribute – even $20 a month.
On its own, that is not a lot of money for most of us.
But together, if we each do it, it makes an enormous difference,
the difference between First Lutheran Church and No First Lutheran Church.
So this morning, I am going to be your Elizabeth.
You have come here in the midst of your own wonder and difficulty.
And I am going to name you blessed.
And, even better, you are going to name one another blessed – in the way you
care for one another and in the way you greet one another.
You are going to see the blessing in one another.
And so you are going to be able to see the blessing in yourself.
And, for another week, you will share the blessing that you have in yourself.
Like Mary, you will bear Christ and his blessing of forgiveness, grace, and justice
into the world.
You are blessed.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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