Connections
Luke 1:39-49(50-56)
At this darkest time of the year, the time of year with the shortest days and the longest nights, I want to paint an image for you of light dispelling darkness.
One morning this past summer I got up early and wandered out onto our deck with a cup of coffee, as is my custom many mornings. The sun was coming up in the East, shining through the dark and the canopy of leaves with a brilliance that verifies for me that God is present in my world. I noticed a spider web created between the deck rails. It glistened with evidence of rain that had fallen during the night. It looked so fragile and yet every strand connected to every other strand with an amazing sturdiness and elasticity.
This is the fourth and final Sunday of the Advent season. Tonight after sundown, we will once again celebrate the incarnation, the nativity of our Lord. Tonight is Christmas Eve. But this morning we are still about the business of preparing our hearts for the coming of our Lord. We are still in the pregnancy of Advent. We are in the final stages of labor. But we aren’t preparing alone. We are laboring together in community. We want so much to prepare room for Him in our hearts, in our world.
Even if he is to be born in a stable, we want to welcome him with a warmth that only comes from the heart. We want to welcome him with a light that doesn’t come from Christmas tree lights or shiny packages. We pray for a safe delivery and a good life. “Let every heart prepare him room,” we sing. And we don’t sing alone but rather together in community.
They were cousins, Luke tells us. They didn’t live in the same town. Elizabeth probably lived in a town in the hill country of Judea (Ain Karim) about five miles west of Jerusalem. Mary lived in Nazareth about eighty miles north of where her cousin, Elizabeth, lived. That was quite a long journey in those days—eighty miles. They probably didn’t see each other that often. But their hearts were connected, like the strands of a spider web, in perhaps a fragile-appearing but sturdy relationship.
Their Advent season wove together two pregnancies—two periods of waiting and preparing. Their stories were strikingly different yet so very connected.
Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah, were both descendants of the priest Aaron and thus were raised to serve the temple in Jerusalem. In that day and age it meant Zechariah would serve in the temple as a priest. Elizabeth’s most important job was to produce children, especially male children who could carry on the priestly tradition. Luke tells us, “But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.”
Well to make a long story short, Zechariah refused to believe the angel, Garbriel, who visited him in the temple—the same angel who appeared to Mary. Gabriel told him his barren wife would bear a son and he was to name the son John. Indeed, Zechariah was unable to speak until his son was born and he named him John as he had been directed by Gabriel!
Elizabeth conceived and for five months she remained in seclusion. Unlike her husband, she believed in this impossible miracle and was filled with joy.
Meanwhile back in Nazareth, her cousin Mary was visited by the same angel, Gabriel. We know the events of that visit well. Mary is to conceive by the Holy Spirit and bear a son—not any ordinary son but the Son of God.
She was alone when the angel visited her. She was much perplexed by his words and probably afraid, but her final response was, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” But as accepting as she was, she still lived in a society in which unwed motherhood was totally unacceptable. Luke says, “In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country.”
I wonder if her father took her there to delay the scandal that was sure to erupt. Or did she ride a donkey as she was to do about eight months later on another journey? One thing is certain. This teenage soon-to-be unwed mother wanted to be with her cousin, Elizabeth. She must have felt a strong bond—a bond of acceptance that would defy conventional morality—a bond as strong and elastic as a spider web at dawn. She must have hoped for comfort and acceptance. She wasn’t disappointed.
Elizabeth is there to accept, affirm and rejoice with Mary. And those things coupled with Elizabeth’s unconditional love empower Mary to burst forth with her own joy.
She rejoices in the company of her cousin as she sings the beautiful Magnificat. It turns the values of the world upside down. It is the poor and the lowly that are magnified. It is the rich and the powerful that are brought down and sent away empty.
It was a day of celebrating double miracles—two most improbable pregnancies and two amazing advents.
The impossibly young and poor, the old and powerless are lifted up. Nothing is impossible with God. The bonds of the heart defy the bondage of society. Nothing is impossible with God.
On this Fourth Sunday of Advent, we pray that our Lord, at his coming may find in us a mansion prepared for him. He is coming once again into an imperfect world—a world tarnished and ravished by war and poverty. He is coming into a world that so often magnifies greed and power. He is coming into a world that so often rejoices in the wrong things. He is coming into a world full of injustice and disregard for the dignity of all people. But he still chooses to come. He looks beneath the façade of empty celebration. He still seeks a home in our hearts. He longs to enter in.
And our hearts expand to make room for him when we stretch them by strengthening the bonds of human relationships and extended community. We make room for him when we strengthen and build good connections between people. When like Mary and Elizabeth, we accept and affirm each other and rejoice in the goodness we find in each other, our souls will magnify the Lord and our spirits will rejoice in God.
There is beauty in solitude but there is strength in community. As we prepare our hearts to receive the Christ child, we must first look within to open our hearts.
And when our hearts are open to the Christ child we see in each other, we will see the beauty and strength that were there all along.
Let every heart prepare him room!
Amen
The Rev. Betsy Porter
December 24, 2006