Luke 1
Listen here:
There was visit from an angel and a moment of ecstatic, mystical prayer. With joy, she had consented to God’s action and presence to bring about new life and a new world through her body and soul. But then reality’s weight bore down on her. She was on the wrong side of all history’s power struggles, a poor, brown-skinned, Jewish, unmarried, teenager whose community and, by some accounts, fiancé, had rejected her when she got pregnant. I imagine her sick, struggling to nourish her body with food, confused by the familiar friend of her body changing, exhausted, and feeling deeply alone.
But then she remembered something else the angel had said. He had visited her beloved older friend and cousin Elizabeth too, some months ago. Maybe a visit to her could help settle her soul? Mary found the energy and hope to travel into the country to see her. She arrived at Elizabeth’s home to find all the familiar smells and the warm light and the creature comforts she recognized in this home away from home. Her shoulders dropped. She could breathe better. She didn’t have to explain to Elizabeth all she felt and all that was happening. Elizabeth knew right away by the tone of her voice and greeted her with nothing but love. But then Elizabeth spoke and perhaps she took Mary off guard. She did not offer her the words of compassion and solace she had expected. Instead, she told her “blessed are you.”
We live in a culture where the word ‘blessed’ has become a confused hashtag, littering captions of pictures of vacation sunsets and fancy meals on social media. We have understood the result of a blessing – the experience of beautiful joy. But we have perhaps willfully forgotten the process of becoming blessed, which demands transformation. To be blessed requires letting ourselves be turned on our heads by God’s love for the sake of bringing about God’s realm. Imagine Jacob wrestling the angel for a blessing. This is the same spiritual work Mary is doing at this moment to embrace God’s Love at it is taking shape in her life. It takes courage and grit and remembering that we are not alone. Elizabeth, 6 months pregnant also with the help of the Divine, knew this in her bones. I imagine her seeing Mary’s confused face and explaining this blessing to Mary, like theo-poet Jan Richardson does here:
With every step
you take,
this blessing rises up
to meet you.
It has been waiting
long ages for you.
Look close
and you can see
the layers of it,
how it has been fashioned
by those who walked
this road before you,
how it has been created
of nothing but
their determination
and their dreaming,
how it has taken
its form
from an ancient hope
that drew them forward
and made a way for them
when no way could be
seen.
Look closer
and you will see
this blessing
is not finished,
that you are part
of the path
it is preparing,
that you are how
this blessing means
to be a voice
within the wilderness
and a welcome
for the way.
I imagine that when Elizabeth finished speaking, Mary sat quietly and pondered it in her heart, like we are told she has a habit of doing. I imagine tears that had been held in too long finally began to fall in the relief. I imagine she felt her ancestors, Hannah and Miriam who had walked this road before, near her. I imagine she remembered the stories she had heard countless times of them bearing in their very bodies God’s prophets and promises too. I imagine she could hear the old hymns they were said to have sung in the cracking old voices of her grandmothers and aunties, songs she didn’t particularly like but found comforting now nonetheless. And then, as though remembering her future from a dream, I imagine she began to sing through her sickness, exhaustion and tears a new verse to those old hymns, steadied by Elizabeth’s presence:
‘My soul magnifies my God,
47 and my spirit rejoices in You, my Saviour,
48 for you have looked with favour on the lowliness of your servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is your name.
50 Your mercy is for those who fear you
from generation to generation.
51 You have shown strength with your arm;
you have scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52 You have brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
53 you have filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
54 You have helped your servant Israel,
in remembrance of your mercy,
55 according to the promise you made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.
I imagine Elizabeth knew the tune and joined her. It was song made better in harmony. And in singing it, Mary knew again the original joy she felt the night the angel first visited her. She remembered how he told her she was to be, like her ancestors before her, a God-bearer. She was to gestate, to form in her very being, the powers that would render the great transformation of her life and the world around her. She was to birth the Love, to bear Love, to raise Love into its full power to fill those who need filling and humble those who need humbling so that all may be well.
On this Sunday when we sing Mary’s joyful song, we remember the particular story of a young, unmarried, brown-skinned, poor, Jewish girl who was shunned for her pregnancy. We remember her particulars so we can see her today. Too often we still reject the women like her who show up among us. We see their swollen bellies and teenage bodies and we project moral poverty or religious fundamentalism. We see them crossing the borderland dessert and detain them, instead of treating them as refugees. We see them show up at school trying to continue their educate themselves and the distance from school to prison pipeline too often becomes small. We fail, like Mary’s community, to see that they too might be God-bearers.
But there is another way. Mary doesn’t stay an outcast. Elizabeth sees her blessedness first. She offers her sanctuary for three months until Mary knows and remembers her blessedness as clearly as she knows her own breath.
We also can join the revolution Mary proclaimed when she claimed that she was blessed. Because we also can claim the revolutionary potential of each of our bodies and souls to be God-bearers. All of our bodies are made to bring Love into this world, to bear the blessing of the inevitable and often painful transformation Love leaves on our lives. All of our souls are made to magnify the Holy. May we be Elizabeths to each other and the world this Advent season, bearing witness to the Love and Holiness in each other that we alone cannot see. And then may we too join in Mary’s song.
Look closer
and you will see
this blessing
is not finished,
that you are part
of the path
it is preparing,
that you are how
this blessing means
to be a voice
within the wilderness
and a welcome
for the way.
Recent Comments