Luke 1:39-55 39 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40 where she entered Zechariah's home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43 But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45 Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!" 46 And Mary said: "My soul glorifies the Lord 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me-- holy is his name. 50 His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. 51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. 52 He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. 53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful 55 to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers."
If you’ve ever sat in the dark long enough, you know that your eyes begin to adjust after a while. The initial shock of the darkness makes you momentarily blind. Then as time goes on, your pupils dilate and eventually your eyes adapt to the change in light and you are able to see again. Maybe not as well as when the lights were on, but a little bit better than when you started. Your eyes become sensitive to the little light that is remaining, and change so that what little light is there now becomes the norm. But have you ever sat in a place where there is no light? I don’t mean very little light, I mean no light. When the light leaves, everything goes black, just like when you first flip off a light switch at night, but then, when you expect your eyes to adjust, nothing happens. You can even feel your eyes struggling to pick up on any sort of light anywhere, but to no avail. Then, of course, the tell tale sign of whether or not you can see is to put your hand a foot in front of your face. When there’s a little light, you usually say that you can’t see your hand, but sometimes you can. But when there’s no light, you do say that you can see your hand. The tricky thing is that you’re not really seeing your hand, but your mind is playing tricks on you. It knows that your hand is supposed to be there, and it pretends to see your hand. When there’s no light, you convince yourself that you can see.
I would be willing to bet that there’s not a person in this room that doesn’t know what Christmas preparation is all about. Even if you don’t have gigantic plans for this Christmas season, you’ve seen the preparation in the form of traffic on the roads, or paranoia or stress in neighbors, and family, and friends. You’ve seen people get tired and burned out, and all for the sake of what? To give presents to another person? To set aside time to spend with those you love? It seems like people stumble around for one, maybe even two months at a time, without even knowing what they’re looking at. We’ve been given eyes to see what’s going on, but our brain has tricked us into seeing something else.
When I think of Mary, I think of the criticisms I hear directed towards young pregnant unmarried women today. It’s not too favorable, is it? Aside from the snide comments made by her classmates, she hears from those in the community that she is irresponsible, out of control, a deviant, immoral, corrupt, and that she has ruined her life. You see, I hear that and think, that’s how it was for Mary, too. Mary would no doubt go on to hear ridicule, and scorn, to hear shouts cursing her and calling her a miscreant. People would see her walking around with Jesus inside, and utter some of the harshest insults that they could muster. People would see with their eyes that this young unmarried woman was pregnant, and they would call her out for what they see as unacceptable behavior, but again, they missed what is really there to be seen.
This interaction between Mary and Elizabeth in today’s Gospel, gives us the piece that has been missing, the thing that has been there, but we haven’t been seeing: God. God gives meaning to everything that goes on around us. You see without God, this season would be just a bunch of busy little ants scurrying about from place to place with no purpose for living. Without God, Mary and Elizabeth would not be remembered in any books as anything significant, except maybe that they were kind people. Without God we would be sitting in the darkness staring into the pitch black and convincing ourselves that we could see things as they are when we really can’t.
John, in
Without God, there is no meaning to what we do day in and day out. We could be kind if we wanted, we could be cruel if we wanted, we could love, or we could hate, it would make no difference. But because of God, everything has meaning. Because of God, Mary is lifted to be blessed by all generations. Because of God, John sits up gives his mom a kick and says, “See what’s going on here, God is coming!” Because of God, we no longer sit in darkness with our minds fooling us into telling us what is real and what is important.
We give gifts, because of what God gives us, we spend time with family, because God came to spend time with us. We rejoice because we, who were low and sitting in the dark, have been given vision and meaning to all that is around us. We, like Mary, have been blessed to be the favored ones, and we, like Mary, like the church before, and after us, are blessed to have God give meaning to our lives, and purpose to everything around us. Amen.
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