Luke 1:26-45
December 19, 2021
There is this amazing scene in the
musical, Hamilton – there are an abundance of amazing scenes in Hamilton
– but there is one in particular that I am thinking about. This is a
scene
in the second half of the show and the song is “Your Obedient Servant.” Aaron
Burr believes that Alexander Hamilton, this orphaned, illegitimate, nobody from
nowhere has thwarted his aspirations and kept him from taking his rightful
place on the world’s stage. So, Burr writes his accusations of this to Hamilton
in a series of correspondence. The tone of each letter gets darker and darker,
and it ends with Burr calling Hamilton out, calling him to duel, to meet him at
Weehauken and dawn. But what is ironic in this song is that no matter how
accusatory and dark each letter his, they always end in the same way.
“I have the honor to be your
obedient servant, A dot Burr. A dot Ham.”
It is a very brief, but a brilliant
twist, a brilliant and revealing moment of incongruity. This signature sign-off
of both men sounds civil, but it is really just a thin veil over a bitter and
ultimately deadly enmity. I doubt either man really felt like an “obedient
servant” of the other, and even it that was customary etiquette, neither would
have felt any honor in having to express it.
Although I don’t really equate the
musical Hamilton with the story of the annunciation by the angel Gabriel
to Mary or the visitation between Mary and her kinswoman, Elizabeth, I can’t
help but wonder if some would have seen Gabriel’s name for Mary as being just
the slightest bit ironic or incongruous.
“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is
with you.”
The reason I lift Gabriel’s
proclamation to Mary as incongruous, is because no one else in her world would
have probably considered her to be favored by God. She was young, really young
– quite possibly no more than 13 or 14 – and although she was betrothed to
Joseph, which would have been a stronger and more legal bond than our
understanding of an engagement, they were not yet married. And now she is
greeted by this angel who tells her that she is favored by God and that she is going
to have a baby. And that this baby will be the Son of God. And this baby, this
Son of the Most High, will be seated on the throne of David, and he will reign
over the house of Jacob, and “of his kingdom there will be no end.”
Mary
gives her consent to God’s work in her, and she does not question the truth of
what Gabriel says, she only asks how it will be possible, but I wonder if there
might still have been some fear in her. She believes what the angel has told
her, but will others? In any other circumstance, a young, betrothed girl
getting pregnant before marriage would have been potentially disastrous. It
could have brought shame on her and her family, on Joseph, and this baby who
was now growing inside of her. The reality was that under the tenets of the
Law, this pregnancy could get Mary stoned to death. At first glance, without
the benefit of knowing the rest of the story, Gabriel calling her “favored
one,” seems almost cruelly ironic. How could she possibly be favored by God
when she has been thrust into the strangest and scariest of situations?
Along with telling her about her own
upcoming child, Gabriel also tells Mary about Elizabeth, Mary’s relative.
Elizabeth and Zechariah, like Sarah and Abraham, were old and had lived for
years without children. This would have been Elizabeth’s shame to bear.
She would have been seen as the barren one, as the one who had failed, who had
clearly not been blessed by God. But Gabriel tells Mary that Elizabeth, even in
her older age, was now six months pregnant with a son. See Mary, Gabriel tells
her, what is impossible for humans is possible for God. Nothing is impossible
with God, not Elizabeth having a baby in her old age, and not you being the
favored one who will bring God with us into the world. Then the angel leaves
her.
Some others might have fled to their
homes to think about this, stayed behind closed doors to ponder what this will
mean. But Mary didn’t stay put after this life-changing, world altering
announcement. Luke tells us that “she went with haste to a Judean town in the
hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.”
This would not have been like
running next door or down the street or even across town. Mary was in Nazareth,
and Elizabeth was in a Judean hill country. This would not have been an easy trip;
more likely it was closer to an arduous journey. But Mary made it with haste.
Why? Did Mary need to confirm what the angel said for herself? Did she need to
see Elizabeth to know whether or not what the angel said was true, or to
convince herself that she really had been visited by an angel? Did she need to
see the truth of Elizabeth’s pregnancy to fully believe and reconcile with the
truth that she was indeed the favored one?
Traditional biblical scholarship
does not like this answer. Mary’s faith would have been enough. There was no
reason to confirm the angel’s words. Mary going to see Elizabeth was just all
part of the plan.
And maybe it was. But let’s take the
scholarship out of this. Let’s look at this story of a young girl, who gets
incredible, wonderful, and terrifying news. And yes, it would have been
terrifying.
And she hears that her relative Elizabeth is also having a baby. Maybe she did
need to confirm it for herself. Maybe Mary did need to see so that she could
believe. And maybe Mary needed to be with another person who would understand
what she was about to go through. Maybe Mary needed to be with Elizabeth not to
confirm her faith, but to give her courage for what lay ahead.
So, she goes with haste to see
Elizabeth. And when the two women come together, before any of this news is
shared between them, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy at the sound of
Mary’s voice. And Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit, and she cries out
in a loud voice, a precursor to her son also crying out in a loud voice,
“Blessed are you among women, and
blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the
mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your
greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed
that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
And with these words from Elizabeth,
Mary breaks into song. We know it as “The Magnificat.” Magnificat is the Latin
for magnify, which is Mary’s first words. “My soul magnifies the Lord.” Brent
and I sang a modern telling of it earlier in The Canticle of the Turning.”
And indeed, Mary gets it right. Her
song is about a world that has been turned upside down. It is not just that God
has come to her, a poor, humble, lowly girl, a nobody from nowhere, and turned
her life upside down, making her and her alone the favored one. Through her,
through this baby she is now carrying, the whole world will be turned upside
down. The expectations of the world will be reversed. The low will be made
high. The high will be brought low. It is a song of joy, but it is also a song
that should stop us in our tracks. It should make us reconsider everything we
thought we believed about the world and how it works, about God and how God
works.
But let’s go back for a moment. In
the midst of the Holy Spirit bringing forth prophecy and songs about reversal
and God working through the lowly and poor, we have these two women. In the
midst of the spiritual and the supernatural we also have the flesh and blood
and bone of the mortal. These two women, one very young and one very old, are brought
together not because they are related but because they are both carrying an
unlikely and unexpected child. They are both wrestling with all the physical
changes that come with pregnancy, with all of the fears and the hopes and
excitement and yes, the terror, that comes with expecting a baby.
Terror, because women and babies die
during delivery. Even today, with all our medical advancements, giving birth
can still be dangerous. Think about how dangerous and deadly it too often was in
Mary and Elizabeth’s context. They probably both knew women who had died giving
birth. Yes, this moment between them was filled with the Holy Spirit, but it
was also a moment in the flesh. It was a powerful moment; a life-changing,
world changing moment. But it was a moment found not in the spiritual realms
but in the earthly ones. And therein lies its power.
Because that is the power of the
incarnation, isn’t it? That is what we are longing for, waiting for, preparing
for, remembering what has already been accomplished, and waiting for it to be
accomplished once more. The incarnation is not just about a spirit divorced
from the flesh. The incarnation is about God entering into this messy, frail,
fragile flesh of ours and through that incredible, wonderful deed pronouncing
that the flesh matters. Our bodies matter. This earthly word we live matters.
Creation, the physical manifestation of God in the world, matters.
And this young girl and this older
woman were not just empty vessels that the divine used. They were real people
with real hopes and dreams and fears. They were frail and flawed. They were
flesh and blood. But God worked through them. God worked through these two
women – and it is not often in scripture that two women are the leads in a
story – God worked through these two women to turn the world upside down. Mary
sings that her soul magnifies God. In this young, unlikely, unexpected girl,
God does something wonderful. Through her, through Mary, the world was turned,
and the world is turned and the world will be turned. That is what we are
waiting for. That is what we are hoping for. That is the source of our peace
and our joy and, indeed, our love. God made the world turn upside down through
real people, through unlikely people, through Mary, through Elizabeth, through
unlikely, unexpected characters throughout scripture, through us. Mary was the
favored one, but aren’t we all? Not because we have carried the baby Jesus into
the world, but because God loves us. God loves us, and because God loves us,
and because we are all created in God’s image, we are able to love – to love
God and to love others. The world is about to turn.
Let all of God’s favored children
say, “Alleluia!”
Amen.
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