A Seam of History - (a sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church, Hawley, PA on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 19, 2021.)  Scripture Reading: Luke 1. 39-56 

       The village of Ein Karem in the hill country of Judea is the place traditionally associated with Mary’s visit to the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth.  Paul Simpson Duke, a pastor from Michigan visited the village.  He tells of a contemporary sculpture on display and the artist’s attempt to capture the moment the two women met. He writes:

            “Here the two women stand erect and very close to each other. Their faces are carved smooth and almost expressionless, except for their slight smiles.  Mary’s hands are on her hips; Elizabeth’s arms hang straight down, open-palmed, while her torso tilts slightly backward, as women in later pregnancy will often do.  The result is that the two women’s bellies—Elizabeth’s well rounded and Mary’s barely convex—are very nearly touching. It is as if the two women are physically introducing their sons, who will be, like their mothers, wonderfully related and strikingly different.”[i]

            Duke continues, “This dynamic—of deep kinship embodied in indispensable difference —is always present in the community of Jesus.”  He explains that “This is powerfully exemplified in the bond between Elizabeth and Mary. Both women bear in their bodies the children of promise, given wondrously by the Spirit; but they draw near to each other from different ends of more than one spectrum. Elizabeth, married to a priest, is established, secure, and known to be “righteous…living blamelessly according to the commandments.”[ii] Luke said that when he introduced Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah, earlier.

            On the other hand, Duke points out, “Mary, unwed and suspiciously pregnant is socially the opposite. They also come from different ends of the spectrum of age and expectation.  Elizabeth in her old age arrives from a circumstance too late for a child; Mary in her virginal youth comes from a circumstance too soon for a child. John is a miracle after the ending; Jesus is the miracle before the be-ginning.  The slim space between the two women (in the sculpture) turns out to be a seam of history: the child brought forth by one them will close an age; the other child will inaugurate a new one. From an Advent perspective, we see that, like Elizabeth and Mary, we stand in the between times, and like them, as different as we may be from each other, we are ‘expecting’ and rejoicing together.”[iii]

            It is tempting in the between times we are experiencing to exaggerate our differences to the point of thinking there is no way we might do anything together.  We stand in the middle of what appears to be another seam of history, with a time of cooperation, peacemaking, and building dreams together on one side, and a time of competition, troublemaking and tearing down on the other.  The faith exhibited by these two women, who trusted the promises made to them, offer encouragement to do likewise.

            Elizabeth and Mary standing belly to belly is a scene in stark contrast to so much of what we have been exposed to of late, where differences are so pronounced that our elected leaders talk past one another without even listening. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this brief visit to the Judean hill country could open some eyes to embrace the possibility of people who are separated by age and economic status and public perception, becoming allies working together?

            It might seem that one can only hope and pray about this, because it feels like there is nothing much we can do. But there is.  One can do one’s best to recognize the truth that what we share in common far outweighs what we don’t.  We can make sure we don’t replicate in the family, the church, and in our other associations, the attitudes and behaviors that divide. Instead, we can model modes of collaboration. We can seek out and pass along word of people working together for the betterment of all.

            First Presbyterian Church, Hawley Pennsylvania is uniquely positioned to understand what was taking place when Elizabeth and Mary brought their sons into the world.  One era was ending and a new one was beginning. On this last Sunday of Advent, the part of your journey led for so long by Bill, and then briefly by Joanne and Carl are now history.  On Christmas Eve your new pastor, Mark, will step into this pulpit as the journey you’ll take together begins.  As Elizabeth and Mary voiced their thanks to God for what God had done, they embraced a vision of what God had yet to do.

            Take another look at young Mary scampering off to visit Elizabeth. No one, not even that angel told her to go. It was her decision. Nothing is said about why she went, though Paul Duke raises a number of possibilities on the way to discovering something we need to remember.

            He starts by asking a series of questions: “Why does she go? For confirmation that the promise is true? For companionship with the only person in the world who would understand? For the nurturing wisdom of the older woman? For the privilege of helping her through the last months of her pregnancy? For a mutual quickening of courage?  For the sheer joy of it?”[iv]

            After raising the questions the pastor offers an insight: “Reasons such as these—confirmation of the promise, companionship with kindred hearts, the exchange of wisdom, support and courage, and the flourishing of joy—are among the very reasons we join together in the church. How can we not? The visitation is the first gathering of the community of Jesus. It invites us to recall how much we need each other, to draw fresh courage from each other, and to celebrate all we share as bearers of the promise together.”[v]

            Doubt what a blessing it is to have each other? Try getting here early enough to watch as the congregation gathers.  Hugs and handshakes and kisses may have been knocked out by Covid considerations, but there are fist bumps and elbow knocks, and good natured ribbing abounds. Quick conversations fill each other in on how the week has been. Stick around afterward as clusters form here and there and as the tables fill up for coffee hour. A fly on the wall would hear struggles shared and encouragement offered.  Keep your eyes open outside and you’ll see bags of hand-me-downs being transferred from one car to another for the kids or grandkids. And during the week, you might find yourself sitting at a traffic light and realize that the car ahead of you has one church member behind the wheel driving another to a doctor’s appointment.

            When Mary showed up at Elizabeth’s door, after the in-utero gymnastics of the Spirit inspired prenatal prophet in the older woman’s womb, the Spirit filled his mother, allowing her to really see who it was who came to call on her.  Like son, like mother and vice versa!  Elizabeth erupts with words that echo the angel’s promise Mary heard be-fore she hit the road:

“Blessed are you among women,

and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” she begins.

And after reporting on her baby’s sudden somersault, she adds one more blessing:

“and blessed is she who believed that there would be

a fulfilling of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

            There’s a whole lot of blessing going on here.  Note the two reasons Elizabeth gives for calling Mary blessed. She is blessed because she was chosen by God for a particular purpose, to raise God’s Son. She is blessed because she believed the word of God. Unlike Moses and Jeremiah, who tried to talk their way out of doing God’s bidding, Mary chose to accept being chosen. “Let it be with me according to your word,” she answered signaling her belief and willingness to be part of the new thing God was doing.

            That new thing was tied up with things God had been doing all along.   Elizabeth’s late-in-life nursery preparations recall God at work through Sarah’s womb back in Genesis, and brings to mind other women who were called “blessed among women” throughout the Old Testament. So does the song Mary sings when Elizabeth pauses to catch her breath. The memory of all these other “blessed among women” move us away from some of the Christmas Carol and greeting card portraits of Mary.

            After quoting some familiar phrases about Mary from the Carols we love, Jill Duffield exclaims: “It is no wonder when we envision Mary, we picture meek, mild, gentle, young, and vulnerable.”[vi]  Then she adds a quick survey of the “blessed among women” who came before her. She starts with Hannah, “the woman once so overcome with grief in the temple that Eli thought she was drunk” Once she dandled her son Samuel on her knee, she sings a song from which Mary borrowed a thought or two. Hannah laughed at her rivals, praising God ‘for blasting enemies out of the sky and leaving them in a burning heap. Nothing meek or mild or gentle here,” says Duffield.[vii]

             Next she points to Jael, who appears in the Book of Judges at the time when Deborah was in charge. Jael was labeled as “most blessed of women” after she lured the commander of a rival army on the run into her tent, gave him a cold drink of water and a place to sleep. While he slept she took a hammer and drove a tent peg through his head, eliminating the threat to her people. Again, blessed, but not for being meek or mild or gentle.

            Duffield tells of another woman who appears in one of the books included in the version of the Bible used by our Catholic and Orthodox cousins.  In the Book of Judith, the woman for whom it is named is praised after she tricks an enemy general and, gets him drunk.  Then, while he’s passed out, she wields a sword to send his head rolling. Hannah, Jael and Judith were hardly passive vessels. They were blessed among women for doing what needed to be done.

            That is where their connection with Mary begins and ends, doing what needed to be done.  Mary’s toughness and tenacity, first shown in her teenage trek from her home to Elizabeth’s pops up in the gospel stories whenever she appears. 

            When she and Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the Temple, Simeon told her “A sword will pierce your soul.” Twelve years later her heart was in her throat when he tarried with the teachers in the temple for three days before they found him.  Skip ahead almost two decades and there came a time when she showed up with his siblings to haul him home because they thought he’d lost his mind. And then came the day when, as predicted, her soul was pierced as her son drew his last breath on the cross.

            In contrast to the other blessed women of the Bible, Jill Duffield says Mary’s “is not to be a military victory accompanied by the cheers of her people. She will ponder things in her heart. She’ll witness the murder of her son. Mary alone bears God, ushering in the incarnation that will save not just Israel, but all creation. Mary births the Prince of Peace, not a judge or a prophet, an earthly king or a military leader. Mary exhibits her strength not through tent pegs and swords, but through giving her body to birth and nurture the one who will surrender his body on the cross. She is called blessed for generations not because she entices a military general into trusting her, but because she trusts God wholly.”[viii]    

            In God she trusted.  So did Elizabeth.  Each of them were blessed by being part of God’s plan.  Note well that being blessed is not a free pass to avoid life’s hardships. You just heard some of the hard times Mary’s heart had to ponder. We don’t know if Elizabeth lived to receive the news that her son was murdered.  William Barclay called it “the paradox of blessed-ness.” Reflecting on what some would label a mixed blessing, he said “To be chosen by God so often means at one and the same time a crown of joy and a cross of sorrow.  The piercing truth is that God does not choose a person for ease and com-fort and selfish joy but for a task that will take all that head and heart and hand can bring to it.”[ix]

            One of my early mentors put it this way: “Nobody ever said it was going to be easy.”  Never-theless, inspired by the Spirit both Elizabeth and Mary stepped up to the challenge. In today’s passage, each of them offers Spirit inspired speech.  Each of them expresses gratitude for what God has done.  Together these two women speak prophetically of what God will be doing on the other side of that seam of history.

            Echoing the words Hannah sang when Samuel was conceived, Mary begins her song with gratitude for having been chosen.  Before long she is lifting her voice to paint a picture of what God will do through the son she will bring to birth.  One scholar points out what makes Mary’s song so interesting: “It speaks of a future God will bring in through the yet-to-be-born messiah using past tense verbs. God looked, did great things for me, showed strength, scattered the proud, brought down the powerful, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry, sent the rich away empty, and helped Israel.  There is a sense, then, in which Luke is proclaiming that already at the point of awaiting the coming of the messiah, salvation is already a done deal.”[x]

            To the paradox of blessedness, we have now added what Wesley Allen, Jr. calls “the paradoxical prophesy.” He writes: “Already the reign of God has arrived, but when we look around at the world we plead that God’s reign might yet come. Is not this the paradox of Advent itself: Christ already came (born, preached, healed, opposed the powers-that-be, died, resurrected, and ascended) and yet we begin the Christian year waiting, preparing, and hoping for him to come?”[xi] 

            He continues: “At the center of the paradox is the concern for why Jesus came/is coming,” and goes on to say that while we often answer that in terms of being saved individually, “Mary will not allow us to think of individual salvation apart from Jesus turning the power structures of the world on its head.” He concludes: “As the beginning of the Magnificat that focused on the reversal of Mary’s situation cannot be separated from the latter portion that focused on systems of power being reversed, our salvation is part and parcel of saving the world.”[xii]

            What does that mean for us in this time and place?  It means that the God who was working then and there is also at work here and now.  It means that God, who called unjust and corrupt rulers to task through the prophets is still working to bring about change. As William Barclay put it so well, it means that in this seam of history, to welcome Christ is to work for a world, “where no one dares to have too much while others have too little, where everyone must get only to give away.”[xiii] Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

[i] Paul Simpson Duke, Connections—A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year C, Vol. 1, Editors: Green, Long, Powery & Rigby, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), p. 62
[ii] ibid.
[iii] ibid.
[iv] ibid, p. 61
[v] ibid.
[vi] Jill Duffield, Looking into the Lectionary blog; 4th Sunday of Advent, The Christian Century, Dec. 17, 2018, p. 1
[vii] ibid.
[viii] ibid, p. 2
[ix] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible, The Gospel of Luke, (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, Second Edition, 1956), p. 8
[x] O. Wesley Allen, Jr., “A paradoxical prophecy,” workingpreacher.com, Commentary on Luke 1.39-45 [46-55], for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 19, 2021, p. 1
[xi] ibid.
[xii] ibid., p. 2
[xiii] ibid. Barclay, p. 10