Year C. 4th Sunday of Advent
December 24, 2000
Lord of the Lake Lutheran Church
The Rev. Jerry Morrissey, Esq., Pastor
Heavenly Father, thank you for your unexpected grace and the Word of promise that we have inherited eternal life because of your Son. Amen.
Title: “God’s Grace.” Luke 1: 39-45 [46-55]
Mary, pregnant herself, visits the pregnant Elizabeth to help her deliver John the Baptist.
Both Matthew and Luke depend on Mark for much of their information about Jesus. They pretty much follow his schema of Jesus, an adult, baptized by John, preaching first in Galilee, the north, and then in Jerusalem, the south, where he is put to death. However, both Matthew and Luke add two chapters to the beginning of the story as Mark tells it. We call these introductions “Infancy Narratives,” for the want of a better term. They both draw on traditional stories about the birth of Jesus that circulated at the time among Christians. While not inconsistent with each other, they are not exactly the same and the differing details demonstrate they are not straight history. They are primarily meant to edify Christians by telescoping the entire gospel message into the infancy and early childhood period of Jesus. They are based on rather stereotyped Old Testament patterns of great births recast to fit each evangelist’s purpose. Matthew tells the story from Joseph’s point of view using the dream pattern of telling of great births. The annunciation is to Joseph in a dream. He is informed in a dream to go to Egypt. Luke tells the story from Mary’s point of view using the Old Testament birth announcement pattern. He does this for both John and Jesus and links these two stories by telling the story of the visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, our gospel reading for today. Without this story the two births would be parallel but unrelated.
Luke demonstrates his great ability to compress a lot of theology into a verbal picture of a down-home, rather folksy scene. He turns a rather ordinary visit of two pregnant relatives, one to help the other give birth, into a lesson on the relationship of the Old Testament with the New Testament. Elizabeth, a woman, and John, there, but not visible, represent the Old Testament. Older, long-in-waiting for the Messiah, pious, one of the ‘anawim, the “remnant” joyfully greets the new kid on the block, not-quite-born, yet alive, recognizing him for who and what he is – the One Who is to Come for his “official visit,” Parousia, younger, yet greater than John and the Old Testament, yet related as a cousin. Mary represents the Church, carrying within her the Messiah and Lord, respectful of the old, yet delivering someone and something far superior, delivering it with joy, for the salvation of all. As such, she, the Church, brings to completion, helps to deliver, the best of the old, John is, according to Jesus, the greatest of those born among men and women because it the Old Testament prepared for the new. This is a friendly passing of the torch among cousins, not a hostile take over. Like John himself, this story functions as a bridge, teaching Christians and Jews alike the relationship between the Old Testament and New Testament.
In verse 39 Mary set out: When Gabriel told Mary about Elizabeth’s pregnancy, he put the bug in her ear to go and help her. Luke makes a subtle point that the Word we receive, even when it concerns us, also has implications for our service to others.
To a town of Judah: No precise location of Elizabeth’s house is given, but it is clear that they are country folk living three or four days journey about 80-100 miles from Nazareth.
In verse 41 when Elizabeth heard…the baby leaped: On one level this uterine reaction can be explained as rather normal. A pregnant woman easily transfers her emotional reactions to the fetus. However, on the deeper level, it means that John was quickened, enlivened, empowered, “filled with the Holy Spirit” even from his mother’s womb according to Psalm 139:13 which reads, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” John was quickened by Christ, the one for whom he would exercise his mission. Jesus is the source of John the Baptist power and the one who commissions John’ to foretell events about Jesus by Jesus divine inspiration. We, too, who met Christ in Baptism as infants received the same power without realizing it.
In verse 42, “cried out in a loud voice”: This signifies excitement, joyful praise, or inspired utterance. Elizabeth gives verbal expression to the meaning of her inner experience. She interpreted the physical facts with faith. This is the meaning of “filled with the Holy Spirit.” Inspired, she saw it as an expression of her baby’s joy and knew what happened to Mary without having to be told. By what was going on within her, she was able to see into Mary’s situation. Most blessed are you among women: This is a Semitic way of saying, ”Of all women you are the most blessed.” The word “blessed” (Gk eulogete) translates the Hb barak. It pertains to earthly bliss, God’s favor to humans shown in material and social gifts to them. The word is also used by humans to “bless” God in the sense of praising him for bestowing those gifts. Elizabeth uses this word twice in this verse; also “blessed is the fruit of your womb”. She is referring at this point to the “this worldly” evaluation of the event, Mary’s “claim to fame.”
In verse 43 My Lord: “Lord” is a Lucan expression for the divine nature of Jesus. Its use here shows that Elizabeth recognized Mary’s child as the Messiah and so did John. Of course, the Baptist was not at this point capable of conscious recognition. John 1:3f indicates John did not recognize Jesus until his baptism. We have other indications in the Synoptics that John questioned whether Jesus was in fact the Messiah –at one point. Here the point is made, quite subtly, that the faith of Elizabeth caused her to bestow on her child a faith it could not otherwise have, like what happens in infant Baptism, and the infant’s movements, responses, caused her to see with her faith eye and interpret the meaning of the event. Elizabeth expresses attitudes which the Baptist will express himself when he is an adult. “Who am I?” says the same thing as the Baptist’s “I am not worthy to loosen his sandals.” There is no resentment in Elizabeth that Mary has trumped her pregnancy with an even greater birth. “He must increase, I must decrease,” her son will say later, but he learned it from his mother, Elizabeth. That John never gave in to the temptation to claim to be more than he was can be traced to his mother’s attitudes at his “baptism” here.
In verse 45 blessed are you who believed: The word that is translated “blessed” here is different from the word used twice in verse 42. Here it is Gk makaria. In Gk usage it expresses the happy, untroubled state of the gods, and then, more generally, of the rich who are free from care. It is usually translates as “happiness, luck.” It is the word behind the beatitude form, “Oh the happiness of…” This is divine bliss, a bliss unaffected by the circumstances of earthly life. The bliss referred to in verse 42 is circumstantial – God was good to Mary and her baby, making them special people. The bliss referred to here is the result of both divinely given salvation, hence, Jesus is not said to have received it, only Mary, and accepted by the person, Mary’s “Yes”. It is not something one seeks. It results from grace. It is spiritual joy because of salvation. Elizabeth congratulates Mary on her accepting trust in God’s word. This is a blessedness greater than the earthly blessedness of being the physical mother of the world’s savior. Had she herself not accepted salvation, she would have only been the biological mother of Jesus, but not saved. It was her keeping the word that made her makaria, divinely blessed.
Mary’s visiting Elizabeth and staying with her to help her deliver her baby is a very human and a very family thing to do. It is a model for all of us on how we are to relate to our relatives and friends, and really all people. Mary was pregnant herself, so she had a good excuse to stay at home and take care of herself. However, Elizabeth was up in years and was apparently quite grateful for Mary’s companionship and assistance. It was probably scary for both of them. So, they supported each other, like any family would. There is no mention that Mary brought gifts, only herself and her personal qualities. This is also true of families. True, we might bring gifts on special occasions, like Christmas, but we know that they are not the real gift. We bring ourselves, often empty handed, but full-hearted, and we are always welcomed and welcome. Just like Elizabeth did to Mary. Despite their differences in age and the special nature of their pregnancies and who would bear whom, Baptist or Son of God, they must have really enjoyed the thrill of being in the same blessed, though risky, condition and being able to be together for a while and savor the moments. Families do not always get together to celebrate good events. Sometimes there is death, disease, or tragedy. Yet, even in these times, the mutual presence and support go a long way in helping each other to get through the bad times. However, this was good time and they seemed determined to make the most of it.
We cannot live twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, with all the people we love and who love us, so we do the next best thing and visit regularly or as often as possible. Even though we may have separate homes we set up a sort of temporary tent when we visit relatives and friends and we mutually feel at home. We share food and drink and stories, but mostly we share our lives. It’s the smiles, the laughter, the smells, the sounds of the voices, familiar clothing, furniture, and that indefinable “familiar,” love, that enriches, enhances and intensifies our experience of life, an experience we could not have with just anyone, only ones we actually shared life with, no matter how long ago that might have been.
Those shared experiences could not all have been good, and, or pleasant. Brothers and sisters might remember fights. Parents and children might remember disappointments. Friends might remember betrayals. Yet, what a teacher visiting relatives and friends can be! We learn to forgive, to value togetherness over apartness, love over being right, the present over the past. We might choose our friends but we do not choose our relatives. We do not always like each other and never like everybody. Yet, we are willing to tolerate, overlook, and discount negatives for the sake of family unity. We learn that we can indeed get along with people we do not like, because deep down we do love them anyway. And we realize something else: we are just as hard to get along with and like to others as they are to us. When we realize that we can laugh to ourselves about ourselves, be grateful that loving is stronger than liking, and maybe even learn to enjoy what and whom we originally felt we did not like. We learn that we are as human as everybody else and are capable of changing our opinions as we adopt the attitudes of God. We learn that the more we love the more lovable we become and that, in itself, is incentive enough to love even more.
Elizabeth, containing within her John the Baptist, the last and best of the Old Testament, and Mary, containing within herself the firstborn of the New Testament, teach us that a whole lot more goes on underneath when two people who love and care for each other meet in a visitation. Underneath the surface the New Testament, Jesus, was enlivening the Old Testament, John, cousins not rivals. But Elizabeth and Mary had to meet for that truth to happen and be revealed. The same is true of our visits, our meetings of the minds. God is at work underneath the surface doing a whole lot more than we can realize at the time. Yet, over time, it becomes clearer to us how he was present to and within us from the first moment of our sacramental conception, Baptism, and remains so no matter where we go or what happens to us. That conceiving moment is our defining moment, defining not so much “who” we are, but “whose.”
The other day, we here at Lord of the Lake Lutheran Church baptized an infant. Amber Nicole Reeves, she did not act humble; Amber Nicole Reeves is a helpless baby who cannot so much as feed herself. Yet, from the time she took shape in her mother’s womb, she has learned what it means to trust: to trust the constant nourishment and the dependable heartbeat of her mother. She learns to believe that her mother will be there to get her out of the regular messes that she finds himself in. As the years go by, she will learn that her mistakes will not jeopardize the love she needs from her family. In the Church She will learn the meaning of her life as a child of God through the sacrament of baptism.
Luther taught us that the baptism of an infant is the most nearly pure sign of grace that there is. A baby has absolutely no claim to make on God’s grace. She will have no memory of her baptism. For this reason the Church will stand as a witness to the fact that she has been baptized. Her mother and godparents will testify to the fact that God made a promise to her long before she had anything herself to offer. Her adoption into the God’s family is pure gift.
We do not baptize her for any decision that she made. We baptize her because of a decision that God made, a decision to have mercy on us frail, dependent children of dust. Beset upon by temptation, limitations, loneliness, and anxiety, she too will try to secure her own life without respect to God. But she will have the promise of her baptism to draw her back to God. For you see in baptism we die to the self without God and are reborn to the self with God. She is a child of God and is marked with the cross of Christ forever.
There will be those who later on question the validity of her baptism. They will explain that true baptism occurs in response to her faith. As an infant, they will declare, she had no faith. Let me assure you that as an infant she has no less faith in her Lord than did John the Baptizer who leapt for joy in his mother’s womb when Mary greeted Elizabeth with good news of God’s own visitation with his people. In baptism we all have God’s promise. We do not worry about whether we had enough faith. Away with worry! Replace it with trust in the promise made tangible with water and the Word. If we stick on the question as to whether we had enough faith when we were baptized, we will fall into the trap of being baptized every time we experience doubt. But if we direct our trust in the God who commands that we be baptized, we will return to God every day by claiming the promise that God has made to us: to be with us always, even to the end of the age. Amen.
