Psalm
16; Luke 1:39-56
Third
Sunday in Advent 2013
It had been about 2:30 in the morning
when the joyful news was heralded to my heart.
In what had felt like forever, I’d been alone in a half-lit hospital
room in Newark, OH very expectantly waiting for it. For various reasons I’d been instructed by
medical staff to stay put there. I
recall feeling overwhelmingly exhausted, fearful, hopeful, and excited all at
the same time. But then there was a truly tremendous burst of
profound joy when a nurse finally appeared to offer the words, “Mr. Gelson, you
have a daughter.” That moment announcing
Anna’s arrival happened fifteen years ago yesterday. And
the memory of it leads to me to also reflect on the equally amazing joy that
arrived with the birth of Rebecca on a mid-summer evening two and half years
later.
The magnificent elation of those
moments continues to fill my life right up to this very hour. Experiences such as this, as well as many
others that inspire the same intensity of positive, life-impacting emotion, are
much deeper and more lasting than mere flare-ups of happiness. Happy feelings are wonderful … but we all
know that they can also be quite fleeting and sometimes seem downright elusive.
When truly deep joys happen, however, they
move into a permanent home in our hearts.
They live on in a formative, foundational way through all of our changing
life circumstances. Faithfully speaking, they are holy gifts from
the continuously good, creative, saving and sustaining presence of God.
I invite you take a moment right now to think
on and thank God for the holy joys you’ve experienced in your lives. Review your most precious relationships,
those times when your life took powerfully blessed turns, when God made a way
when it seemed there was no way, the instances when you felt most healed and
hopeful. Doing so now and every day is
a way of profoundly thanking God for your past and present. And I believe it also keeps you faithfully expecting,
seeking and confirming God’s loving presence in your life and in this whole
world.
In this morning’s familiar lesson
from Luke’s Gospel, we are told about the day two ecstatic relatives, Elizabeth
and Mary, got together to celebrate and confirm the arrival of holy joy. In their time together this faithful elation
was magnified, so much so that they came to fully realize that the miraculous blessing
they had each received was for the purpose of preparing the way for holy joy to
fully enter the whole world.
Elizabeth’s miraculous blessing was
the son, to be named John, whom she was carrying in her womb at what Luke’s
Gospel informs us was an advanced age. Her
pregnancy was a joyfully unexpected reversal of her long-standing heartache and
social disgrace. She and her husband
Zechariah, a priest of the great temple, had been unable to conceive. This had led them to experience considerable
social shame in the culture of their day.
The miraculous and joyful news of a
way beyond this was first delivered to Zachariah while he was attending to his
temple duties. And it came by way of a
person he understood to be the angel Gabriel.
He was not only informed that they were going to have a child, but that this
son, to be named John, would have the power of the great prophet Elijah. Through the Holy Spirit, his life was to become
one of calling the people of Israel back to God in preparation for the arrival
of their long-awaited Savior. Though
Zechariah initially found this announcement unbelievable, after a period of
time in contemplation and continued faithful service he returned home and the
holy news came true.
Further confirmation and celebration
of this divine blessing occurred when Elizabeth was a visible six months pregnant. Her much younger relative, Mary, engaged to
a carpenter named Joseph, traveled with “haste” to see her at that time. She had her own remarkably joyful news to
share, for the heavenly one known as Gabriel had also appeared to her, saying the
words, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you!” And
Gabriel did not mean just spiritually, it was meant quite literally, declaring
that she had been favored by God to bear a child by way of the Holy Spirit. This child was to be named Jesus. This son, it was explained, would grow to be called
“great” and “the Son of the Most High” and would be given the faithful kingdom
of his ancestor David.
Understandably, Mary couldn’t quite
believe this was to happen to and through her.
After all, she was just a socially marginalized, poverty stricken young
woman trying to start a new chapter in her life. But those angelic words had also sounded so familiar
… they were old words, special words that her people long cherished, words of
promise of the One who was to come and redeem her people from sin. And what an incredible joy to be chosen by
God to bring God’s love into the world so intimately, so fully. Her son
was also the Son of God! Further
addressing this, Gabriel told her what was happening with Elizabeth and assured
her that nothing is impossible with God.
Responding with tremendous faith,
Mary then declared herself a humble servant, and proclaimed that all should be
according to the holy words. She then went with a whole lot of hurry up to Elizabeth’s
house. Upon arrival, the joyful holy
truth of it all was fully confirmed when John jumped for joy, gave a solidly
expectant kick in Elizabeth’s womb. In
that moment, “the future mother of the forerunner” recognized the “future
mother of the Messiah.”[i]
Continuing to faithfully and humbly respond,
Mary then gave voice to all the voiceless in the world by breaking out in a magnificently
magnanimous praise song, one that was not a solo aria, but a full on chorus of
God’s amazing, liberating love for all of humanity oppressed and marginalized
by the power of sin.
I hope you took good note of when
holy joy entered Elizabeth and Mary’s lives most fully. It wasn’t when their lives had a lot
happening to nurture hope. It wasn’t
through moments particularly pregnant with joyful expectation. Holy joy was instead announced right amidst hard
life realities, truly humbling and uncertain circumstances, the deep sorrow of
the lonely and oppressed. God chose this
unexpected way to birth the full presence of holy joy to the world -- our
Savior’s reign. It’s the holy joy of
the cradle and the cross. “Where is the
divinity, where is the might of the child?” asked one fellow believer, before going
on to answer, “in the divine love in which he became like us. His poverty in
the manger is his might,” and “only the humble rejoice that God is so free and
so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human
beings. God marches right in.”[ii]
With humility, where in our lives
and in this world do we trust God is marching in? Where do we proclaim the most holy joy that God’s
surprising, life-transforming, redeeming love is on the move?
I feel compelled to share this in
closing, given that yesterday was the one year anniversary of the horrific tragedy
at Sandy Hook elementary. First grader
Emilie Parker was gunned down that day.
I recently watched a short video featuring her mother Allissa’s voice as
narrator and many beautiful, joyful photo images of Emilie’s time on
earth. Allisa reported that for a while she “felt
consumed by how evil can be so powerful, and that evil won.” But then, she continued, “The letters started
to pour in, and these letters over and over were accounts of the power of God’s
love. There was an overwhelming response
from millions of people, well-wishers, people praying for us, people sending us
things.” Then, with what I hear as a
note of holy joy in her voice, she further explained, “I truly started to feel
this obvious strength and power that lifted me, lifted my family.”
The Parkers responded to this divine
gift by faithfully seeking ways to keep alive the holy joy of their Emilie.
This led to the birth of several new initiatives for positively transforming people’s
lives. These include supporting arts
programs in schools via the Emilie Parker Art Connection website, co-founding a
school safety advocacy group, and financially supporting emergency response
medical care in Guatemala. “The only way
good can be in us,” Allisa faithfully proclaims, “is if we freely choose it over
all else. Evil didn’t win that day,
we’ll carry on the love that Emilie had.
It’s quiet, it’s not on the news, it takes effort to find. But what I’ve realized through all this is
how strong and big God’s love really is.”
Amen.
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