Advent 4 2018 – An ordinary miracle.

23 December 2018

A young woman has received momentous news, which is by turns wonderful and terrifying: she’s pregnant.

It’s not a planned pregnancy, and the timing isn’t ideal, especially given the journey they have to make in the third trimester.

But she and her fiancé, after the shock has worn off, are excited.

The young woman feels compelled to go and see someone who will understand: a family member who is going through, if not exactly the same thing, something similar enough that there will be empathy, and support.

This impulse is something that is easy to understand.

Many of us will be familiar with the stories that are shared by women in particular, about the joys, challenges and indignities of pregnancy and childbirth.

Sharing funny, profound, or horrible stories tells us that the experience, whatever it is, is not one we have to go through alone, and that others have been where we are.

But for this young woman, something else is going to happen on this visit.

Because this young woman’s pregnancy is in one sense unique.

Mary is going to have to tell her cousin about the visit of an angel, and what she has agreed to do.

She is going to have to persuade her cousin that, remarkable as Elizabeth’s pregnancy might be, Mary has a story to top it.

She never has the chance to tell that story.

Because Elizabeth KNOWS.

This too may be familiar to a lot of people.

Whether it’s actually true or not, many mothers/sisters/aunts/friends will claim that they knew a woman was pregnant either before she did, or before she tells them.

Here too though, that trope is added to.

Not only Elizabeth, but Elizabeth’s unborn child, recognise that Mary is pregnant.

And there is also a recognition of who that child is.

Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. ⁴³And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? ⁴⁴For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. ⁴⁵And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’

Elizabeth is overjoyed, not simply at the fact of the pregnancy – but at who the child already is.

‘Lord’ has already been used repeatedly in the Gospel, in relation to God.

It occurs multiple times in the story of Zechariah, and his encounter with an angel in the Temple:

Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense (Luke 1. 11).

And it has just been used in the encounter between Mary and Gabriel, when Gabriel says to Mary:

‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ (Luke 1. 28)

There are not many occasions in the Bible where we see a scene between two women, where they have all the dialogue.

They do exist. Naomi and Ruth spring to mind, but there are not many of them.

This scene shows two women engaged, on the surface, in a conversation common to millions of women, sharing in the joy and anxiety of pregnancy.

Within that conversation though, we clearly see God at work.

The incarnation – Jesus’ birth, and life, and death – is about God transforming the ordinary stuff of human life and death.

The everyday, boring, uncomfortable, painful or ridiculous stuff of human life.

God’s presence in Jesus Christ tells us that all of this, and all of us, are precious to God – that it, and we, are priceless.

There are layers and layers to this scene.

I’ve said that this scene – featuring two women – is remarkable in the Bible.

What adds to this, is that these women have each of them, have faced disgrace in their community – Elizabeth because of her inability to conceive, and Mary because of her unplanned pregnancy.

God has chosen these women, not only to bear children who will themselves change the world, but to be prophets themselves.

Both Mary and Elizabeth articulate powerfully who God is, and what God does.

They too, are powerful voices.

And they are blessed by God. Not simply in the sense that they have been given good things.

Elizabeth says:

And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord’.

The word that Elizabeth uses is akin to that of the beatitudes – a sense of divine joy. Righteous, and joyful before God is Mary, because she has believed God has done as God promised: to lift up the lowly, and save God’s people.

Mary’s own Spirit-filled response has become one of the great songs of the Church, sung or said daily here in the words of the Magnificat.

We will sing the words ourselves in this service, in our final hymn, Tell out my soul.

Within that song is a sense of primal exultation that God is good, God is faithful, and God is present.

Countless women through the ages have rejoiced at the news that they will have a child, and countless others have shared in that joy, and supported them.

God, whose Spirit hovered over the face of the deep at the beginning of the world, and in whom we all live, and move, and have our being, has been present with each of those women.

For God has always loved, and cared for his creation.

But with this story, and with this pregnancy, we glimpse more clearly than ever, the richness of that love.

Here our Lord enters our human nature, and so experiences the joys and sorrows of human life.

Over the next couple of days we will hear the story of how Jesus was born, not in a royal house or hall, but in a stable dark and dim, the word made flesh a light for all.

But for now, this morning, let us rejoice with the women of Jesus’ family.

These women whose humanity and faithfulness was honoured by a faithful and loving God, and whose ordinary human experience was transformed by God’s spirit.

Ordinary women whose courage, compassion, and faithfulness mean that we too can rejoice, in God’s presence with us, and can join in the song.

Tell out, my soul, the glories of his word!
Firm is his promise, and his mercy sure.
Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord
to children’s children and for evermore!