Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zecharich and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” (Luke 1.39-42)
With Christmas on the doorstep, the liturgical calendar brings the sacred texts ever closer to that blessed event, when heaven bent low, kissed the fragile earth, and bestowed new life upon it. So, mere days remaining, we are introduced today to Mary, a key player in the drama, the evangelist Luke doing the introductions.
Unlike his peer, Matthew, also prefacing his gospel with a story of introductions, but his attention on Joseph, Luke, in his own prelude, asks us to put our attention on Mary, the young girl favored by God, called to a special duty, asked for a simple yes to a profound question. Told of God’s need for a human vessel, Mary gives the answer that humanity, as a whole, had been unable to give the Most High God since the beginning, saying yes.
“Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word,” a compliance of human will with divine will found in her words, leaving little doubt as to why the angel calls her blessed, that is, favored, so stunning is her response in light of the long human history of non-compliance. With her yes, the axis of the world adjusted itself a bit, righted from the wrong tilt it had taken, the slow, cranking movement towards God starting after a long, dark winter.
“Shallow believers prefer a shallow God,” Toni Morrison writes in her book, A Mercy, an insightful, incisive statement if there ever was one, separating the world into those who are shallow believers and those who are deep believers. Mary, as we will see soon enough, is a deep believer in a deep God, finding herself often confused by the course of her life, but believing her steps are guided, directed by more than her two feet.
And so, Luke, so fond of journeys in his double-volumed gospel, begins with a journey, in this way his preface, or infancy narrative as scholars are wont to call it, becoming a miniature gospel, all the key themes placed in these first few pages, condensed and consolidated, but still carrying the sweet taste of good news that will stay throughout the remainder of his book.
And what is the journey that Mary, the girl from Galilee, makes here at the start? It is a journey from Nazareth to a town in the hill country of Judah, neither the name nor the distance told us because, in the end, every journey Luke presents to us, here and hereafter, is really about the journey to God. So, while her footsteps may lead her to the hill country, they are leading her at the same time ever closer to the God who calls humanity to return home to him.
Entering the house in the hill country, Mary greets another woman, unlike Mary in age, much older than the young girl, but very much like Mary in every other way, both women deep believers, not a shallow belief in either woman’s bones. And with the greeting, Elizabeth, also with child, experiences what every soul hereafter in these pages will experience when face to face with the good news. She feels joy.
Luke, finding a way to express the woman’s joy in poetry, rather than prose, for the moment is poetic, writes, “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’” There is no more perfect response to the good news, we could say, than a baby kicking up its heels in its mother’s womb.
And Elizabeth, feeling the kick, understands something is afoot and it is more than the feet of her baby to be born. She senses, as deep believers always do, that the Most High God is at work, his ways mysterious, but his footprints always visible to the eyes of faith. With joy, because good news is in the air, Elizabeth, old and too old to be dancing, still shakes a leg and does a spin or two, mother and babe partners in the dance, like David, naked as the day he was born, dancing before the ark of God as it is brought into Jerusalem.
“Blessed are you who believed,” Elizabeth cries out to Mary, “that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled,” kindred spirits in these next to kin women, both coming to see beyond the impenetrable veil, at least for a brief moment, the face of God, a face of mercy, as Mary knows now in her heart, mercy being the truth behind all good news.
“His mercy is from age to age to those who fear him,” the girl of Galilee says, tears surely flowing down the cheeks of two women hugging each other and hollering their joy. Not a subtle bone in his body, Luke’s intent is clear, from the first page to the last page, to announce the good news. And that good news is the mercy of God, shown here at the start to two women carrying babies, shown hereafter to lepers, tax-collectors, a bad boy returning home with a hangover and a headache, a black sheep or two, and just about anybody else who needs mercy as much, or more, than they need the air they breathe.
So that he can get on to the larger story, Luke brings to a close the visit between Mary and Elizabeth, stating that “Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home,” the time drawing near for her to give birth to the word made flesh, God among us, speaking, showing, bestowing divine mercy with every step of the way, beginning with shepherds on the hillside and ending with a thief on the cross, all blessed, all favored, all hearing the good news.
Luke, in the year ahead, will tell us story after story, not of judgment, but of mercy, whether in a prodigal father or in a good Samaritan, in a stubby tax-collector or in a sinful woman with a past. Each and everyone receives mercy, recipients of the good news that God is slow to anger and rich in mercy, and hearing the good news, their burdens are lightened and their steps quickened.
So, are we also prepared to hear the good news? Are we able to believe deeply, or are we, at best, shallow believers, unable to feel the hand of God wiping away our tears, unprepared to find his light movement beside us in our troubles, incapable of trusting that his mercy is from age to age for those who believe in him?
The answer, I suppose, is found in the presence or absence of joy in our lives because those who hear–really hear–the good news dance in circles like Elizabeth, leaping and leapfrogging and skipping like children in the schoolyard, unbothered by adult worries, living in the moment, finding grace in everything from butterflies in the breeze to birds in the branches.
That is the central message of Luke, here in this preface, later in his lengthy book, that we have every reason in the world to rejoice, for God has favored, not only a young girl in Galilee, not only an aged woman in the hill country of Judea, but God has favored all of us, blessing us, which basically means he sees us and he loves us and he forgives us for all the messes we make of our lives.
If we allow ourselves to believe Luke’s words, then we have to believe in the good news. And if we believe in the good news, then we have to live fully, joyfully, even playfully, not allowing the shadows to steal our smiles, or the naysayers to take away our happiness, or the setbacks to destroy our faith. We find the good news in every moment because we find God in every second of our lives, breathing his spirit into us, lifting us up, moving us one step closer to him.
And it is never enough, not near enough, to just think about it. Unexpressed joy is not joy, maybe a second or third cousin, but not in-the-gut joy. Already in the thirteenth century, a Catalonian mystic named Raymund Llul, wrote, “Lord, since you have put so much joy in my heart, extend it, I beg you, into my whole body, so that my face and my heart and my mouth and my hands–all of my members–feel your joy. The sea is not so full of water as I am of joy.”
Too old, but not too proper, not too stuffy to make a fool of herself, Elizabeth felt joy springing to birth in her creaky, achy body, a joy that moved all through her, in her face, in her hands, in her feet, and, as Luke says, she cried out in a loud voice and let it loose, joyful to hear the good news that God, in his mercy, was paying her a visit.
In a matter of days, heavenly angels will sing joy to the world. If we want to join the chorus, then we will need to practice our pipes, beginning now, so that we also can make a joyful noise at the good news soon to be born in Bethlehem. A short squeak or two is too little for the occasion, as Elizabeth makes perfectly clear to us, her response the only right response to good news.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 