Yes!?
Advent 4c, December 20, 2015 (Luke 1:39-55 with Micah 52-5a in b.g)
Means - focusing on 1:46 (and the entire magnificat)
Once, not so long ago, a Pastor received a call. This wasn't just a phone call, but a call upon his life. A rural congregation was asking him to come and be their Pastor. So, he and his wife got into their car and went to visit these people. They drove up to the church building on a cold, rainy late September day. A group of mostly men came out to welcome them. Together they walked into that church building – small, dank, only heated on Sundays, no running water. The men wore coveralls and high topped rubber boots. The visit went well. The people spoke. The pastor listened. He responded to their questions: Who was he - what did he really believe? What really mattered to him in life, in the world, in the way a congregation might respond to God's calls upon their lives? Would he, could he actually love them and lead them as they were?
As the visit ended, the Pastor walked out to his car accompanied by the president of that congregation's church council. The president, an older man, said to the Pastor, "You know Pastor, we are JUST farmers".
Those words still embed themselves in that Pastor's mind – JUST farmers!
That Pastor accepted their call, God's call upon his life, to become their Pastor. Over their years together, that Pastor witnessed God moving, literally working in among and through those people. They grew food not just for themselves but for people around the world. How hard they worked - often beginning before sunrise and lasting until after sunset. They labored in barns and fields, shops and schools, kitchens and church buildings. The dirt in their lives wasn't just under their nails or up their nostrils – it was literally part of their DNA. They were in constant touch with birth and death. They actually lived in the midst of all of that - in and with their livestock intermeshed with the lives of all the people around them. In all of this their Pastor witnessed them sharing the love of God in Jesus Christ not just among themselves but also very specifically within a 20 mile radius of their church building.
They helped not only other church members but anyone who was ill or had been injured. They gathered for and celebrated births. They also wept with each other around death and illnesses that pervaded their little community, particularly the malady of multiple sclerosis. Often, without realizing it, they were doing what God was calling them to do. How they sang on some Sundays! It mattered not that they were accompanied by an old organ and themselves had limited musical education. Their souls would magnify God their Lord. To be sure some of them may have felt that they were just farmers. But the Pastor could often see God living, breathing and loving through them.
This day we meet two amazing women – Elizabeth and Mary. At first glance some might say that Elizabeth and Mary were JUST two poor, relatively uneducated women from a little insignificant country that was often under siege. Some might even say that Elizabeth and Mary were just two unimportant women – even disposable people by the standards of the most important nation of the world, the Roman empire.
Who is to say? At times Elizabeth and Mary may have even felt that way about themselves.
To be sure their lives weren't easy. Elizabeth was married to a priest. Her marriage was stable. She had some community status as a priest's wife. But – and this is a huge BUT – Elizabeth and her husband didn't have any children – nary a one. In that time and that place, she was referred to as BARREN. She was treated as different - not in a good way, in the eyes of her entire community. She was seen as LESS THAN.
For years she had been praying that she might have a child – BUT NOTHING- FOR YEARS. And now – now that she is SO OLD, now suddenly, SHE IS PREGNANT. It's unbelievable – AND NOT WITHOUT RISK!
On the other hand, Mary is young and engaged. She has not had sex. And yet, unbelievably, she is pregnant. In her time and place women could be stoned for being impregnated by someone, anyone else, who is not their husband or fiancée. Even given all of this, Mary knows, seemingly inexplicably, that somehow the child growing within her is of God. But who will believe her, her amazing story?
She heads off to visit her relative, the much older Elizabeth. Just as Mary enters Elizabeth's house and speaks, the miracle baby growing inside of Elizabeth's womb, leaps.
Now these two women are caught up by and with each other, by and with what is happening in and through them. Neither of them are less than! Neither of them are just this or just that. GOD IS WORKING IN AND THROUGH THEM FOR THE GOOD OF THE WHOLE WORLD!
As this incredible realization begins to dawn upon them, Mary breaks into song.
There can be new life for the world! God is the One working on this - in most unexpected ways! God is keeping God's promises!
Just when you least expect it God shows up big time – in and through people we may never have guessed – old people, young people, poor people, people that many might think of as being unimportant, less than, irrelevant - just kids or old women, or.........
Can't we see? Christmas is coming!
And where are we? Where are you – in your awareness of God's presence with us, God's calls upon our lives?
We experience so many realities: excitement, anticipation, anxiety, resignation, hope, despair, love, loneliness, energy, exhaustion, faith, doubt. We are complex people. Is it any surprise then that our thoughts, our feelings are so many?
But know this! As Mary and Elizabeth and their expanding bodies encounter us this morning we can see, we must see that GOD IS AT WORK! God strives to keep God's promises in the very middle of our often muddled and messy lives – in the living of this crazy, horrible, wonderful world. Christmas is coming and God's work is unfolding!
Amid the horrible losses that we behold in Edmonton and Syria, in Burundi, Paris and California, that we witness and contribute to in our own broken or damaged relationships – even here, God is working.
God is also at work in the abiding, faithful care of people – who gather in nursing homes, in hospitals, doing their best to care for parents, partners, children, friends, former acquaintances whose health is failing. They continue to journey together no matter what!
And yes, God is also at work in congregations of all sizes and shapes – whether we gather in small buildings, no buildings or great cathedrals. God is at work among people of all ages, sizes, shapes and colors – of varying abilities and educational backgrounds.
You see God's gracious and redemptive word is being carried in and through Elizabeth and Mary's bodies in particularly important ways. God's good and gracious word is also intended to be carried in and through other "ordinary" people, people like us, including us.
God does the unthinkable. God is coming to take on frail human flesh in order to free us and all people from the power of death and evil, so that light, abundant life, love and hope may be shared and known among us.
Even now the babies that Elizabeth and Mary carry are being born, living, kicking, crying and die. But – we must know: they and their mothers have not lived nor died vain!
In this moment and this place, God wills to be at work in and through us. Dare we listen? How are we responding?
Often I see God at work in and among you. Might we join Mary in her "yeses", in her seeing that sometimes we need to be humbled to have our eyes opened, our ears unplugged, our hearts warmed, our minds stirred, so that we can behold God working around, in and among us now.
Christ is coming. Because of Him, no one, not a single person is 'less than' or 'just this' or 'just that'.
All are loved by God. All are to be loved. Some are still waiting, so desperately longing to experience that. And we, we are being called to share that love. Will our souls join Mary's in magnifying the Lord?
Our lives, similar to Mary's can be "yeses!" Amen.