 |
|
 |
|
Home
|
||
|
Worship Times Refreshments & Christian Education Nursery Services Provided Handicap Accessible All Are Welcome!
A Congregation Of The |
From December 24, 2006 Immediately preceding today's encounter between maiden Mary and her mature cousin, Elizabeth, the angel Gabriel has shared with Mary news nothing could ever prepare her for. So beautiful is Mary's spirit, so strong is her soul, so pure is her heart that God has invited Mary to help in fulfilling God's greatest promise: the gift of the Messiah. It's a magnificent moment, the one Gabriel and Mary shared. But even more magnificent is the way God, working through Gabriel, patiently waited for Mary to consent to being the mother of the Messiah. But that's a sermon for another day, another Advent. This morning we center our attention on the scene that follows the annunciation. This moment, the one Mary and Elizabeth share today, is brimming with blessing. Blessing that can bless us, as well. Pregnant with our savior, Mary makes haste to the home of Elizabeth. She travels at great risk; it is a three-day journey to her cousin. Now surely Mary has many women she knows and loves. And if circumstances had been more ordinary, she might have turned to any one of them. And any one of them would have told her how to get comfortable at night when her belly grew so great that she couldn't sleep. Any one of them would have wanted to help calm her fears about what to do when the baby decided to come. Any one of them would have shared hints about tending to a newborn. But Mary doesn't race to her aunt or to her grandmother or her sister-in-law. She hurries to her elder cousin Elizabeth, arriving breathless and full of news she is still struggling to understand. Pregnant, unmarried, a peasant: if God has found favor with her, the world will not. The world might decide to do to her what it has done to other maidens who find themselves with child but without a husband. They could easily stone to death for her shameful condition. Mary hurries to Elizabeth because Mary trusts Elizabeth will understand. That Elizabeth will shelter her. That Elizabeth will recognize that God was all wrapped up in this pregnancy, even though it sounds like craziness. Thank heavens for Elizabeth. And for the Elizabeths in our lives. And yet how many of us aren't sure who our Elizabeth is. Every Sunday afternoon I do this: I visit for a few minutes a website that reminds me of this hard truth, this painful reality that for many there is no Elizabeth. The website I'm referring to is postsecret.com and it features anonymous postcards sent in each week by people wanting to unburden themselves by revealing a secret of some sort. They come in every shape and size, these secrets do. Some of them are decades old, some are as fresh as yesterday. Some express guilt, others shame. Some describe actions taken, others express regret for actions not taken. It's not uncommon for people to write in to the website once they've seen their secret posted there. They say how healing, how freeing, how important it was to know that their secret wasn't secret anymore. Never in human history has it been easier to communicate with whomever we wish, whenever we wish, for whatever reason we wish. We have email and instant messaging. We have cell phones in our pockets. We can take an incoming call when we're already on the line. We have pagers and voicemail and caller ID. And yet how many of us lack what Mary had: a sense of rightness about who to reach out to, who to share with, who to run to. To have the right person to go to is a blessing. To know exactly who it is who can share in the news we bring--to go to that one confident that when we rap at the door, it will be flung open with love and whole-hearted understanding--this is a blessing. A blessing we see Elizabeth does not hesitate to impart because the Spirit has given her eyes to see. "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!" Elizabeth exclaims as she bounces on her toes and claps her hands in delight. Who knows Mary's heart at that moment? It may already be brimming with joy and Elizabeth's words only cause her cup to spill over the sides. But maybe, maybe Elizabeth's blessing is precisely what young Mary craves hearing after the cruel clucking of tongues and the too-loud whispers in the marketplace back home in Nazareth. "Blessed are you," Elizabeth says without needing any of the details, without demanding answers to a long string of questions. "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!" Elizabeth pronounces a blessing on Mary but she could have just as easily doubted her. Seeing Mary with that rounding belly and those huge doe-eyes of hers, the elder Elizabeth could just as readily have asked, "Does your father know you're here?" And then put her on the next caravan bound for home. Elizabeth could have listened some and then decided she needed to thoroughly interrogate Mary about this angel visit Mary claimed she'd had. Elizabeth could have decided Mary was delusional or playing a mean joke on account of Elizabeth's pregnancy. Whether teen-aged Mary arrives at her cousin's with a suitcase full of needs or whether she only wants to rejoice with Elizabeth because God's salvation is floating safely inside her, Mary has intuited rightly: Elizabeth has the capacity to recognize and celebrate God's profound involvement in Mary's life and that of Israel, Mary's people. Elizabeth's blessing is one you and I need. Which is to say, the blessing of no-questions-asked, no-conditions-given support and affirmation. We each need know we have a door to go to with the confident hope that we will be received as-is, and the God-at-work-inside-us celebrated. Whether God is working through a welcome circumstance or one that may be harder to explain. Earlier in the week, just as I was settling in to work on today's message, an out-of-town friend dropped by unannounced. I hadn't seen him since he moved and so I was eager to hear how he was settling in, especially because his move had been prompted not by outer circumstance but by a sense of inner prompting. We talked an hour or more, my friend and I did. And as I listened, I experienced something akin to what Elizabeth must have felt that day she opened her door: the great blessing of being in the presence of someone in whom and through whom God is working. In this season of holy pregnancy, I could sense how much this man resembles Mary, how he too is carrying something of God, nurturing and protecting it, wondering how it came to be that he has been chosen for such a thing, uncertain of where it will lead, but still willing to go the distance with his God. Elizabeth pronounced a blessing on Mary. But she also received one. Two, really. The first blessing was that of knowing that her connection with Mary was deep and true and real. The other blessing was seeing how her words of affirmation, her commitment to Mary, freed Mary to break into God-song. Who among us wouldn't want to hear a soul-friend break sing out, as Mary did, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior..." Any number of Christmases ago, a man came to me because, I suspect, he had no one else to turn to. I was the pastor he'd not yet met. A day or two before, his whole world had turned upside down and come apart. He raced to my door, as Mary had with Elizabeth, guided by a deep intuition that he would be welcomed as-is. Like my Thursday friend, this man too was full of God. But unlike my Thursday friend, he could not yet see this. So I did with him what Elizabeth did with Mary, I invited him in and danced with him. Not a dance of joy, of course, but certainly a dance of release of feelings every bit as strong as those Mary knew. A dance that then elicited a song from this man's soul, one as profound as Mary's Magnificat because of the truth it told. When we have someone to run to without hesitation, when we have someone who is willing to dance with us even before the first sentence has fallen from our lips, when we have someone who is unafraid of our news--whatever it may be--and who finds God in it, then we know ourselves to be blessed. Mary knew to rush to Elizabeth's house. A blessing in itself. Blessed by Elizabeth, sheltered by Elizabeth for a time, Mary bore with grace--for us--a blessing beyond compare: Emmanuel, God-with-us. The one who no matter what news we come bearing, greets us at the door of his heart, welcomes us in, and dances with us. This is what he was born for, our Blessing, our Christ. To have you know that always, always you have someone to run to--him. And find in his presence a way, at last, to sing out your song, joyful or not. To sing out your heart's truth. Which is, you must know, what blesses Jesus our Christ. Amen. © Rev. Karen Winkel |
"Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen
Check the Announcements and
Calendar pages to
Please join us for a special viewing of
Paper Clips
on May 4th at 12 noon. |
