Blessed Among Women 12-9-12

The Reading— Isaiah 42: 1-8 “Here is my Servant, whom I uphold my chosen one, in whom I delight! I have endowed you with my Spirit that you may bring true justice to the nations. You do not cry out or raise your voice, or make yourself heard in the street. So gentle that you do not break a bruised reed, or quench a wavering flame, faithfull you will bring forth true justice. You will neigher waver nor be crushed until justice is established on earth, for the nations await your teaching! Thus says Yahweh, who created the heavens and spread them out, who gave shape to the earth and what it produces, who gave life to its peoples and spirit to its inhabitants. I, Yahweh, have called you to serve the cause of right; I have taken you by the hand, and I watch over you. I have appointed you to be a covenant people, a light to the nations: to open the eyes of the blind, to free captives from prison, and those who sit in darkness from the dungeon. I am Yahweh! This is my Name!” The Middle Reading--from Jan Richardson and is entitled Drawing Near. It is difficult to see it from here, I know, but trust me when I say this blessing is inscribed on the horizon. Is written on that far point you can hardly see. Is etched into a landscape whose contours you cannot know from here. All you know is that it calls you, draws you, pulls you toward what you have perceived only in pieces, in fragments that came to you in dreaming or in prayer. I cannot account for how, as you draw near, the blessing embedded in the horizon begins to blossom upon the soles of your feet, shimmers in your two hands. It is one of the mysteries of the road, how the blessing you have traveled toward, waited for, ached for suddenly appears as if it had been with you all this time, as if it simply needed to know how far you were willing to walk to find the lines that were traced upon you before the day that you were born. The Gospel Reading: Luke 1: 39-43 Within a few days Mary set out and hurried to the hill country to a town of Judah, where she entered Zechariah’s house and greeted Elizabeth. As soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why am I so favored, that the mother of the Messiah should come to me? The moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who believed that what our God said to her would be accomplished!” Oh, I see you’re all here. She told me you would be. I’m Elizabeth. I want to tell you a story, several stories actually—it all took place a long time ago, but I want to tell you my story of miracles. It all started with my husband, Zechariah. A good man, my Zechariah—anyway, Zechariah was a priest. Out of thousands of priests it came to be Zechariah’s turn to go the Sanctuary to offer sacrifices and to pray. This is how he tells the story. While everyone waited expectantly outside, he went into the Sanctuary. There he saw an angel that told him several incredible things—my poor Zechariah, how he must have trembled in the sight of the angel. This angel told my dear husband that I would become pregnant and bear a child. Now, this, my chosen friends, was pretty hard to believe. We were too old to think about having children—why my body was already telling me that childbearing days were over and, quite frankly, we had given up. Zechariah was even older than I was, so I can imagine that Zechariah was more than doubtful. But the angel insisted and told him that I would bear a very special boy, one who would grow to be a very important man—the man who would announce the coming of the Messiah. The Messiah—the one we had waited for all those years. My poor Zechariah couldn’t believe his ears—in fact, he didn’t believe his ears and for that God struck him deaf and dumb. He came back out of the Sanctuary, but he couldn’t tell anyone what happened—even when he tried to draw pictures. Everyone knew he had been touched by God, they just didn’t know how. Zechariah came home and I comforted him and, well, then, and this causes me to blush, I became pregnant. I did, in fact, have a baby boy, and we named him “John” just as God insisted. Just at the time we named our baby, Zechariah could again speak. There he was, my Zechariah, who had been silenced during my pregnancy, praising God and telling all who would listen about his time with the angel, Gabriel, who had told him all that John would do. The announcer of the Messiah, my John was chosen to clear the way for the coming of the Messiah. But, in my excitement to tell you of my own child’s birth, I’ve gotten way ahead of myself. I know that you will forgive me, I waited so long to even have a child and that God would choose me to bear this special baby, filled me with such wonder and joy that it is very hard for me to stop talking about my John. So, please, be patient with me. My John was not the only miracle in my family that year. So let me tell you about Mary, and her son, Jesus. Mary was my cousin, sort of. I can’t remember exactly how we were related, but we were. She was much younger than I—much, much younger. She was only just starting the time when she could become pregnant when I was long done—trust me, long, long done. During the same time as I was pregnant with John, something very strange and wonderful happened to Mary and her husband-to-be, Joseph. Mary, why she couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15 at the time, was promised to Joseph. Joseph was a kind man, and I was thrilled for her that she was so fortunate as to be engaged to such a wonderful man. Now, there is something you need to understand—when you were engaged, it is the same thing as being married in our law. And then—the real miracle happened. I tell it to you the way Mary told it to me, so young and trusting she was. Mary said that the Angel Gabriel, I suppose the same one as visited my Zechariah, came to see her. He told her some very strange things indeed. He told her that she was one of God’s favored ones. She was scared, poor little thing, and who wouldn’t be—some angel appearing out of nowhere. She said the angel told her not to be afraid, and that God was going to use her to bear the child who was the Messiah—the Messiah, she said she couldn’t believe her ears. But Mary, was a smart one, she knew just how babies come to be, if you know what I mean. So she says that she worked up her courage and asked the angel how this was going to happen, since she and Joseph were not married. But the angel goes right on and says that the Holy Spirit would enter her and she would become pregnant with God’s son. Now, I’ve got to stop this story right now and ask you, what would you have done? 14 or 15—knowing that being pregnant before she married Joseph would cost her everything, everything, Joseph, her family, everything. But Mary kept listening and then the angel told her about me and Zechariah and the baby I was carrying at the time. The angel said, “with God, nothing is impossible”. Well, I was living proof of that, you know, so she couldn’t argue with that. And then, it seems that this sweet young child surrendered to the will of God, and told the angel that she would do exactly what God told her to do. I’m so proud of my little cousin-of sorts, what a brave young woman she became in those few moments. At least I had Zechariah, she didn’t know if she had anyone. Did you know that she could have been disowned by her family or even killed for her so-called Holy pregnancy? It was all up to Joseph to decide her fate. So, she came to see me. I wasn’t going out anymore, as I was pretty big, that John was a big baby, don’t you know. But, wait, I forgot to tell you about Joseph. Joseph was a good man, but couldn’t bear the thought of having a wife made pregnant by someone else. But he wanted to spare her public disgrace—he was working on what to do when he got his own visit from an angel. After that, he was a changed man and he agreed to marry Mary anyway and raise her baby as his own. So, through the door she comes. I am rising slowly, seems as if I was doing everything slowly those days. As she entered the room, that baby inside me started doing flip-flops. And, I knew immediately that something very special was happening. I told Mary that I knew the baby she was carrying was God’s son. I felt so blessed to be in her presence, like a great white light was pouring peace into the room. I couldn’t tell where the light was coming from but it flooded over us both as I just stood and gazed at her. In my heart, I wanted her to truly know how honored I felt to be in her presence, it was as if I encountered God in a completely new way. I told her that she and her baby were blessed. I told her that I could barely believe that I was standing in the presence of the mother of God. I told her that my baby knew, too—that he recognized that her baby was the Son of God. It so amazed me that this mere child was carrying the earthly incarnation of God. I wish I could help you understand—to you the coming of Jesus is nothing new—happens every year, so I hear. But, not in my time, our people had waited hundreds of years for this baby—this baby who now filled Mary’s belly as she stood in front of me. As I was trying to take this all in, Mary sang the most beautiful song. Let me see if I can remember most of the words. My soul belongs to God. My spirit is full of the joy of God. God cared for me, a woman of no importance— Until now. Now, I am blessed and all will know of God’s work in me. I am humbled, even to say the Name of God is a holy act. Those who know God intimately believe in this sacred love— And not just at this moment but for all time. Every generation who walks this God-created earth know of God And of God’s acts of power and might. God disarms those who are proud and think they know it all— Confuses them in their hearts and minds. God, our Creator, fills all the hungry people--those who are Hungry for food and those who are hungry for God. But those who feel no need for God because they think they are Rich have been sent away. God remembers the promise to Israel—the promise to always be Our God. The mercy and love that flows from that promise Are for all of us, now and forever. And, then she was just Mary again, but somehow different, always changed, never the same. She stayed with me right up to the time of John’s birth—it was such a joy to have her with me during those months and watch her grow into a beautiful young woman, called to be the Mother of God. Well, you know the rest of the story, I guess. You certainly don’t need me to tell it to you. I wanted to tell you my story, though, to tell you of the miracles that I saw, that I experienced, that I know to be true. Most of all, I wanted to tell you what it felt like to be in the presence of God, even before that baby who would change everything was born. I felt so humbled and yet so lifted up at the same time. This God, the God of our forefathers and foremothers, of Abraham and Sarah—this same God had visited me and filled me with a divine sense of the grace and love of God, and my life was never the same. Is that what happens for you, I wonder—this time, each year. Do your hearts open so that you can feel the presence of God in your heart, in your mind, in your body and spirit? I wish for you, what I had—an encounter with God that changes you for now and forever. My time with you is over, but I pray for you this day. And so, as I leave you, I say, amen and amen.