Luke 1. 39 – 45
If I can offer you a present above all others this Advent it is to read the first two chapters of Luke’s Gospel in an accessible translation. Read the story. Savour every word. Find the connections. And sing the songs. Three of the greatest lyrics, poems, anthems of the faithful are here: Zechariah’s song, which we call the Benedictus; Mary’s Song, which we call the Magnificat, and Simeon’s Song, which we call the Nunc Dimittis. Sometimes only a song will take past, present and future and enable it to be the soundtrack, the expression, of all that we are, and all that God is.
Luke’s Gospel begins with a very formal introduction, promising an ‘orderly account’ of the truth of the love of God shown in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, called the Christ. That lasts four verses. By verse five Luke is saying: ‘pin back your ears. You’ll never guess what happened’. In just these two chapters and you’ll find a community, family, history, faith, hope, amazement, wonder. In this story is a people which is bound together, which looks after itself, and which makes sure that it stays close to the reason it exists. It knows its history, and is ready for that history to find its fulfilment when its deep truths are grasped and revealed and held and believed.
Here is to be found the most radical overturning of what might be taken as ‘normal’. Elizabeth, Zechariah, Jospeh and Mary might know their stories, might sing their ancient songs of the God who overturns and is merciful and cuts the powerful down to size, and they might even hold on to that hope with all their being, but perhaps their know that, in reality, such wonderful things are not for the like of them. Zechariah and Elizabeth may have both been from priestly stock, but Zechariah was one of twenty thousand priests, the vast majority of whom never got near the holiest places. And, after all, Elizabeth had got beyond child bearing and there was no child. God may be great, may even have given a child to Abraham and Sarah when they were ancient, but could that be true for them?
Then Zechariah’s section was on duty, which only happened a couple of times a year. And then it was him chosen by lot to go into the holy place. This was, literally, once in a lifetime. Once you’d done it you couldn’t do it again. Maybe, just maybe, Zechariah dared to dream. When he comes out he cannot speak. There has been an annunciation. Read the story. He gets to meet Gabriel before Mary and Joseph do. There will be a miraculous birth, a miracle made plain by his dumbness until the boy, John the Baptist, is born. The people outside the holy place know that he’s been hit for six by what he’s seen and heard. They know that God does stunning things through history, and take his stupefied state in their stride. God does great things after all.
I like it that the experienced priest is struck dumb because it takes him time to get it. When the young girl Mary asks a very similar question to Zechariah’s (look them up when you read the two chapters) it is accepted not as a sign of unbelief but a genuine query about how God will go about it. The old male has to take time to learn. The young girl gets it straight away. That pattern continues. Elizabeth, Mary’s relative, knows enough of the stories of God’s overturning to be ready for God’s revelation to come in someone at least two generations younger than her. And she knows what a privilege this is.
Remember, Elizabeth herself is evidence of God’s power at work. She is an elder, a stateswoman, a descendant of Aaron. She should not, in the normal scheme of things, be giving birth. But her first reaction is to bow down. “Why has this happened to me?” she asks when Mary visits her. She recognises that Mary’s belief is something to be honoured and championed and celebrated. Taking the ancient stories, Elizabeth’s great gift is to say that they are for them, right there and right then. God did this. God does this. God will do this.
That releases Mary to channel all the songs and beliefs of her people, and particularly the songs sung by women, and to sing the song of radical overturning. Not only that, but she makes it ours. Far from doing the work for God, Zechariah and Elizabeth and Joseph and Mary discover the work of God and give it a home and a place. “Why has this happened to me?” is not a way of saying “I cannot do this”. It says “God does this, and is doing it now. That’s nothing to do with my worthiness or importance, and everything to do with the God who has mercy from generation to generation.”
Mary carries the stories of her people, the wisdom of the ages and the fulfilment of her history, and marries it to the challenge of the young. She sings of the mercy of God which is from generation to generation. Pope Benedict says of her: “Going beyond the surface, Mary “sees” the work of God in history with the eyes of faith… Her Magnificat, at the distance of centuries and millennia, remains the truest and most profound interpretation of history, while the interpretations of so many of this world’s wise have been belied by events in the course of the centuries…”
Maybe, just maybe, in complex times and with clouds all around, God’s story of overturning and hope is true. Maybe, just maybe, the young girl gets it right, and says that, when it is according to God’s word, there will be mercy, new life and hope. Maybe, just maybe, this is for us, and we will be the ones to declare God’s overturning, God’s filling of the hungry, God’s lifting up of the lowly. Maybe, just maybe, we can take our history and our songs and our beliefs, and discover the work of God in them. Maybe, just maybe, when we oldies allow ourselves to hear these things sung by the young we will hear them anew. Maybe that will cause us to feed the hungry and lift up the lowly ourselves. In all these things may our spirits rejoice in God our saviour.
Read Luke chapters 1 and 2!