NBC Mazatlan, Pastor Rebecca Ellenson
Today we get to look in on two unlikely pregnancies. Our gospel gives us the story from two mothers’ perspectives. Elizabeth was a woman “advanced in years” as the Bible says, she may not have been quite as old as I am. She had been married without children for many years, which meant that she had lived with very little status or power in her culture. But now, she is unexpectedly pregnant. Zechariah, her husband, didn’t believe the angel who came to announce what would happen and he lost his speech for the entire pregnancy. In contrast, Elizabeth’s response is grateful joy that the disgrace she had felt for being childless would end.
Mary was a young, engaged woman. Like Elizabeth she was a person of low status, a simple person from an out of the way place. Engagement meant something other than it does nowadays. It was a 9-month waiting period–obviously intended to make sure she wasn’t pregnant, but she was. The law allowed Joseph to break off the engagement. The charge would have been adultery; the penalty—stoning. Mary had no power in the traditional sense. She was an engaged pregnant teenager. Yet she was singing about it, traveling with haste to a safe place, to her cousin, where she could share her blessing and be blessed among women.
The a Roman Catholic prayer called the Hail Mary that includes the words of Elizabeth’s song. When I first heard those words, blessed are you among women, I thought it meant, blessed are you – compared to all the women, as if it meant, not bad for a girl. There is a 6th Century prayer from the Coptic Church in Egypt that says it this way, blessed are you above all other women. But it can also mean Blessed are you AMONG women.
Zechariah doubted, questioned. Elizabeth rejoiced. Joseph is absent from the story, as Luke tells it, until the journey to Bethlehem. Mary, unsupported by any male power structure, went to a female cousin who was also pregnant, where she could share the blessing and be blessed AMONG women.
Mary’s song speaks of power in clear terms. She knew that society was weighted in favor of the powerful, the wealthy, those with physical might, or positions of authority. She knew what it was to be powerless. Yet, she also knew what God promised, that those who open themselves to God’s power get to participate in something stronger than anything else. She had a special view. She knew, or at least she would soon learn, that God would enter this world through a dependent, weak, helpless infant in need of care, in need of love, in need of parents who would trust and believe. God comes with a totally counter-cultural kind of power, not the power of wealth or position, not the strength of the arm. God’s choice of power involves willing participation and gentle trust.
There’s a saying I first read on the office door of my academic advisor in seminary, Ralph Smith.
There is nothings as strong as gentleness, nothing as gentle as true strength.
Ralph was a poet, a writer of hymns, and a marvelous teacher. He was also a wicked racquetball player and a weightlifter. But, most of all, he was a mentor and a pastor to me.
My son, Peter, was born in late November of my second year in seminary. In December of that year Peter’s father was diagnosed with cancer. I was 25 years old and quite unprepared to deal with all of that. Ralph visited us, cared for us. Then when I was a senior, we faced another medical crisis related to the cancer. Ralph was there again for us with just the right support.
Five years later, at the beginning of the Advent season, Ralph and his first grandchild were killed in a car accident. I’ve been remembering Ralph this week. The year he died I was a young, fresh new pastor at a great big church in Duluth, MN. During Advent as an opening song we sang Marty Haugen’s arrangement of the Magnificat—my soul proclaims your greatness O God, and my spirit rejoices in you. You have looked with love on your servant here, and blessed me all my life through. Great and mighty are you, O holy One, strong is your kindness, strong your love. How you favor the weak and lowly one, humbling the proud of heart…
I remember standing up front, grieving for Ralph, standing between two male pastors who also worked on staff there, as we started to sing. My son had just turned 8, my daughter was 2 and a half. I stood there as a young mother and wanted to turn to the men on either side of me and say,
S.s.s.h.h.h.h…! This is a mother’s song. It’s about participating in creation, maternity style. It belongs to altos and sopranos, not tenors and basses.
The magnificat comes up every three years on the fourth Sunday in Advent. The previous time I’d preached on it was when I was 6 months pregnant with Cora. I felt like I owned those words. As I heard my male colleagues singing this pregnant-mother-of-God song I thought my exclusive thoughts—those, “what do you guys know?” thoughts. I remembered my seminary advisor and the plaque on his door about gentleness and strength. I remembered Ralph’s modeling of how to be someone through whom God works. I knew that surely the magnificat would have fit his rich tenor voice.
I reconsidered the proud thoughts that filled the heart of me, as a mother, and heard the rest of Mary’s song with new ears.
God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
The power of God does not belong to women or men exclusively, nor does gentleness belong only to some. God’s power is inextricably linked to gentleness and is needed by all of us.
Mary gave birth to the Lord, because she was willing and trusting and ready to let God direct her life. That is how God comes, not by grandly appearing with dominating force to destroy evil in the world, not with power and grandeur. God chooses to come in a weak and tiny way, as a baby without power, to an unwed mother with no status, celebrated by an old woman surprisingly also with child. If it were not for those faithful women, the plan wouldn’t work. God relies on cooperation and on our open hearts and minds to receive him.
God continues to work in the same way today. No matter how much we might want God to come directly, fixing all the problems of the world in a flash, God still chooses to come in a way that surprises us. God chooses to need us to work in the world. It is only when we say to God as Mary did, I am the servant of the Lord, I live to do your will… that God can act in this world. Our challenge is to listen and watch for ways to serve, to be both strong and gentle, to make safe places of blessing for the powerless, to love, to bear God into the world, and to remember the promise that Elizabeth spoke:
Blessed is she (or he) who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her (or him) by the Lord.
God will come, to us and through us, to others.