Sermon for Fourth Sunday of Advent – Luke 1:39-55

Gifts are complicated. Seriously. I don’t just mean folks that are hard to shop for. I mean, at Christmas we hear, “I didn’t know we were supposed to bring gifts.” Or, “oh you shouldn’t have.” Or, “if that’s another fruitcake so help me….” There are lots of obligations and expectations and rules around gifts. Interesting that we still call them gifts. Now, we like to talk about God’s free gifts, but seems like we do the same thing. What does God expect in return? Is it a blessing or a curse? Because sometimes God’s gifts feel like more of a chore than a gift, right? Like they cause more trouble than they’re worth. That’s the problem that Elizabeth and Mary wrestle with in our gospel reading today. What do you do when God’s gift doesn’t feel like a gift?

Now, let’s remember who Elizabeth is. She’s going to be the mother of John the Baptist. She’s married to Zechariah, who’s a priest at the big temple in Jerusalem. The gospel says “both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to ALL of God’s commandments.” This is an amazing couple with strong faith in God. But, they lack one thing. No matter how hard they try, they still don’t have any children. They desperately want kids, but Elizabeth is barren and they’re both getting on in years. It might remind us of Sarah and Abraham, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel. So one day the angel Gabriel visits Zechariah in the temple and tells him Elizabeth will bear a son and his name will be John. And he’ll be great in the Lord’s sight, turning many people toward God. But Zechariah’s skeptical (of course)!, so the angel makes him mute. He can’t tell anyone about this, not even Elizabeth. But it doesn’t matter. When Elizabeth discovers she’s pregant, she immediately knows “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me and took away my disgrace.” Unfortunately that’s how the story goes. back then she’s suffered the whispers and looks for as long as she can remember. “What kind of woman can’t give her husband a child?” So as far as she’s concerned, this must be a gift from God for everything she’s had to put up with.

Meanwhile, the angel Gabriel then visits Elizabeth’s cousin Mary. He tells her, “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.” Mary’s like, “but, I’m a virgin, so….” Meaning how will she explain this? She can’t. Who would ever believe a virgin birth? And being engaged just makes it worse. If the neighbors’ questions aren’t hard enough, what’s she going to say to Joseph? This is like the opposite of Elizabeth. It doesn’t feel like a gift from God. It feels like God putting her whole life at risk for reasons she can’t understand. Like God’s just setting her up for suffering and loss. So when Mary says, “let it be with me according to your word” – it doesn’t feel like giving thanks. It feels like resignation. Kind of like saying “not my will, but your will.”

So it’s not weird that Mary runs away for a while. But it’s weird that she goes to Elizabeth. If that were us, who would we expect to be more supportive? Someone who knows what it’s like to feel stuck, or someone like Elizabeth, who’s righteous before God and keeps all the commandments blamelessly? People like Elizabeth don’t have problems like this. They always make the right decisions. They’re dependable. And when someone’s so committed to that kind of righteousness and blamelessness, there’s a mindset that always seems to go with it. Good things happen to good people. Because otherwise what’s the point of being good? Sure, problems still come up. But you figure that’s just God testing your faith, so you can win your reward. Because nothing good comes free.

So it’s telling that what comes out of Elizabeth’s mouth aren’t her own words. “Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and said, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.'” It doesn’t sound like what we’d expect Elizabeth to say, because what Mary’s got doesn’t look much like righteousness. It just looks like consequences. So the Spirit uses her to say what they both need to hear. We need to hear it too. We need to know that this is what the gift of God looks like – not something we could ever deserve or earn. It’s what God gives us when we have no other options. And the gift of God is always controversial. It sets us on edge just like Mary, wondering what strange thing God’s up to. Because we don’t have control, and it turns upside down everything that we take for granted.

But the Spirit’s not done talking. I think we hear the Holy Spirit speaking through Mary too. She preaches, “His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” God’s going to shake up the status quo! The gift we truly need! Now, it’s easy to hear this and get excited, because we don’t associate ourselves with the proud or the powerful or the rich. We’re not like them. But if we’re not one of them, then what does that make us? The lowly, the hungry, and the fearful. There’s no sideline in prophecy. That means we’re the ones who receive God’s gifts because we’re out of other options. And that makes us uncomfortable. Maybe insulted, because we expect God to reward our piety and we deserve a reward. Or maybe we’re desperate to believe we have control and we resent being told otherwise. Maybe we’re afraid, because deep down God doesn’t feel trustworthy to us. Or what if we realize we’re not really lowly, hungry, or fearful after all. I’m not sure which is scarier.

But the good news is that God isn’t content with just tearing down the proud and powerful and rich. This is the God of Creation, the God who wants to build up. And what God is building is something completely new, “according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” So God defies everything we know and understand by blessing Mary with a child. And this will be Jesus, our Emmanuel. “God with us.” And Jesus goes beyond what Mary promised. He doesn’t just takes the lowly by hand but calls them children of God. He doesn’t just feed the hungry but fills them with forgiveness. He doesn’t just comfort the fearful but gives them the hope of his good and gracious Father’s will, and at the end of the day that’s the only thing we CAN trust. And yet that’s not enough for Jesus. Because then he gives us the greatest gift of all, his own life on the cross, so that we would rise with him in his resurrection. Nothing we deserve but everything we need.

And Jesus gives us faith, so that we can hear Mary’s prophecy for the great promise that it is. The proud will be scattered in the thoughts of their hearts to know the gift of humility. The powerful will be brought down from their thrones to know the power of compassion. The rich will be made poor to discover the wealth of community where we freely share with each other and we all thrive. But none of this comes by force or laws or retribution. It only comes through human hearts transformed by the power of Jesus’ love, made manifest in us as his living body in the world. And it comes through the word of forgiveness that Jesus gives to us, so that we would give it to each other. This word tells the truth about greed and injustice. But it also insists that these will not be the last word for us. There really is another way to live together, and we will surely see this with our own eyes. Blessed are those who believe that there will be a fulfillment of what was spoken to us by the Lord.

Of course, this won’t be quick or easy. There will be plenty of challenging days before us. But even still, we can give thanks for each new day we have with one other – God’s gifts to us in God’s own time. And we can praise God, for the Mighty One has done great things for us. Even so, may our souls magnify the Lord, and may our spirits rejoice in God our Savior.