Last sremon of Advent

Mary:

I was almost 14 when I became betrothed. I had never met this man, Joseph, whom I would spend the rest of my life with, but I knew that he was of a suitable age, about 30, and that he was a carpenter, so would have the means to look after me and my children. I was excited that I would finally be counted as a woman, no longer a child, but of course I was also a little scared – it is no mean thing to leave your family to live with someone you don't know.

When I found I was pregnant I was terrified. I knew, KNEW that this was a unique child, a blessing from God, one who would change the world now and forever, but it would be assumed that I was adulterous – and the penalty was death. So I made haste and fled to Judea some one hundred miles away when you bypass Samaria, which I had to do. If a Samarian had caught me, an Israelite, travelling through their territory they would have killed me without a second thought. The journey was dangerous – there were wild animals, bandits, and extremes of weather that a young girl travelling alone had to be brave and a little foolhardy to survive.

I was running for my life.

I needed Elizabeth’s protection.  This was no social visit.  This was not happenstance.  Elizabeth was the wife of a priest, a descendant of Aaron, and the matriarch of our clan.  She was distantly related to me, a girl from a related clan. I fled to see a distant cousin who she hoped would save her life. Had Elizabeth not blessed my pregnancy, and had the religious authorities condemned me as an adulterer, I might be put to death. It was a journey of faith, that would be made again so many times over my life – faith that God was, is and always will be with me, that God's purposes are ultimately fulfilled.

Elizabeth:

Had Zechariah been able to speak, he would have condemned Mary.  As a priest, he would follow the law.  He was known for following the law. As a man in a patriarchal culture with a patriarchal religion and institutions, there would be pressure to enforce the law.  The Law demanded death.

The law protected male interests.  Girls were property. For example, if a man rapes a girl, he was required under the law to pay the girl’s father fifty shekels and to then marry her. Having lost her virginity, the girl could not be married and no dowry could be collected, so the rapist has to marry the girl, and the girl had to marry her rapist. Conversely, a husband’s infidelity is punished only if he takes another man’s wife. But a wife who commits adultery commits a “great sin”. She would be severely punished. Her husband could forgive her, but he could then divorce her leaving her penniless and disgraced. It was a risk for me to accept an unmarried young woman with child into my house. Unlike for Mary, my pregnancy carried with it a rise in status – as a barren woman unable to produce a son for my husband, I was useless, less than a woman and of little value. Now I was able to stand proud and tall, knowing that I was fulfilling my duty not only to my family but to my God.

When I greeted Mary, I knew that she too carried a special baby. She carried the Messiah, the one for which we have been waiting for so many long years. I was filled with the Holy Spirit and cried “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

Then Mary begins her song. It’s full of joy and praise for reversing the power struggle between the lowly and the powerful. God fulfilled his promise to rise up the poor and scatter the proud. Mary’s escape from the limits of her situation and culture symbolizes the fulfilment of these promises.

Josie:

Obviously, this is a reconstruction of a possible encounter. We can't know what was going through Mary and Elizabeth’s heads as they carried. Brought up and eventually farewelled their children, those children that were, despite and within everything that was done in and through them, human and loved.

I have been struggling this advent season. Normally it is my favourite time of the year – a time to celebrate and prepare for Jesus, human and yet divine. A time to remember his beginnings, as a humble, illegitimate child with no claim to glory or status, unique and special in his mother's eyes but to the world, just another man. I think of my own children, feel a bond to Mary as a feed and love them, imagine what it was like for her, watching her oldest child grow and develop. I wonder what she wished for him, how she thought his story would be carried out, if she watched him when he was asleep and was overwhelmed with love and protection. I wonder if she prayed to take his burden, to carry his pain, to give him what he had not chosen for himself – a normal life.

But this advent has been changed for me. I can not rejoice the way I want to. I can't look forward with unbridled joy to the time when Jesus will come in every heart, because this Christmas there are hearts that will be forever empty. This Christmas there are 20 children, children the age of my little girl, and 6 adults, teachers who gave their lives in fear and heartbreak, who are not celebrating the way they should be – with their families, with their friends, with nothing on their mind but the lead up to Christmas.

I live in the faith that, as Mary sung, God has fulfilled God's promises. That the weak are made strong, the poor fulfilled in every way. I have to have faith in this because right now, I find it hard to believe. Once again, children have been torn from their mothers, their fathers, their families and communities. Once again parents who would do anything, suffer anything for the happiness and well being of their children are never going to have that opportunity again. Evil is at work in the world, and the darkness seems to be free. There are plenty of people who seem to know what God is thinking and planning in the wake of this tragedy – I wish I was one of them! But I turn to the Bible to try and help me make sense of this senseless act.

Mary’s words in Luke’s Gospel are probably not the speech of an unmarried girl contemplating her pregnancy. More likely, the author of the Gospel composed them as an interpretation of Mary’s situation. This is not to diminish Mary’s value or faithfulness; but it is a reminder that the author was looking retrospectively at Mary’s pregnancy, viewing it through a post-Easter lens to express a confident hope that God’s Messiah would yet complete the task of upending the world’s oppressive ways.

I am very suspicious, then, of theological statements that promise too much insight into the present. Theology that tells us what God is doing right now, and that definitively claims to understand tomorrow, usually is manipulative theology.

It’s not that we have no confidence in contemplating God’s future, or ours. But God’s future will be informed by who God has been in the past. Our talk about God should begin there, then.

In the end, Mary’s song remains outrageous. When the Gospel of Luke ends, the powerful remain on their thrones, and the rich have not been left empty. No historical event unambiguously confirms her claims; they remain statements of faith.

Advent is like this for Christians. It’s a season of standing up against “the way things are.” Advent rejects the assumption that humanity remains trapped in never-ending decline.

We light candles during advent “against” the night. Our tiny, vulnerable flames pose no threat to the darkness of the night. But we light them anyway, because they declare a different reality to come.

“Joy to the World” will not sound the same this year, not after funerals for twenty beautiful children and their adult defenders in Newtown. The carol, in declaring the “wonders of [Jesus’] love,” will sound fake to some. Ignorant to others. And in some places, hopeful. But I plan on singing it a little defiantly -- not in naïve, Pollyannaish hope, but in confidence that Mary, the author of Luke, and those before them who dared to speak about God saw with a perspective I can learn from.