Sunday, December 22, 2024

Advent 4 - Elizabeth and Mary

 "Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets"

So says the writer of the letter to the Hebrews. 

A few of these prophets led the people of Israel, many stood beside their leaders.  Sometimes they were heeded, sometimes ignored or even punished for what they said.  But still they spoke, proclaiming God’s word to the people, to anyone who would listen.

And then the prophets fell silent.  No new words were spoken for centuries.  The silence wasn’t total – the words of the prophets had been written down and preserved.  The prophets of old, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Zephaniah and Micah and the rest, their voices echoed down through the years, and their words continued to speak to those who had ears to hear, with new resonances for each generation.

Until one day a new prophetic voice spoke – two voices – and they were not what anyone was expecting.  A pregnant teenage and a middle class woman of a certain age.

We don’t know how old Elizabeth was, but we do know she was past the age when she would be expected to be able have a child, and yet here she is, pregnant, and being visited by her young cousin Mary.  Elizabeth is filled by the Holy Spirit and speaks out the words given to her by the Spirit.

"Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.  And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?  For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.  And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord."

Elizabeth’s own child is a miracle, a gift beyond all expectation.  And yet she recognises that the child in the womb of the woman before her is an even greater miracle – a gift not just to a faithful old couple who had been patiently waiting, but a gift for the whole world.

There is a beautiful humility in Elizabeth’s words.  Who am I, she asks, that this has happened to me, who am I that the mother of my Lord would come to me?  She is honouring Mary’s faith in believing what was spoken to her, but I think these words also speak to Elizabeth’s own faith.  We spoke about Elizabeth at the study group last Tuesday and two words that I took away from our conversation were steadfast and trusting.  Elizabeth had put her trust in God and lived according to God’s ways.  And that trust was steadfast and unwavering, even when, to those around her it looked like she had been forgotten by God. 

I am sure these words were precious to Mary too.  These last few months would have been tough on her.  She had accepted God’s call on her life, but it had implications.  We know Joseph took some persuading to accept that this was all from God.  I wonder how many people looked on her growing pregnant belly with judgment in their eyes – perhaps Mary had come to visit her cousin to get away from this judgment.  So Elizabeth’s recognition of Mary’s faithfulness matters.  There’s an encouragement in this for us to follow Elizabeth’s example, and to say out loud to others the things we are thinking, to tell them about the good we see in them.  It’s always good to say good things to people when we have the chance, and just sometimes these words, prompted by the Spirit, will be the very thing that someone needs to hear.

Elizabeth blesses Mary and her baby, and then Mary speaks her own words of blessing for the God who has done all this.  In a sense, Mary was a prophet like no other.  Her call was to literally bring the Word of God into the world, to carry and give birth to Jesus, all the fullness of God contained in the tiny body of a baby. 

 

Mary puts into words the hope that this baby brought to the world, words we speak and sing in this place week by week.  She speaks of the promise of God, she speaks of a world turned upside down, she speaks of a saviour come to show us the way back to God.

 

I don’t need to tell you the ways in which you fall short of God’s ways, you know how you do.  I know you do because I know how I fall short of God’s ways.  As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, I know the good I want to do, but then I don’t do it.  And I know the things I want to avoid, but then I tangled up in them again.  I do delight in God’s ways, I do want to follow God’s ways, but I have this little pull in my nature that, time and time again, draws me away from God.

We have each gone astray and turned to our own way.  But the good news is, God doesn’t expect us to find our own way back.  In Jesus, God came to us. Jesus walked among us, shared meals and told stories, showing people the way to God.  Jesus died as one of us, and Jesus rose again, overcoming death and giving life to us all, life in all its fullness.

This is our hope.  And it is hope not for each of us, but for the whole world.  The systems and structures of our world reflect our human nature – the desire to do good and the pull to act selfishly are woven together in the institutions across our society as they are in each of us.  Some systems or institutions stand out as particularly oppressive and there is nothing we can do but to work for them to be overturned.  Often, however, our institutions are like us – capable of doing great things and at the same time capable of great failure.  There will be times when we can work for justice within a system, working to take power and resources out of the hands of the few who are hoarding power, and sharing them fairly with all.  At other times it may be impossible to work in the system and we need to stand outside it and work to build new and better systems.  Wherever we stand, outside systems or within, our task is to work towards the promise in Mary’s words.

Mary and Elizabeth’s words have come down the centuries as an encouragement to us.  But they were first of all an encouragement to each other – one woman who had received an unexpected gift, the other who was going through an unexpectedly challenging time.  I don’t know what the days and weeks ahead hold for you, what mix of gift and challenge you will face.  But I pray that you will find companionship like Mary and Elizabeth found in each other, and so will find God’s blessing for the year ahead.

Amen.

Sunday, December 1, 2024

Looking to the light - the first Sunday of Advent

 

Down through the centuries, Christians have been waiting for the fulfilment of the promise that came with Jesus.  The angels sang of peace on earth, and goodwill to all, and we still long for that peace, for the kingdom to fully come on earth as it is in heaven.

Some have looked for this to come about through human progress, and the gradual improvement in society, though the evidence of history suggests progress and decline seem to cycle around one another, and if progress is to outstrip decline, it has quite some way to go.  Others have looked for sudden and spectacular end, with the present earth passing away to make way for a new creation – some may even think that events in our world right now are beginning to show some of the signs that would herald this end is approaching, though many generations before ours also thought they were living in the end times. 

I do not profess to be a good enough scholar to be able to make a judgement on this, I can’t say if we’re close to the end or not, I can’t say how it will all come to pass.  I do believe that somehow, God’s justice will one day be sovereign on earth.  I do believe there will be peace, and goodwill to all, that all of creation will be reconciled to God.

This means it matters how we live now, whatever times we are living in.  It matters because we are already building the Kingdom of God, bringing heaven to earth.  Whenever we have the chance to good for someone else, to work for justice, to care for creation, when we do these things we are making the kingdom of God a reality here and now, in however small a way.  And what we do now for good will, somehow, echo through eternity in a restored creation.

It matters also because in doing so, we become a sign.  Jesus told his disciples to pay attention to the signs in the world around them, but in building the kingdom here and now, we become a sign to the world.  Like the budding leaves on the trees are a sign of summer coming, so as God’s people live in God’s way, the world will know the promise of peace and goodwill that has come in the person of Jesus.

It matters how we live, but it is not always easy to live in this world.  We live in times that feel uncertain, unstable.  When we turn on the news and hear about what is happening in Syria, Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, when we hear of people struggling in our own country with unemployment or homelessness or domestic violence, it can be tempting to switch off.  But that is not what we are called to do.  We are called to engage with this messy, complicated, beautiful world.  We are a sign of the coming of the kingdom, and the world cannot see this sign if we are hidden away.

So, what encouragement can we find in Jesus’s words this morning?

One thing Jesus tells us to do is pray.  When we look at the world it can be hard to know where to start praying, but perhaps we should turn that around.  We don’t start with the world, we start with prayer, we start with orienting ourselves to God, rooting and grounding ourselves in faith.  Only then do we turn to the world.

There is an old hymn which we used to sing at my first church, you may know it.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.

I remember my youth group leader used to say the hymn, lovely as it was, had got it slightly wrong.  As we looked at Jesus, it wasn’t that the things of earth would grow strangely dim, it was that the things of earthwould grow clearer still, in the light of his glory and grace.

That’s not to say that we will always be able to make sense of the world.  But our prayer together here, week by week, our prayers as we go through life day by day, these help us keep our perspective, and help us see our way through the changes and chances of this world.

Jesus also calls us to get ready, to prepare ourselves to face whatever is to come, to keep ourselves safe in the midst of the world.

What do we need to do to get ready?  I guess we are to do the opposite of what Jesus warns us against.  Jesus warns against distracting ourselves in human indulgence, or letting the weight of our worries burden us so we cannot act.  That’s not to say that we should be ascetics, separating ourselves from the world, and avoiding all earthly pleasures.  But when these become a coping mechanism, a way of avoiding the realities of life, that is a problem.  Likewise, when we look at the world today, it is a very rational response to be worried.  But we need to find our ways of managing that worry. 

Audre Lorde, the American civil rights activist, said “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”  You care for yourself so that you can fight for justice without burning yourself out, you care for yourself so that you can help others when they need it, and they in turn can look out for you.  We take the time we need to keep ourselves safe, to protect ourselves from danger, so that we are still able to live, together, in this difficult, complicated world.

There is also a word of encouragement from our old testament reading this morning, from the prophet Jeremiah – not a place we often look to for encouragement!  As Jeremiah speaks these words he is living in a land besieged by a foreign empire, and he has been put in prison by his own king, who is angry with what he is saying.  And yet he speaks of how God will make good God’s promise to bring justice to the world.  In the midst of difficult times, he holds on to hope.

We are having a running argument at work at the moment about the correct time to put up Christmas decorations.  As a good Anglican I am, of course, clear that the correct time to put up decorations is 24 December, when the season of Christmas begins.  Turns out I am in a minority of one in this position. My team are all excited to get properly Christmassy, and at some point this week our office will probably look like Santa’s grotto. The thing is – and don’t let them know I said this, I don’t want them to think I think they have a point – the thing is, they have a point.  In the midst of darkness, we need to look to the light.  I might quibble about just when we put up those Christmas lights in the office, but it is these lights that remind us of the light that came into the world, the light that the darkness cannot overcome, the light that will bring peace and goodwill to all.  And even as we wait through Advent, we hold on to the hope of Christmas.

When Jesus spoke these words, he was in the temple in Jerusalem, which would in just a few years be destroyed by the Romans.  I’ve visited that temple, our guide was an archaeologist, and she kept showing us how the stones of the torn down temple had also been used to build what came next, and what came after that.  The stones of the temple where Jesus taught were cast down, and they were built up again, and I have walked on those stones.

I don’t know how God will break into our world to fulfil the promise of the kingdom that Jesus brought.  But I know it will happen.  And I believe that whatever the kingdom looks like, it will be built from pieces of this world. 

The powers of the heavens will be shaken.  But don’t be afraid.  Because your redemption is near.

 

 

 

Advent 4 - Elizabeth and Mary

  "Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets" So says the writer of the letter to the Hebrews. ...