4th Sunday of Advent

Luke 1:39-56

So I told you all last month that we had finished our Season of Women and it was all wrapped up.  But it turns out I lied.  Because I made an error, I missed something critically important and so now we have to come back and correct it.  Because we spent this whole year talking about women leaders in the Bible.  And it was great, we saw women do all these amazing things, women who lead armies, women who toppled empires, women who taught and women who preached the good news. And women who sang songs that passed on the secrets of the world.  But we missed something, we missed half the story because it only works for women to sing the songs that change the world if there is someone to listen to them.  This only works if alongside the women who lead, there are women (and men) who are willing to listen, to follow, to make space, to offer support and refuge, even when it is costly, or dangerous or hard.

So today, in the midst of this beautiful story, on one of my favorite Sundays of the church year, the Sunday that started us on this journey, where we read the Magnificat and hear Mary’s earth-shattering song, we aren’t going to talk about Mary.  Though I am thankful many of you were here on Tuesday and got to hear Pastor Anna talk to us about Mary because she is just too good to miss.  But this Sunday, here today we are going to look at Elizabeth instead, because in order for Mary to sing her song, Elizabeth had to be willing to make space and to listen.

And this is a much bigger deal than we realize, because Elizabeth is not who you think she is.  Usually we tend to picture Elizabeth as this nice harmless old lady who gets to have a baby too, as a cute Auntie to Mary.  We may even picture her as being as vulnerable as Mary, but maybe for different reasons.  But actually, she is none of those things.

So lets back the story out a bit and see who she is.  Zacharia and Elizabeth are introduced in beginning of the first chapter of Luke and here is what the Bible says:

“In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.  Once when he was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense.” (Lk. 1:5-9 NRS)

This all may seem pretty innocuous, but it’s not.  Priests in this time were defacto rulers in Jerusalem and the whole surrounding region.  They held all religious authority and ruled in parallel to the secular, foreign rulers, provided by the Empire, currently Herod and his family, later Roman governors like Pilate.  And most importantly they controlled temple treasury and sacrificial system which collected a minimum of 10% of Israel’s entire GDP every year and through it controlled much of Jewish life.  Zacharia is identified as leading member of one of the 24 aristocratic hereditary priestly families, who served 2 weeks a year in the temple and then sort of like feudal lords, spent the rest of the time administering a geographic district of Israel, in his case in the Judean hill country.  Elizabeth, being identified as a direct descendant of Aaron and the wife of a priest was also born into this same aristocratic system, which is also why it was so critically important that she produce an heir.

So basically they are rich, filthy rich aristocrats.  They are definitively in the top 1% maybe .1% of the richest people in Israel.  Those of you who watched the Chosen, do you remember Zohara, Nicodemus’s classy, rich and powerful wife?  She is maybe a 10^th as rich as Elizabeth.  Not that there was anything wrong with that, Luke also calls them righteous before God, faithful and blameless.  It’s just that Luke means for us to know and understand who they were in Jewish society.

And then all of a sudden, in rolls Mary, who is identified as her “kinswoman”, and we have traditionalized this as cousin but word is used only here and so we don’t get a great sense of how closely related they actually are.  But Elizabeth is a hereditary aristocrat and Mary is properly engaged to Judean captenter, so not even a Levite, so the blood relation may be quite distant and no matter what, the class gulf between them is vast.  Yet Elizabeth welcomes her with joy, and that swirly whirly Holy Spirit gets involved and Mary is welcomed, sheltered and given refuge with Elizabeth.

And then Mary goes and sings her song.  The Song we heard Pastor Anna talk about on Tuesday evening. The song where generations are changed, the weak are protected, the lowly are lifted up and the hungry are filled.  The song that Pastor Anna told us is such good news to the people that she ministers to on the streets of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor.  The song that is such good news to the poor and downtrodden everywhere throughout time.

But there is another side to this song.  Because this same song says that the proud are scattered, the powerful are brought down from their thrones and the rich sent away empty.  And Elizabeth is all those things.  The Good news that Mary proclaims for the poor is distinctively bad news for Elizabeth and her family.  And Oh and by the way, that beloved son you now carry, the long awaited heir to this vast stream of generation wealth and power is also supposedly going to throw it all away in order to go into the wilderness to prepare the way for this upside down Messiah.  All of this must seem like very bad news to Elizabeth.  Yet then comes the most remarkable line of all “And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.” (Lk. 1:56 NRS)

So pregnant, unwed Mary shows up at her house and tells her this baby is going to destroy everything she has stood for for generations, and Elizabeth listens to her, and believes her, and supports her.  In this way, Elizabeth might be the most remarkable woman of all we have studied.  Because it is one thing to challenge God, and preach the gospel and take on armies when you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.  And it’s another thing entirely to stay on board when you are the one who pays the price for those big changes.

By all reasonable accounts Elizabeth should have kicked Mary straight to the curb for saying those things in her house.  But she doesn’t.  She welcomes her and she welcomes the moving of the Holy Spirit.  She welcomes the world changing good news of Jesus Christ, even if it risks changing everything she knows.

So as we enter these final days of preparing the way for Jesus, we encounter maybe hardest question of all.  Are we willing to risk it all for Jesus?  To face change that brings good news to new people and places?  To give up comfort and security for love and justice?  To push back against people and systems that hoard wealth and power even if it’s our own wealth and power?  Are we yet ready to welcome the king in the manger, even when we learn he is coming to turn our world upside down?  Amen.