Blessed Beloved (Luke 1: 39-45)

By David Sund, Lay Preacher

​I love it when the lectionary brings us to Luke for Advent and Christmas.   We’re given a fresh opportunity to see the seasonal stories from Mary’s point of view.  It’s in Luke that we meet Elizabeth and Anna at Christmas time,  and later we are introduced to Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary.   This gospel and it’s companion piece, the book of Acts, present a host of 1st century women who are passionate, three dimensional characters who speak and act and participate in Jesus’ inner circle.  They articulate their feelings honestly, offer insightful conversation and model admirable responses to crises.  

Last week we were reminded that the heavenly messenger Gabriel has delivered earth shattering news to the teenage Mary from No-wheres-ville, Galilee (A.K.A. Nazareth).  God was taking the initiative: it was Messiah-time and Mary was chosen to be an un-wed teen Mom who would give birth to that Messiah.   Mary, as a virgin, is first and foremost, confused!  Whatever else she might be afraid of, she’s not afraid to express her confusion!  Gabriel gives her a quick course in incarnational theology, and, as if to emphasize the Point that God is in the Miracle business, Gabriel tells Mary that her cousin Elizabeth, quite elderly and previously incapable of having children, is now six months pregnant.  At this point Mary consents to a plan in which she has had no say, probably well aware of what the future held:  disapproval, gossip, scandal, ridicule, and possibly much worse!   This costly consent has inspired countless sermons.  I find it amazing that there’s no hint of resentment or resistance.   Wouldn’t most of us push back at someone else, unilaterally making risky plans for our lives?  I have much more in common with the reluctant Noah than the humble, accommodating Mary! 

First century Palestine was a dangerous time and place for anyone to be traveling… Patrols of entitled Roman soldiers, Bands of desperate rebel zealots, and ruthless highwaymen were all vying for advantage and control of the rough roads and empty spaces between the Galilean and Judean hill-towns.  But Mary is willing to make the trek to cousin Elizabeth’s because she must see for herself.  If Gabriel is telling the truth about Elizabeth, then maybe He can be trusted with this news that is about to change the entire trajectory of her own life.    If anyone will believe this virgin-birth-business it will be the cousin with her own miraculous story to tell about a truly geriatric pregnancy. 

As Mary crosses the threshold it doesn’t take a trained midwife to observe that Elizabeth is indeed expecting!  After a trip full of questions and emotional upheaval there is a glimmer of hope!   When it comes to the mile-stone moments in our lives it is easy to become the stars of our own internal scripts.   Isn’t it true that usually, we’re pretty ego-centric when it comes to our amazing, or horrific, or newsworthy head-lines?  But Elizabeth is prompted to take a different path.   As soon as she hears Mary’s “Shalom” she shifts the attention from herself and offers center stage to Mary.
Elizabeth’s personal news is a big deal but her focus isn’t on her own BIG EVENT.  With a nudge from the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth discerns that this average teenage girl is carrying an extraordinary child that will transform human history.   

There is a 400 year prophetic parenthesis between the last words of the Prophet Malachi, and the first words exchanged between Elizabeth and Mary.  Malachi, the last of the Hebrew prophets had predicted the births of these two children.  400 years later these two women tie a bow on his message. Suddenly we have a new prophetic era and it all starts with two women, sensitive to the Spirit of God, while trying to make sense of their unusual circumstances. 

Elizabeth’s first word is the focus for the rest of this sermon.   “Blessed!”  “Blessed.”    In other words, Elizabeth declares Mary happy.   Mary shows up at her doorstep a confused, concerned, frightened teen.   But Elizabeth, 6 mo. into her own miracles affirms the goodness and grace of God to them both.   To paraphrase verse 45 of our text, “You will be sincerely, deeply, truely happy AS LONG AS you choose into the belief that God not just a maker of promises but a keeper of promises.  Focus on the promises, not the circumstances, Mary,  focus on the promises not the circumstances. 
Elizabeth IS NOT saying,  Mary, you should be happy, or you will be happy but you ARE happy because, just by being here you proved that You take God seriously.

In Elizabeth, Mary had found someone who not only accepted her, and opened her home to her, but more importantly, someone who blessed her.  And that is all that Mary really needed, all that she was seeking, whether she knew it at the time or not. She just needed to be accepted, loved, and blessed by another. 

If you reflect on the Creation story, the very first thing that God did after creating Adam and Eve, was to bless them. God created them and then immediately blessed them.   The Lutheran priest and author James Laurence puts it this way, “You might even say that God created them in order to bless them. And you might say the same for us...God created us to bless us and to love us; to be in a relationship with us;  a relatioinship that is built on love, and filled with grace and mercy. There is nothing that God wants more than to bless us. Each and every one of us were born to be blessed.

But, somewhere along the way, the brokenness of this world causes us to forget that we are blessed by God. That forgetting is the root of so many of our problems. 

Adam and Eve forgot they were blessed and focused on what they thought they didn’t have.   And don’t we do that too? By focusing on what we don’t have, we forget that we are already blessed in countless ways.  We need to cling to the truth that we are blessed to be a blessing. We are loved to love. We are forgiven to forgive. 

This world, even the person sitting next to you right now, is just like young Mary. This world, or that person next to you, shows up on our doorstep. Alone, scared, confused, desperate for someone to simply open the door and offer a blessing. Just as Elizabeth did for Mary all those years ago. 
Elizabeth didn’t change the world that day. She didn’t need to. All she had to do was to open her door, and offer a blessing. God would do the rest. 
And as Elizabeth said to Mary, in that tender scene, so I now say to you and to myself: Blessed are you who believe this. And may God bless you as you live out your blessing on the stage of the lives of those around you.”

I’d like to close with a quote from Henri Nouwen’s book, Life of the Beloved. “To bless means to say good things. We have to bless one another constantly …  In our society, so full of curses, we must fill each place we enter with our blessings. We forget so quickly that we are God’s beloved children and allow the many curses of our world to darken our hearts. Therefore we have to be reminded of our beloved-ness and remind others of theirs.”  Amen.

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