“Visitations”
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
5:00pm Sermon
The Fourth Sunday of Advent (Year C)
Psalm 80:1-7; Luke 1:39-55
December 22, 2024
Mark Lloyd Taylor, Ph.D.
A Beatles song says it well:
There are places I’ll remember
All my life, though some have changed.
Some forever, not for better;
Some have gone and some remain.
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall.
Some are dead and some are living,
In my life I’ve loved them all.
Familiar places. Moments – those dates on the calendar we’ll never forget. Names and the people who wore them. The stories their lives told.
My mother died on December 22nd – this very day six years ago. At 7:01pm Central Time. Oh, that’s right now! December 22nd: the same day she gave birth to my youngest sibling, fifty-eight years earlier.
I wasn’t in the room at the skilled nursing facility in Kansas when my mother died. But thanks to my sister and her smartphone, I was able to see Mom’s face from faraway Seattle as she lay in bed earlier in the evening. I read the 23rd Psalm to her, along with Psalm 103 and a prayer that begins, “Eternal God, you call us to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.” She mouthed silent words in return. Then, I watched over her for a little while from my sister’s chair across the room.
In 2018, December 22nd fell on a Saturday, not Sunday like today. I didn’t sleep much that night. Instead, I looked at lots of old family photos. Somehow, I managed to get up the next morning – the Fourth Sunday of Advent – and set out on my short journey to attend the 9:00 o’clock mass here at St. Paul’s. I came alone because Debra had just finished her first week of radiation treatments following surgery for breast cancer. I sat over there, in that place in the corner, near mother Mary and baby Jesus. It was a different icon back then, but I wanted, I needed, their company in my grief and loss. Desperately.
People called my mother Betty, but her name was Elizabeth. And the gospel reading I heard that Sunday morning after my mother’s death was the one Fr. Phillip just proclaimed. The story of Mary’s visitation with her relative Elizabeth and how the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaped for joy at Mary’s greeting and the coming of the baby in Mary’s womb (Luke 1:39-45). How could I not hear my life story woven into the stories of pregnant Elizabeth and Mary, unborn John and Jesus? Pregnant Elizabeth and unborn Mark? This evening, however, I find myself carrying these familiar stories and names and moments and places differently. Holding them, embracing them, anew.
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I wonder why Mary chose to visit Elizabeth. Why did Mary travel so far in such great haste? From Nazareth up north in Galilee all the way to the Judean hill country – south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Over eighty miles. On foot? On a donkey? Did Mary travel alone? If not, who accompanied her? Why with haste? In those days, we’re told, Mary set out on her journey. Those days: the days immediately after angel Gabriel announced the startling news to Mary that she would bear a child even though she was a virgin. Immediately after that same angel announced that, despite decades of barrenness, Elizabeth had also conceived a son and was in her sixth month of pregnancy. Did you catch that? Gospel writer Luke dates the annunciation to Mary from time of the angel’s earlier visitation with Elizabeth – not the other way around. Why did Mary stay with Elizabeth so long? The verse following the end of our gospel reading says: “And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home” (1:56).
Mary needed something from Elizabeth. Mary wanted something from Elizabeth. Desperately.
Maybe Mary was surprised by the changes in her body. Maybe they frightened her. Maybe Mary found herself utterly alone as the gossip about her pregnancy outside of marriage spread and the other villagers began to shun her. Maybe Mary was shamed and felt ashamed. Maybe she worried how, worried if, she – a woman, young and unmarried – could provide for a child. Would Joseph her betrothed even stay with her throughout an unplanned and problematic pregnancy? Would she and the child become an intolerable burden on her family’s financial resources and social capital? Maybe Mary simply despaired at the thought of bringing a child into the world – into this world. Israel defeated and occupied by the Roman empire. A people empty and adrift. A world of overwhelming cruelty and sorrow.
Why Elizabeth? Well, she was older than Mary and she too was expecting a child – although she was experiencing pregnancy for the first time. Whatever the reason, Mary came to the right place. She found in Elizabeth a mansion prepared to welcome her. Not only did the unborn child filling Elizabeth’s womb leap for joy, but Elizabeth herself was filled with the Holy Spirit and stepped right into the role of a prophet in Israel. Elizabeth serves as Mary’s forerunner, preparing the way – just as John, Elizabeth’s son, later prepares the way for Jesus. Mary felt herself and her unborn child honored instead of shamed. Praised by Elizabeth, not blamed. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord. As the angel Gabriel had said earlier to Mary – but about Elizabeth’s pregnancy: Nothing will be impossible with God.
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I can’t help wondering what psalm Mary might have been singing to herself on her long journey to visit Elizabeth. Could it have been one of Israel’s songs of lament – given Mary’s fear and surprise, loneliness and shame, worry and despair. Could it have been Psalm 80, the psalm we prayed together this evening?
Restore us, O God of hosts;
show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
O LORD God of hosts,
how long will you be angered
despite the prayers of your people?
You have fed them with the bread of tears;
you have given them bowls of tears to drink.
You have made us the derision of our neighbors,
and our enemies laugh us to scorn.
Restore us, O God of hosts;
show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved (1-7).
If so, if this was Mary’s psalm, then her lament turned toward God, when sorrow and despair tempted her to run away. We remember Mary singing her own song, that most familiar song: My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for you have looked with favor on the lowliness of your servant. You have lifted up the lowly. You have filled the hungry with good things (Luke 1:46-55).
But here, for me on this December 22nd, is the most stunning new insight into all these familiar stories and names and moments and places. Mary sings her song of rejoicing not in response to Gabriel’s annunciation but to her visitation with Elizabeth. To be sure, Mary’s response to the angel was one of trust and willingness, but hardly joy: Here I am the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word (Luke 1:38). The Magnificat, instead, is Mary’s joyous response to Elizabeth’s spirit-filled, prophetic words. In fact, there are even a couple of ancient manuscripts of the gospel of Luke that attribute the Magnificat to Elizabeth; and name Elizabeth as the singer of the words: My soul magnifies the Lord. Even if we don’t choose to go that far, I can imagine Mary and Elizabeth singing the Magnificat as a duet.
And if a duet, then why not a congregational song – one we all can join. In this place. At that altar where we bring our gifts, even our bread of tears and the bowls of tears we drink. We bring them and pray that they will be transformed into the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven and the Blood of Christ, the Cup of Salvation. We are mansions prepared by the daily, weekly, yearly visitation of Christ. Not empty and adrift, but full of those good things. For nothing will be impossible with God.
Resources.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “All My Life,” from the album Rubber Soul (EMI Records, 1965).
For the prayer “Eternal God, you call us to ventures…,” see Book of Common Worship: Daily Prayer, Presbyterian Church (USA), page 39.
The words around “daily visitation” and “mansions prepared” come from the collect for this Fourth Sunday of Advent (Book of Common Prayer, page 212).