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Today’s Good News includes a happy reunion of two of our matriarchs in the faith. But this delighted meeting of two pregnant women got me thinking about two more matriarchs, Sarah and Hagar.
Sarah is the savvy wife of Abraham, famous for being startled and then amused by the ludicrous promise that she could have a child in old age. Sarah found that idea so ridiculous that when it finally happened, she named her child Isaac, a name that means “Laughter.”
Soon after she gave birth to Laughter, Sarah wasted no time expelling the household slave Hagar and her illegitimate son from the family compound. Abraham had slept with Hagar (at Sarah’s suggestion!) to hedge his bets on God’s promise of a son by Sarah. (It’s highly doubtful that Hagar had much of a choice in this matter.) Hagar had duly given Abraham a son, who was named Ishmael, a name that means “God will hear”. But with Isaac’s arrival, the clock was ticking loudly for Hagar. She and Ishmael had to go.
But take note: after they are ejected from Abraham’s household, God takes care of Hagar and Ishmael, in the wilderness. True to Ishmael’s name, God hears them in their time of great need. But to Sarah and Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael were first instruments they could use, and then dangerous inconveniences.
My friend Arienne Davison, a priest in our diocese, offers a helpful perspective on this story of household conflict. (Arienne calls it “a fleshy story about cultural differentiation.”) Sarah was a woman in a strictly patriarchal culture, and so it fell to her to transmit that culture to the next generation. She ejects Hagar and her son not because Sarah is a jealous, small-minded villain, but because in a real sense it is her job to do this. God cares for the rejected Hagar and preserves her son’s life, but it would have been hard for Abraham and Sarah to do that, given all the constraints of their time and place. God is present and powerful in all cultures, but God is also bigger than our human cultural constructs and rules.
And now, today, people of faith in Arab cultures claim Abraham as their ancestor through Ishmael; and people of faith in Jewish (and later, Christian) cultures claim Abraham as their ancestor through Isaac. It’s a difficult, frustrating schism in the family of Abraham that has had disastrous results down the ages.
But at the dawn of this age – our age – in a rural backwater and among unrenowned hill people, two more mothers discover that they have the power to come together, rather than break apart in a painful schism. They don’t heal (or at least they haven’t yet healed) the great rift of Isaac and Ishmael, but they offer a new pattern to people of faith, a new way of being, a new way of relating. And because their story is told by Luke, that wonderfully skillful and lyrical evangelist, we get to enjoy intimate, vivid portraits of these women, and we even get to hear them sing songs of love and triumph; songs of freedom and justice.
Mary goes “with haste” – she is in a big hurry – to the hill country in Judea, from north to south, and visits her cousin Elizabeth. Why is she in a hurry? I’ll assert that she bears in her body the immediacy, the urgency of God’s incarnation: God in Jesus arrives in our lives with haste, coming to us soon, very soon, rushing into our sphere of suffering with healing and release, with comfort and gladness.
And Elizabeth erupts in joy when her younger cousin arrives. Elizabeth doesn’t get a full song – a full aria – in Luke’s beautiful songbook. (That honor goes to her husband Zechariah, her cousin Mary, the Bethlehem angels, and old Simeon in the temple.) But Elizabeth does get a recitative, as it were. (A recitative is a brief, sung recitation of dialogue that moves the story along.) If Luke’s Gospel were an oratorio or opera, Elizabeth’s brief song is the recitative that sets us up to hear Mary’s Magnificat aria.
Elizabeth prepares us for Mary’s good news. “Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit,” sings Luke, “and [she] exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘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 fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
Let’s look at this recitative more closely. Why is Mary blessed? Is Elizabeth singing that Mary is blessed because she believed God’s promise? (Great is your faith, Mary! You’re blessed!) Or is Mary blessed by the fulfillment of the promise itself? (It worked out like you believed it would, Mary! You’re blessed!) We’re not quite sure what Elizabeth means because in the Magnificat, Mary sings of God’s triumph in the past tense. God has already knocked the mighty from their thrones, and fed the starving multitudes. God has already reversed the world order. And Elizabeth’s syntax matches Mary’s: the Lord’s mother is blessed because she believed (past tense) that there would be a fulfillment (past tense). They’ve already won, these two! Nailed it! Much winning!
And this is all so joyful. Instead of the old-world structure in which two child-bearing women can’t help each other, can’t lift each other up, can’t even dwell under one roof, now they come together with gladness. Elizabeth is the older mother who is giving birth to the less-important child – she already knows that Mary’s child will outshine her own – but she greets her more fortunate cousin with uncomplicated joy. The last time something like this happened in the Bible was when the older brother Aaron embraced and supported his younger brother Moses, letting go of his own ego, his own agenda, maybe even his own dreams.
This is all so lovely. From even before his birth, Jesus teaches us that we need not adhere to the old ways, the old divisive ways, the old schismatic ways. Now of course, we sometimes still harbor ill will toward one another. We occasionally nurse resentments. But anxious resentment is wretched and destructive. Anxious resentment breaks us apart; it tears at the fabric of community. Resentment is a great enemy, and Saint Elizabeth teaches us to let it all go, to release it. It sounds like she didn’t even resent Mary in the first place! Be at peace. You need not compete with your neighbor, and you’d likely lose anyway. Don’t worry about it. In the new world brought into being by the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, everyone is on the same level, valleys filled, mountains knocked down. Your children don’t threaten mine. We multiply our joy by freely sharing it with one another, with our community, and with the stranger at our door.
But hold up: let’s go back a step. Let’s talk about that past-tense bit. Maybe Elizabeth just got carried away, but did I really hear her sing that Mary is blessed because she believed the world would be changed, and therefore the world has already changed? And then, in Mary’s aria, is she really singing that it’s all done, mission accomplished, poverty is no more, all is well? Are they out of their minds? Are they fantasists? Are they high on hormones?
No, they’re onto something. Consider this: the whole story of Mary and Elizabeth was written down by a community that already knew that both of their sons would be executed by the state. They already knew that Jerusalem would be flattened by the imperial army, just a half century or so after this happy Judean baby shower. Mary and Elizabeth aren’t fools, any more than Sarah and Hagar were. All the women in these stories know what the world is really like. (And that includes Hannah, yet another matriarch. Mary’s Magnificat is in many ways a reprise of Hannah’s aria.)
The world may be a big, awful mess – we Christians are not naïve about that – but our matriarchs teach us that the Resurrection has already routed the evil powers of the world, even if it takes millennia for that routing to fully manifest itself. Are you lamenting the state of the world? (If not, I wonder if you’re paying attention.) It’s bad out there. But Saints Mary and Elizabeth teach us that the grace and the triumph of the Incarnation is right here, growing inside us like a leaping baby.
I’ll give you a strong, good example. I met with Phil LaBelle, our new bishop, this past week. I like him a lot. Phil is from the east coast: he has not yet been to 15 Roy Street; he does not yet know St. Paul’s. I filled him in. I told him that when I got here in late 2022, I couldn’t find even one area of ministry that was not in need of development in the wake of the pandemic. I told him that I have counted no fewer than twelve urgent projects in our Buildings and Grounds Ministry. I told him that while every congregation around the world suffered greatly in a time of plague, St. Paul’s had one or two additional difficulties to handle during those years, including having a front-row seat for the exploding housing crisis in our restive city.
But then I told Bishop Phil that we have rushed back joyfully and ferociously, determined to regain our place on this street corner, delighted to relaunch our vital mission in this neighborhood. I told him that as bad as things got, our parish had strong vital signs and strong faith. We nourished prophets and evangelists here. We empowered witnesses and servants. We cultivated justice and peace in this Resurrection garden. We’ve already done so much. God has already accomplished so much, in and with us. And the holy Child of God’s abundant presence is already kicking joyfully inside us, foretelling a bright and graceful future.
Is the world falling apart? Yes, it seems so. But here, right here, just here, the world has already come together. God has already helped us, in remembrance of God’s mercy, according to the promise God made to our ancestors, to Abraham and Sarah and Hagar, to Mary and Elizabeth, and to their descendants forever.
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Preached on the Fourth Sunday of Advent (Year C), December 22, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Micah 5:2-5a
Psalm 80:1-7
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-55