Good Morning Friends,
Today some of my Catholic friends are celebrating the event of the visitation of Mary with Elizabeth her cousin as recorded in the book of Luke. It is a wonderful story. For sure the regal image of a woman in scripture and the coming birth of her ruler son is evident. And in part because it comes right after the Celebration of the Ascension of Jesus to the throne in our lectionary, it carries with it something royal, magnificent, and noble. Really, anytime a child is born we can and should marvel at the astonishing reality of what might be considered ordinary birth. Life is sacred. That we see it being played out in society and politics is no coincidence. But it bears a deeper message. When a child is born to a mother well past childbearing years as with Sarah and Abraham and Zechariah and Elizabeth, it is an amazing statement to a reality that life will find a way if it is God’s will. And then we have the case of Mary and the hints of the Golden Age of Israel returning in a remarkable reality of a virgin birth. We think it impossible, but then think again and ask hopefully. What Prayer Might We Offer That Is Extraordinary?
Scripture: Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are.
Romans 12:9-16 (NRSV)
In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and 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.” And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.
Luke 1:39-56 (NRSV)
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Matthew 19:26 (NIV)
Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it.
Zephaniah 3:14-18a (NRSV)
Message:
Today, for many around the world, is a celebration of the blessedness of the mother of our Lord. Now, the precise nature of her raising to glory has been the subject of much theological debate which I am not going to indulge. That would lead us down the road of obsessing about how, rather than honoring and respecting the person of Mary. So, I would like to draw our focus to the mother of Jesus through a song she sang. There is a very familiar line from the Magnificat, the Song of Mary that says, “from this day all generations will call me blessed.” But what does it mean? This requires a little more reflection. So, let’s put it in perspective. The context of our Gospel reading is Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth. Now, Mary’s song of praise begins, not with Archangel Gabriel’s tidings of divine favor. No. At that point, she is merely obedient and faithful to God’s will. However, when a woman of flesh and blood, like herself, calls her “the mother of my Lord”, the message of the angel assumes a living force of its own. Mary is moved by this force in such a way that she cannot help but glorify her Lord! She sings, in Hebrew thought and style, of the all-excelling perfections of God, his power, his holiness, his mercy and his faithfulness. Interestingly, the Magnificat is almost wholly comprised of Old Testament quotations, and there are very clear resonances with Hannah’s Prayer on the birth of Samuel in 1 Samuel chapter 2. It is intriguing that Mary does not utter a single, direct word connecting her with her promised Son, but clearly, the whole hymn is inspired by this truth. She undoubtedly understood that the Messiah would inaugurate a cosmic Jubilee foretold in Isaiah. It would be a time of massive political reordering and social reversal. Luke uses the past tense for these revolutionary acts as a prophetic statement of confidence in a perfect future event. Just as we may see the light of dawn emerging before we set our eyes on the morning sun, so many of the future events of the Messianic age had begun to be realized in the very pregnancies of Elizabeth and Mary. Elizabeth refers to Mary as ‘blessed’ three times in just four verses, but the meaning is essentially the same as in the beatitudes and means happy, but not a superficial, fluffy happy. It is the religious joy of a person who has a share in divinely given salvation. And this is the key to understanding Mary’s blessedness and how we might become blessings as well. Certainly, our roles are not so significant. The part of Mary is a vital and indispensable role in God’s plan for the history of the world. Our roles are less dramatic and yet also resonate with the lesson of the Assumption, that is that the whole person, body, and soul, participates in the battle of life and the whole person, body and soul, participates in the victory that exists eternally. It is therefore about our hearts united with patience and struggle and joy that joins our lives to the eternity of the triumphant Church including all its members. Here heaven and earth come close, allowing us to experience the gift of community and the body as an instrument of knowledge, an instrument of pleasure, pain, procreation, and the vehicle of life that supports the soul. For me this morning as the sun rises, that is the message of the blessedness of Mary. God loved us enough to send Jesus Christ into the world to let us know what Joy is. Although it took centuries for it to happen, God waited until the time was right, and God took on flesh to intersect the life of a poor young girl by the name of Mary. An angel had come to Mary to let her know that she had been chosen to give birth to a child who would become the savior of the world. The child would be the Son of God who would take away the sins of the world. This was the child of promise. This was the child of pain. This would be the child of joy.
And So, it is a big task to build a loving family and community that we see evidenced in the lives of Elizabeth and Mary. The key to achieving it is our birth in the Body of Christ. We are, in a way, to be born again. And the amazing thing about the reborn Body of believers is that God has given us so many different people with lots of different functions. And together we make up a new creation. The image that the Bible uses is that of a body. Lots of different parts: limbs and muscles and ligament and nerves; all different but all part of the body of Christ and, more importantly, part of each other. We gain strength in diversity. Each unique gift of the members is to help build a community that reflects God’s love. Friends, the mark of success in building this sort of community is the experience of mutual affection between members, much like a family as seen in the passage from Luke about Mary’s visit with family. That is, we are to be a people who genuinely enjoy being together, who treat one another with love and affection. Impossible prayer request you say. Well maybe, but then again, nothing is impossible with God. The thing is that we must be willing to let God answer prayers when the time fully comes. Sure, God does want to touch us and change our disappointment into His appointment, but we should be willing to let God answer in His own way. The beauty is that God can breathe hope into the stale air of impossible solutions, but we should be willing to let God answer with a divine power and not limit the solutions. Sometimes it just comes down to our being willing to receive love but even then, we should be willing to let God answer our prayers for a divine purpose. The thing is that Jesus perfectly blended the ordinary and the extraordinary. He is the extraordinary God placed in an ordinary body and his mother got to experience this is an amazing way worthy of our contemplation and prayer.
Pray we discover our true identities even as we acknowledge that God will be God. Pray despite our lack of understanding about things extraordinary that we have our vision magnified. Pray we have a vision consistent with our self-image. Pray we overcome the past and establish a new reality. Pray we prepare for success and live into our legacy. Pray that the fruit of Mary’s womb prompt us to show hospitality to others. Pray we let the Holy Spirit produce fruit in us so that we too might know the joy of God. Pray our lives and homes produce the fruit of the Spirit in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Pray we realize that this fruit is the fruit of Christ’s own character within us. Pray we realize that Jesus wants to become a guest in our homes and heart to transform us. Pray because heaven has the heart of a mother that proclaims the greatness of our Lord. Pray we are never robbed of hope. Pray we believe in the strength of grace as this gift from God carries us forward with our eyes fixed on heaven. Pray our collective body and individual bodies become blessed to be a blessing to others in ways like Jesus both ordinary and extraordinary.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 