O come, O come, Emmanuel. Amen.
When I was on sabbatical last year, I was in the Edinburgh airport getting ready for a short flight over to Dublin. I was flying on one of those very economical airlines. I think the one-way ticket was something like 45 euros, so I guess you get what you pay for. Well, the time of the departure came and went with not so much as a word from any airline staff. Up until this point, the two dozen or so of us who were on that flight had been ignoring each other – earbuds in ear and reading books. See, we were waiting on something that was going to be predictable. But when it got to be the time that we were supposed to have landed in Dublin but still hadn’t even boarded the plane, the waiting turned from boredom to anxiety. And with that change, our disposition towards others changed as well – bookmarks went into books and headphones got put away and we started to talk to one another. It started with the basic “I wonder what’s going on?,” to the more personal “What are you planning to do in Dublin?” What made the waiting more bearable was the sense of community, knowing that we were not waiting alone.
Over the Sundays of Advent, the sermons have been focusing on how we wait. Advent, after all, is a season of waiting. The word “Advent” means “coming,” so Advent is the season in which we wait for the arrival of Jesus; not his arrival as an infant 2,000 years ago. No, we’ll celebrate that on Wednesday. Advent is the season in which the Church helps us to notice the ways in which Jesus is continuing to come to us as we await that day on which all will be made well, when all brokenness is redeemed, when all swords are beaten into ploughshares, and when justice flows like an ever-rolling stream. We’ve considered how the prophets, John, and the people who are a part of the established systems of society help us in waiting more faithfully. Today, we will wait with Mary.
Waiting though is challenge, particularly in our modern context. We rarely wait these days because we’re so busy multi-tasking. Because of technology, we can actually do 12 hours of work in an 8-hour day. Though it is reckless, dangerous, and a very bad idea, a lot of people check their email while they drive. As we wait for an appointment to start, we pull out a phone and do some Christmas shopping. In the times when we used to let our minds wander, we now have pacifiers in our pockets that let us play games or scroll through this weird combination of people’s rants, family photos, and ads that we call “social media.” You know, in Scripture God often speaks to people in dreams. And I wonder if maybe why sometimes we struggle to hear the voice of God in our lives is that we’ve forgotten how to daydream instead of trying to make every moment productive.
And not to sound like a Luddite, but technology has made us bad at waiting, which is why we need the example of Mary all the more. Of course, there are so many reasons why we look to Mary as an example. In a sense, Mary is something like our older sister. She carried the One who created all things in her womb and knows things that we do not. Mary is an example of faith, humility, and openness to the Spirit which is why most Christians so deeply respect her and are inspired by her witness.
Most of how we pass time these days is done in a solitary fashion – we pull out a phone with narrows our range of vision to a few inches or we put on headphones that drown out the world around us. Waiting alone is scary, anxiety-producing, and interminable. Mary shows us how to do practice holy waiting.
We’re so used to this story that we might not notice the absurdity of it. Mary is what we would call a young-girl, perhaps 15 years old. She’s betrothed to Joesph, but not yet married. Her life seems to be reasonably on track and then God says to her, “Do not be afraid – I’m going to upend your life with a scandal.” It would be like God coming to me and saying, “Good news Robert, I’m going to use you do something, but first you might need to hire an attorney because people are going to assume you’ve done something horribly immoral, you’re going to have to abandon all of your hopes and plans for life, and some might even think you deserve to be stoned to death.” I’m pretty sure I’d be more like Jonah than Mary; I’d run as far away as I could and might even jump into the belly of a fish.
When the angel Gabriel came to Mary, it’s not as if the angel gives Mary all of the details about how this is going to work out. Mary isn’t told “Hey, I know this sounds crazy, but 2,000 years from now, on the other side of the world, people are going to be singing your praises and they’ll even have a stained glass window of you at the front of their building.” No, Mary isn’t told any of that. Instead, she’s about to have a 9 month wait for her life to be completely upended. And how she waits is instructive for us.
This is where our reading in Luke picks up this morning – Mary set out with haste and went to a small town named Ein Kerem, about 90 miles from Nazareth to visit her relative, Elizabeth. This is the first way in which Mary teaches us how to wait – don’t do it alone. I’m generally a private person, and, truth be told, that’s not always a good thing. In Galatians, we read that we are to fulfill the law of Christ by “bearing one another’s burdens.” Well, if we hide our burdens from each other, not only do we have to carry them alone, but we’re actually preventing others from following the law of love.
I remember when I was in seminary, we had a flag football team. It’s actually pretty serious stuff – I guess it was one way seminarians let off some aggression and anxiety. Well, one week, as we were practicing, as I was running someone down to try to pull their flag, someone else was coming from the opposite direction and I ran into the side of their head, leading with my nose. About a week later, I had surgery to repair the broken nose, but I didn’t make a big deal about it and didn’t tell more than a few people about the surgery. A classmate came up to me the day after surgery, which I could no longer hide with a massive brace taped to my face, and said “I really wish you would have told me about your surgery, I would have liked to pray for you.” And she was right, I had prioritized privacy over community. And the Church is not built on privacy.
Mary and Elizabeth form the most unlikely of cohorts – one is far too old to be having a child and the other is too young. I so appreciate the non-competitiveness of their relationship; the way that they bless and support one another. Notice that they don’t swap angel stories. We all brag, we like to receive praise for our accomplishments, we want people to be impressed by us. I know that if I were Mary, I’d be tempted to find a way to nonchalantly mention, “So the other day, while I was setting a new personal record in the bench press, Gabriel, you know, the archangel, came to me said I was ‘the favored one.’” And if I were Elizabeth, I’d probably respond with, “You know, that reminds me about how when my husband, you know, he was chosen to be the one that got to enter into the sanctuary in the Temple and offer incense. Well, anyway, an angel told him that I was going to have a child even though everyone said it wasn’t possible.”
But there’s none of that – Mary and Elizabeth bless each other and wait with each other. It’s such a holy and righteous example for us of how we ought to wait. To be sure, oversharing is a thing – mostly we see it on social media. I’m not saying that we have to share all of our fears and anxieties with everyone, but it’s a sad commentary on our society that we so often give more information to the Google search bar than we do to friends, mentors, or pastors.
Mary shows us that in waiting with others, by intentionally choosing to be in a relationship with Elizabeth, the waiting is made holy. Some of you are going through stuff and you’ve trusted me with that. If you’ve ever shared a struggle or concern with me, I assure you that I keep you in prayer. Some of you are dealing with something and you need a safe place to offload the burden you’ve been carrying. I don’t always or often have an answer for every situation, but I can listen and assure you that God’s love abides. And if I’m not the right person for the task waiting with you, perhaps Deacon Bonnie is, or maybe another member of this beloved community of St. Luke’s, or a friend. The point is that waiting is always easier with others, so don’t wait alone. Maybe you’re waiting on a diagnosis, a treatment, a college application, a rough patch in a marriage, an impending retirement – whatever it is that you are waiting for, there is an Elizabeth who can wait with you.
Just before Mary sets off to visit Elizabeth, the angel told her “And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Elizabeth was Mary’s sign of hope and promise gifted to her by God. Had Mary decided to stay in Nazareth and keep things to herself, who knows how the story would be different. In waiting with Elizabeth, Mary shared the burden of having a divinely announced child, she received the counsel of someone who could help her in a new situation, she saw the promise of God in the flesh – she saw the impossible become possible and because of that relationship, received strength and confidence to persevere in her own situation. And goodness knows, Mary’s visitation to Elizabeth was a blessing to Elizabeth as well. Elizabeth makes this clear when she proclaims, “Why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” Though Mary was the one who was carrying the burden, in going to wait with someone else, Mary became a blessing to Elizabeth as well. Indeed, there are so many blessings that we receive when we do not wait alone.
And, very briefly, the other way in which Mary did not wait alone is that she testifies to the fact that God is always waiting with us. Mary takes the time to sing the praises of God and notices what God is doing around and through her. She reflects on the great things that God is up to, even if they seem confusing and unsettling. She knows herself to be forgiven and loved as she sings of God’s mercy. Mary witnesses to how God is rearranging, reorienting, and reshaping things. And Mary puts her trust in God’s faithfulness to the promise to always be God with us and God for us.
No matter what valley of the shadow of death you find yourself in, regardless of how unprecedented and unpredictable the situation, God is always with us as our guide, our rock, and our salvation. The song that Mary sings is known as the Magnificat and it is said at Evening Prayer every day. You might use that prayer in these days leading up to Christmas – asking that God would use you to magnify what God is up to in the world. Or maybe your prayer is that others will help to magnify for you how God is with you in whatever you are facing.
There’s no getting around the reality that we all have to wait, but do not have to wait alone and that makes all the difference. Thanks be to God for our Elizabeths, our friends and mentors to give us strength and guidance, and thanks be to God for the fruit of Mary’s womb, Jesus; the God who is always with us. Amen.
