Advent IV, Year C
The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector
Micah 5: 2-4 Psalm 80 Hebrews 10: 5-10 Luke 1: 39-49 [50-56]
How much more on the threshold can you be?! It's as if we're standing just outside the door, listening with bated breath for the Good News of a safe delivery.
And the "family room" is already decorated for the birth - I feel like saying, Oz-like, "pay no attention to the decorations behind the curtain"! And yet, how can we not see, and feel that the moment is here!
So close! And yet, there are still questions, aren't there? Have we done the right things, made the appropriate preparations, focused on the genuine reason for this festive time?
Today's gospel reading isn't quite that close - at least, geographically. And - well - it also seems to begin three months ago!
Mary is still in the hill country - the north country near Nazareth, that's over 100 miles from Bethlehem. And, it's a beautiful part of the Holy Land.
Even though we're at the other end of the country we're brought to Bethlehem in spite of where Mary is by the Old Testament reading from Micah. God says of Bethlehem "You are so tiny! You are not even counted among the clans of Judah. You are empty of big ideas, power, royalty and influence. How can you be sufficient to bring forth a ruler of Jerusalem?"
Not an auspicious beginning to think about the coming of one who is called "The Savior", is it?! But light had already come from the darkness, the large from the small. History is on Bethlehem's side: King David had already been born in Bethlehem, centuries before. Maybe again a great king would emerge from humble beginnings......?!
Mary, Luke tells us, goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, and the realization that something truly amazing is happening seems to dawn on both of them at the same time.
Here is an intimate encounter between two women of faith. Both have trusted in the secrecy of pregnancy. They both are moved to share their secrets:
- Mary has been greeted by an angel and trusts what she hears in her soul.
- Elizabeth hears Mary's greeting and trusts what she hears and feels within her body.
And so Elizabeth greets Mary with a tender benediction: "Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled."
And, as if to confirm it, Luke tells us, that other baby - the one that will be known as "The Baptizer", "leaps for joy".
In the Bible, leaping is what you do on the last day. As the Prophet Malachi reminds us (4.2), when that day dawns, when the sun of righteousness rises with healing in his wings, we shall "go out leaping like calves from the stall" "In his mother's womb, John the Baptist, the least [laid-back] of biblical characters, takes up the dance in which, at the last, all creation will join." (John Pridmore, Church Times column)
And in that moment there's a message for us as we stand on the threshold: The Word has already been made flesh, it's just that this flesh has yet to become worldly.
Enwombed - as later he will be entombed - The One Who Is To Come is protected for just a little bit longer from the harsh realities of the world by his mother Mary, as later he will be protected - for three days - by his mother-the-earth.
The moment of celebration is - even in these readings - closer than we thought even just a few minutes ago - in fact it's already here - and there's much singing to accompany it. Mary's song of joy is offered to us this day to remind us that, in the end, no matter what happens on the journey, there will be joy at its ending.
That seems a fitting place to stop, for a few hours: on the threshold of joy! Amen.
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