What's in a Word? (John 1:1-14)

     Monday night we read the story of the Christ child, born of simple circumstance two thousand years ago . . . we saw his humble beginnings, read about the manger and the wise men, the little babe and Mary, pondering all in her heart . . . and who could have a more lowly beginning?  Who could be more menial at his start?  There was no room at the inn, or at least no room could be made . . . if there was an earthly ruler, if there was an earthly prince or princess or even a well-off wine merchant, room might have been made . . . like a movie star who never has to wait in line, who can get reservations just by dropping her name, there would have probably been room at the inn for somebody willing to throw a little weight around, or at least a little silver . . . but Joseph and his pregnant wife had neither social weight nor silver, so they were stuck out in the barn, with the animals . . . and we picture them there – the cattle are lowing, the poor babe awakes – in countless nativity scenes that you may – or may not – be able to set up in a court-house square, and there's nothing more homey, more down-to-earth, more familiar than our picture of Mary, Joseph and the babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

     But wait – there are hints of his greatness, even at birth . . . angels announce his coming to his parents – that doesn't happen everyday – and shepherds in the fields hear a heavenly choir singing "Glory to God in the Highest" but still – Joseph is just a poor carpenter and Mary just a slip of a girl, and shepherds . . . well, shepherds are mighty low on the old totem pole, let me tell you . . . somewhere below household slaves yet still above, of course, Samaritans . . .

     And all these details about his lowly birth, all these tales of what Mary pondered in her heart, of wise-men following yonder star, all of them come from just two of the four Gospels.  They're all from Matthew or Luke . . . they're the only two gospels that thought details of his childhood important enough to include – even though they each include different details . . . Put another way, Luke and Matthew assume the story of Jesus begins with his birth . . . for Mark, on the other hand, the story of Jesus begins when his ministry begins, on the Jordan River, with his baptism by John the Baptizer, who's no relation to John the Gospel-writer.

     And that John – the Gospel-writer, that is – that John begins "in the beginning" and that should ring a few bells, because those are the exact same words that Genesis begins with . . . "in the beginning . . . the earth was formless and void."  The Gospel John says "in the beginning was the Word," and it's clear that he's evoking that first in-the-beginning here . . . in fact, because Genesis begins before creation, John is saying that this Word was – that it existed – before creation.  And in fact, in the beginning this Word was with God and – at the same time, and stunningly – the Word was somehow God.  And a whole bunch of theology is packed into this one little verse, and we won't begin to unpack it all, but let's start with the word "Word" . . . just what is in that Word, anyway?

     Well, John was writing in the first century, and the word Logos – which is the Greek we translate as "Word" here – the word Logos was jam-packed with meaning . . . it could mean simply a single word, or an idea, an utterance, or it could mean a reckoning, a settlement of accounts.  In Stoic philosophy it was the rational principle of the universe, by which all the cosmos was ordered, but John was a Jew, and in Jewish thought it was rich with significance . . . the word of God spoke creation into existence . . . God's word ordered Jewish lives in the form of the law, and through the prophets it spoke out in comfort or in judgement . . . it is related to Lady Wisdom, who is called Sophia, said who in Proverbs works alongside God, accomplishing God's plan for humanity . . . all of these associations – creative force, rational principle, law, judgement, wisdom – all are bound up in that one word Logos, which we translate as "Word."  And when John uses it here, all these associations come along with it.

     And John says that this Word, this personification of all these ideas, all these characteristics of the God-head, was there in the beginning, right alongside God, and at the same time were somehow the essence of God, in some fashion the Word was God.  And all things came into being through the Word, without him not one thing came into being . . . this Word—as it says in Genesis—is a motive force for creation, when it is spoken it creates.

     And what is it that was created out of God’s-breath?  What is it that comes into being with the speaking of the Word?  Why, it’s life itself.   What gets spoken into existence, breathed into substance through the Word was nothing less than life itself, all that we hold dear . . .  and this life was the light of all people . . .

     And now John's metaphor shifts to light, light that illuminates the darkness, that makes all things clear . . . light you can read by, love by, live by . . . light that makes the rough places a plain and mountains and hills low . . . in this light you can see things you couldn't see before, and you can see things for what they really are . . . this light illumines as well as illuminates, it makes clear what was formerly obscured, and behold!  The darkness did not overcome it . . . the light shines and the darkness did not overcome it.  And note the mixing of tenses, present as well as past . . . the light shines and the darkness did not overcome it . . . it's all over but the shouting.  The light is still shining and the darkness has failed, end of story.

     John the Baptizer knew this, didn't he?  He knew of whom he was the forerunner . . . he was sent from God to be a witness to this light, to see it spring up, so he could testify to the light, and the wording is specific here as well . . . testify, as in a law-suit, or a criminal trial . . . testify, as in under oath . . . he himself was not the light, he was not this pre-existent Word – and were there folks during John-the-Gospel-writer's time who thought that he was?  Were there people who followed John the Baptist as we follow the Christ?  John the gospel-writer is emphatic about that point, he wants to make sure we get it–  John the Baptizer was not the light, but the true light – which enlightens everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, Greek and Roman alike, male and female, slave and Ethiopian eunuch alike – was coming into the world.

     Let's step back for a moment, and look at it from a modern perspective . . . this last bit, about enlightening everyone, seems to me to be a bold statement . . . "everyone" includes a bunch of people . . . even back then, in the first century.  But in the twenty-first century?  Oy vey . . . Europeans and Africans and Asians . . . Buddhists and Marxists and Atheists . . . and look at the tense of the verb "to enlighten" . . . it's in the present tense, this light illuminates everyone, it shows everyone the truth, or at least according to John . . . The light was in the world in the beginning illuminates all parts, all peoples, all faiths and countries and continents.

     Well, if it was there in the beginning, if it was part of the creative force, why do so many refuse to see it?  Why do so many reject it out of hand, this light who lights up the world?  He was in the world, John says, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him, refused to accept him, and John's community knew it was true . . . they were stinging under rejection from the synagogues, from their own Jewish brothers and sisters, and feeling increasingly isolated in the world.  John's gospel goes on to tell of instance after instance when the prominent religious people of the day refused to accept the Christ, and we all know that he is ridiculed, scoffed at, rejected today, as well . . . and just like back then, many prominent religious folk of the day refuse to accept him as well . . . they claim to be Christians with their tongues, but refuse to live as if what he taught matters . . . they idolatrously remake Christ in their own image, rejecting what he taught that is inconvenient for them or their aims.  Whole countries do this, and individuals as well . . . even those of us who are members of his body, even those of us who are the chosen refuse to accept him at times . . .

     And notice that this has nothing to do with “salvation,” nothing to do with where we go when we die.  For John the gospel writer, like most Jews, accepting Christ affects how we live in the here and now . . . believing in Christ orders our lives, maybe in the hereafter, perhaps in the sweet by and by, but certainly in this present existence.

     And for those who do this, all who orient their lives to Christ, all who believe in his name, he gives power to become children of God born not of blood or the will of man or flesh, but of God . . . the power, the ability, the capability to be the children of God . . . born not by human means – by blood or will of the flesh or man – but of God.

     And this Word, this creative force, present with God in the beginning of it all, before the beginning of time, this Word who enlightens the whole world, no exceptions, became flesh and dwelt among us, among us, his creations . . . and we have certainly seen his glory, the glory as of a fathers only son, as of a mother's only daughter, full of grace and truth . . . and the incarnation, the coming of this Word to earth, to become one of us, that is what we celebrate this Christmas season, that's what bells around the world ring out on this first Sunday of the coming of Christ . . . that the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us was born lying in a manger, cattle and sheep and shepherds and wise men all around . . .

     And all of the ecclesiological nuances, all of the doctrine, all of the top-down, from-on-high theology that comes together in our passage, all of it came together  in that cradle, in the little babe who nuzzled his mama's breast and cooed in delight at trinkets brought by wise men . . . who pulled his daddy's beard and grinned a toothless grin at ragamuffin shepherds . . . the Word was made flesh, ordinary, run-of-the-mill flesh that dwelt among us.

     Hollywood producers – how's that for a segue? – Hollywood producers are famous – or infamous – for asking writers to boil their scripts – the products of months of work – down to a one-line idea. . . like "it's the Graduate meets Godzilla, only the monster doesn't marry Dustin Hoffman" or "it's the Wizard of Oz, only with a singing chipmunk as Dorothy and John Wayne as the wicked witch."  And if I had to boil all the theology and imagery and poetry of this passage down to one thing, if I had to pitch the message of our passage to a Hollywood producer, I'd go back to the beginning . . . and in that beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . the Word that was spoken on that frosty Christmas night communicated to us, revealed to us . . . God.  No person, no man woman or child had ever before seen God . . . oh, Moses saw God's backside, Elijah felt God on the wind, but nobody had ever beheld God face-to-face.  From that night two thousand and twelve years ago on, that was no longer the case . . . anyone who wants to know what God is like, all she has to do is look in that cradle.  All she has to do is look at that life lived in service of others.  All she has to do is look at that death so that all of us might have life.

          Later on in John's Gospel, Jesus himself explains it to his disciples: "If you know me," he says, "you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."¹  And it's the basis for all the Christian endeavor, from those annoying "What would Jesus do?" bracelets to all of the social service operations in Christ's name.  If you want to know what God would have us do, if you want to know what proclaiming the Gospel in thought, word and deed means, just look at  the Word, just read the Word, just experience the Word that was born in the City of David, who is Christ the Lord.  Amen.

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The Angel’s Tale (Luke 2:1-20)

I always wondered what it would be like to be an angel.  No . . . really.  I mean, how would it be to be immortal?  Kinda cool, wouldn’t you say?  You wouldn’t have to worry about health insurance, about little Gabriel Jr. growing up and becoming 21 and going off your health plan, and you having to pick up some El-Cheapo 100-dollar-a-month plan that excludes everything but direct atomic attack, would you?  You wouldn’t have to worry about what to watch on TV that night, because you could probably look down and see a hundred-million dramas going on all at once.  But you have not much use for the lives of the mortals, to you who have lived so very long, their puny generations seem like seconds, nano-seconds, even . . .

And to you who are immortal, their cares and woes look like silly, little soap operas, like inconsequential insect-scrabblings, and you do God’s will—after all, you are God’s messengers—you appear with fiery sword in hand, calling the prophets to do whatever it is prophets . . . do, but otherwise you leave the humans to their own smelly devices . . .

But on this night it’s somehow different, it’s colder than Methuselah’s shovel, for one thing, the breath is coming out of everybody’s mouth like steam-engines, but that’s not it, really . . . it feels different, somehow, momentous, as if all heaven—and earth—is on the verge of something, and you’re part of the greatest show on earth, the heavenly chorus, and as you collect your folders and file in to the practice room, that one cold winter night, the director—this tallish blond angel with a full halo and impeccable taste—says “Word’s come from on high to expect something new this evening”—and immediately a groan goes up from the sopranos, they remember the last time they had to work a last-minute gig, something about Elijah being taken up to heaven or something, and they had to hit a G-sharp without even warming up . . .

And far below, you can hear a clatter, and if you squint and strain to peer around the altos, you can just make out old Gabriel, shining like the sun, and a bunch of ratty-looking shepherds, cowering in fear—you’re glad you’re this far away from them, if you know what I mean—and Gabriel always did like an audience, you grumble, but if you strain you can just barely hear what’s being said:  “Do not be afraid,” he says, and you think “Right . . . that ship’s already sailed” “Do not be afraid,” says Gabriel, “for Behold!”—this with a flourish—“I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people!” and the heavenly choir-director steps up to the podium and raises her baton, all the while listening to ol’ Gabe down below, and his voice is louder, now, he’s getting to the good part, to the point:   “to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Messiah, the Lord.”  And the director cocks her head, straining to hear Gabriel’s pronouncement and ready the choir at the same time:  “This will be a sign for you” he says, and the director’s baton is raised just a little bit higher, and she’s almost vibrating with expectation, waiting for the cue, “you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”  And there it is, her hands flash down, and you respond, and from your mouths come the most magnificent sound, multi-leveled, multi-voiced, polyphonic, a great wall of cascading sound  . . . it is the most beautiful sound, you are sure, any of those puny mortals have ever heard, pure and wild, filling the heavens . . . and yet within it, you can make out the words—and you grudgingly admit all those enunciation exercises the director made you do have paid off, because clearly within the looming cacophony it can be made out: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward Humankind!”

And straining to look down, while the sound is still pouring from your mouth, you can see those silly, mortal shepherds, standing with their mouths gaping open, and a wondrously bright light pours down upon them—and they reach instinctively for their sunglasses—but just as suddenly as it came, the director cuts you off, and the sound stops on a dime, and so does the light, and self-satisfied, you look around in back of you toward the throne, straining to see what God the Creator thinks about it all, looking for some props from the ol’ Ancient of Days, and you almost fall off your riser: the throne is empty, bare, there is no God at home.

You are flabbergasted, floored, flibber-ti-gibbeted, because that’s never happened before in your life, God being missing in action, and you’ve lived a long, immortal, life . . .  well, it did happen one time, just after God created all those silly creatures, he spent an awful lot of time walking in that garden, talking with that Adam person . . . but since then, God’s been a rock, a Rock of the Ages, so to speak, and you are suddenly cold, bereft, it’s as if you were suddenly the loneliest person in the world . . . the God of Heaven, creator of the you, the universe, and all that jazz, has left the building.

And by the whoosh and flutter of wings all around you can tell the others are frightened, and when the shock has abated, and you look around at the rest of the Heavenly Choir, you can see it clearly . . . faces that for centuries showed only immutable joy, creased with worry, pocked with panic . . . feathers falling in a great rain, onto the ground below, piling up in drifts like so-much new-fallen snow . . . Henrietta, fluttering like some over-stuffed peacock, Thaddeus gibbering like a school-boy, and over in the corner, they’re pummeling Gabriel with questions, but it’s clear he knows no more than any other: “I have no idea where God has gone,” he said, “I just delivered a message, I’m just a messenger, like the rest of you.”

And suddenly, somebody spies those idiotic shepherds, slowly heading toward the west . . . and lo, there is a great star shining out in that direction, and you think: It clearly has something to do with them, might as well follow . . . and so you fold your wings like you taught the eagles to do and plummet toward earth, and as you look around you see you’re not the only one who decided to do that, there’s a whole host of heavenly bodies, dive-bombing the earth, and just before you crash into the shepherds, you pull up out of your bombing run, but so artful are you that it’s like a troubling little breeze, ruffling their greasy robes, and they look up, troubled, but you’re not visible to their mortal eyes unless you want them to be . . . and nobody wants that . . .

And so, on you go, the entire heavenly host, fluttering unseen above the shepherds, and you can’t miss the irony of it all: shepherds—the most lowly of them all, the lowest of the low, the outcasts of the outcast—leading all the finest that heaven can boast.  It’s like blind beggars, or penniless war veterans, leading the upper-crust of earthly society toward an unknown destination, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet following a crank-addicted homeless man, trusting him to lead them . . . that’s what it feels like to you, like the whole social order has been . . . re-ordered, upended . . . and you think: “Man—the things we do for God.”  And you look around nervously, and shudder just a little, cause you don’t want to say what’s on your mind out loud “Wherever God might be, that is . . .”

Up ahead you see the star, and you’ve seen a lot of things in your immortal life, and you know—unlike these stupid mortals—exactly what stars are, burning balls of hot gas, and you know the earthly physics of it all, but it’s the weirdest thing: it’s as if the star is sitting right over this little backwater town, and after you enter it—the clueless shepherds and you, their silent stalkers—after you all enter it, you can see that the star is right over a barn!  You’ve never seen anything like it in all your immortal years—and that’s a lot of years—and the shepherds glance uneasily about—they can sense your presence after all—they glance uneasily about and duck into the low-hanging doorway, and all the heavenly host follow, and you’re glad your physics is meta physics—and you suddenly find out how many angels can dance in the doorway of a stable, and it’s a lot.

As you crowd in behind the shepherds you see a beautiful young woman—just a girl, really— and a bashful young man, barely able to shave . . . and over to the side are beasts of the pasture and birds of the air, but your eyes are drawn like a magnet to who it is lying in a manger, wrapped in ragged baby-clothes, face—how marvelous, a face!—shining like the sun.  You’d recognize that Person anywhere, in any guise . . . of course, it’s God the Almighty One, author of creation, Ruler of the Heavens, in the form of the humblest, most helpless thing of all, a little human baby.

And suddenly, the immensity of it all crowds into your head, and you can hear the rustling sigh of all you fellow choristers around you, and the sheep ba-a-a nervously, and the woman looks around in wonder, as all your questions are answered.  Here’s where God has gone: the most mighty being in all the universes has become the most lowly of creatures, a squalling, wriggling, infant, the most humble of these base human beings.  And it hits you like a sledge-hammer, how wonderful these creatures must be, these humans for whom—up until now—you wouldn’t cross even the most narrow street of gold, how wonderful these creatures must be that God would become one of them, to give up immortality even for just a season, to experience pain and heartache and death.  What a wondrous, magical, sparkling love that on cold winter’s night, God would shed all shred of God-hood and become a human being.  Amen.

Annunciation, the Sequel (Matthew 1:18-25)

     As we saw last week, Luke tells us about the annunciation of the Christ to Mary his mother . . . the angel Gabriel appears to her and says “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you."  Notice it’s not the Lord was with you, or the Lord will be with you, or even the Lord will be with you if you do what God wants.  No, it’s the Lord is with you, God is with Mary, and what a remarkable thing to say, especially in that time and day when men were the priests, men were the scribes, men were the temple authorities.  Here the angel Gabriel comes to thirteen-year-old Mary, little more than property of her father, who will soon enough give her up so that she will be little more than property to Joseph her husband, provided he doesn’t—quite justifiably by 1^st century standards—cast her into the outer darkness, out into the wide, merciless world where she would be without a protector, without food or water, and would be reduced to begging or worse, Gabriel comes to this little slip of a quite helpless girl and says "The Lord is With You.”

And I can imagine she’s thinking “He’d better be, if I’m to become an unwed mother in first century Galilee” where even though she might not have been cast out into the outer darkness—Galilee was fairly cosmopolitan by Palestinian standards—she probably would have been packed off to stay with her Aunt Tilly, wife of Achmed the camel waterer, until after the baby came.

After she accepts her assignment, and the angel leaves, Luke proceeds not to the birth of Jesus, or to the shepherds keeping flock by night, but to her rendezvous with cousin Elizabeth, who as we saw last week, was pregnant with her own special child.  And Luke goes into great detail about the interaction between the two women, and culminates with the Song of Mary, the Magnificat, Mary’s paean to the absolute goodness of God.

Contrast that to this morning’s tale of annunciation, this time from Matthew.  First of all, he begins with the birth of Jesus:  “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.”  And it’s worth noting that he ends this passage with it as well, by noting that Joseph “had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son, and he named him Jesus.”  Literary types recognize this device, this beginning and ending of a text with the same information, as an inclusio, and what is included, what is surrounded by the fact of Jesus birth, is his account of the annunciation: the account of the annunciation begins and ends with the birth of Jesus, it is wrapped in it just as the babe will be wrapped in those celebrated swaddling clothes tomorrow night.

Another thing to note is that where Luke’s version is Marian—and Elizabethan—centered around the women, who at least share the stage with the feckless Zechariah, Matthew’s version is all Joseph, all the time.  In the first half, it’s concerned with Joseph and what a good guy he was not to have her immediately stoned.  “Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.”  Whereupon she would have no doubt gone for an extended visit to Uncle Achmed and Aunt Tilly.

But riding to the rescue is an angel—we don’t learn if it’s Gabriel or not—who saves the day by appearing to Joseph and saying “Do not be afraid,” which should remind us of that other annunciation, but with a big difference: whereas in Mary’s version Gabriel is telling her not to be afraid of him, what he is not be afraid of here is taking Mary as his wife.  Don’t be afraid that she has cuckolded you, don’t be afraid of all the shaking heads and muttered insults that will come from your so-called friends and family when they get the news, but go ahead and take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

One of Matthew’s main concerns—other than the birth itself—is that his listeners know that Jesus is not an illegitimate child.  And just to make sure we get it he quotes from the prophets to seal the deal: “All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’”  And Joseph wakes up—for the angel has come to him, as they often do, in his sleep—and does as the angel of the Lord has commanded him:  he takes her as his wife.  And just to make sure one more time that there is no doubt about who Jesus’ daddy really is, Matthew tells us that he had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son.

Now, one could be forgiven for thinking that all Matthew is worried about is making sure we don’t view Jesus as illegitimate.  He goes to great lengths to show that far from being ill-legitimate, Jesus is the height of legitimacy.  What is a scandal to Jewish society is diametrically the opposite for us Christians: he has the greatest, least-scandalous father of them all.

But what if that’s not it at all?  Or rather, what if that’s only part of it?  What if far from wanting to deny the scandalous nature of Jesus’ birth, his aim is to emphasize it?  After all, the more a person denies something, the more it is underlined.   And if we weren’t aware of Jesus’ lack of an earthly father before we heard this, we certainly were afterward.  To paraphrase Queen Gertrude from Hamlet, methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann reminds us that for every act of communication there is a text and a sub-text.  That is, there is what the communication says on the surface—its plain-sense meaning, what the syntax communicates—and also what it says given the context in which it is said.  For instance the text of “The car is white” says something very concrete, and confronted with the statement alone, without any other contextual information, that’s what we expect to see: a white car.  But what if we hear this statement—the car is white—while being shown a picture of a car that is purple?   At the very least, it sets us thinking: that car is purple . .  . why are we being told that a purple car is white?  Is there a sense in which all cars are white?  Or is there something about the car that makes it metaphorically white?  White is a color that is a symbol of purity—is a statement being made about all cars being pure, no matter what it’s looks like on the outside?

In other words, contextual information—information that is literally with (in Greek con) the text—gives rise to a sub-text, a text that is under (sub) the plain-sense one.  It gives depth to a communication, and richness, and there is evidence that Matthew is doing it here, specifically in what he says right before this passage.  Like Luke, he begins his story with a genealogy, but it is different, in one very specific senses.  Luke, generally thought to be more inclusive, nevertheless includes no female ancestors.  Matthew, on the other hand, names four.  And what’s more, they are women who have somewhat scandalous sexual reputations . . . Tamar, who disguised herself to have illicit relations with her father-in-law . . . Rahab the prostitute who saved Joshua’s hide . . . Ruth, whose indecent behavior with Boaz saved the Davidic line . . . and Jezebel, the wife of Uriah, who however unfairly became an icon of the wanton woman . . . Matthew is ever-so-subtly emphasizing Jesus’ scandalous family history.  And he follows it with reference to the unmarried status of Mary which, to Palestinian society at least, carries more than a whiff of scandal.

And if his life begins as a scandal to the Jews, more than one observer has noted that his life certainly ended with one.  No less than the Apostle Paul writes eloquently of the foolishness, the contrary to good sense-ness of the crucifixion.  “. . . we proclaim Christ crucified,” he writes, “a stumbling block to Jews”—and in Greek that is scandal—“a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ (is) the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

And that’s what Matthew is saying here . . . far from excusing Jesus’ less than societally correct birth, he is pointing out the same thing as Paul: to Jews, his birth without an apparent father is scandalous, a stumbling block to their acceptance of him as Messiah, but for those who are called by God—no matter the language they speak or the color of their skin . . . Jews and Greeks and New Yorkers and even people from the region of Cincinnati . . . he is the power and might and the holy wisdom of God.

And in two short days we will be presented with it again, Christ will come again into our hearts and minds and souls.  Laid in a manger—the most ordinary and humble and, yes, scandalous place where a king of the universe might be born—surrounded not by courtiers and potentates and court hangers-on, but by cows and chickens and sheep and goats—in two days will be born a savior, who is Christ the Lord.  Hallelujah, amen.

Leap for Joy (Luke 1:39-45; Luke 1:46-55)

   Leap for joy!  Leap for joy!  Glory hallelujah, leap for joy!  For unto us will be born, only nine short days from now, in a manger – no room for his head! – unto us will be born a savior, who shall be called Messiah, the anointeed one, Prince of Peace.  And shepherds will keep watch on their flocks by night, and glory will shine all around, and lo!  Angels – angels! – will be heard on high, sweetly singing o’er the plain.

     Luke begins his story – the story of Jesus – and by extension the story of the rest of us as his followers – with John the Baptist, leaping for joy in the womb at the approach of the Christ child, who himself was still in the womb . . .And that’s the way the story ends too, in the very last verses of Luke’s very last chapter, where the disciples react to the risen Lord with great joy . . . so the whole Christian story is packaged in joy, wrapped in it like a Christmas present . . . beginning in joy, ending in joy . . . joy is the Christian state, or it should be . . .

     But I wonder how Mary felt, as she rushed over to Elizabeth’s house . . . she’d just had an overwhelming experience, an angel had appeared to her and called her by name, and that isn’t something you see every day – I saw a bumper-sticker that said “I’m being watched over by an angel,” or something like that, and I wondered what the driver would do if one really appeared to her, she’d probably wreck her car . . . something like that happens in the play Angels in America, a God-fearing woman tells the main character – who’s dying and has been visited by an angel – she tells him that he shouldn’t be afraid, that an angel is “belief with wings,” and when the angel appears to them both, she is sore afraid . . . that may have been Mary’s reaction, too because almost the first thing out of the angel’s  mouth is “do not be afraid.”

     But if the apparition itself scared her, you can imagine what she felt when she heard the message: “you will conceive and bear a son, and you’ll name him Jesus, and he’s gonna be the Son of the Most High, he’s gonna inherit the throne of David and reign over his kingdom forever and ever, amen!”  But of course, there’s just one little problem – she’s a virgin, and unmarried to boot, not exactly a good thing, especially back when adultery could be grounds for being pummeled with stones until you’re dead.

     So maybe it wasn’t exactly joy she felt when she rushed over to Elizabeth’s place . . . it may have been panic that made her go in such haste, or she may have gone over there for confirmation, to reassure herself that it wasn’t all just a dream, to check out the other prediction the angel had  made, that her aged, barren relative was pregnant against all the odds . . . and of course, she gets confirmation, because the minute she walks in, Elizabeth’s baby leaps in the womb . . . and it’s proof that her cousin is pregnant, and that she is as well . . . and it’s somehow fitting that the one who confirms it is the infant John the Baptist, who will spend his career crying in the wilderness, proclaiming the Good News . . . John is the first one to sense the presence of God, the first one to feel the Christ child, and what did it bring to him?  Joy . . .

     But as for Mary, Luke relates no such thing, he records no Marian leaping about, no flapping of robes, not even a little hop, skip or jump . . . remember back when she first heard the angel’s prediction?  When she first learned that she is the mother of the future, she simply, quietly – and without fanfare – says yes: “Here am I,” she says, “the servant of the Lord.”

     Bernard of Clairvaux – a founder of the Cistercian Monastic order – speaks eloquently of this moment: “Answer quickly, O Virgin.  Reply in haste to the angel, or rather through the angel to the Lord.  Answer with a word, receive the Word of God.  Speak your own word, conceive the divine Word.  Breathe a passing word, embrace the eternal Word.”   Saint Bernard makes it beautifully clear the interplay of human speech and God’s Word, both from the Angel, and in Mary’s womb . . . for it is in her womb that the Word incarnate matures, it is the Word of God she soon will embrace in her arms, God’s Word she will soon feed and shelter and clean . . .

     And now that Mary’s come to visit, now that John’s leapt in her cousin’s womb, suddenly it’s Elizabeth that’s filled with the Holy Spirit, and though she knows not of the angel’s predictions, she cries out . . . “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”  The Spirit’s filling has made a prophet of her it seems, it has filled her with that same Word of God, so that when she speaks it tumbles out of her, and she is with knowledge and authority . . . “Blessed are you among women . . .”

     Was this news to Mary?  That she was blessed, I mean?  The angel had spoken, she’d obediently received the word—“here I am,” she’d said “I’m your servant,”—and then rushed off to visit her relative, and maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t feeling all that blessed . . . here she was, engaged to be married, and now she was gonna be pregnant, and even if her and Joseph were to get hitched right away, she knew her family – and all the neighbors – could count, for Pete’s sake. But the Spirit had come upon Elizabeth – she could see it in her face and her eyes – and after that, Mary knew she’d be blessed.

     So she responds with the song we read earlier, the Magnificat, sung every evening to this day in monasteries around the world – “My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”  Her whole being – the Greek word here is psyche – her whole self praises the Lord, it increases God’s greatness, it rejoices – there’s that joy again – in God the Savior.  And why?  Because – and here’s the heart of the matter – because God has looked with favor on her lowliness, God has been mindful of her humble station, her humility, her low position in life.  And once again, we’re reminded – as we were at the annunciation – that she is a servant of God.  “God has looked with favor” she says “on the lowliness of his servant.”

     And our readings for today revolve around two axes, two poles if you will: joy and service.  John leapt for joy at the nearness of God, and Mary rejoiced at the coming incarnation.  At the same time, Mary proclaimed her status as servant, her servanthood, and we know what will happen to John – he will be martyred in the service of the Lord.  So the question is: Could the two be related?  Could joy and service be somehow intertwined, perhaps two sides of the same coin, in the kingdom of God?

     My daughter Emily used to schlepp food and drink for a living – she earned her keep as a waitress.  And it’s a brutal, thankless way to make a buck.  I remember when she was working at a little café in mountains of Northern Georgia, and we went up to visit her, and there was a customer who was snide, demanding and dismissive, all at once, who made Emily’s life hell, so she was close to tears, all because she was a servant, and that customer – for the moment, anyway – was the boss.  Far too many customers assume that waitresses are low-class women without skills, beneath conversation and consideration.  Too often, they are snubbed and underpaid and ignored. That’s why Suzy Hansen, writing in Salon magazine, says the world can be divided into two kinds of people: those on the customer side of the tray, and those on the waitress side.  Those on the customer side are the proud, the arrogant, the disdainful.  Those the waitress side are the humble and the harassed.

     For those on the waitress side of life, joy is not usually associated with serving those on the customer side, the two are generally mutually exclusive . . . they exchange their work, they exchange themselves, for food or money, they work for demanding people who treat them, well . . . like servants.  Mary was definitely on the waitress side . . . all women were, in those days . . . they were little more than property, little more than tools of the men around them . . . Mary was a servant long before she came to be pregnant with the Christ child – a slave of every man in her life.  That’s why she spoke of her lowliness, her humble estate . . . she was a second-class citizen in ancient Palestine.

     But God chose someone on the waitress-side of life to bear and nurture God’s own son.  God chose someone who was of lowly estate, who was a servant to her father and uncles and – soon – to her husband Joseph – to be honored above every other person alive.  Mary of Galilee became Mary Theotokos, as the Greek Orthodox call her:  Mary God-bearer, most highly-favored Lady.  And she entered her servanthood to God gladly, she rejoiced in God her savior, because through this service, through this labor – if you’ll pardon the pun – she would be mightily blessed.

     According to Roy Medley, General Secretary of the American Baptist Convention, servitude and servanthood are very different. He says that servitude is imposed, servanthood is embraced; servitude enslaves, servanthood emancipates; servitude denigrates, servanthood uplifts; servitude crushes, servanthood fulfills.  Servitude despairs, servanthood rejoices!  Mary certainly does that, she certainly rejoices in her servanthood, she sings about it with her whole being, with her whole soul.  But she sings about more, as well: “[God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones,” she says “and has lifted up the lowly; [God] has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”  And this last line is servant imagery, as if at a lunchroom, or a restaurant, where the hungry come to the table and are filled, and there’s God, waiting tables and bussing the dishes, and if you are in need, and rely on the Lord, God says “be there in a minute, hon” but if you’re self-reliant and proud and arrogant, well . . . you don’t need any service, do you?  So you’re sent away empty . . . in this image, it’s God who’s the servant, God who’s on the waitress side of life . . .

     And Jesus Christ, the one whose coming we look for today, lived there as well.  He who came to free the oppressed, bring Good News to the poor and set the prisoners free lived his entire life on the waitress side, serving God by serving humankind.  And in the end, he gave his life in that service, so that we might be set free.

     That’s the relationship between service to God and joy, one flows out of another . . . and the key to Christmas is not the presents waiting under the tree, not the hustle and bustle of holiday cheer, not even the chestnuts roasting on an open fire.  At Christmas we contemplate the coming of our savior, who has looked with favor on our lowly estate, and has shown us that our joy is to be fulfilled when we become servants of God ourselves.

          So let us leap for joy!  Glory hallelujah, leap for joy!  For unto us, in the City of Bethlehem – only nine short days, now! – will be born a savior, who shall be called Prince of Peace, Son of God, Messiah.  Unto us shall be born a servant, Christ the Lord!  Amen.