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.
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