Vetting us, Mary, and Elizabeth

Sermon for Advent IV, 2024, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Text: Luke 1:39-45, Hebrews 10:5-10

There is nothing like a shared experience with someone to understand what you’re going through, and where that experience may take you. Deacon Jan Scholtz at St. Matthews and I went through the Diocesan School of Ministry in the same class, learning the same things and sharing with each other what we learned. There was one significant difference between us, though: I had started the official diaconal discernment process with the Diocese, and Jan had said several times that she wasn’t interested in the diaconate. Her call and discernment came a couple of years later, and we met again here where she performed her internship as I was preparing for ordination. What she was going through at that time was still fresh in my mind, and I shared with her what had been next for me that she would experience. We both saw our discernment happening in the other person.

Jan’s and my experience was similar to Mary and Elizabeth’s experience of going through a pregnancy together, a shared experience where none of us knew exactly where we would be after the anticipated event. Unlike Jan and myself, these two women would give birth and one of their children would be a prophet of God, the other the Son of God; one would say, “prepare yourselves for the coming of the Lord,” the other, “I am the way, the truth, and the light.” Mary is fortunate to have a family member to talk to, just out of a need for someone to listen, so it is fortunate that Elizabeth was also expecting to deliver someone of great significance to the world. I am reminded that our journeys and what we give fruit to is done best in community or at the very least with one other person; can you imagine Elizabeth or Mary going through their momentous pregnancies and births without each other, without that shared experience? Imagine what it would be like for you to go through something dramatic alone. I'm sure there are those here this morning who have had that experience of going through a difficult time alone.

In the epistle reading from Hebrews, the author makes the point that worship of God or giving praise is not enough for a righteous life by quoting part of Psalm 40. “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.” The psalmist and the author of Hebrews both say that in response to God’s salvation, that worshiping God is not enough. Doing God’s will in the world is what we are called to in addition to worship and praise. This can result in a somewhat circular response where we could say, “but isn’t worshiping and praising God doing something?” And, yes, we are doing something when we worship and praise God. But, Mary and Eizabeth do more than just that. They said yes to the angel Gabriel’s prophecy and then gave birth to and raised Jesus and his predecessor, John the baptizer, which is quite a bit more than worshiping God.

There is a big difference between worship and praise and taking a step into the uncomfortable unknown future when we say what Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Mary didn’t know what she had signed up for; Elizabeth didn’t know that John’s life would end with such humiliation. I wonder if either one would have said yes if they had known the future. But they did say yes to God’s will, and together stepped into that unknown future. That takes more courage and faith than we are often willing to give, or think we are capable of giving and it means that we leave behind the comfort and safety of the words “Your will be done” in the Lord’s Prayer that we recite from memory. We can say that anything we say or do is “God’s will” and people will respect that, but are we really being honest when we say that? Are we defending our desire not to enter that discomfort and do something different that is also God’s will? What is more important to us, defending our faith as it is, or giving it life as Mary did?

Three weeks ago, I said in my sermon that maybe we could look for the birth or rebirth of our ability to find the kingdom of God, instead of only looking forward to the birth of Jesus. That suggestion, restated as a question for today’s Gospel reading might sound like this, “Are we finding new ways of discovering the kingdom in the uncomfortable places God calls us to?” Or is it more attractive to us to sidestep that question and defend God and kingdom from what makes us uncomfortable? We can look to Mary and Elizabeth, a young, unmarried, pregnant woman and an older woman condemned because of her infertility and see that they did not defend their circumstances. They didn’t need to because they trusted God to validate them through love. They were willing to search for the kingdom through the births of their children, and follow them as their ministries matured.

Trust in God, or trust by itself is hard to come by. Through unrealistic expectations of ourselves, or dogmatic expectations of us from the people around us, it is hard to trust when failure is presented as devastating for us. Trust is hard to come by when the phrase “trust in God” is thrown around without much care, or with an implicit understanding that if you fail, it’s your fault, and God won’t be happy. These are the soul crushing, religion destroying ideas that come from building our faith on sacrifices and offerings, attempting to prove our worthiness, our righteousness, to God who simply asks us to believe that we are loved as we are. God did not ask for any qualifying proof from a young unwed mother that she was worthy to give birth to God’s Son. Sacrifices from an older infertile woman were not required, despite society saying that God was displeased with her. God loved them both and elevated them both, ignoring what a righteous society was saying about them in God’s name. Perhaps the scariest thing about Jesus’ birth is accepting that we are worthy of the love that brought him into the world as a gift for us, and that there is nothing we can do to earn or justify that love given so freely. Perhaps the hardest part of celebrating Jesus’ birth is accepting a gift with no strings attached or a return receipt in case we don’t like it. Accepting this gift means that we put aside our fear of not being righteous enough. Our savior is coming into the world, coming to save us from the worst part of ourselves and restore us to wholeness. Let us rejoice and find the peace that comes from his birth and salvation.