make safe the way that leads on high

and close the path to misery

The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke, the 1st Chapter!

Today is the last Saturday/Sunday of Advent…
In just a few, all-too short days, we will celebrate Christmas. Soon our vigil will be completed. Over.

In Advent we wait. We prepare. 

What did you wait for? 

A new you? More patience? An end to conflict? Peace at home? An era of goodwill among humanity? Concord in the family? Christ’s coming? His return?

How has it been?

Have the things you waited for come to fruition? Are they at least nearly fulfilled? 

Perhaps it was just too hard for you. You couldn’t bring yourself to hope this year. You gave up looking forward. There wasn’t anything to look forward to. Your last hope was dashed long ago. You didn’t wait this advent. Not for anyone. For anything. For you, this season was just another trip through the motions.

Christmas always seem to promise more than it delivers, doesn’t it? A person can only have their hope deferred for so long. So many times, before they just give up.

Sometimes it seems easier to live without hope than to have them disappointed over and over again. It isn’t easy to keep expecting God to act. To wait so long…

Which is why Advent is so difficult. 

It isn’t because we only have so much time and so much money to get everything done in those few weeks before December 25th.

Advent is tough because it isn’t easy to keep waiting in hope. 

You can only say God is a God of love so many times. Eventually some piece of news, some thing that happens to a loved one, makes you feel like a fool for your belief. You can only hope God will set all things right for so long. There comes a time when you can’t help but wonder if it all isn’t some mean-spirited joke everyone is in on; but you. 

Advent isn’t natural because it forces us reckon with God’s promises. It hasn’t been effortless, either. In fact, it hurts to admit we are still waiting for realization of God’s Word. 

In Advent we admit, maybe to no one other than ourselves, that it hasn’t been easy. It feels like our faith is barely holding together. We’re not sure how much longer we can wait. 

Honestly, sometimes we’re not even sure if we’re actually waiting anymore. So accustomed have we become with life as it is. We’ve made our peace with the way things are. Maybe we aren’t waiting anymore. We don’t expect God to act…

Well, It seems those who put together the lectionary couldn’t bear it any longer, either. 

Instead of making us wait, we finally hear about Jesus and his mother. No more cries of warning from that killjoy John. Today there is only joy. Two expecting women meet. 

The child in Elizabeth’s womb leaps, even!

Mary sings that famous song of her’s. The magnificat. Perhaps the best part of Holden Evening Prayer.

The encounter between these women and their children in gestation, is full of nothing other than joy. Sweet joy… 

You can only wait for so long. Eventually there has to be some resolution. 

And today’s Gospel seems to be just what the doctor ordered. 

Thankfully…

Only, and perhaps it’s our fatigue. Our worry we can’t wait any longer. Our supposed familiarity with this moment in the Holy History.  But deep down, we all know this scene between Mary and Elizabeth isn’t the satisfying conclusion we’ve been waiting on.

Today is not some chocolate covered Christmas scene. Some gingerbread manger. 

In fact, this moment is perhaps the most fraught moment in Advent. The depiction of the end of history. The report of John and his preaching. None of those scenes are pulled as tightly as this one…

Two women, one on the run the other in seclusion, meet in the middle of nowhere. Out there, in the hill country of an occupied nation, they meet.  Over coffee and scones, doing what kin do. Talk. 

This isn’t any ordinary chat between cousins. Before Mary can say as much as ‘hello,’ Elizabeth blessed the unwed, pregnant girl. After not long at all, their conversation takes a surprising turn.  

Mary, in song no less, anticipates what their pregnancies mean. Mean, not for them. Not for their families. Not for the children, even. But, means for the world.

Overcome by the magnitude of their meeting, Mary sings her famous hymn.

This isn’t some Christmas song you’ve heard on the radio for the millionth time, either. Mary’s hymn predicts a fundamental shift in history. It’s a song of revolution. Of tyrant’s overthrown. And a populace rising up.

Not only that, either. 

Mary dares to sing how she and her cousin will be the harbingers of this new era. In that bland kitchen with weak coffee and dry pastries, Mary sings that table will be the center of it all. Beginning that very moment.

It’s a lovely sentiment…

If not a little exaggerated.

After all, today —nearly 2,000 years later—we have to admit; Mary’s hope unfounded; her predictions unrealized. On every account, she was wrong…

Except in one sentiment - actually.

“From now on,” Mary sang, “every generation will call me blessed.”

Of all the unlikely things Mary sung of; this was the most unlikely. Oppressed people have risen up, overthrown their dictators. That goes without saying. To predict an unwed women, in the middle of nowhere and of no repute, would be praised ever after, though; was utter nonsense.

“From now on all generations will call me blessed,” she sang.

And yet, for 2,000 years now; each generation has done exactly that. In fact, Mary’s prediction is being proved today. Right now.

As the Gospel was read, in reverence you rose to your feet. Many of you here have sung her hymn the last three Wednesday evenings, when you could have been doing anything else…

In the prediction we’re most likely to look over, Mary is proved. In the least likely of her predictions, you have to admit; the woman was right.

That God’s promise is realized in such a seemingly trivial prediction, is why waiting is so hard. That God’s Word is fulfilled, not with a display of power or glory, but in praise is why Advent doesn’t come naturally to us.  Advent isn’t easy. Waiting for something more than presents under the tree is a challenge. 

But, and here’s the thing, your Advent has been kept.

Perhaps you did name your hopes. Maybe you’re heartbroken they haven’t been realized. Maybe you didn’t bother. After all these years you couldn’t admit to yourself you’re still waiting.

Either way, your Advent has been kept. 

When you leave here, you will enter into a space between. Between your hope, and its realization. You will enter the very space where those two women met. Certainty, but still waiting.

Certain and waiting.

It’s a hard place to be, yes. 

That is what it means to be blessed, though. 

Being blessed doesn’t mean having your life together. It doesn’t mean your family is picture perfect, either. It isn’t even being the best version of yourself. And it isn’t living in the pinnacle of human history.

As Elizabeth says, “blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

To be blessed is to hear God’s Word. To hear God’s Word and have something inside of you turn on.
Something maybe you didn’t know was there. Something you forgot about. Something that, at the Word of God can’t help but, like Mary, believe that Word will be fulfilled. Fulfilled, despite circumstances.

Advent is hard.
The very thing that makes Advent so hard, however, is what makes you —like Mary—blessed. 

So do it.

Call her blessed. Prove her prediction. First that one, and then the rest. Until that final Advent. Until the day when there will be no more need to wait. Until the day when all things are set right.

For now, we sing —like Mary. We sing that all things are fulfilled. Not because they have been, but because the Word of God which will fulfill all things, has come to us and we we trust that Word to do what it promises.

You who are blessed. You who stand in that space Mary and Elizabeth met in. Do like Elizabeth. Call Mary blessed. Prove Mary’s prediction. Call her blessed.

Call her blessed; and I will call you blessed.