Behold: Joy

Luke 1:39-46

Advent 4 Year C

December 23, 2012

First Presbyterian Church of Clarksville

and Harmony Presbyterian Church

The Rev. Dr. Robert Wm Lowry

            Nothing in this text from Luke makes sense.

            It is about a poor, unmarried teenage girl who is pregnant going to visit her cousin, a woman well past her childbearing years who is, you guessed it, pregnant.

            The house is the house of Zechariah.  But upon entering, Mary greets Elizabeth rather than Zechariah.

            When Mary speaks, Elizabeth’s first words are praise to God for Mary because her words make the child in her womb jump.

            And all of this to prepare for the birth of the Messiah foretold by the angels who spoke to Mary.

            So we have unwed pregnant Mary visiting too old to be pregnant Elizabeth and upon entering the home, Mary breaks social custom and addresses first Elizabeth rather than Zechariah whose home it is at which time the words of unwed pregnant Mary make the child in too old to be pregnant Elizabeth’s womb jump at which point older Elizabeth breaks with social custom and gives praise and precedence for the child in younger Mary and for Mary as the mother of the Lord.

            Nothing in this text makes sense.

            This is not how things are supposed to work. 

            Of course, trying to make sense of the ways that God works in the world is a fool’s errand.  As the saying goes, God works in mysterious ways.  In fact when I was in seminary I had a professor who told us that when parishioners ask a particularly difficult theological question, you can just fall back on “well, it is a mystery!” 

I have to confess that I have used that escape hatch a time or two over the years

In truth, I have been using it on myself quite a lot over the last few months.  I suppose that the world makes no less sense in recent months than it did before but I for one seem to need to lean into the mystery of God more and more.

Over the last few weeks, another mystery, the whole phenomenon of the Maya calendar, has been occupying many people’s minds.  Were these ancient mezzo-American native people right?  Would the world indeed come to an end?

With few exceptions, most of us who quipped about the Maya calendar turnover last Friday did so tongue in cheek.  It made for a good laugh about not having to finish Advent and Christmas Eve sermons or not having to worry about holiday travel.  If the world came to an end, we would not have to pay our taxes, face another hot summer or endure another Alabama national football championship.

All in all the Maya gave us a good “the end is drawing nigh” punch line in the midst of a world that is less and less funny and working less and less the way we expect God’s world should or would work.

In a world where nations continue to rise up against nation; where people are divided by politics, poverty or religion; where the violence of our culture spares no one, including our children; a world where far too many children go to bed hungry or thirsty or despairing, making sense of things seems too much to hope for.  And the joy of the season?  Not easily found in this world of ours.

If this text makes no sense, this world makes even less.

This is not how things are supposed to work.

This is not how God is supposed to work.

In 1928, Thornton Wilder won the Pulitzer Prize for his book “The Bridge over San Luis Rey.”  The novel is set in the early 1700’s in Peru.  Five people crossing a rope suspension bridge across a deep river gorge die when the bridge collapses.  Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk on his way to Lima, is about to cross the bridge.   He witnesses the collapse and the deaths of the elderly Marquessa of Montemajor, her maid Pepita, the young scribe Esteban, Uncle Pio and his young charge Don Jamie, a boy of about 7. 

As he watches the bridge collapse and the five victims plunge into the river below, Brother Juniper is overcome with a sense of dread that such a thing could happen.  As he reflects on the events of that morning, he finds himself weighted down with a question.  If this is God’s world and God’s providence reigns, how could this happen?  Surely there must be some reason that God would take the lives of these five people at this moment.

To find the answer to his question, Brother Juniper sets out to investigate the lives of each of the five.  Over the next seven years, he interviews and researches to learn about the lives of each of the five.  He searches for some reason that God would cause or even allow such a thing to happen.  In the end, he gets his answer.  Or at least, he gets as much of an answer as he is going to get.

It is a mystery. 

There is no obvious answer.  In fact, all evidence points away from this being an act of divine judgment.  The Marquessa, once a shameless social climber, has grown into a woman of deep faith and compassion.  Pepita, a nun sent to service in the Marquessa’s home, has developed a beautiful way with words and affection for her aging mistress.  Esteban, long despairing about the death of his twin brother, has learned to live and love living once again.  Uncle Pio leaves behind the fame of the stage to care for young Jamie.  And Jamie himself, just a boy, cannot have committed any sin so grave to deserve this kind of divine action.

These are five flawed, sinful but wholly redeemable people.  So why did they die?

This makes no sense.

This is not how things are supposed to work.

In the end, Brother Juniper comes to the same conclusion so many of us do.  It is a mystery.  The simple fact is that we do not know and we cannot know fully the mind of God.  Like brother Juniper, we are left with more questions than answers when we try to analyze and categorize and comprehend the mind of God. 

If we are waiting until we do fully understand God, we will be waiting a long, long time.  If we are waiting for some moment of epiphany when the world will make total sense, we will be waiting a long, long time. 

This text from Luke- this social norm violating, worldly expectation defying, and political order challenging text- does little to unravel the confusion and mystery of the world.  These words which are part of the proclamation of the coming of Messiah do little but confuse our expectations of how God almighty would come into the world.  Nothing here makes sense so there is little it can do to make sense of the world.  At least little that it can do to make sense on our terms with our vocabulary.

But this text is not about the logic of the world or even the logic of how we think the world should be.  It is about the goodness of God.  And the goodness of God is not about making sense of a confused world or even fixing a broken world.  The goodness of God is about making the world new. 

Even in the midst of chaos- like this text or like our world- God breaks through and the light of God shines through.  

And here, on this fourth Sunday of Advent, with the tragedies of the world still fresh in our hearts and our minds, this nonsensical text reminds us that even in the midst of chaos or social disorder or political unrest or any other thing, God in God’s goodness is never absent.  In fact, if anything God is evermore present in our times of need and trial. 

Brother Juniper realized, and we too struggle to understand, that the world does not work on an equation of action and reaction.  This perplexing story of a girl too young and a woman too old bearing children into the world is a story about how God really works.  God does not work in wholly predictable ways nor does God abandon us when the world goes askew from our expectations.  God does not only favor the well to do or the self-described righteous.  God’s goodness in God’s acts in the world are not dependent on the status or condition of the world. 

Instead, whatever the circumstance of the world, God just loves the world.  Loves it so much that God gave God’s only son to die for the world.

It may not be how we think the world would work, but it is how God works in and through the history of God’s creation.  When the works of God intersect the history of creation, they do so most often in unexpected and unusual ways.

The Greeks had two words for time.  There is chronos which is the time that ticks away on the clocks and slips by on the calendar.  It is the time of telling time.  The other word is kairos.  Kairos describes those moments, those opportune moments when chronos is intersected by an event that changes things- that shifts reality from its ticking trajectory. 

When they meet in Zechariah’s house, Mary and Elizabeth recognize it as a kairos moment.  They see it as a moment of great joy that transcends custom and politics and every other thing.

Something momentous is happening and they meet it with songs of joy.  They see a glimpse of the new world to come in the hope and grace of Christ and they cannot help but feel joy.  In fact, they cannot help but declare their joy in that moment and for the love and grace of God.  Joy, not fear or anxiety or even confusion, rules in that moment.

            Today we do not merely recall that kairos moment shared by Mary and Elizabeth, we celebrate that we are living in it.   We live in this centuries old moment when God with us came to truly be with us.  And, although Christ is not standing in our midst as Jesus, he is no less present.  And just as God sent the Christ child into the chaos of that moment so long ago, God continually sends the Holy Spirit to intersect our lives and our world and remind us that we are not alone.

            Friends, our world may not make sense.  This ancient text may not make sense.  But this does.  God is good and in that goodness, God is with us.  Even in the darkest hours of the soul; the most chaotic moments in history; the most joyless times in our lives, the goodness of God and the joy that is its companion seek us out until our souls leap like the child Elizabeth carried so long ago.

            With Mary and Elizabeth, may we glorify the Lord with shouts of great joy and forever give thanks to God.

            Come Lord Jesus.  Amen.