Reflecting together on their disrupted lives
Luke 1:39-45
39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be[e] a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when these two women met. Elizabeth, older, mature, and yet six months pregnant with a child she never expected to be carrying; and Mary, young, just having been told that surprisingly she was going to have a child. Each pregnancy surprising, unexpected, miraculous.
In the one case, the years of disappointment had become despair and resignation, there was never going to be a baby, she was just too old for that to happen. And then, the miracle.
In the other case, another impossibility, a miracle God pulled off, as surprising as the first.
No wonder God brought the two women together, who else would understand. (In vs. 36, Gabriel had implied that Mary should go see Elizabeth.) The Holy Spirit was doing the Spirit’s thing in bringing these miracles into reality. The God of the universe had chosen to use these two women, who came from unimportant places in northern Palestine. The God of the universe had chosen to use these two women, the one the wife of a country priest and the other a young woman from a small town which was the butt of jokes in Israel. There was nothing special or important about these two, but God was using them in the most important mission he had ever brought into being in the world.
No, no one else could understand, it made sense that God brought them together.
It was the older Elizabeth, who recognized that she was in the presence of a person who was specially blessed by God – saying to Mary “Blessed are you among women.” The blessing flowed to Mary because Mary had believed what the angel said to her. Mary’s trust, belief, obedience – for they are all linked – were necessary for the blessing to be realized. Mary had to agree to participate in what God was doing. We are invited to participate in what God is doing in the world so that blessing might come to us, the blessing of being partners with God in what he is doing in the world.
PRAYER:
God of grace, we thank you that for you no one is too old and no one is too young to participate in your mission in the world. We rejoice in the wisdom and experience of the older, and we rejoice in the energy and newness of the young. May we like Elizabeth and Mary find the blessings of each as we together serve towards God’s mission in the world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.