Expecting

Advent takes on a different slant when you or someone close to you is about to give birth. I remember when Andra and I were expecting our first child, to be born sometime in February. All those Biblical passages about longing and waiting suddenly seemed addressed directly to us.

That Fall we both performed in the local Little Theater production of "Oklahoma!" I played Curley and Andra portrayed a pregnant pioneer woman in the chorus. Her performance was far more convincing than mine. (This was not so dramatic as our little troop’s production of "The Fantastiks" the following year. On opening night, the leading lady fainted in the wings, leaving El Gallo (me) to sing a duet with himself. We found out later that the leading lady was pregnant, too.)

When you’re pregnant, you find yourself lingering in the children’s clothes aisle of the department store, even though you’re supposed to be shopping for a car battery or a present for an elderly aunt. In the grocery store you compare strollers instead of cabbages. You encounter total strangers who smile at you as if they know something you don’t know, but aren’t about to tell you what it is.

Some of our friends turned out not to be so shy. "Just wait!" they’d say. "Just wait. You have no idea how your life is about to change." It’s the way some of them said it that bothered us – as though they were kidding, but not really. There was so often that touch of resentment, just the tiniest hint of hostility, as though parenthood hadn’t turned out to be what they’d expected, and they were perfectly willing to burst our bubble.

"Just you wait! You have no idea! Life will never be the same!"

I imagine Mary’s life changed from the moment the angel left her. I see her hanging out washing at the time, humming a little tune and making a mental inventory of the items in her trousseau. Then the angel Gabriel appears and the first words out of his mouth are, "Greetings, favored one!" and "Don’t be afraid." He tells her that God is pleased with her, that she had been chosen, and that she will be the one to bear the Son of God.

The message made no sense to her at the time, and I’m not sure it ever did make sense, but Mary had enough grit and enough faith to say to Gabriel, "Here am I, the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me according to your word."

So, this morning we find Mary in a dusty a little town in the Judean hill country, standing in at the door of the nondescript house where her cousin Elizabeth lives with her husband Zechariah. Luke doesn’t say why she’s there, but I’m guessing life back in Nazareth had not been easy lately. There were dirty looks from married women in the market. There was whispering in doorways as she passed. Mary’s life had indeed changed.

Before the angel’s visit, Mary had had her good name, the respect of her neighbors, and the support of her family. I imagine that that’s all gone by now. (Joseph, it’s true, did stand up for her, refusing to break off the engagement. According to Matthew, he too had had a visit from an angel. But even a stand-up guy like Joseph could be close to loosing it by now.)

So you can’t really blame Mary for wanting to get away. Elizabeth will understand. No, that’s asking too much. Elizabeth will listen. After all, her life has changed, too. She too is expecting.

Elizabeth is fed up with Zechariah’s toothless grin every time he walks into the room. The old priest hasn’t said a word since he emerged from the sanctuary, half crazed and half scared to death. Elizabeth isn’t sure exactly what had happened behind the altar in the temple, but she fears her husband might have had a stroke. For all she knows, she’ll be raising her two children soon – one in his first childhood and the other in his second.

But as soon as Elizabeth hears Mary’s call at her door, the baby inside her kicks like a mule, and Elizabeth bursts out in song. She sounds just like the Reverend Mother in The Sound of Music. Her aging contralto cracks like a scratched 78, but she sings out anyway. "Blessed are you among women, and blessed in the fruit of your womb."

She sings with such certainty, with such adulterated joy, with such confidence that God is somehow in all of this, that Mary’s own misgivings fall away, and she too begins to sing.

She sings of teenage mothers coming out from the kitchen at McDonald’s, waving their burger-flippers like royal scepters. She sings of presidents toppled off their podiums to sweep up after the horses in a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. She sings of folks from the Shelter on Tennessee Street dining on steak and lobster at the Doubletree Hotel while the doors slam shut on the brand new Governor and legislature.

She sings of a world turned topsy-turvy, of a social structure stood on its head, of a God who puts the last first and the first last. A God who will not be controlled or pigeonholed, a God so mighty that he comes to earth as a helpless child, born to a slip of a girl who is just young and foolish enough to believe in promises.

Your life will change, Mary. You have no idea how it will change. You have no idea how much it will hurt you to bear that promise to the world, or how much it will hurt God to keep that promise.

Generations from now, your song will save the church from its own success, for nobody can sing that song of yours without thinking of the poor and the powerless, the hungry and the dispossessed.

When Christians become wealthy and self-assured, your song will call us back to God. When we turn our backs on the hungry, and blame the poor for their poverty, your song will cause us to turn round again, and look into the faces of our neighbors.

When we invoke your little boy’s blessing on acts of violence, when we torture in the name of security, when we stick a needle past the vein and into the flesh of a man named Angel, watch him struggle in agony for 34 minutes, and call it justice – your song, Mary, will haunt our sleep.

Blessed are you, Mary, for you sing the truth. And blessed is the fruit of your womb, for he is the way, the truth, and the life. The world changed forever the night he was born, when God came to live among us in the flesh of your little boy.

That’s him in the manger of our hand-carved crèches. That’s him on the cross between two thieves. And that’s him on the gurney, Mary.

How will you bear it? How will God?

Elizabeth speaks for us. "And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?" I suppose the answer is, she comes because God has sent her to sing her song, to bear her child, and to be a witness throughout the generations. She comes to us because, of all the people we might expect to bear the Son of the Most High, she is the most unlikely.

There have been a lot of letters to the editor in the past few weeks from Christians who are offended when they encounter the greeting, "Happy Holidays." Strange, isn’t it, what we mange to find offensive in this season?

What’s truly offensive about Christmas is . . . well . . . Christmas. The Son of God born to Mary. The word made flesh in a Jew from Nazareth. The world turned upside down by the birth a little baby.

What’s offensive about Christmas is the incarnation – the good news of God with us. That’s why Mary sings. God in Christ constantly challenges the status quo, relentlessly calls us to repent, ceaselessly beckons us to join in Mary’s song. Holy is the One who puts down the mighty, who scatters the proud, who lifts up the lowly, who fills the hungry with good things. Holy is the One who has claimed the world in love and will not let us go.

Sing, Mary! You have no idea how what you’re in for, or how badly we need to hear your song. Even you have no idea what good news it really is. The world is pregnant with promise because of you and your song.