Everyone Is Love and No One Is Safe [Advent 4]

Luke 1:39-55

  

Over the holidays, my family has been playing games.  Sometimes that’s the best way to keep the kids from spiraling out of control and the adults from falling asleep.  This weekend we played a dominoes game and a new version of Pictionary.  To pick up a new game, you have to learn the rules.  And once you learn the rules, you can settle in and play, because you know what to expect.  When I was growing up, I learned a version of Monopoly where you got $500 for rolling snake eyes.  I thought that was one of the rules.  Turns out it was a Witt family addition.  So imagine the shock of my friends when I grabbed $500 from the bank upon rolling snake eyes.  “That’s not a rule!” they screamed.  You can’t change the rules, or everyone gets bent out of shape.

 

When Jesus is born, God changes the rules.  When Jesus is born, everyone is loved, but no one is safe.  Mary’s song is the joyful music sung by all those who welcome the birth of something new and different.  And Mary’s song scares the dickens out of all of us who like the way things are and want them to say the same.

My family will get together for Christmas later today.  And our Christmas has had to adapt and change over the years as the family expanded.  Because there are so many of us, the kids draw names and the adults bring a gift for an exchange with either males or females.  This hasn’t always been the way we’ve done things.  And if you’ve ever tried to change the way your family gets together or exchanges gifts, you know how powerful the backlash can be!  A few years ago, someone proposed ending the gift exchange for adults and there was an organized and vigorous protest.

Maybe some of you have been part of one of those gift exchanges where you can either pick a gift or steal something that’s already been opened.  Everyone does their best to be playful.  But of course there is that one gift that you really want.  And oh the satisfaction of getting that gift rather than the porcelain tchotchke that no one wanted.  And we like the rules of that gift exchange until someone announces at the end that the person who went first has one more opportunity to steal a gift – and they steal yours!

Mary sings with joy of big reversals in how the world works, but we like the way things are.  We like the way the furniture is arranged in our house.  We like knowing exactly where everything is so that if we have to wind our way through the house in the dark, everything is right where it’s supposed to be.  We can feel our way from the refrigerator to the table, past the counter and around the corner.  I make several trips to the bathroom each night.  I do so in the dark, and without even fully waking up.  And so it’s important that I can touch the end of the bed, then a closet door, then the dresser, and then straight into the bathroom.  All of that depends on my wife actually closing her stupid closet door.  When she doesn’t close it, on my second step from the bed I walk straight into the edge of it.  And though I am an amazingly forgiving person, after the fourth or fifth time I have to wonder whether she’s doing this on purpose.

When Jesus is born, everyone is loved, but no one is safe.  Everyone is invited to the feast but no one gets to stay the same.  The whole world is welcomed into a new friendship with God and neighbors but not many will find this news convenient or comfortable.  When Jesus is born, we begin to find our way back home, but only to discover that everything has been turned upside down.

During this season we do our best to welcome the ancient stories that come down to us as gospels.  By slipping imaginatively into these stories, we can see the glad tidings through the eyes of Elizabeth and Zechariah, Mary and Joseph, Anna and Simeon, the inn keeper, the census takers, the shepherds, the angels, the curious crowds, and even King Herod.

In our gospel story today from Luke, we are allowed to overhear a moving and tender scene between two poor and unimportant women.  Mary, still stunned with dismay at her own new pregnancy by the Holy Spirit, travels to see her relative Elizabeth.  Elizabeth, much older, too old to have expected new life in her own body, is already large with her own baby.  Here are two women – with not even a speck of importance to the wider world, without money and without even a role to play in the public world of the Roman Empire.  These two women, one too young and the other too old – have been pulled into a story whose splendor even the angels cannot contain.

The baby in Elizabeth’s womb “leaps for joy” in the presence of Mary’s secret.  And Elizabeth utters a blessing upon Mary, upon the way young Mary says “yes” to the whisper of the Holy Spirit.  “Yes” to the God who asks for trust and obedience as she turns to face the newness that will dawn like the sun from the holy and surprising darkness of her own womb. 

Elizabeth’s joy in response to Mary’s baby continues to ripple through the lives of people today.  I get to see it all the time.

A few of us went caroling on Wednesday evening.  We wanted to visit our older friends in nursing homes and assisted living facilities to sing with them and remind them that they’re loved and included in the joy of the season.  Ralph Carlson had agreed to be our guitarist for the evening.  And early in the day, I dropped by his house to give him a songbook we would use.  While I was there I was reminded of what I already knew – that his wife Sondra had not been feeling well and that Ralph had been taking care of her.  I told Ralph we’d make do without him if he needed to stay at home (this was a complete lie, I have no idea what we would have done!).  But Ralph insisted on playing. 

When we arrived at the Medicalodge, the room was packed and everyone was ready to sing.  Ralph played and we all sang together.  And I saw residents whom I have never heard speak singing along to their favorite carols.  When we went to the Presbyterian Village, Minni Lou Allen led us up and down the hallways, knocking on doors as we sang.  And Ralph played and sang with our older friends even though he had every reason to be tired and focused on his own life.  Ralph knows the joy that includes those who are often overlooked and forgotten.

While Elizabeth’s body “leaps for joy” and calls out in blessing, Mary’s body breaks forth in song.  This song is good news for all who are poor and sad and sick.  But it is a dangerous song for those who like the way the world works. 

Everyone is loved.  But no one is safe.  The one born to Mary was never safe.  He was born into conflict and danger.  King Herod did his best to take control and eliminate this challenge to his authority.  Herod’s killing spree in Bethlehem proves beyond doubt that the arrival of Jesus is very much about politics and power and allegiance.  Among other things, Christmas creates a crisis for all of us – we have to make difficult, inconvenient choices about whether to align ourselves with the old world or with the new one quietly emerging here and there.

Christmas easily becomes sentimental when we focus on baby Jesus.  It becomes a radical call to a controversial way of life as soon as we begin asking ourselves whether we want to become disciples of this Messiah who teaches that life is turning upside down, “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.”  It becomes an unsafe, uncomfortable, and inconvenient way of life when we ask ourselves whether or not we want to join in with Mary’s singing about a revolution, about a new kingdom that reverses many of our cherished assumptions. 

Adults get set in their ways.  Kids manage to stay open and flexible.  Adults keep both feet planted, as if to say, "I'm staying right here."  Kids dance and spin and play, often standing on one foot, as if to say, "I'm ready to move in any direction."

What about you?  As you have grown older, have you kept your child-like sense of wonder and adventure?  Or have you let it slip away as your life has become more predictable and rigid?  

In C.S. Lewis' story, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, four children find their way into a land called Narnia and learn that the whole land properly belongs to the great Lion, Aslan, even though it is currently under the evil spell of the White Witch.

            “But shall we see him?” asked Susan.

            “Why, Daughter of Eve, that’s what I brought you here for.  I’m to lead you where you shall see him,” said Mr. Beaver.

            “Is – is he a man?” asked Lucy.

            “Aslan a man!” said Mr. Beaver sternly.  “Certainly not.  I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea.  Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts?  Aslan is a lion – the great Lion.”

            “Ooh!” said Susan, I’d thought he was a man.  Is he – quite safe?  I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

            “That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

            “Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

            “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver.  “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you?  Who said anything about safe?  ‘Course he isn’t safe.  But he’s good.  He’s the King, I tell you.”

Mary sings with joy as she welcomes the dawn of a new set of rules, as she opens her life to a revolution of values, as she gives birth to a reversal of the way things work.  If we insist on clinging, tight-fisted, to the way things are, we will feel Mary’s song – not to mention the arrival of Jesus – as a threat to our comfort.  But if like Mary, we can welcome the end of the stale old world so that something new can begin to emerge in us – in our families, in our communities, in our congregations, in our politics, in our relationships, in our dreams for the future – we too can sing for joy.

This is joy that will look silly to all those who want things to stay the same.  This is joy that gives away money and time and energy.  This is joy that befriends those who don’t matter.  This is joy that is, literally, ahead of its time.  This is joy that bands together with others to cheer for a different kind of world that is only beginning to be born.