Traveling Companions

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
December 20, 2015

4 Advent C

Two bizarre stories collide in our gospel lesson this morning.  First, Elizabeth and Zechariah are both righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments of God.  But Elizabeth is barren, and she and Zechariah are getting old.  Gabriel, an angel of the Lord, appears to Zechariah and tells Zechariah that Elizabeth will bear a son.  Zechariah does not believe the angel, so Zechariah's voice is taken away and he is told by the angel that he will not be able to speak again until the baby is born.  That baby is John the Baptist.

Secondly, Gabriel, one very busy angel, goes to visit Mary, who is engaged to Joseph, a descendant of the great King David.  Gabriel tells Mary that she will conceive and bear a child.  Mary is a bit perplexed by this, since she is a virgin, but she is satisfied by the angel's explanation that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and her child will be the Son of God.  Gabriel tells Mary that her relative Elizabeth has conceived a son in her old age, and is, in fact, 6 months pregnant.  And Mary says "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."  That is bizarre story number two.

Mary and Elizabeth are both on very strange journeys, not of their own choosing, begun by the announcement of an angel, and each involving an unlikely pregnancy.  One child, the angel tells Zechariah, will have the spirit and the power of Elijah to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.  The other child, the angel tells Mary, will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David and of his kingdom there will be no end.  Both women have every right to be a bit perplexed at this turn of events!

The two stories collide this morning, when Mary, having heard from the angel Gabriel, goes with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she and Elizabeth greet each other with great joy and with song.  We are told that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for 3 months, and then returned home.  After all the detail we are given about the greeting Elizabeth gives Mary, and Mary's great song of praise, the simple fact that Mary stays three months and goes home seems rather anticlimactic.

I wonder what Mary was thinking, as she left with haste and traveled through the Judean country side.  Some scholars speculate that she went in order to hide her pregnancy from her family at home.  If that were the case, one would think she would leave home for the last three months rather than the first three months.  Was she banished by her family, embarrassed by this unplanned pregnancy?  There is no evidence in the story that she was sent away, by either Joseph or her parents.  In fact, in Luke's gospel, we are not even told that Joseph knows of Mary's pregnancy at this point.  My guess, is that while Mary was open to God, and obedient, and willing to be the servant of the Lord, she was also a bit scared and confused.  An angel had appeared to her and told her that she would conceive and bear a son. The angel had mentioned that her relative Elizabeth had conceived a son in her old age, so perhaps Mary was thinking that she does not need to travel this strange journey alone.  She has a fellow traveler, whose journey will be alike, but different, who can travel with her and will help her see what God is doing through her.

The story of the visitation tells us more than that John the Baptist recognizes the Messiah while they are both still in their mother's wombs.  This story tells us that Mary, the mother of Jesus, chose not to travel her remarkable journey alone, and not to try to understand what God was doing through her, all by herself.  The story actually tells us that Mary has three traveling companions on this journey.  First, she has Elizabeth, a living breathing human being (as opposed to an angel), who is able to name what God is doing through Mary.  Only when Elizabeth recognizes Mary as the mother of her Lord does Mary rejoice.  Secondly, we are told that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit who helped Elizabeth speak the truth to Mary.  And lastly, when Mary responds to Elizabeth's greeting, she does so by reaching into Scripture.  The song Mary sings is the same song Hannah sang in 1 Samuel to give thanks for the birth of her son, Samuel.  Scripture is also a companion on Mary's daunting journey.

Mary's story reminds us that we are not called to travel alone, either.  Alone, we cannot always make sense of what God is doing through us.  Alone, we may think we have heard the voice of an angel and wonder if we were dreaming when God calls us to do a new thing or takes us to a new place.  Alone, we may not yet be able to rejoice in God's action in our lives.  The story of the visitation reminds us that we have fellow travelers in each other, in the Holy Spirit, and in Scripture, no matter how bizarre or joyful or confusing the journey might be.  And the delicious twist to the story is that the one who teaches us that we need never travel alone, is the one who will give birth to the child named "Emmanuel," God with us.  Indeed, we never travel alone.

Amen.