“The Other Holy Couple: An Advent with Elizabeth and Zechariah,” Week Two
Thursday, July 30, 2020, found my small family in their dark gray Ford C-Max utterly exhausted in every possible sense. Ten days ago, we closed on the sale of our townhouse in Vancouver and had begun the cross-country sojourn to Birmingham—Carrie in the C-Max with our two dogs, Sadie and me by airplane.
We had no idea what to expect on arriving here. Having driven through Missouri plenty in my childhood, and Arkansas some as well, I knew what the first day of our drive from my parents’ place in Kansas City would look like. I had no idea what the second day of our drive, from Memphis to Birmingham, would look like.
Carrie and I, bone-tired though we were, found ourselves happily surprised by the green trees and rolling hills of Alabama as we drove along I-22. And as we came near the city, not long before where I-22 intersects into I-65 and suddenly ends, Alison Krauss’s hymn from O Brother Where Art Thou, “As I Went Down Into the River to Pray,” started playing on Pandora:
As I went down into the river to pray, studying about that good old way, and who shall wear the robe and crown, good Lord, show me the way…
It was a profound moment of arrival—of the good Lord showing the way forward, and of trusting in following that way which was shown to us.
Such journeys are not so easy, but they are made easier in the knowledge that God is showing the way through them. And I think that is what made Mary’s journey to see Elizabeth, after Gabriel announced to Mary her pregnancy with the Christ child, so doable for her.
This is a sermon series for the church season of Advent, or, in much of popular American culture, the “Christmas season.” But the Christmas season does not traditionally begin until Christmas Day. The four weeks leading up to Christmas are set aside in the church calendar to be a time of preparing the way for the Lord, and in that spirit, the origin story of John the Baptist, who preached that message of preparing the way for the Lord, seems an appropriate sermon series for now. So, for this Advent, we will be walking alongside the other Holy Couple of Luke’s Gospel—not Mary and Joseph (though we will of course be at their side on Christmas Eve), but Mary’s relative Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah. They end up overshadowed by Mary and Joseph’s dramatic saga in the end, but there is much in Luke’s telling of their story to capture and hold our attention as well.
Last week, we focused on Zechariah, but this week, the narrative swings towards Elizabeth and her younger relative Mary. This is a deeply poignant moment in Luke’s Advent narrative, of Elizabeth greeting Mary with the news that John the Baptist had leaped for joy in utero at the presence of his aunt, Mary, and cousin-in-utero Jesus.
Maybe you do not feel quite so much like leaping at the end of 2020. Perhaps a cushioned recliner to fall into, or perhaps a litter to be carted around upon, would more fit the bill. But both women, Mary and Elizabeth, have seen through their own journeys and hardships to arrive at this point as well, and their children do still leap! If we listen to them, I believe that we very much still can as well.
Now, neither woman finds the other in usual state. Mary has journeyed far, from Nazareth into the hill country, while Elizabeth has done the exact opposite—if you recall from last week’s message, she spent the first five months of her pregnancy in isolation. She endures what is surely more lonesome isolation than we have—after all, she cannot whip out her smartphone to instantly connect to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, TikTok, and whatever became of those old-school AOL chatrooms. Reading Elizabeth’s story in preparation for this sermon, and this series, really put into perspective the less drastic sacrifices we have been asked to make, but have not always made, to try to flatten covid-19’s curve.
And I think there is a word for us in there. Think of where you are now compared to last winter—mentally, emotionally, spiritually, existentially if you must—and, in the case of my family and me, that includes geographically. What has changed for you, and how have you changed in response? What has changed for Mary and Elizabeth? How might you imagine them changing in response?
Mind you, these are two remarkable women in a book full of stories of remarkable women. It may even seem a trifle unfair to ask, “Well, who am I compared to the likes of them?” But remember what I said last week when we began Advent and this sermon series: that God does not call us to be average, or middling, or so-so. God did not call Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah to mediocrity, and God sure did not call Elizabeth herself to it either.
But rather, God calls us to be the very best versions of ourselves. And sometimes discovering those versions, uncovering and unlocking them, takes time. Maybe even lots of time. For while Mary is very likely young—a teenager, even—Elizabeth is not, she is much older by this time.
Sometimes, becoming the person God wants you to be, and needs
you to be, takes time. Moses was eighty before he went before Pharaoh to demand that his people be let go. Jesus was God-made-flesh, but He still needed thirty years after the first Christmas to begin His public ministry.
I have been in parish ministry now for over a decade, but I needed that decade to become the pastor that Valley would call to be its minister. Becoming who you are, growing into who are, and fully living into who you are does not happen overnight. It takes days, weeks, months, years, maybe even decades. After all, it did for Elizabeth.
So we ask the Lord to show us the way.
It is a mighty, mighty long way from Vancouver, Washington, to Birmingham, Alabama. So we asked the Lord to show us the way, and the Lord did.
It is a long way from Nazareth to the hill country (BC—before cars). But the Lord showed the way.
And it is a long way to go from consigning yourself to a lifetime of childlessness to giving birth to the herald of the son of the living God. But the Lord showed the way.
The Lord shows us the way, but that does not reduce God down to a flashlight, or a map, or a GPS device. Showing the way is not limited to getting us to our destination—it includes how we journey.
For Elizabeth and Zechariah and Mary and Joseph alike, it involves living a life of faithfulness and devotion, of doing what is right not merely what is convenient. That, too, is the Lord showing the way. That is God making not just a way for us, but the best possible way for us.
After all, it would have been enough for God to send God’s only Son, so that we might be restored to right relationship with God, liberated from sin, set free to flourish and be our very best selves. All of that would have been enough, more than enough, and yet—and yet—God softens the ground and straightens the path for that Son by giving the Son a herald in the form of John the Baptist.
We see the Baptist already fulfilling that role by giving Elizabeth that clue to the true identity and purpose of her nephew by leaping for joy. Is it, strictly speaking, necessary that he do so? No. But it adds to how God leads us, to how we arrive at a place of belief, of living out that belief that God so loved us that God was willing to become flesh, to endure what we endure, experience what we experience. No wonder, then, that Elizabeth says to Mary, “Blessed are you among women!”
We are two Sundays in, with two Sundays remaining for us to prepare for Christmas. As we near the midway point of our preparations, of not only the decorating and halls-decking, but also our spiritual preparation for Christ’s birth, know that if you feel a need to do better at how you will arrive at Christmas that it is not too late! It never is, precisely because God is far more than a flashlight or a map or a GPS system. God operates on God’s own time, and what we may think our estimated time of arrival is may or may not be what God knows our arrival to be like. If you feel like you need to be shown the way, or a better way, God is ready to do that for you! God is ready for you, for all of you, everything that you are and carry with you, burdens and all. And as much as 2020 may have taken from us, we do not let 2020 break us. When the Lord shows us the way, we continue along that way. When God lights the way forward, we follow that star. And when God’s voice through Elizabeth says “blessed are you,” we live up to that blessing.
So, amid the carols, the decorating, and the festivities I hope we indulge in safely, may you hear the voice of a woman in the Israelite hill country, who has felt her son leap for joy at the existence of his cousin and Savior. I imagine that she, like Mary, may well be singing that joy. May you hear that joy as it is carried on the wind, from Israel’s hill country to here, from the first century to the twenty-first century, from down in the river to here in the valley:
As I went down in the river to pray, studying about that good old way and who shall wear the robe and crown, good Lord, show me the way…
May it be so. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Eric Atcheson
Birmingham, Alabama
December 6, 2020