“Blessed in Believing”

by Bruce J. Johnson

December 16, 2001

 

Lois and I did pretty well in planning out our family. We were married six years before Timothy was born; 11 years before Peter. I can remember what a great moment it was and is when you first learn that you are expecting and you get to tell people. All you have is the results of the test. Nothing is showing yet but the wait begins. Preparations get under way. There is a room to paint and stuff to buy, books to read and classes to attend. Because of our experience, we tell everyone not to wait too long before getting things done. Tim arrived 5 weeks early. We had to miss our last birthing class…  a missed class that I am sure affected my less that exemplary performance in the delivery room!  Pete was 10 weeks early! We hadn’t even started those classes yet and UConn must have gotten the low down on me from Windham. They wouldn’t even let me in the room!

 

(Rob and Susie—with your little Anna being only three months old---do you remember all that stuff?

 

Well, today’s lesson from the Gospel according to Luke is filled with all that kind of normal excitement and anticipation and more, given the extraordinary circumstances.

 

Mary and Elizabeth were kin. Elizabeth was old but married; Mary was young--a teenager --- and unmarried. In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, the angel Gabriel announces to a frightened Mary that not only would she conceive and bear a son and she would name him, Jesus but that Elizabeth too was pregnant. Luke tells us that in response to these two bits of  news, Mary “set off in haste to a city in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.”  (Luke 1: 39-40)

 

We can close our eyes for a moment and picture the scene. Two women- both pregnant, giddy with excitement and incredulous over the news and wondering how such a thing could happen. But they took the angels at their word--- “with God all things are possible!”

 

Mary has traveled a long way and is tired. Tiny beads of sweat mixed with dust have formed on her forehead, on the end of her nose and above her upper lip. Her feet are the color of the dusty earth and she longs to wash and cool them off with fresh water. Even though she still has a bit of fruit and dry bread in the bag hanging from her shoulder, she is hungry, but that can wait.

 

First things first. It is so good to see Elizabeth, and Mary greets her with utter joy, throwing her arms around her shoulders, feeling the pregnant belly push into her own--- which would soon enough follow suit. Mary cannot believe that at last Elizabeth will have a baby. Who would have ever thought! GO FIGURE! The hug lasts a long time… and soon they are both wiping away tears of joy from their eyes…. But Elizabeth feels something very different within her womb—her baby leaps for joy and she just knows that she is in the presence of something really wonderfully promising.

 

AND THE SCRIPTURES TELL US THAT THEY STAYED TOGETHER FOR THREE MONTHS. WHEN YOU DO THE MATH, WHAT YOU COME UP WITH IS THAT MARY MAY WELL HAVE REMAINED WITH ELIZABETH ALMOST UNTILL THE BIRTH OF HER SON---JOHN, WHO WOULD EVENTUALLY COME TO BE KNOWN AS

‘JOHN, THE BAPTIST.’

 

Is there any wait in all of life filled with more promise?  Any fulfillment more blessed with joy? Any experience more meant to be shared with the people who matter most in our lives?

 

That is why this season of advent is so significant. We are called into community to wait together and share the promise together and to be blessed in our believing that something really wonderful is happening!

 

I think that Henri Nouwen’s reflection on the passage, which I included in this morning’s bulletin, is really meaningful.

         

“Elizabeth and Mary came together and enabled each other to wait.

These two women created space for each other to wait. They affirmed for each other that something was happening that was worth waiting for… (It is) one of the Bible’s most beautiful expressions of what it means to form community, to be together, gathered around a promise, affirming that something is really happening …”

(Henri Nouwen, “A Spirituality of Waiting: Being Alert to God’s Presence in our Lives” in Weavings, Jan. 1987.)

 

One of my favorite books is a little paperback titled: Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. It is a collection of letters written by Rilke in the early 1900’s to a young student who was awaiting the birth of his own creativity and genius as an artist. There is one paragraph that has always been my favorite:

         

“Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own intelligence and await with a deep humility and patience the birth hour of a new clarity: this alone is living… this alone is life.” (pg. 29-30)

 

“Everything is gestation and then bringing forth.”

 

And those who await with a deep humility, patience and faith the birth hour of a new clarity about who we are as children of God and to whom we belong are blessed. --- For His birth declares our precious worth and the promise of our lives!

 

The other night, Lois and I were in Border’s Books and I picked up a copy of Lance Armstrong’s account of his battle with cancer. The title is: Its not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life. He writes powerfully about the importance of community and the support of fellow patients who gather around the promise of their treatments and their hope. He is at his best when he talks about the kids and their ability to be so brave and have such courage and to have it so right while they work and wait for good news.

 

He tells this story:

When Wheaties decided to put me on the cover of the box after the Tour de France I asked if we could hold the press conference in the children’s cancer ward at the same hospital where my son was born. As I visited with the kids and signed some autographs, one little boy grabbed a Wheaties box (with my picture on the front of it) and stood at my knees, clutching it to his chest.

          “Can I have this?” he said.

 

          “Yeah you can have it.” I said, “Its yours.”

 

He just stood there, looking at the box and then he looked back at me. I figured he was pretty impressed.

 

The he said, “What shapes are they?”

 

“What?” I said.

 

“What shapes are they?”     

                  

                   ‘Well,” I said, “Its cereal. It’s all different shapes.”

 

                   “Oh,” he said. “Okay”

 

                   See, to him, its not about me or about cancer. It’s only about

cereal.                                        (p. 266)

 

 

I think that we too would do well to make this time only about one thing--- the shape of God’s love in a child born in Bethlehem… and the joy he brings to all humanity.

 

So, this morning we join Elizabeth and Mary in their wait, gathered together as a community of faith yet again around the promise. Something really is happening--- the angels are preparing their script for the newscast, the heavenly host are warming up their voices for their ‘glorias,’ the shepherds are preparing for their night in the fields, the star is storing up its energy so it can be at its brightest

 

And the gift of God’s love continues to grow and awaits its time when it is to be born anew in the world in a place that each of us has prepared in our hearts because there are plenty of other places where there is no room!

                                                                                            Amen