St. Mary's Episcopal Church

Advent 4c: The Visitation (Luke 1. 39-56)

There was a show on the Sci-Fi channel a couple of weeks ago called "The Lost Room."
In the drama, there were a series of everyday objects from a mysterious motel room -a ball point pen, a comb, a nail file, a bus ticket, and the like-which were endowed with magical powers.
The ballpoint produced fire.
When placed on someone's forehead, the bus ticket transported that person to Gallup, New Mexico.
The comb stopped time.
When the holder of the comb raked it through his hair, everything around him stopped in mid-action.
He, however, could continue to move and do things.
It was a great tool for dodging bullets.
After a few seconds, he reentered the tick tock world of time.
Until he combed his hair again.
Now to the people and animals and objects which got stopped in time, they didn't know that they'd been placed on pause.
However, when tick tock time began again, the person with the comb was in a different spot
To them it looked like he magically moved instantly from one place to another.
To the man with the comb, he had simply moved while the world stood still.
These two ways of looking at time are what we get to experience this morning.
What the Greeks call chronos and kairos.
Chronos is the time we live in-tick tock time, governed by seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks….
Kairos is the time God lives in-where 100 years to us is like a second to God.
Where time is governed by encounters with God.
The kind of time we are in depends on our perspective.
Today kairos enters our chronos.
For all who are worshipping on the 4th Sunday of Advent on Christmas Eve.
This morning, we recall the blessed encounter between Mary and Elizabeth.
Seven or so hours from now, we'll skip to 9 months later-and the birth of Jesus.
It's a very peculiar thing for us who live in tick tock time.
To enter the kairos of Mary and Elizabeth's visit in order to prepare for the kairos of the birth of Jesus tonight.

What's happened to Elizabeth and Mary before they meet in today's gospel?
What do we know about Elizabeth?
- She was from a family of priests and married to a priest named Zechariah.
- She had tried for many years to become pregnant, but had remained childless.
- When she was post-menopausal, six months before our gospel today, she became pregnant.
- When the angel of the Lord told Zechariah that he was going to have a child, Zechariah was naturally a bit wary of believing what the angel said. For not trusting God, Zechariah was unable to speak throughout Elizabeth's pregnancy.

What do we know about Mary?
- She was young, maybe even so young that she had not started menstruating yet.
- She had not had sexual relations with a man.
- She lived in Nazareth.
- An angel of the Lord comes and tells her that she will become pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit and her baby will be the - The church lingo for the angel's announcement of Mary's pregnancy is the Annunciation.

90 miles down the road later, Mary enters Elizabeth's house and blessings and prophecies fly.
Mary and Elizabeth, two very wise women, are prophets.
Prophets are people who speak God's truth.
Prophets are people who sometimes say something we don't want to hear; sometimes prophets say things we never expected to hear.
When Elizabeth says to Mary, "Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, and why is this granted me, that I should greet the Mother of my Lord?"
Elizabeth's prophetic word is one that Mary had first hoped to hear 90 miles earlier when the angel of the Lord promised her a confirmation that she was indeed going to bear the Son of God.
She had hoped for that word of prophecy, but I'm not sure that she expected to hear that word of confirmation.
When Mary and Elizabeth sang (some manuscripts say Mary, some say Elizabeth; I can't imagine one of them starting to sing and the other not joining in), they sang words that some had never expected to hear, and words that some would never wish to hear.
The rich sent empty away!
The proud scattered!
The mighty cast down from their thrones!
Two pregnant women, one young, one old, beginning a six month visit in which the greeting is a prophecy and the reply is a song of the revolution that God has already begun.
The next three months will be a kairos of waiting and preparation.
What do you think that Mary and Elizabeth did for the next three months?
Sharing lives, singing, and praying.
In the six month visit, elder wise woman Elizabeth will have much to share with the wise younger woman Mary.
Elizabeth knows about the challenge of marriage.
She knows about the challenge of trying to live faithfully, especially when there is no hope.
She, with years of being barren, knows what it's like to live with scorn.
She, with an impossible pregnancy, knows what it's like to live with people whispering behind her back.
She has years of practice of being grateful to God no matter what happens in life.
She, particularly for the past six months, knows what it means to be vessel of God's will.
In the next three months, Mary will have much to share with Elizabeth.
Mary has the freshness of young hope.
The youthful view of endless possibility.
The brightness of a profound encounter with God.
This encounter between Mary and Elizabeth is titled in church lingo as "The Visitation."
Lots and lots of art of this meeting between this young and not so young woman, who are alike in that they have had miraculous pregnancies.
When I was in Rome almost two months ago with the Women Touched by Grace, I got to visit the Vatican Museum.
It is Mary-mania.
One of my favorite paintings was La Visitzaione by an unnamed painter of the Florentine school of the 1500's.
Its colors are golds and blues except for Elizabeth, who wears red.
There are five women pictured-three others beside Mary and Elizabeth.
Mary and Elizabeth stand outside a home, trying to embrace, but they are too pregnant to get their arms around each other.
The painting is unique in that Mary is visibly pregnant and Elizabeth even more visibly pregnant.
I think that it is must be a painting of the leave-taking of Mary and Elizabeth, the final word of the last verse of our gospel, rather than the saying hello that begins our gospel today.
Because at their greeting, Mary is hours or days pregnant-certainly not enough to show.
And in our gospel Mary enters Elizabeth's home, is in inside, before the greeting and the blessing and the prophesying begin.
With their leave-taking, Mary and Elizabeth leave the kairos of God's time and reenter the world days and weeks and months.
Thankfully, only God knows what is ahead for the women and the sons they will bear.
In the tick tock time of life.
The son who will carry prophecy to a whole new level and get his head cut off.
The son who will carry love to a whole new level and be crucified.
But for this time, this moment, this morning the women are in kairos time, God's time.
To the outside world, the visit of these two women is nothing very spectacular.
Two pregnant women hanging out in some mountain village.
But God is indeed present.
In the midst of our busy ticktock time, may we be aware that each moment we are in God's time, too.