Journey's Weekly Homilies

4^th Sunday of Advent, Cycle C, 21 December 2003
Homily by Joe

Micah 5:1-4   
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:26-45

There is a woman whose story is told in scripture. She was, mainly because of some reproductive issues, misunderstood and even a source of scandal. But she persisted in faith because God’s word of promise had been spoken to her. When that word came true she gave thanks to God with great joy. These are the words she sang:

My heart rejoices in my God;
in whom my horn is lifted high.
My mouth boasts over my enemies,
for I delight in your deliverance 

There is no one holy like you, O God;
there is no one besides you;
 
The bows of the warriors are broken,
but those who stumbled are armed with strength.
Those who were full hire themselves out for food,
but those who were hungry hunger no more. 

God brings death and makes alive,
bringing down to the grave and raising up.
God sends poverty and wealth;
humbling and exalting. 

God raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
making them to sit with princes
and to inherit a throne of honor.
God will guard the feet of the saints,
but the wicked will be silenced in darkness. 

The woman glorifying God in these oddly familiar words is not Mary the mother of Jesus, but Hannah the mother of the prophet Samuel. Hannah had been unable to bear children for her husband, Elkanah, and she had prayed to God in the temple with such vehemence that Eli, the holy man, assumed she was a drunkard. Once Hannah convinced him that she was not, Eli assured her that she would indeed bear a child. When that promise was fulfilled in the birth of Samuel, Hannah sang her canticle. 

Samuel you remember from the story of his being awakened at night by God in the temple and speaking the words Eli told him to say: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” Samuel eventually inherited Eli’s mantle and anointed David as king of Israel.   

I’m not trying to say that Jesus’ mother was a plagiarist. For the evangelist Luke, who regarded his gospel as the second of three books chronicling the whole of salvation history, it is no more out of place for a peasant girl from Galilee to improvise magnificent poetry than it was for Hannah to do the same in pre-Davidic Jerusalem. Mary’s paraphrase of Hannah’s well-known words in the canticle we call the Magnificat is a way of putting rejoicing into words, like “Hallelujah!” or “praise the Lord!” (just a little more elaborate).  

What is surprising is that Luke puts these words on Mary’s lips. As the story is presented, Mary’s cousin Elizabeth would have been a more likely choice: the parallels between her life and Hannah’s are much stronger. Like Hannah, Elizabeth is thought to be barren and conceives only with divine intervention. Elizabeth’s son, John the Baptist, essentially takes on Samuel’s role, announcing Jesus as God’s chosen one just as Samuel had anointed David. In fact, there are manuscript sources for Luke’s gospel in which the Magnificat is sung by Elizabeth and not Mary. 

But, appealing as it is to excavate scripture, let’s assume that the received tradition is what Luke had in mind. What then of Elizabeth? The occasion for Hannah’s song of praise was the fulfillment of God’s promise in the birth of Samuel. What’s the reason for Mary’s song at this time?  She’s been honored by the angelic visitation but has yet to give birth.  In Luke’s purpose Elizabeth is a second, even more convincing “annunciator.”

Even when angels appear outside of dreams they are so dazzling that the memory of them is difficult to trust. Elizabeth, by contrast, is a living, breathing woman with a baby stirring inside her? However strong Mary’s faith as she gives her consent to Gabriel, she still sets out “in haste” for Elizabeth’s house. Not to assist at the delivery, surely. Elizabeth, unlike Mary at Bethlehem later, is at home and can give birth surrounded by supportive kinswomen. Mary goes to Elizabeth to have the angel’s predictions confirmed. And in Elizabeth’s greeting, Gabriel’s words are true: Elizabeth, who had been barren, is indeed with child and Mary begins to know herself as “theotokos,” “god-bearer.” 

Such is the grace of Elizabeth’s greeting that Mary is moved to ecstatic praise of God: “My being proclaims the greatness of God; my spirit rejoices in my savior.” Whatever doubts she may have had are quieted; whatever hardship is yet to come will be bearable because Mary knows God’s protection and power. How we need such assurance now – not necessarily that there is anything miraculous about our lives, but that we have worth and dignity just in being human. In an age when the mighty are still very much on their thrones and the rich have no idea what it is to be sent away empty, when life is sown as corn, who are the Elizabeths for us? Who can show us that justice is possible, that war can have an end, that all who hunger will be filled? 

We do catch glimpses of people who proclaim these things and, even better, work to achieve them.  There are the people who run the Sisters of the Road café, those who organize the potluck in the park, those who protest the School of the Americas, those who advocate for justice for immigrants. All of these people work for great things, but all would say that they’re only doing what little they can for the needs they see around them. 

And this is where we too have to begin to be Elizabeths for one another, in the smallest of ways. Every refusal to grasp at wealth or power, every hour spent with a friend in need, every copy of Street Roots you buy, every time you make eye contact with someone on the street, every kind word to a harried salesclerk, anything you do to honor another person’s humanity helps to turn this world around.