HOMILY: "Choreography of Resistance!"

A Meditation on Luke 1:39-55

Sunday, December 8, 2024

Part One: "Mary Says 'Yes'!" (November 17, 2024) HERE

Part Two: "Choreography of Resistance!" (December 8, 2024) BELOW

1.

I’ve always imagined—maybe you have too—that Mary hurries to the hill country to find support, care, companionship in a season of unanticipated disruption. Whatever you make of the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ and ‘wherefores’, Mary’s going to have a baby. So she takes off for the one cousin, the one human being, whose counsel and care she trusts most. Elizabeth in the hill country.

But the Bible lends itself to interpretation, right, to a variety of readings and meanings. And what if there’s another way to read all this?

Maria, Elisabeth (Lucy D'Souza-Krone, 1990)

What if Mary goes—and some suggest it’d be a four-day trip on foot, and apparently she goes alone—what if she goes because she knows that Elizabeth needs her? Maybe this explains the urgency of her trek. Maybe this explains the clarity with which she leaves everything and everyone else (Joseph?) behind. What if Mary hurries to the hill country, sleeping on benches when she can, napping under trees now and then, foraging for food, because she’s heard that Elizabeth is vulnerable, she’s heard that Elizabeth is shaken, she’s heard that her dear, dear cousin and soulmate needs her?

Think about it for a moment. We know that Elizabeth’s endured years of cruelty from neighbors and gossips who interpreted her childless life as a sign of moral failure, or even worse as an indication of God’s rejection. And that kind of shaming—as we know—makes it hard to trust anything, anyone, or any angel at all. And we also know that Zechariah—Elizabeth’s beloved—has been rendered speechless by the possibility that, in their old age, they too would soon have a child. Breaking every rule and convention. Disturbing the expectations of neighbors and gossips.

And we know this too: that the two of them (Elizabeth and Zechariah), traumatized by cruelty, chastened by unimaginable news, and at least partially muted by all of it, have fled to the hills to wait. To wait. To wait for the mystery promised, but yet unseen. To wait for the revelation strangely foreshadowed by an angel, but still impossible to believe. And remember, out there in the hills, Zechariah’s still speechless, unable to speak, awkwardly bumbling around the house, strangely incapable of meaningful conversation. Alive, alert to the possibilities, she must be, Elizabeth. But also isolated, befuddled and vulnerable frankly to the stirring of new life in her own flesh.

So maybe, then, it’s Mary who goes to comfort Elizabeth, or better yet, to embolden Elizabeth and believe with her, dream with her, imagine with her a world in which the promises of God are in the making. Not distant and imagined, but in the making. Maybe, then, it’s Mary who responds to Elizabeth’s craving for companionship, for a friend who knows how to rub her feet, for a sister who knows when to sing a song and when to put the kettle on and when to just sit still.

2.

I want us to notice, but then to internalize and claim, the spiritual power available to these two women as they greet one another, and then as they honor their lives and bodies and vocations together, and then as they boldly bear witness to God’s vision and intention. You see, the Magnificat—the song that emerges out there in the hills: it’s not just Mary’s Magnificat, right? It’s the song these two women sing together, sing to one another, sing into the hills and into the very heart of God.

“Our souls lift up the Lord!” That’s how it works, right? That’s always how it works. “Our souls lift up the Lord! Our spirits celebrate God, our Liberator!” All of the blessing God showers upon Mary is equally, abundantly, delightfully showered upon Elizabeth as well. Upon the two of them, together. “Our souls lift up the Lord! Our spirits celebrate God, our Liberator!” When we commit to relationships of tenderness and strength, when we invest in friendships that defy cruelty and convention, when we build spiritually vibrant and prayerfully grounded communities of care, we make ourselves available to the liberating energies of God. We begin to sing the gospel of grace. We open our hearts and homes to the radical, world-flipping energies of the Holy Spirit.

Is that phrase a little too much? “The radical, world-flipping energies of the Holy”? Judge for yourselves. This is their song. This is their gospel. This is the power, the prayer unleased in Mary’s concern for Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s delight in her cousin. Judge for yourselves. This is their song:

The proud in mind and heart,
God has sent away in disarray.
The rulers from their high positions of power,
God has brought down low.
And those who were humble and lowly,
God has elevated with dignity.
The hungry—God has filled with fine food.
The rich—God has dismissed with nothing in their hands.

This is sacred scripture, friends, the Word of the Lord. This is the Magnificat, the song Mary sings to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth takes up as her own. This song, their song is all about reversals, worlds flipped upside down. This song, their song is all about privilege upended, power redefined and a feast that fills the hungry, the poor, the desperate with fine food and righteous hope. What begins in their gratitude for one another, what takes hold in their care and protection of one another, soon becomes an anthem to love’s revolution. Their song stakes a claim for God’s intention, for the world’s salvation, and (yes) for humankind’s liberation.

The proud in mind and heart,
God has sent away in disarray.
The rulers from their high positions of power,
God has brought down low.
And those who were humble and lowly,
God has elevated with dignity.

Imagine, if you will, this text, this poetry being read at next month’s inauguration in Washington. It might bring the whole city toppling down, turned inside out by the joy of two women, and the fearlessness of God, and their commitments to a kin-dom of the humble and the kind. “The proud in mind and heart, God has sent away in disarray.”

3.

One of you said to me recently that our church—all of this, all that we are, all that we create together—our church was built for a time such as this. And I think that what you meant is that we too are building a ministry out of relationships, that we too are singing anthems shoulder to shoulder, that we too are discovering the Holy Spirit not as a best guess or a bright idea—but as the lived experience of our love for one another, the respect and care we cultivate every Sunday and throughout the week. And in the midst of these relationships, God is inspiring courage in the face of cruelty and fascism. In the midst of these relationships, God is asking for partnership in protecting the vulnerable and beloved among us. In the midst of these relationships, we will not, we cannot give in to despair. We need one another. And God needs us.

By the way, if I come around this week, pleading for your 2025 pledge, or if you hear me in a meeting begging for an aspirational budget—that’s what it’s all about for me. We have work to do. We have a mission to fulfill. Just so you know. We need one another. More than ever. And God needs us.

Isn’t it possible, then, that what Elizabeth needs most—in her own life, on her own journey—is a friend like Mary, a sister like Mary who is brave enough to believe in God’s passion for reconciled communities, deposed tyrants and justice among the hungry and poor? Isn’t it possible, then, that Mary’s willingness to trust the divine breath, that Mary’s commitment to shalom (peace) and tzedek (righteousness), that Mary’s openness to God’s partnership, liberates in Elizabeth a kind of fearlessness, a kind of delight in the possibilities and promises just now enfleshed in her own life?

When God taps you in for a dance whose steps you’ve never danced, you need someone like Mary pushing you forward. When God asks you to flip systems of privilege and cruelty upside down, when God asks you to inaugurate with friends a new world of blessing and abundance, you need someone like Mary—just like Mary—calling you in. So I’ve got to believe that Mary’s four-day dash into the hill country reveals her commitment to Elizabeth, and her faith in the God who joins sister to sister, cousin to cousin, friend to friend, for the revolutionary project of God’s kin-dom on earth.

4.

In our communion liturgy this morning, we’ll name Mary and Elizabeth as our friends in faith, as our partners in beloved community. And as we do, we’ll remind one another what this sacrament means and why it shapes our life together and feeds our hungry hearts. When we break bread with Mary, with Elizabeth, with Jesus, we receive again God’s promise of Spirit in our brokenness, God’s blessing of abundance in our limitations, God’s gift of resurrection even in our grief and despair.

I see this here, among us, all the time. The night after the election last month: I watched you shake in disbelief together, and ache for your children together, and lean into one another’s bodies. That’s the Body of Christ. And just last Sunday: I watched you welcome our new friend and colleague Izzy, and listen faithfully as she preached not just the Word of God, but the Word of God in her own uniquely blessed and gifted life. That’s the Body of Christ. And then on Thursday: I watched Antony return from the DMV with a new driver’s license, still so anxious for the days and perils to come, but clearly and visibly emboldened by the deep friendship and fierce protection he experiences every day in your midst. And that, too, my friends: there’s no doubt that that too is the Body of Christ. Communion. Spirit in brokenness. Abundance in limitation. Resurrection in despair.

You see, the bread and juice on our table aren’t simply a sweet memory of what once was—but a holy and sacred invitation, a daring offering of what will be. And it all begins, it all takes shape in our capacity for compassion, in our willingness to take one another seriously, in our openness to sisterhood, and to brotherhood, in the Body of Christ. Communion isn’t a wildly improbable guarantee of some kind of moral or even spiritual victory. Communion isn’t some kind of magic—by which we’re plucked from the pain of daily living into the promise of eternal life. What it is, what communion is, what Jesus is, is a gift we take from one another’s hands, and then give into the hands of others. A kind of choreography of resistance. What it is, what communion is, is a practice of joyful and fearless distribution in a world of hoarding and violence. What it is, what communion is, is a song, sometimes very old, and often very new—celebrating the ways our kindness and God’s grace upend systems of oppression and titans of intimidation, flip it all upside down, and reconfigure a world of blessing, peace, shalom. For Mary, for Elizabeth, for Antony, for every one of you, and every soul in every hamlet, the whole wide world around.

That’s what’s waiting for us on the table today.

Amen and Ashe.