Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 19, 2021 – Micah 5:1-4A; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45

One storytelling technique is to tell one story in terms of another story. One of the most recent examples is Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story”, which is in revival now with a whole new version of it. It’s a based on Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” but it tells a different story. It tells the story of ethnic and racial tensions in an urban setting, with crime and other things hanging over the whole plot. And so, if that’s the storytelling technique, it shouldn’t surprise us that it’s a technique used in the telling of the gospel story. St. Luke tells the story, this morning, in terms of a very, very small, but very important story in the second book of Samuel, in the Old Testament.

The Ark of the Covenant contained the tablets of the Law, and the Jews recognized that those relics were the closest they could come to the physical presence of God in the world. But the Ark had been stolen by Philistine raiders. When it was returned, for safekeeping, it was kept for a long while in one pious Jew’s home. Finally, David, when he had conquered all his enemies and established Jerusalem as his headquarters, wanted the Ark brought to Jerusalem, to be housed in a large tent. But something went wrong with the plans and, for three months, the Ark was stored again in one person’s home, in the home of Obed-edom.

So, now it was time to make the last part of the journey up to Jerusalem and, when everything was ready, David took off the robes of a king and put on the robes of the high priest, and danced before the Ark, all the way to Jerusalem. He made a spectacle of himself and many people actually disapproved of what he had done. They thought it was undignified for his state in life.

Luke takes that story, and uses it for the framework of his story. Notice what happens when Mary, carrying the new presence of God in the world, meets Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s child leaps for joy. He dances. But that’s not the whole story, by any means.

The story here is about the meeting of two women, both carrying a child. You notice that, when Mary arrives, she does not greet Zechariah, she greets Elizabeth. That would not be surprising to anybody reading the story way back then because, ordinarily a woman would not first greet a man. She would go to the women’s quarters in a home and greet the female head of household.  But there’s something else going on there. Luke wants us to notice that, although Zechariah is the priest and the man of the house, it is not he who is important but, rather, his wife, Elizabeth, who is important.

So I asked you what you thought might be missing at the end of the story. It ends with the end of Elizabeth’s quotation but, we’re used to hearing this afterwards. “And Mary said.” And then there’s a colon, because that’s what we do in English. “And Mary said…” And then comes the whole hymn that we call the Magnificat. The Magnificat has Mary talking about the triumph of the poor, the decimation of the rich, the restoration of Israel. She speaks in terms of a triumph, a military success. And, in doing that, she echoes all the great women of the Old Testament, starting with Miriam, Moses’ sister, who sings a victory song after Moses leads the people in a successful escape from the forces of Pharaoh. And then there’s Judith, and Esther, and each one of them has a song of joy and triumph. And they’re all gathered up into Mary’s song of triumph.

But there’s more still. Nowadays, people are very interested in things like ancestry.com and 23andme. People are fascinated with their lineage. Well the same was true back then. During the run up to Christmas, at one of the morning Masses every year, the priest has to read from the gospel the thing we refer to, disrespectfully, as the “begats.” This one begat that one, and that one begat that one, till we finally get to Jesus. We don’t like to read it because it’s long and boring. But, in both Matthew’s gospel and Luke’s gospel, it’s extremely important because it tells us the viewpoint of the gospel writer. Matthew traces Jesus’ lineage back to Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation. But Luke traces Jesus’ lineage back, not to Abraham, but all the way back to Adam. And, when he does that, he includes, among Jesus’ ancestors, people who are not Jews, people who are pagans, and he includes people who were sinners and gave birth to other ancestors by sinful means. And so, Luke wants us to understand that, although Jesus Himself is sinless, Jesus participates in every possible way in the human experience, and He encompasses all humanity, not simply the Chosen People. So that’s part of the story here.

But notice what happens if you go back to Adam, the real story here is Eve. When the man had taken the fruit from the woman and eaten it, God comes to visit, in the cool of the evening. And He says, as He always does, “Where are you?” But they’re hiding because they’re ashamed. And they’re ashamed because they have no clothes on. It didn’t used to matter, until they ate from the fruit of the tree of good and evil. And God says to them, “How do you know you’re naked? You ate of the fruit I told you not to eat, didn’t you?” And the very next thing God does is not scold them and rail against them and threaten them, no, as a good father, he sits down and he makes them clothing to put on. Then He simply tells them the consequences of their bad choice. He says, “Now, now you, Adam, you’re going to have to earn your food by hard work. And you, woman, it is going to be painful for you to bring children into the world.” But he turns to the snake, and levels all his anger at the snake and says, “Listen. Because of what you have done, cursed are you among the animals. You will try to snap at her heel, while she waits to crush your head with her heel.”

The story is about the fact that the woman carries the promise of redemption from the very beginning. That’s why the story ends with the writer saying, “And so the man named woman Eve because she became the mother of all the living. Not simply the mother of all the living human beings, but of everything living. She became the mother of everything living, including ideas, and works of art, and inventions. And everything that comes into the world comes from her generative power, not simply the ability to create life, but the ability to sustain life, comes from the woman. And that’s why Luke places these two women together.

Luke’s view of the history of the world is that one era of history is from the beginning up to the preaching of John the Baptist. The next era is the three short years of Jesus’ public ministry. The third era is the resurrection until far, far in the future, the end of all things. And, right in the middle, where all those eras come together, two women meet each other. Each one of them pregnant. One carrying the summation of everything sacred in the world up to that time. The other carrying the One who will bring salvation to the world.

What does this mean to us? It is far beyond feminism. Feminism, in the political sense, is extremely important because women have been mistreated and unjustly treated for centuries. And their cry for justice still needs to be heard in many corners of the world. But this is a feminism beyond feminism. It says that, when we look to see where life is carried in the world, we need to look for the women in our midst. And not only that, but this is a cry for justice for the whole world.

Right now we’re living through a difficult time in our world’s history. There’s a great deal of militarism throughout the world. People building up their armed forces and their weapons of destruction. We have a big problem with prejudice. We have a big problem with dishonesty. We have a big problem with drugs. We have all these problems. But what we need to understand is that we belong to a different sort of history, what the church calls ‘salvation history’ or ‘the history of salvation.’ That doesn’t mean that God simply comes and solves things for us because we’re believers, but rather that we, in our own time, each are placed within that ongoing history which has the absolute promise of success. And we are placed here to deal in hope and courage with the things that are hard to deal with. And to take our own ingenuity, the generative, the creative process that dwells within us, and try to make our time, in the history of salvation, a time that moves forward the great plan of love of our Creator.