“The Women of Christmas: Joy of Every Longing Heart” Luke 2: 21-40

The Sunday after Christmas. The presents have been unwrapped. The Christmas dinner eaten. The relatives are on their way home. And it would seem like there is nothing left to say or celebrate - the candles have been lit, Christmas hymns sung, and now we just get back to life as normal.

But that isn’t true at all for those of us in the Christian faith. The celebration doesn’t end after Christmas day. In fact, some of my favorite narratives surrounding the birth of Jesus are yet to come. They are just often forgotten in the Christmas hustle and bustle.

There are certain folks we talk about every year with the Christmas story - Mary, Jospeh, the shepherds, the angels, the Wise Man. These are the folks that fit into our nativities and Christmas pageants. They are staples. There are others that we talk about frequently, folks like Elizabeth and Zachariah, those who lead us into the Christmas story. But other folks, well, we don’t talk about them as much. People like Anna and Simeon. People who are a continuation of the story of the Christ child in profound ways. 

Just as John (the Baptist) was presented by his parents Zechariah and Elizabeth in the temple eight days after his birth for his circumcision and naming, so was Jesus taken to the temple eight days after his birth. He was given the name Jesus, just as the angel foretold, when Mary was told that the Holy Spirit would come over her and that she would give birth. 

But several weeks after that time in the temple, forty days after Mary gave birth, the family had to go back again. This time, about a month after the circumcision, it is for Mary to be ritually cleaned. She needed to do so before she would be allowed to worship in the sanctuary or handle sacred things, other than ironically, the holy son of God that she is cradling in her arms. At the same time a sacrifice would have been made for Jesus since he was the first born son - turtle doves if you had money, pigeons if you didn’t. It was here that the family encountered Simeon. 

Outside of this scripture, we don’t hear much about Simeon. We are told that he was righteous and devout, similar to the terms used a chapter earlier for Zechariah and Elizabeth. He was getting on in years, but the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would meet the Messiah, the one that would save him, save his people, save Israel, before he died. For centuries God’s people had been waiting for their salvation to come, and for a Messiah to come and rescue them. Simeon had been promised by the Holy Spirit that the time would come before he died. 

How exactly did the Holy Spirit reveal this to Simeon? We don’t know. We aren’t told in Scripture. But we do know that Simeon so deeply believed this revelation that he staked his life upon it. We also know that he trusted the Spirit’s continually leading in his life, because it was the Spirit that led him to the temple that day. 

Everyone else saw Joseph and Mary coming to present their offering and become clean and didn’t think anything of it. This is just another young family coming to perform their religious duty. But Simeon saw them, through the eyes of the heart of the Holy Spirit, and knew, knew deep within him that the prophecy had been fulfilled. This was the time. Salvation had arrived. 

Now maybe by this point Mary was just used to odd things happening with her child. It wouldn’t have been too long ago that a whole gang of shepherds came in from the fields to worship her child and said that angels led them there. But here is an old man, a complete stranger, who took her child scooped her child into his arms and started to praise God. And Mary and Jospeh were absolutely amazed. 

A few years ago Todd Agnew released what is to this day still my favorite Christmas album entitled Do You See What I See? It’s a collection of songs written from different perspectives of characters in this growing Christmas narrative. The one based on Simeon has the following lyrics: A young couple walks through the temple door

“Carrying of salvation in their arms, A sight for old eyes, Redemption draws nigh. In the eyes of this little baby boy… You can take these eyes, For I have seen Your salvation Oh, You can take this breath, And bring me at last into Your Peace. Oh and You can take these hands.I have held the light of the nations And the glory of your people Israel.”

It would be shocking, would it not, to hear such words being proclaimed over your child, even if you knew all that Mary and Jospeh knew. Their son, who no one else seemed to notice was deeply seen and recognized by this man. 

But it didn’t stop there. There was also a prophetess, Anna, who lived in the temple, day and night. The moment she saw the child, she also knew that Salvation had come and she started to praise the Lord. She would talk to anyone she could about encountering the redemption of Israel - she could not contain the joy spilling over from her heart. Could Mary have imagined that her encounter with the angel would lead to this? To this day in the temple.

Friends, it wasn’t Anna or Simeon’s goodness or piety that allowed them to see the Christ child - it was the Holy Spirit. And it was the Holy Spirit that allowed them to go forth from that place to proclaim that they had see God’s Word in the flesh. Are we so emboldened and led by the Holy Spirit that we can not help but proclaim this as well?

During the season of Advent we talked about what it means to wait. To wait for that which we cannot quite grasp, but know is to come. To wait with accountability, love, and challenge. But we also wait, my friends for the Holy Spirit’s leading. Men and women who are lead by the Holy Spirit to be in our lives for a purpose, that we may or may not understand.

The question is - are we willing to open ourselves to the work of the Spirit? Are we willing to stick it out and see what emerges from the seasons of waiting? And are we willing to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit, so through community, we can be the Simeons and Annas in other people’s lives - speaking words of hope and promise at just the right times and places? Amen.

“The Women of Christmas: With Heart and Soul and Voice” Luke 1: 57-79

We all probably have stories of times that we lost our voice. Times that we struggled to speak. For me, one such time came at the final day at my previous parish. I was to preach three services and have a send-off party. My family was in for the day. I made it through the 7:45am service with the aid of the microphone, but by the second service all that was left was the faintest hint of a whisper. I literally had to shout for the microphone to pick up anything at all. It was so uncomfortable to not be able to express myself through the gift of the voice. 

Emily Freeman, on her podcast The Next Right Thing, shared this story about singer John Mayer and silence in a recent episode. In the autumn of 2012 singer, John Mayer had surgery on his vocal cords. He was ordered not to speak for two months or sing for six. Here’s what he wrote at the onset of his two months of silence: 

“Well, here I am. Silent for the next few months, no singing for probably six, but all signs point to this being the last step in getting to perform again. I’ll try and post more, but I’ve gotten really good at keeping my thoughts to myself and I don’t exactly see anybody starving for my take on things. But it might be fun to offer some kind of window into this very odd and slightly beautiful time.” – John Mayer, on his Tumblr page 

In other words, John Mayer had an intentional time of silence in his life in order to find healing. In order to be able to have any chance to do again the thing that he loved the most, he was going to have to do something that he probably couldn’t even think of doing on a good day. Be silent. 

Zechariah understood the pain and healing that could be found in silence. He was on an imposed silence from God, via Gabriel, in many ways. Some scholars think that he simply couldn’t talk. Others thought he may not be able to hear as well, meaning total silence in his world. But in the silence came a gift - time to think. Time to pray. Time to realize that even without speaking God was still present and God was still speaking. With or without voice, we can reach out to God. 

Zechariah was still silent when Elizabeth went into labor. The women of her family and a midwife from the community would have attended at the birth of the child while Zechariah was relegated outside with the men of the town to wait. Finally, after the couple being fearful of the how community would react, some of the same people who would have wondered why they didn’t have a child, were there to celebrate with them at the brith. 

A few days later, eight to be exact, there would have been a ceremony and celebration where the baby would be circumcised and name. And everyone seemed to have an opinion. Normally, the Father, the head of the household would speak the child’s name into existence. But with Zechariah still being mute, the relatives tried to speak for him. They suggested that the child bear his father’s name. But that was odd, it’s not how society worked nor was there any Biblical presidence in this matter. I recently heard it described by a Jewish expectant mother this way - you name your child after someone in your family, but not someone who lives with you or is currently living. So Elizabeth jumped in - saying no, the child will not be Zechariah, Jr. He will be named John. And the relatives bulked and scrutinized her for not following the customs of naming the child within the lineage of family names. But then Zechariah wrote out “his name is John.” Doing his duty. Speaking, without verbal words, the child’s name into the world, just as the angel Gabriel had suggested. And his tongue was loosed. 

I’m always struck that the first thing Zechariah did when he got his voice back was not complain or ask questions about why he had been silent, or even tell the story of his encounter with the angel Gabriel that led this this time of reflection. Instead, he praised God. Just as Mary composed her song of praise, her Magnificant, last week, Zechariah had prophetic words spilling out of his mouth. Words about the coming of the Messiah. And how John will be a prophet of the Most High. With those words, Zechariah went from being a priest, going about duties, to a prophet, telling of the coming of the Lord, who wasn’t even born yet. 

Mighty words that were being spoken over this child named John about the Lord’s blessing being upon him. But do you think that meant that John never experienced any hardship or pain? By no means. Fast forward about thirty years to John embracing his call. We find John in the wilderness, we don’t know why. We aren’t told what happened to Elizabeth or Zechariah, or what John’s life was like up to that point. Because he was selected by God for this special task we can assume that he lived a disciplined life since childhood. But now we find him in the wilderness - a good image for periods of waiting, especially during Advent, that seem rough and dry and uninhabitable. John had been waiting - waiting for the time to be upon him to announce the coming of the one who would redeem Israel. John knew that his call wasn’t about him - it was about his relationship to Jesus. He knew that he could resist the call or let it move through him for the sake of his people. So he began to cry out in the wilderness for people to repent. And some people listened! They started to turn away from themselves and their sin in order to move towards the Kingdom of God! The time was upon them. He truly lived into the prophetic words his father proclaimed so long ago. 

 Zechariah may not have known it, but his song was as much about his own son as it was about Jesus, the one yet to be born. We celebrate that in a particular moment in time this unbelievable thing happened, God gave us something to sing a song about, even in the midst of poverty and Roman oppression. In the midst of suffering, God came down to us. And for us he suffered, replacing his royal crown with one of thorns. And on the third day, the Son of God rose and conquered death. So we sing a song of thanksgiving. For not only did we suffer, but another suffered for us so that we may be free.

Zechariah is not singing a song of what he wants God to do, like sitting on Santa’s lap with a wish list. No, Zechariah sang of what God had been doing for ages and what God was going to continue to do. When are the moments that have lead you to sing a song of deep thanksgiving and what lead you to that moment? For God does save us. The God of mercy rescues us even from our darkest moments of despair. The true question is not if God intervenes, but if we are attuned enough to realize it, and give thanks both for what God has done in the past, where we have been, and where God is going to lead us to in the future. Amen.

The Women of Christmas: The Virgin Mother Luke 1: 26-38

       I have a colleague who teaches classes on painting icons. Icons are religious works of art, but they are used to help usher people into an attitude of prayer. He has dozens of them hanging around the Center for Spiritual Formation, but one that always captures my attention is the Virgin Mary. In the icon Mary is holding the Christ child and just looks serene. 

In the Holy Land there is a placed called the Church of the Annunciation that has all of these different renderings of the Virgin Mary, but there is one that I would still love to see - one that depicts today’s passage where Mary hears for the first time that she has been chosen to carry the Savior of the World.

We are told that in the sixth month the angel Gabriel, the same angel that had come to Zechariah, went to a town called Nazareth. Later in the Gospels, as Jesus is calling his disciples to come and follow him, one of them named Nathaniel made this powerful statement, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” That’s because at the time, it barely had one-hundred people living there. It wasn’t a place of honor or high-up officials. Mostly labors and shepherds and some tradesmen and farmers lived there. And yet, it was out of this off the path, small place, that God put the plan of Salvation into motion. 

We are told that Gabriel was to go to a virgin engaged to be married to Joseph. Engagement was very, very different in Biblical times then how we imagine it now. It involved a written and legally binding oath. The man would bring the woman a gift, and they would publicly engage in this oath, then they would wait about a year between being engaged and being married, so that the man could construct a place for his family to live. 

Girls were betrothed as soon as they were able to have children. Men were usually a bit older, because they needed to be skilled in a trade well enough to support their family. During the time of engagement, the woman was to not go to social gatherings in order to stay out of compromising situations that could lead to gossip. 

And this particular virgin who was engaged to be married, her name was Mary. Mary was just going about her daily life, when she heard the words from this celestial visitor that would change her life. “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you”. He goes on to tell her not to be afraid, but that her life is going to forever be changed. 

But the thing about Gabrielle, is that every time he shows up and tells folks to not be afraid, that is the most natural reaction for them to have! Gabrielle is an angel, who yes, is coming to bring good news, but is also an interruption to life as they know it who asks them to take a risk for the sake of God. Zechariah was to risk believing that God could do the impossible. Mary was to risk the ridicule that she knew that she would face from her community, becoming pregnant, even with the son of God, outside of wedlock. The shepherds were to risk tending their flocks in order to respond to a great invitation, directly from God. 

After Gabriel unwound for Mary all that was to take place she had one question, how is this to be? Why a common girl from a town so small and insignificant that it wasn’t even counted as being part of Galilee by her neighbors. Why not someone older? Or someone from Seppohris, the next town over, with so many thousands of people to choose from? Why someone from Nazareth – where everyone knew everyone and the total population could not be more than 400? Why her? Why here? Why now? But despite all of that, she did not ask for proof like Zechariah did earlier in this chapter. Instead, she said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word”

When I was little and it came to be Christmas pageant time, there was never a shortage of little girls who wanted to be Mary. But Rev. Adam Hamilton asks a thought-provoking question, would Mary want to be Mary? She had to give up so much and take on a burden that many cannot fathom, but she still clearly answered, “Here I am. A servant of the Lord’s.”

Mary is revered around the world because of the words she said, but friends, as author Liz Curtis Higgs so eloquently puts it, “God didn’t choose Mary because she was unique. Mary was unique because God chose her”. Mary had a truly unique calling on her life, to give birth to the Savior of the World, but what makes Mary live into that call, what makes her worthy of that call, isn’t her own work or piety. It’s God’s grace. 

Here is Mary, who is probably still getting used to the idea of being a wife and now she is going to be a mother, but not just any mother, but the mother of the Savior of the World. She took a risk and said yes. Mary knew the consequences. She knew that if she was discovered to be pregnant while being engaged, but not married, to Joseph that the law said she was to be stoned to death. She knew that if she could not wrap her mind around being a pregnant virgin, then her family, Joseph, the town, would not understand it either. But something that this angel had said had caught her attention. The child she was carrying would be the son of God. Not a son of God, the son of God. Wasn’t this what her people had been waiting for? Isn’t this what her very town had been named for. Netzer – a branch or shoot. A new tree would grown from the stump of where another tree had died. Isn’t this what the prophets had predicted? That a shoot shall come up from the stump of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of its roots? She would be carrying the promise of hope within her womb, and that hope was greater than any of the consequences.

Friends, if Mary could say yes to such a great risk at such a young age what are we willing to risk for Christ today? Is there room in our hurried schedules to actually prepare the way of the Lord, or is Advent and this holiday season more about preparing our homes for the holidays then preparing our hearts for the Lord? 

What are we willing to risk as we prepare and wait for the Lord this holiday season? Can we make Advent not something that we simply add, but that which we focus our time on the birth of Christ and what that actually means to our lives?  Are you in a place in your life where the Lord could speak to you? Where a messenger of the Lord could meet with you, or are you so busy that you wouldn’t even notice or have the opportunity to respond as Mary did? Can we offer ourselves to God this season, risking everything for an unrealized and unknown hope?  And can we sing Mary’s song even in the midst of the risks that we are taking as we prepare and wait. May this season of waiting be filled with blessings for you as  you place yourself in the position of Mary to listen and respond to the invitation of the Lord. Amen. 

“The Women of Christmas: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” Luke 1: 5-25

I have a friend who leads trips every few years to the Holy Land. Whenever she goes over she will bring me something back, usually made of olive wood. One year it was a carving of a pregnant Mary. This year I am patiently awaiting the carving, which I’m told is of Elizabeth. 

I was thinking as my friend was talking about shipping the figure, that I am now two-thirds of the way of having carvings of the women of Christmas. There are three women who are absolutely vital to the Christmas story, yet often we only hear about one of them, Mary the Mother of Jesus. But Elizabeth, her cousin, and the prophet Anna also played such big roles in preparing for and proclaiming the birth of the Christ child.

For the next few weeks, during the season of Advent we are going to jump into their stories, as well as the stories of others who play a role in the coming of the Christ child. Often we just want to jump straight to the story of Christmas Eve, but friends, we need to prepare our souls  for that story. For in the coming of Jesus Christ we have the gifts of love and hope embodied. This is not something to be taken lightly or simply to skip past. We need to dwell in this story, preparing our hearts to receive him anew. 

Advent is this blessed four-week season of preparation, but it is also a time of renewal and reflection. For some of us, the stories we hear will be familiar - then let us ask God to reveal to us new truths for our spirits for such a time as this. For others of us, maybe we haven’t heard these parts of the Christmas story before - then may we ask God to reveal a blessing for us that is within them. 

Our Gospel Message today, one of the first few verses in the Gospel of Luke, tells of Zechariah and Elizabeth. Zechariah was a priest in the regiment of Abijah. There were twenty-four divisions of priests, so there were a lot of them, but they all took turns doing various duties - preparing the temple for worship, handling the sacrifices for offerings, singing praises to God at the gates of the temple, amongst many other things. 

Elizabeth would have been considered a special woman to marry, for she, too, was from the house of priests, the house of Aaron. She, along with other wives of priests, made sure their garments were prepared for their service to the Lord and welcomed people into their homes to discuss the business of the temple. 

We are told that Elizabeth and Zechariah were righteous and blameless before God, and yet Elizabeth was barren. Elizabeth not having any children would have been viewed by those in her community as punishment from God - it had to be her fault for some unconfessed sin in her life that God has not blessed her. She must be displeasing to God. And yet, their righteousness, their blamelessness, their ability to stand firm in the midst of the whispers, that would not have been by their own strength, but by the grace and power of God working in their lives, which allowed them to respond with what happened next. 

Zechariah entered the temple to intercede for the people - which was both a duty and a privilege. But in that place, at that moment, the angel of the Lord showed up and told him that God has been hearing Zechariah’s prayers and pleas all of these years, and now was the time they would be answered. Gabriel revealed himself to Zechariah as he was going about the task he was supposed to be doing that day. How would you respond if God sent you a personal messenger to tell you that your prayers have been heard? How would you respond if you were going about your daily job and suddenly found your waiting ended, and your prayers had been answered. Would you too need to be told to “Do not be afraid”. In this moment we see grace and divine kindness - a God who listened to Zechariah’s cries, tenderly caring after his immediate needs in the face of unspeakable fear. 

  The angel goes on to tell Zechariah that the child he would be blessed with was more than he could have ever imagined praying for. He would be great in the sight of the Lord. He would turn the people of Israel to the Lord their God. The child, to be named, John would be a blessing to the entire nations of Israel. 

And how did Zechariah respond? He asked how this could be so? He started to think about all of the reasons it shouldn’t be able to happen instead of leaning into the gift that God was offering him and his wife. And for his doubt, he was struck silent. But  I also love the fact that Zechariah’s punishment is not so much a punishment as a time of silence. In a day and time when we seemed to need to be entertained at every minute - always having something confront our senses - Zechariah’s punishment could actually be seen as a gift. A much needed time of silent retreat to ponder the unbelievable. To focus himself on what was coming. 

Personally, I crave silence. When I sleep, I have to put in earplugs in order to shut off the noise of the world, or I can’t rest. Yet, for Zechariah, silence was not seen at first as a welcomed gift, but instead as a barrier between himself and being able to share with those around him what he had experienced. 

While Zechariah’s silence was imposed, a speechlessness, that led him to a time of reflection, Elizabeth chose her own form of silence. While many women who have been waiting for a child for as long as she has cannot wait to tell everyone and anyone they are with child, Elizabeth chose to stay in her home, keeping her pregnancy a secret for the first twenty-two weeks. Away from all of the neighbors who thought she displeased God, away from all of the gossip of those who had considered her to be less than. 

Silence can often feel like barrenness. We don’t particularly like it when things are quiet for too long. Even those of us who need silence to function, still need human interaction as well. Yet it is often in the silence that God is trying to speak into our lives. For silence helps us define our meaning. It was in the silence that Elizabeth found that God had looked favorably on her and removed her disgrace. It was in the silence that Elizabeth and Zechariah could grow in faith, and trust, and hope. It was in the silence, that Elizabeth and Zechariah realized they were so much more than the barrenness they had let define them for so long.

According to author Enuma Okra, “The more we inhabit silence, the better our hearing becomes”. Maybe that is what we need a little more of this Advent season - intentional, holy silence. Waiting for a birth within our spirits. Waiting for new life to emerge. A time when we can trust that God is still working in the silence. A time that reminds us who God is and who we are as a child of God. Praying that the seeds of faith, hope, and trust grow in you. Let us keep silence as we prepare our hearts for the coming of our King. Amen.