Foreshadow and Foreboding

“Foreshadows and Forebodings”

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’

Our daughter Zoe was in seminary and coming home for Christmas.  Like this year, Christmas Eve was on a Sunday.  “I want to preach on Christmas Eve morning, and I want to preach on the Me Too Movement,” was her zealous hello to me on the phone.  “I can give you a spot for a sermonette as the associate is already preaching, but not on Me Too.”

“Why not,” she shot back?

“Well, on account of it being Christmas Eve and the folks coming to worship are coming for a Christmas Eve like service and sexual abuse and the social oppression of women, the victims of violence are not the best fit for Christmas carols and garland and poinsettias.” 

Zoe was undeterred by this and continued to argue.  Our debate lasted a good thirty minutes until I said, “you are welcome to preach, but the topic needs to fit the occasion.”  As Christmas Eve approached, she assured me that she would not speak to the injustice and the desire for women’s voices to be trusted.  I could tell she was waiting for me to cave. There were moments where I wavered, but in the end, I held firm.  Now all I had to do was trust her.

Zoe chose our text this morning to be the source of her sermon.  Narrating the events of the story with great detail she got to the blessing of Elizabeth and then added a twist to the story.  “And Mary said, ‘Me too.  I am pregnant too."  All of sudden my internal warning and alarm security system of potential conflict and chaos in my office lights began to flash as well as this may be a long week on the phone siren started to blare.  And then she did it again.  An angel came and told us the news.   Me too! 

Throughout the sermon, Zoe kept her word, she didn’t preach on the Me Too Movement, but she did find four or five more ways for Mary and Elizabeth to say, “me too.”

It was clever and effective and was not missed by anyone. Everyone got the message.  We need to trust people, and in this case, women, when they have the courage to speak from the pain of abuse and violence. 

The most effective part of the sermon was not that she explained or convinced anyone to believe what women say who have been abused, what was effective was that she took a painful reality and let it be overshadowed by joy, she lifted the broken; she didn’t try to shout anyone down by giving voice to the silenced. For the most part she kept her word, at least literally. Metaphorically, symbolically, poetically?  Not even close.

When I read this story now, the visit of Mary and Elizabeth, I read in Zoe’s “me too.”  And the voice I hear is jubilant, uninhibited joy.  Me too!  An angel announced his birth, "me too."  It’s not often that we discover a way to speak about something painful with beauty, let alone joy.

I was thinking of this sermon as I was talking with colleagues about the challenge we faced to speak to the injustice done to George Floyd.  There was not a lot of beauty or joy in our voices.  Anger, indignance, offence, vitriol, sadness, but not a lot of hope or jubilation. It's tempting to have your voice match your emotion.  If you are angry, you speak with an angry voice; if you are sad, you speak from sorrow.  You can see this when people become very serious when they speak of injustice or hardship.  It is as if we must sound as serious as the suffering.

Now that the dust has settled a bit from the summer of 2020, and when I see now how we were three months into the pandemic at that time, I can see how putting a large banner in front of the church saying Presbyterians affirm Black Lives Matter may have caused upset.  Yet, what felt then like a bold move feels a bit timid now, almost too careful.

In the last month, on two different occasions, my doubts or questions were put into sharp relief.  One was a call from Ron Owens who said many things as Ron does.  But then he got serious and said, that was such an important thing you all did.  You will never know how important that was to me and others.

Then a mother told me a story.  She described driving her teenage daughter to the church, parking in front, showing her the banner.  The mom said, "my daughter started to cry. All she said was, 'I never believed they would care for me; now I do.'" 

The greatest lesson I learned from those six months, from the tragedy to the vigil for George Floyd, was this: my voice is just that, mine.  I don't speak for the church.  Not my place. The church speaks for the church.  You see, it wasn't that some pastor cared and tried to assure a young black woman that God loves her, or that there may yet be justice in the world someday.  It was the church's voice; that the church cared.  God, clergy, general do-gooders, we are obliged to care.  The church is a whole other level of challenge and power and possibility.

I had a crazy idea recently.  Thinking about Zoe's Me Too Christmas Eve sermon and the Black Lives Matter banner, I thought, what would happen if before there were sermons, before there were banners, before there were statements and speeches, what if before all that, a congregation sought to put their heart into song?  What if the first step toward justice was music?

I shared this thought with Jordan who has been working with me long enough to know something crazy is more than likely in my head at any given moment.  He might have just been placating me, but I thought he liked the idea. 

If we want to stand up and speak out as a church, why don't we start with the place where we join our voices every week?  What would our desire for social justice, racial justice, equality and respect, what if these desires were first in verse, in poetry, in melody and perhaps even harmony?

The power of music, like all of art, is beauty.  How beauty redeems, restores our heart.  Beauty is the light uncovering lost memory, washing the image of God in us, and making us beautiful as well.  What if beauty, not outrage, what if music, not shouting, was our discipline, our path before anything else?  Sounds crazy enough to work.

In our reading this morning is a key moment in the gospel of Mary, her treasured stories she shared with Luke while living in Ephesus with John the beloved.  This story of her meeting with Elizabeth is quite unique.  First, this is, as far as I can tell, the only exchange between women in the New Testament.  I don't know of any other passage where women talk to each other.  Elizabeth greets Mary and then in the next pericope, Mary responds with her Magnificat, the longest speech of a woman in the New Testament. 

The other mark of distinction that might be missed is this: Mary and Elizabeth are the first people to talk about John and Jesus as the ones who will bring the kingdom of God.  Two pregnant women are the context for the first proclamation, the first confession between people about what God was doing and what they believe. 

As mentioned before, here Luke is introducing the themes of his larger Gospel as well as offering the accounts of Mary.  And one of the themes is that God talks through the least.  Shepherds will be told, the least; Jesus will speak of what it means to be a neighbor with the Good Samaritan, the least.  Mary and Elizabeth, an old woman and a teenage girl are the birth of the gospel, born of the least.  Adds a bit to the Me Too when we consider it took almost 2000 years for women to preach in a pulpit, before they could say of this, me too.

I must confess a persistent sadness when I read the story of Mary's visit to Elizabeth.  I get caught up in the joy and the beauty and the Magnificat just about to begin.  I get caught up but then I crash.  I do.  I think of those babies in the womb, John jumping for joy, Elizabeth filled with the Holy Spirit, and then I jump ahead.  Both soon-to-be-born would die young, die at the hand of cruelty.  One at the hand of political power; the other at the hand of religious authority. 

I try hard to stay in the moment, the foreshadow, the light that will shine in the darkness, the miracles about to be seen, the lifting of the lowly, the baptizing in the river, I try to hold on to all of this so to keep the foreboding at bay.  The beauty will be dashed by pride and envy. The glory dashed by betrayal and tragedy. I am not prone to maudlin thoughts, but somehow this one is tough.

Maybe the best thing to do here is trust what Mary has accounted.  Just stick to the beginning and end of the visit.  This story is nothing but beauty.  No rising and falling of nations.  No warnings about power and abuse and injustice.  No cryptic declarations about kingdoms.  Just beauty.  It is as if Mary shines a light that says, when you find my child, you find my son, when he walks beside you, you too can be overwhelmed in joy, you can leap like a child.  You too will be caught up in happiness, filled with the Holy Spirit.  You too.

I wish I was as clever as Zoe, and I could create a way to speak to injustice in words where beauty lifts the broken.  I fear my skills are more on the blunt than the beautiful.  Yet, even if I did have such power, it is not my voice that will change things, not a sermon or a letter, or book.  It's your voice in song; your voice in harmony that is so desperately needed. 

I could have sent all the sermons I preached in the summer of 2020 to the young woman who cried on the street while looking at the banner.  And it wouldn't have made a difference.  It wouldn't because my voice wasn't what was needed; it was yours.  That's what Ron tried to convey to me.  He knew my heart before; but now he knows yours.

It may prove impossible to enact or adopt or take up the music before statement as a policy.  It may need to be an experiment before it is a rule.  But just imagine for a moment what it would look like for us to express what we hope to see, or not see, in Gaza right now in a song.  What would happen to our prayers if they were sung?  And what if we found the strength to listen to each other, to write and rewrite the lyrics again and again, leave them open to change and revision?  Isn't that closer to life.  We don't usually hum a policy or whistle a statement, but we carry a tune. 

And what if that was Mary's point.  The gospel began in beauty, in good words, in blessings, and a song. 

The more I hang out with the stories of Mary, the more they work at my heart.  The account of the visit has sat in me for a long, long time and it has smooth rough edges, and even polished parts of my soul.  Beauty has this power.  It was her power.  May we find a moment where we can say it is ours as well.  Beauty has led me.  Me too.  Amen.