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If No Sound
Pregnant with Hope©
December
20, 2009
Micah
5:2-5a
Luke
1:46b-55 (UMH 199)
Hebrews
10:5-10
Luke
1:39-45
Amy DeWitte
College
can be, at its very best, more than just a time and a place where you acquire a
skill set that will enable for you to become gainfully employed (though,
hopefully it does help you get a job. College, at its very best, can be a place
and a time where you dream and hope and fully jump into the world of naive
imagination where anything is possible. You are right on the precipice of your
whole life, really, and you are in a way pregnant with expectation of what is to
come.
College
was like that for me. I could take all kinds of classes in all kinds of
subjects, and they all opened my eyes in a certain way. But ti was what
happened after class that really changed my world. My last year of college I
lived in an apartment with five other girls, and we were all studying different
things. So, we’d get together at night and talk about what we were learning and
how the different subjects all related to each other. We would not only discuss
issues, but we would dream big about what kind of impact we were going to make
on the world. We encouraged each other that in whatever we did, it was going to
be great: Karen was going to be the greatest social justice lawyer ever. Lauren
would single-handedly break the language barrier between English speakers and
Spanish speakers. We even conjured up an organization that would use all of our
expertise for a common cause. Even when we were worried about this paper or that
exam or that application for that job or this application for that grad school,
we could all come together and imagine, and by the time it was time to go to bed
we’d solved all the worlds problems, and mused, “if only the people in charge
would listen to what we had to say, everything would be alright with the world.”
I have
these same kinds of conversations happen when I’m with other friends now, or if
I’m with my mother of grandmother. I wonder if that’s a thing with women. I
don’t know if these are the kinds of conversations men have together; I’m not
privy to those.
In any
case, I think I imagine Elizabeth’s conversation with Mary like that, with maybe
a few exceptions. We meet Mary and her cousin Elizabeth in the Gospel lesson
when they are both with child. And in their conversation we see them full of
hope and imagination. Let’s back up a few steps, though, and tell the story
from the beginning of the gospel of Luke.
Luke
begins with Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah. Elizabeth and Zechariah were good,
upstanding people. Zechariah was a priest, even. But as much as they tried,
they hadn’t yet been able to have a baby. By this time, they were getting on up
in years. They prayed and prayed and prayed, but both had nearly given up
hope. Well, one day Zechariah was chosen to offer incense in the temple of the
Lord, in the very place where god was said to dwell. There he was in the very
presence of God, and still he was startled by the angle of the Lord who appeared
right there before him.
The angel
had a message for him: Elizabeth was to become pregnant with a baby boy. His
name would be John, and he would be a very special child. From the very
beginning he would be filled with the holy Spirit, he would bring people back
around for God, and he would prepare a way for the coming of the Lord.
Zechariah was
incredulous. “How can that be?” Zechariah asked the angel. “My wife and I
getting pretty old.” And because he did not believe message of the angel
Gabriel, Zechariah was made mute.
Six months
later the same angel, Gabrielle, went to Mary and said to her, “The Holy Spirit
will come upon you...you will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are
to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the
Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he
will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
Mary
couldn’t quite believe her ears, either, but ultimately she opened herself to
the plan that God had for her, and she said, "I am the Lord's servant," Mary
answered. "May it be to me as you have said."
As soon as
she found out that both she and her cousin were pregnant, Mary ran to
Elizabeth. As Mary was approaching the house, the baby leapt in Elizabeth’s
womb, and Elizabeth imagined that something was up. Elizabeth was filled with
the holy spirit in just the same way prophets are who were about to speak a word
of truth from the Lord. And by the mysterious power of the Spirit she knew that
Mary was pregnant, and she understood that the baby was special, so much so that
she called the child her Lord: “How wonderful of you, the mother of my Lord to
come visit me, an old pregnant woman! To what do I owe this honor?” And she
encouraged Mary: “You’re so faithful, Mary, to just trust in the Lord with this
crazy thing.” And they had one of those imaginative, hopeful conversations that
women tend to have when they get together.
For that
moment, even when they plenty they could be worried about - whether hesitation
at having a baby at Elizabeth’s age or the fear that Mary could be stoned to
death for having a baby out of wedlock - in that moment they were pregnant with
hope - hope for their the lives of their sons, as any expectant mothers wold be
- but also hope for the way God would use them and their children to do
miraculous things, hope for the ways they would bring people back around to God,
to make things right with the world, to bring God into the midst of the people,
to give mercy and hope.
Mary knew
that this plan that she was in on with God would turn everything on its head.
She saw way beyond where my friends and I could see. She saw that God would work
in unexpected ways and in unexpected places and through unexpected people.
My friends
and I continue to dream, but those plans that we had when we were in college -
God has turned on their heads, and he’s working through us in ways even we
dreamy types couldn’t have imagined. The one who studied education went into
public policy, and the one who would be a social worker became a teacher and the
one who studied international relations ceased her travels abroad for the time
being to to work in the very same town she grew up in, and the one who thought
she’d spend the rest of her life in Virginia somehow ended up in Northern
Alabama. God turns our plans and our expectations upside down, and God’s will
often works out so unexpectedly: the king of kings, born not in a palace, but in
a stable; not in a big powerful city, but in the tiniest, most insignificant
town; not to an important, powerful person, but to a single teenage mother.
That’s not the way we might have written the story, but that’s the way God
works.
In that moment, Mary
knew it:
“He has brought down
rulers from their thrones
but has lifted
up the humble.
He has filled the
hungry with good things
but has sent the
rich away empty.
He has helped his
servant Israel,
remembering to
be merciful
to Abraham and his
descendants forever,
even as he said
to our fathers."
Mary and
Elizabeth sat there together and sang and dreamed and prophesied about what was
to come. They dreamed big and they hoped with a hope that’s probably unique to
women who are literally full of new life. They knew things were about to
change.
With the
birth of Jesus, everything we thought was real and right got turned upside down.
What was impossible became possible - even the dreams of an idealist young
woman, pregnant with hope for the future.
I’m still idealistic. I am full of hope and
expectation for what God can do through us, through the church. I am pregnant
with hope! And I want that excitement for you, too. I want us to all be on
board with God’s will for us and the grand plans that he has for us. Because if
we’re not on board, we might as well be mute, like Zechariah. But if we’re in,
if we jump on board, in no time, we’ll be singing a song of hope, just like
Mary.
Copyright © 2009 Amy DeWitte. All Rights Reserved. No portion of
this writing may be reproduced in any form without specific, written
permission of the author.
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