Gift-Wrapping: Free

Luke 1:26-38

²⁶In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, ²⁷to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” ²⁹But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³²He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” ³⁴Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” ³⁵The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. ³⁶And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. ³⁷For nothing will be impossible with God.” ³⁸Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

Gift-Wrapping: Free!

Let us pray:

As Mary and Elizabeth were open to you

Let it be with us

As this world was open to you in that time

Long ago

Let it be with us

As we are open to your presence now

Be with us

Birthed anew, here.

Amen.

Part of the joy of Christmas, for me, is giving presents to loved ones.  It always has been.

I remember one year when my younger brother, who shall remain nameless, found the gifts that I had bought for him.  When I caught him looking at them, I took every single one of them back.

Every single one.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want those gifts; he did!

It’s that the surprise was gone.  And that’s half the fun, right?  The surprise.

I also really enjoy wrapping gifts.  When I was younger I did it with much more precision, much more care.

Now as life is busier and more rushed…well, it’s done with a lot of love.

But my hope always is that the outside will reflect the inside, that the surprise will come packaged in something as appealing.

That’s why I love it when stores will gift-wrap what you buy.  I know that that tape will be perfectly sized, the ribbon curls will be six inches, and the corners neatly folded.

That’s a true gift-wrapping job.

If only more of life looked like a Christmas present, right?  If the things that come our way on a daily basis, or even yearly basis, look as good on the outside as they do once we get into them, neatly gift-wrapped.

Or, perhaps, your life as already too filled with such surprises, such twists and turns, you wouldn’t call them gifts but they end up in your life anyway, and you need some relief from them no matter what they look like.

I wonder what Mary thought about this present given to her in our Gospel reading today.  Excitement, joy, fear, wonderment…yes, all of that I’m sure.  But I imagine there were other feelings there as well.  Her situation was not exactly ideal, the timing wasn’t quite right, was it?

If you didn’t want to be the talk of the town, you didn’t want to be an unwed but engaged young Palestinian woman.  No, the timing wasn’t ideal.

And it wasn’t ideal for her relative, Elizabeth, either.  I imagine Elizabeth did hope to have a child, even at her age.  But such a thing was ridiculous and perhaps that hope was long buried…and that hope was so unbelievable that her husband, Zechariah, couldn’t even talk about it.

Literally.

What did Elizabeth feel?  A sigh of relief or resignation?

She, too, would be the talk of the town, but for a different reason.

So what was it about these women that made them the ideal vessels to begin God’s new, transformative work in the world?  What did they possess that, perhaps, others did not?

Walter Burhardt was getting at what set Mary and Elizabeth (and perhaps you and me, if we’re able) apart in this way when he writes:

“You must be men and women of ceaseless hope, because only tomorrow can today’s human and Christian promise be realized; and every tomorrow will have its own tomorrow, world without end.  Every human act, every Christian act, is an act of hope.  But that means you must be men and women of the present, you must live this moment—really live it, not just endure it—because this very moment, for all its imperfection and frustration, because of its imperfection and frustration, is pregnant with the future, is pregnant with love, is pregnant with Christ.”

Mary is the embodiment of ceaseless hope.  Not hope in the future, but a hope that says that somehow even if the timing of this whole thing, this gift, isn’t ideal, that God has gift-wrapped it…and will see her through.  That at the end of this process, whatever it is, it would be life-giving.

And that was probably difficult for Mary because, as we read later on next year, this one jumping inside her will be hanging life-less on a cross.  And yet, even then, God caused life to spring forth anew.

The hope she has now will be proven true…though it takes a while.

Elizabeth is the embodiment of ceaseless hope.  Not hope in the impossible, but rather that whatever happens, she is open to the possibility that God can and will do something new.  And when this new life springs inside her as John the Baptizer, she moves with it and goes with it, and is open to the fact that God can make water spring in the desert, a rose bloom in the winter.

In fact, for those of you wondering, I saw a rose blooming last week over on Lincoln Avenue.  Perhaps a sign of sorts for the mind open enough to see it as such…

Elizabeth’s hope was proven true…though it took awhile.

Perhaps we need to look to John and Paul…and George and Ringo…for another perspective.

The third verse of Let it Be, another Advent song, is “And when all the brokenhearted people, living in the world agree, there will be an answer, let it be…”

Mary and Elizabeth lived in hope…they let it be.  And it was not pie-in-the-sky optimism; they were not naively thinking that God would turn it all around. Rather, they were confident that, no matter how it turned out, God was with them.

That is, after all, what Emmanuel means, “God with us.”  And that is why we can let it just be…because God is with us.  And that is why we come here week after week, to teach our bodies and our souls that God is with us, that we can let it be.

So often this life seems to gift-wrap presents for us for free, whether we like these so-called presents or not.  We don’t ask for the life-changes that come our way anymore than Elizabeth or Mary did.

And yet, they carried Emmanuel with them, in one case quite literally, trusting that this present situation might be a present situation, a gift.  And so they let it be.

So, good people, what kind of people are you?  Are you people who live in the present, expecting that life changes, switches, turns can be life-giving gifts from God?  Can you let it be?

After-all, everyone likes a gift.  Perhaps we too can see that life, all life, even one full of surprises, is a gift, no matter what the gift-wrapping looks like.  In doing so we, too, are pregnant…with possibility, with hope, with the God who says, “I love you, for Christ’s sake, and will never let you go.”

Amen.