Savor God's Presence - Advent 4

39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

Mary’s Song of Praise

46 And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,

47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

and holy is his name.

50 His mercy is for those who fear him

from generation to generation.

51 He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

53 he has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.

54 He has helped his servant Israel,

in remembrance of his mercy,

55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,

to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

56 And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

What’s it like to enter your home? How do you welcome your guests? With a hug, an embrace, an offer to take their jacket?

Or what’s it like to be received in a place you love to visit? What do you look forward to? Do ever get that tickle in your stomach when you embrace someone you love or see their face again after a long time apart? How it brings a smile your face...

Today, in this meeting of two women, we are invited to savor such powerful moments. I’m sure many of us will have opportunities for these kinds of meetings in days to come.

Opportunity to connect more deeply

These women show us a picture of what it means to connect, what it means to draw close and give and receive love from another.

Let me frame this moment between the two women in a stark fashion, to really get at what beautiful thing is going on here. Let’s start with Elizabeth: married to Zechariah, this couple unable to conceive of a child until late in their years. Like, she’s a woman who’s gone through all the fertility tests, received hormone therapy, attempted en vitro fertilization, probably had a number of miscarriages. Her husband, a priest, likely had his own troubles with virility and visited the doctor countless times, adjusted his diet, and with his wife tried again and again with no positive results to have a child. And to this woman, this couple, we find God offering the remarkable conception of John the Baptist — the wild man we’ve been looking at these last couple weeks, this man of great strength and power of God. He was a delight to his parents, the joy of answered prayer.

And then we have Mary — the young girl, probably a teenager. Suddenly pregnant under confusing circumstances, at least if seen through the public eye. Unmarried. An unmarried teen who gets pregnant by a mysterious spirit (a story certainly very few would believe). A teenage girl who flees her hometown in the months before she is to be married to hide away her pregnancy with her relative Elizabeth. A refugee of sorts, a girl who the system wouldn’t have taken care of, but rather shunned.

Now picture these two, pregnant joyful women meeting. Both have experienced something miraculous, something of God’s presence and love, something of being known by the Lord, something they share with each other. The joy of their meeting is not simply one of family reunions, no this is a meeting of likewise blessed women, women who would be other wised outcast. Women, who with out each other, I imagine would feel a deep sense longing and loneliness in their respective states, both before their pregnancies and now in this liminal state of anticipating birth.

It makes me think of our many stories, which are gathered up here right now. The particular ways we have struggled, the heartbreaks we have known, the physical and emotional wounds we carry or the longings in our hearts to be truly received and known, just as we are.

As I see these women, I think of the meetings that take place as we gather. Out of our joys and our sorrows, we meet each other here, as God calls us together.

How many of us are longing for connection right now? How many of you feel the loneliness that draws in close this time of year? No need to show hands, I can say with confidence that many of us feel this longing, most of us. We yearn to be known by others and, as we gather here in this congregation, we yearn to be loved and a part of a community of God’s people. “Count me in.”

Let’s pause just a moment here and have a time to be reminded: you are very welcome here. Not simply welcome to sit among us, but you are welcome to belong to us. In your loneliness, hear this invitation to belong in this community, to see the people next to you in these pews and sense the invitation to be a part of their family. We are not perfect people, we are messy and stubborn and very, very human. But in this state, we gather and in this we anticipate that we can still belong. We welcome you as Elizabeth welcomes Mary.

Pause and hold that. The door to belonging is open and is essential to the work of Christ’s church as it exists here at St. James.

Ok, with this picture of connection in mind, I want to turn us toward the good news of great joy that we see in this passage. In this moment of connection and Mary sharing her joyful song, we are invited to consider three movements toward a deeper connection with God and each other, as well, in this season. We are invited to hasten, remain, and finally, with our fourth sense, we taste and savor.

Hasten

Pregnant teenager Mary leaves her home and sets out with haste to a Judean town in the hill country. It’s kind of like “Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go” but with a lot less nostalgia and a lot more of “don’t get found out.” She hastens to a place where she knows she will be safe.

And in their meeting, we see that she is, in fact, safe, received, welcomed and loved.

In this season, where have you been hastening too? Advent is a season of waiting, yes, but oftentimes it feels more like “hurry up and wait.” “Christmas, don’t be late?” We check travel websites and Google traffic times, stressing out at how many extra minutes/hours it is going to take us to drive through Seattle or how long the border or ferry lines will be.

In Mary, we see hastening, but with purpose. She is on a mission, she knows that the end destination will be a place of refuge.

How might, in the days and weeks to come, you experience this hastening like Mary?

How might you blitz out into the countryside to get to your destination — how might it actually be a good thing? Perhaps you can get to where you’re going with focus, arrive…and then be. Perhaps hastening can be something different than rushing. Perhaps rushing is filled with worry. Perhaps hastening like Mary is filled with intention.

When I run, I feel a difference in my stride and breathing when I set my focus, literally becoming mindful of the direction of my eyes and finding a singular thought in my mind — it drives me to be more efficient and direct in where I am heading. Other times, when my mind wanders or I don’t set my eyes, I notice that my body becomes listless, floppy, less coordinated.

May you hasten this season, to arrive, to be welcomed, to be in the presence of God. Do not rush. Do not worry. Make haste.

Remain

And once you have hastened, set forth with intention and arrived in the place of God’s presence, we hear then the invitation to remain. The closing of this morning’s text, vs. 56, says that Mary remained in Elizabeth’s home for about three months and then returned to her home.

Now, just in case any of you are not very intuitive, when you are a houseguest in the coming days, please do not plan to stay for three months. You may not pick up on it, but your hosts want you to go home.

My parents half-jokingly told my family and my sister’s, when they moved into their retirement home, that we were welcome to come and stay, but that the rule was for no more than two weeks at a time. Honestly, I find that generous. I tend to fall in to camp that compares houseguests to fish — best when fresh and they really stink after a couple of days.

But Mary, who has encountered the presence of God and God’s liberating, welcoming, love knows that she can remain and be safe, be uplifted, that the son growing in her will be well nurtured in this place of rest. God has shown her strength, has brought up this lowly girl, and, by extension, through her, is favoring and restoring the whole people of Israel. The invitation is to hasten to this place where Mary can receive all the blessings of God’s love and then…to remain.

In this Advent season, I hope you have found ways to slow down in the anticipation of Christ’s coming. The challenge, which I hope we can all find ways to accept, is to remain in that place of God’s presence. If a small flame has been awakened in you this year, the invitation is to remain with it, to fan it, to help it grow, slowly and intentionally.

May you remain in that place of God’s presence. May you discover it among this community of belonging and may it swell up within you wherever you may go, filling you with joy.

Savor

So how are we to live, once we have hastened to this place of God’s presence, once we have chosen to remain as very welcomed houseguests, for as long as we can?

The invitation Mary’s story gives us is to savor the moment. We’ve been exploring the 5 senses this Advent season, looking at the way God’s story invites us deeper in and closer to encounter God with our whole being. From sight, to sound, to touch, we now come into this intimate space where we taste, we savor.

Let’s go back to that moment at the door with Elizabeth and Mary. I imagine that one of the first things they did as they entered the home, after their embrace and Mary’s magnificent song of praise, is that they ate and drank together. Water on Mary’s parched lips, after her journey and after singing her amazing hymn. Fresh fruits and milk, yield from the Judean countryside, to fill and sustain these pregnant women as they grow their sons in their bellies. These women would savor together, without hurry, without concern.

When you enter our home, we do our best to offer you a drink or something small to eat in the moments after you arrive. This is a part of our hospitality practice, but also very practical in helping our guests know they are welcome and should, please, stay awhile.

It may seem prescribed, but that’s what we do here too, at church. Coffee hour, cookies, and conversation, which follow our service — these are acts of hospitality that we hope extend the invitation to savoring. Could it be that we are able to deepen our sense of God’s presence and encounter through sipping church coffee and eating an Oreo cookie? I hope so.

In this season, you are invited to savor. To savor the moment sounds quite cliche, but what if we were able to actually become present, hasten to set our intentions, remain close and in intimate connection long enough to choose a kind of savoring that really does capture the joy of these moments? This comes through setting our mind and our heart. It goes back to the intention of a runner — turning our mind to this present moment, noticing God’s presence in this moment. It’s a practice of prayer — in the present moment, savoring, tasting with our whole body, what God is doing around us.

Out of this savoring, Mary sings! The babies leap! There is a swelling of joy in this moment. And that joy they experience leads to a deeper savoring, it serves as a trigger, a call, a bell that rings and reminds us — hold to this moment, this connection, this time with loved ones and the encounter with the God of the Universe. Feel the child in your belly. Watch the smile on someone’s face. Feel the closeness of another’s hand. Listen to the laughter, the stillness, the music, the song of God’s spirit singing all around you. Savor.

An invitation

Friends, today I want to invite you to encounter the final days of anticipation, the final days of Advent, with as much presence as you can. Pay attention to the connection with friends and loved ones. Embrace and savor that moment. Sip your wassail and savor the flavor, savor the goodness of what it calls to mind. Savor God’s love as you see it in and among you. And even in the moments that are difficult, as there certainly are during the holidays, practice acknowledging that God is still very much present, abiding with you, your source of love and strength, which lifts up the lowly and scatters the proud, fills the hungry with good things, turns away the rich with emptiness, continues to do great and mighty things with all who call upon God’s name.

A final word about savoring. Next week, we’re going to practice remembering as a way into savoring God’s goodness. We will do a Sunday of Examen, reviewing the ways God has been faithful to us through this past year. I invite you to come, belong, and participate in this practice next Sunday, looking back on all of God’s goodness and anticipating all that we will be invited to savor in the days to come.