Go in haste

Christmas cards might be delayed this year. 55,000 Canada Post employees were ordered back to work last week after a month-long strike came to an impasse. Regardless of where you stand politically on the postal strike, if you get a chance to offer a kind word or even a gift card to a Canada Post worker this season, I encourage you to do so. 

Christmas cards might be delayed this year. One year for Christmas, I decided to make my own. You ever done this? I know a number of you make your own cards because I’m lucky to receive them. The year I made my own, I was really deliberate about it. I made a list of the 20 or so people I wanted to send them to. I wrote out the supplies I needed from the store. I even went online to Michael’s to make sure they had everything in stock. 

I went with haste to pick up the supplies. I went on a weekday to avoid the rush. I got the paper, the glue, the glitter and the fancy gel pens. I just needed one packet of stickers and then I was out of there. 

I got to the sticker aisle. I saw the stickers. I reached for the stickers just as another person reached for them. It was the last packet. I looked up and smiled. I pulled the packet towards me. They smiled back and pulled it towards them. 

“It’s just that I’ve decided to make my own cards this year,” I said.

“So have I,” they replied.

My grip tightened. So did theirs. I watched as they dropped their gaze to the clerical collar around my neck. 

“Touché,” I said.

To go “with haste” is to go with intention, with purpose, to be really deliberate about something. It’s the phrase used for Mary’s meeting with Elizabeth in this morning’s gospel reading: 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.

The back story to this meeting: both women have been visited by an angel, separately, and told they will bear children. Mary is very young and not yet married, so this is a bit of a scary situation for her. Elizabeth is very old and no longer bearing children, so this is scary for her, too. Nevertheless, both women believe the angel’s message and are preparing for the pregnancies. Interestingly, amidst conversation, I’m sure, about prenatal vitamins, diapers, and what to do when the baby comes, when Mary and Elizabeth meet up they discuss first and foremost the downfall of the Empire. Their conversation is one held “in haste,” we might say. They speak with purpose, intention. They are deliberate about what the arrival of their children means for the fragile world they find themselves in.  

The Magnificat is the name traditionally given to Mary’s words to Elizabeth. It means, “hymn of praise.” Mary’s Magnificat describes a series of reversals that will take place when Jesus enters the world. First: the proud, whose accomplishments are usually stacked up one on top of the other, will be toppled. Second: the powerful, usually seated in high places, will be brought low, while those who live with their faces pressed to the ground, are lifted up. Third: the hungry will be filled, while the rich have their pockets emptied. 

There’s one other reversal in this story that’s worth mentioning. We didn’t hear about it in our gospel reading this morning, but it follows soon after. Elizabeth has given birth and it comes time to name her child. All of the relatives are fluttering about the house, saying, “Let’s name him Zechariah after his father.”

Elizabeth interrupts and says, “He is to be called John” (as in John the Baptist, prepare ye the way of the Lord, locusts and wild honey). 

The relatives are distraught. No one in the family is called John. This would break with tradition! They go to Elizabeth’s husband and ask him what he thinks the child should be called. Only, Zechariah can’t speak, because when an angel appeared to him and told him that his wife would bear a child, he chose not to believe it. So, the angel silenced him. Now back with his family, Zechariah scrawls a message on a piece of stone. “Call the child, John,” it says. Or, in other words, “Listen to Elizabeth.” It’s a wonderful example of yet another reversal: those who believe in God’s impossible are the ones given the authority to speak it into being.  

My prayer for us this December 22, is that we would go with haste to meet the Christ child, that we would go with intention, with a sense of purpose for what the arrival of God as a human being means for us today. I pray that our hearts would be open to the reversals that come with this holy child’s birth, to things  turned upside down in our lives and in our world in order to bring about God’s impossible on earth as it is in heaven. 

As I close this morning, I’d like to read Mary’s Magnificat one more time. This time I’d like to read it with a reversal of pronouns, replacing the masculine pronouns for God with feminine ones. It seems fitting on this fourth Sunday of Advent when we listen to the story of two women responding to God that we would listen for the divine feminine. This is Luke 1:49-55:

And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for she has looked with favour on the lowliness of her servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is her name. Her mercy is for those who fear her from generation to generation. She has shown strength with her arm; she has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. She has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; she has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. She has helped her servant Israel, in remembrance of her mercy, according to the promise she made to our ancestors, to Sarah and to her descendants forever.”

Amen.