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Sermon - The Visitation

Sunday 22nd December 2024


Micah 5:2-5a

Psalm 80: 1-8

Hebrews 10:5-10

Luke 1:39-45 [46-55]

 

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.


In our Gospel today Luke tells us of the Visitation. To anyone watching, Zechariah for example, this is a moment of immense happiness shared between two friends, neither of whom expected to have a child. It’s the sort of happy encounter between friends we could see wherever mums to be meet to laugh and talk. But what only the two women know is that this is a four-way celebration; as Elizabeth hears Mary’s voice so, Luke tells us, ‘The child leapt in her womb.’ Elizabeth’s child will grow up to be John the Baptist, and in time both babies and their mothers will know terrible pain and suffering, but here, at this moment in time, there’s nothing but happiness. It’s a gospel in the truest of the word, ‘good news’ ; filled with words like ‘leaping’ ‘exclaiming’ ‘joy’ and ‘blessed’ . Here God’s entrance into the world is celebrated for the first time, not with all the splendour of the angels, kings and shepherds we’ll see in a few days’ time but in the intimacy and privacy of a very human encounter, and by two unborn babies and their mothers.


A 14TH. wall painting in a church in Pelendri in Cyprus shows the two babies as if via some form of biblical ultrasound, their tiny legs kicking away in delight as their mums embrace, with John bowing before Jesus and Jesus’s offering his friend to be a blessing with his tiny hand. In the painting the two unborn babies seem immensely vulnerable and fragile; Jesus appears wearing a halo, its cross foretelling the death and resurrection that both Jesus and John are coming into the world to bear witness to. The painting reminds us however that the wonderful story of the visitation is one in which we can all share. We can all show love for one another just as Mary, Elizabeth and even the unborn Jesus and John love one another. But even as the Visitation invites us to share in something deeply and recognisably human and loving it also reminds us of just how those unborn babies have come to offer us a part in something greater than our own humanity. The story of the Visitation invites us to be witnesses to the earliest moment of God’s own coming to the world in the form of the unborn baby; a form which every one of us had in common with Him at the very start of our time on earth. Whenever we hear the story of the Visitation, we join with Him in the fragile humanity he’s assumed for himself, wherever we are in space and time. And on a day which celebrates the creation of two new lives the visitation also invites us to remember that we are looking back in time to the beginnings of creation itself. In a few days’ time we’ll hear those wonderful words from the prologue to John’s gospel: what has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people . The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.’ The emptiness which was in the beginning, becomes a space filled with light and life and hope, just as the two women who thought they would never have children are themselves filled with light and hope.


In our psalm today the psalmist may well be speaking for us when he cries to God ‘stir up your mighty strength and come to our salvation’. The tears and anger of the people in the psalm could be ours now; last week and every week for as long as we can remember we could all list examples of the darkness at work in a whole range of countries and situations, personal and public. Places where the wealthy and powerful seem to rule and the hungry starve. But we passed the longest and darkest night yesterday with the passing of the winter solstice and the darkest night of the year. And the Visitation, coming today directly after that experience of the night at its longest is the answer to our cries against the dark. It suggests that the love we know from our own special friendships is similar in some ways to that between Elizabeth and Mary, and between John and Jesus. This is the Love that shines in the darkness, and which the darkness doesn’t overcome. Their relationships with one another are unique but we too can rejoice at loving one another’s company, we too can celebrate the ways in which we can see love at work in the world, creating new possibilities and bringing the possibility of redemption and relief.


When Mary says in the Magnificat ‘My spirit rejoices in God my saviour’ we, like Mary, can try to see ourselves as existing in the God whose presence she carries. We can celebrate our loves and friendships and, with Mary, use them as lights by which to see God as present in the world. And just as the light Jesus brings conquers its opposite, the darkness, so Mary’s Magnificat encourages us to see other opposites winning through; humility conquering pride, the powerful and the proud being displaced by the powerless and meek; everything turned inside out and upside down!


This morning’s visitation light really is for everyone; and this Visitation morning s may be a good time for turning our own dark places inside out. May we, with Mary and Elizabeth, discover how to sweep away our own dark places, and in time let them be them filled with the light , the light as John tells us is ‘the true light, which enlightens everyone.’


Amen

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