Advent with Luke #8 – The Visitation
I was surprised and then delighted by the great Richard Rohr’s thought, when commenting on Mary’s journey from her home in Nazareth to visit her relative Elizabeth, 100 miles away, and on foot while pregnant: “Mary became the first missionary to take Christ out into the world.” Hidden – as Jesus was so often, being God in the flesh, and hidden in plain sight from the eyes of skeptics who can’t cope with the idea that God could find God’s way into real human life. Mary, by simply being pregnant, carried the viable presence of God out into the world – just as every pregnant woman, believer, cynic, doubter, atheist, Methodist, whatever, carries the presence of God, the gift of new life out into the world any time she simply exits her home!
The “Visitation,” the fancy theological label given to the extraordinary season when Mary, pregnant with her God child, spent time with her relative Elizabeth, also pregnant with an amazing child. Amazing, as she was thought too old to bear a child; and amazing, as her child turned out to be John the Baptist, the eloquent prophet who prepared the way of the Lord, who pointed to Christ, who even baptized the one who should have baptized him.
Did neighbors notice when Mary arrived in Ein Kerem, which today is a lovely suburb of Jerusalem, with a lovely church commemorating the remarkable meeting of these two most remarkable expectant mothers of all time? I am moved, just picturing those two together. Humorously (to me), and yet theologically proufoundly, little John, in utero, gives his mom an especially noticeable kick when Jesus, in utero, enters the room.
Elizabeth’s insight, “Blessed are you among women,” has been repeated billions of times in every place and in every language on earth as part of the recital of the Rosary – what Catholics repeat as they finger their prayer beads. She was commencing what my friend Jeremy Troxler spoke of: Elizabeth serving as “mentor” to Mary. Some mentors think they should download all their brilliance into the mentee. The best mentors listen. They encourage. They name gifts they identify in the mentee (as Elizabeth did). They walk alongside. Elizabeth did this for Mary – or perhaps they did this for one another! As Jeremy put it, “Mentoring happens when two persons empower each other to more deeply trust in the faithfulness of their common Lord.” Come to think of it, that’s what we all might be about with one another.
Mary and Elizabeth needed company. How lonely were they? My colleague Rev. Nancy Dixon Walton insightfully suggested Elizabeth experienced layers of loneliness: married to a priest, from a family of priests, so all her life kept at that arm’s distance that clergy and their families have always known. And she’d not had a child, almost shameful in their world. You have to wonder if her husband subtly blamed her for this, isolating her in her own home. And then pregnant in old age? Her few friends were already grandparents…
Mary was certainly lonely: from a tiny town, and then turning up pregnant before marriage, her former friends raising eyebrows and whispering, those nasty habits among those who lose their chance to be true friends because of some insecure lunge for moral superiority.
Such a beautiful relationship. We don’t know much about what they said. Mary sang a song (Luke 1:39-56). Did they sing together? Cook? Take walks? Play games? I imagine them able to sit in silence together, enjoying the simple togetherness of sharing in the challenging journey, the joys of God’s new life coming to be in and through them.
How long did Mary stay? Was she still there when John was born? Did Elizabeth visit her after Jesus was born? Luke doesn’t say – inviting us simply to wonder. This is the Bible’s great Christmas gift to us: wonder.