Joy Breaks Out

Joy Breaks Out
Luke 1:39-45

This has been a cold, wet week of snow and wind and freezing temperatures along with rain and slush and short days of clouded obscure sunlight. I managed to skip a couple of visits to the gym this week because I was so sore from shoveling snow and slush. Thank goodness weeks like this are rare here on the west coast.

In a way, the cold dark winter is a good metaphor for the silence of God. When God doesn’t speak, it is as if there is no color, no life, no warmth, no light- basically, winter. That’s exactly what happened to Israel before the birth of Christ. When we read the Old Testament, especially the historical books, we are fairly used to reading a continuous narrative of the history of God’s activity in the world. There are hardly any breaks of time in the narrative from Adam to Zechariah. But between Malachi (the last book of the Old Testament) and Matthew, a period of nearly 400 years has passed without a word from God (at least not in the way that they were accustomed to hearing from God). It was like a 400 year winter. Israel must have felt abandoned and emptied of its former glory under cruel Roman oppression.

But there was also a sense of anticipation that God was about to do something to rescue his people. The gospel of Luke records a thaw in the cold, dark silence and a spontaneous outbreak of revelation: first there was the visit of the angel Gabriel to Zacharias announcing the miraculous pregnancy of his barren wife; Then that angel visited Mary to announce that her womb would hold God.

The result of this outbreak of God, like the feeling of a warm breeze and an early spring after a long cold winter- Joy. After Gabriel visited Mary with news of her pregnancy, Mary traveled to the hill country to visit her relative Elizabeth, who was also miraculously with child. Read vv. 39 to 45.

I love singing Christmas carols. It’s one of those rare times when we pull out the ancient hymns and sing them with such vigor and passion. And the words are so full of affection. The words sometimes stick out in my mind and impress themselves on my soul, like in the song, “O Holy Night” we sing the verse, “Fall on your knees, and hear the angels’ voices.” I wonder if we ever really think about falling on our knees when we sing that song. Here we are 2000 years after the meeting between Mary and Elizabeth, half way around the world… we’ve put men on the moon, mapped the human gnome, cloned sheep, put machines the length of football fields in the air to transport people around the world in them. What sort of joy could those obscure shepherd women have experienced in the remote hills of far-flung Israel two millennia ago continue to persuade us sophisticated moderns to (at least sing about) fall(ing) on our knees?

These Carols are also packed with some powerful theology too. This morning we sang the hymn, “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus”. When I read the first verse of the third stanza, the power of truth of those words grip my mind and soul with such inexpressible joy that I feel like I need to hold on to something or I’m going to fall over from all the blood rushing to my head. “Come to earth and taste our sadness.” Rather then dry passionless theory- It’s that doctrine, the doctrine of the incarnation that provokes such affection in me.

What a way to sing about the doctrine of the incarnation: “Taste our sadness”- feel our winter. That’s exactly what the incarnation is- God coming to earth and tasting our sadness… tasting the sadness of a barren middle aged woman; tasting the sadness of poor teenaged girl; tasting the sadness of lonely shepherds; tasting the sadness of everyone who has ever believed in him.

Come thou long expected Jesus
Born to set they people free
From our fears and sins release us
Let us find our rest in thee

It’s as if the unborn fetus in Elizabeth’s womb was somehow able to sense the presence of his Saviour and he leapt in her womb; his leaping was his way of saying, come thou long expected Jesus. Maybe he didn’t fall on his knees, but he certainly wasn’t idle either- he leapt for joy! And that joy, born in the womb of a barren woman, continues to spread to people around world to this very day.

His joy was contagious; Elizabeth was “filled with the Holy Spirit.” Whenever you read that phrase in the gospel, you know the person who is filled is about to say something prophetic. What better person to break the long silence of prophecy then the mother of the herald of Jesus (John the Baptist) whose prophesying would one-day “turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the disobedient to the attitude of righteous, so as to make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (1:17). “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

And Mary was blessed; she was the mother of the Saviour of the world, the mother of the son of God. She was a virtuous young lady. There are plenty of virtuous women today, but ours is an age that makes heroes out of young women like Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton; it’s an age that can’t even find an actress who is a virgin to portray the virgin Mary, much less one who is virtuous like Mary.

But Mary wasn’t perfect, in fact, her righteousness was like dirty rags to God- even her goodness was an offense to a Holy, Righteous God. Without a Saviour, she, like everyone here: dead in sins and destined for condemnation. And she was the first to admit it, “My soul exalts the Lord, and my Spirit has found joy in God my Saviour”! She needed a Saviour too! But the difference between Mary and the rest of us was that Mary found favour with God and so He condescended to choose to make her womb his home for nine months. The act of finding favour with Mary had more to do with God who did the choosing then it did with Mary who was chosen.

Now we can’t all be blessed to be Christ’s mother, but Mary was also blessed for another reason, she believed; “Let it be to me according to thy word” Mary told the Angel.” It’s like Abraham, “He believed God and it was accounted to him a righteousness.” And so Elizabeth, speaking prophetically said, “There will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord.” Blessed is Mary because she believed the unbelievable truth that God was coming to taste our sadness through the womb of a poor shepherdess. And blessed are you this morning if you believe that truth, it will set you free from your winter of God’s silence and Joy will break out.