There was older Elizabeth, six months along, sitting at home in her quiet house in the Judean hills not far from the city of Jerusalem.  Without phone or email to give her warning, suddenly in came her cousin Mary who had traveled “hastily” all the way from the Galilee area.  The moment Mary hollered “Cousin, its me, Mary,” the baby leaped in Elizabeth’s womb and Elizabeth herself was so filled with God’s spirit that she let out a loud cry of joy celebrating Mary’s pregnancy.  But that is not where the story began.  The passage says that Mary entered the house of Zechariah but Elizabeth’s husband didn’t come out and greet her himself.  He had lost his voice.  A very important priest in the temple in Jerusalem, Zechariah had been burning incense in the inner sanctuary when an angel, a messenger, appeared to him saying his prayers would be answered.  Elizabeth would have a baby and Zechariah would name him John.  Zechariah was very skeptical and asked, “How can I know that this is so?”  He was certain that he and Elizabeth were both much to old to be able to conceive a child.  He demanded a sign from the angel as proof and he certainly got one.  The angel Gabriel silenced him taking away his voice until the birth of the child some nine or ten months later.  Soon after Zechariah’s meeting with the angel, he left his work in the temple and returned home.  Not long after, Elizabeth conceived.  Luke tells of how pleased she was that, as an older woman she was finally going to have a baby but maybe she was unsure that it was really true or maybe she feared a miscarriage or maybe she was afraid the village women would scoff at her but for some reason she stayed secluded and kept the secret to herself for five or six months, until the time when her body would show the truth of her pregnancy.

 At that very time, six months after meeting with Zechariah, the same Gabriel paid a visit to a very young girl in Nazareth, a girl who was betrothed but not yet married to a man named Joseph who was also silent in Luke’s story.  Gabriel told Mary that she, too, would become pregnant.  As far as we know, unlike her cousin Elizabeth, pregnancy at this time was not what the unmarried Mary was hoping for.  She, like Zechariah, was also skeptical.  She had never yet “known” a man, in the Biblical sense, so pregnancy certainly could not be humanly possible.  But the angel insisted that it was true and that Mary, the mother, would name the baby Jesus.  When Mary heard from the angel the surprising news that her much older cousin Elizabeth was six months pregnant, then she became convinced that nothing was impossible with God.  Mary offered herself willingly and agreed to let it happen as the angel had said.

 It was at that point that the young girl Mary set out on her own as quickly as she could, without anyone to accompany her, traveling about sixty miles to a small town near Jerusalem to the home of her cousin.  As Luke tells the story, “she ran in haste,” “she ran as quickly as she could,” we can picture her hurrying so full of excitement that her feet were hardly touching the ground.  These two very unlikely women both had a secret, God’s Good News bursting inside of them and who else could they tell?  One was so old that others weren’t likely to believe her and the other so young that her pregnancy could be seen as a disgrace.  Their presence together affirmed and assured and awakened in one another the joyful news that God’s dancing Spirit lived within them.   If Mary, just newly pregnant, had any possible doubt, Elizabeth squelched that doubt with her welcoming outburst, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb…Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”  God’s magnificent joy that turns our world upside down.  We can’t plan it.  We can’t buy it.  We can only recognize it, allow room for it, name it, welcome it and celebrate it.

 The very gifted Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor, said recently, “The only condition for joy is the presence of God.  Joy happens when God is present and people know it, which means that it can erupt in a depressed economy, in the middle of a war, or in an intensive care waiting room.”¹   I grew up with stories of my mother’s family and friends and all the fun they had together during the terrible times of the depression and the Second World War.  They had very little in the way of possessions and conveniences.  My grandfather built highways and my grandmother suffered from a rheumatic heart. They had many ups and downs and were sometimes separated from loved ones but they celebrated every joyfilled moment with laughter and music and fun and thankfulness.

 We often hear our mission travelers, adults and youth who return from Mexico or Haiti or Guatemala, saying, “The people we met have so little and yet they seem to be so happy!”  There is no denying the very hard truth of the misery of life without sufficient housing, sanitation system, health care and food.  At the same time, when we might mistakenly think we are bringing the Good News to others in our mission travels, we find that in truth, we are given a look at the gift of God’s joy thriving in the lives of those we meet and offered as an invitation for our lives as well.  Sadly, I heard one high school youth from our congregation say upon returning, “The children have nothing but they seem so much happier than I am at home.”  In our busyness and our anxious lifestyes have we robbed our children of the joyful peace they might have assured and aware of God’s presence in their lives?  The beloved priest, Henri Nouwen, wrote, “Not only are the poor grateful for life, but they also celebrate life constantly.  A visit, a reunion, a simple meeting are always like little celebrations…All of life is a gift, a gift to be celebrated, a gift to be shared.”²

 One Westminster Saint who celebrated those visits, those simple meetings with uncompromising joy was the very wonderful Jane Sledge.  Jane died in 1998 of a form of cancer that gradually consumed her body beginning many years before. When I met her, she had long retired from her work as a social worker at Children’s Hospital with children who had severe special needs.  She never had children of her own, she didn’t drive, and she lived in a simple home near the freeway in Mill Valley.  She had been married once but she shared very few details of that relationship so I was never sure that it was a happy union.  When a friend or a pastor stopped by Jane’s house “for a cup of tea,” at least an hour and a half was set aside to share the bubbling joy that would erupt out of her as she chatted on with stories of very special children who came vividly alive for the hearer.  The chaplain and nurses looked forward to her frequent visits to the Fifth Floor Cancer wing of Marin General when she came for her blood transfusions.  The love she felt for others who cared for her in so many ways was felt authentically in the way she remembered important and insignificant details about them.  She was grateful for all the people who entered her life on all levels and her joy for life was life-giving and contagious.  She was an artist in her stories and her whimsical paintings capturing God’s surprises and cherishing each unplanned moment.  In her last month in the Rafael Convalescent Home she was fading in and out of awareness.  She told me of an experience or a dream that she had, saying, “There was a crossing over ceremony Thursday night.  Look at all the beautiful flowers!”

 Joy doesn’t happen when we get what we want.  It happens when we let ourselves be surprised by God and we find ourselves laughing instead of crying because God’s ideas are so much better than our own.  We have a hard time seeing that until we get our own wishes and plans out of the way and allow space and awareness for God.  Its in the giving up, the “I surrender,” the “let it be with me according to your word,” that the joy is most likely to happen.  Who else can make life out of death?  Who else can bring light into the darkest night of the year – in your life or mine?  The birth of God’s word in our souls is always happening.  We just need to stop doing things that get in the way.  This final Sunday of Advent as we await the birth of the Christ Child, may we make room in our hearts for God who wants to fall in love with us and have us fall in love in return, who wants to take our hands and dance with us in the freedom of not knowing, of not having, and of not grasping but letting go and dancing in trust and belief.