So here we are…the holiday season is upon us, and odds are, that by now, someone, somewhere, in someway, has already wished you a ‘Merry Christmas!’ And why not? Family and friends, plenty of gifts, piles of food, and the birth of a saviour…what’s not to be happy about. They’re all things we associate with Christmas, and all things we’d expect to put a smile on our face, some holiday cheer in our hearts, and a little joy in our lives.

 

Of course, having said that, our attention today is on Mary…someone, we might very expect to have looked ahead to that first Christmas, some 2000 years ago, with feelings that were perhaps somewhat less than joyous.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s back up for a moment...   

When you and I first meet Mary in Luke’s Gospel, she’s a girl of…oh…no more than 15 or 16 years old, living in the back-water town of Nazareth, engaged to a back-water bumpkin of a carpenter named Joseph, with a life that, despite having been chugging along happily, is turned upside down when a certain angel named Gabriel stops by for a rather unexpected visit, with an equally unexpected message – that Mary, an unwed, teen-aged virgin, was about to find herself pregnant and carrying God’s Messiah.

 

Now, Luke tells us the angel’s visit – and likely the news he came bearing – left Mary feeling ‘troubled’. Actually, Luke tells us she was ‘greatly troubled’; ‘confused and disturbed’ according to the New Living Translation; and ‘thoroughly shaken’ as Eugene Peterson puts it in his biblical paraphrase, The Message.

 

All good words, though not exactly the words I’d choose in that situation. ‘Scared out of my wits and terrified at the prospect of being alone’…now that’s more like it!

 

I mean, consider Mary for a moment. She’s little more than a kid. And while it was one thing at that time, and in that culture, to be a teenage girl getting married (something altogether common back in the day) it was quite another to be an unwed teenage mother-to-be.

 For one thing, who could she tell? She couldn’t tell just anyone – at least not back then. Back then, being unwed and pregnant wasn’t only something shocking, it’d be scandalous.  

It’s the kind of thing that’d earn a girl a ‘reputation’ (not that she’d want it) for being the town whore, an adulterer everyone would suspect of having slept around on her fiancé, and it’s the kind of reputation that’d make her the stuff of gossip…and the person everybody shuns.

 

Of course, even if she bit her lip, said nothing, and tried to keep it a secret…her expanding belly was bound to give her away at some point. There was no hiding it. Soon or later, everyone would know…including her family, and her fiancé Joseph.

 

Now, while we might not agree with cultural rules of the day…with everyone thinking Mary had been unfaithful to him…it would have been considered a disgrace for Joseph to marry her. Again, those aren’t the rules today, but they were the rules back then, and like every other sod in Nazareth, Mary would have no doubt expected Joseph to call off the wedding quietly…divorcing her in the process, and distancing himself from any ensuing scandalous fallout.

 

And same could be said of her family. It was a disgrace to have a pregnant unwed daughter, let alone having a pregnant unwed daughter who was divorced. But a family couldn’t divorce you. It just wasn’t an option. Kicking you to the curb…now that was an option, as was stoning you to death, or tossing you down a well. We might not like these customs…we might not understand these customs…but the point is, there wasn’t much she could do.

 

Sure, she could try explaining the whole angel thing, and that bit about bearing the Son of God, but it’d likely have only added ‘lunacy’ to her reputation. After all, a ‘virgin birth’, and even the thought that God would, of all people, pick a back-water bumpkin like her, who’d believe her?

 

Her cousin Elizabeth might. As the soon-to-be-mother of John the Baptist, she might have been able to relate…to a certain extent…but she was older, respectably married (to a priest, no less), living miles away in the hill country of Judea, and Mary was all alone in Nazareth.

 

Christmas was coming…and with thoughts of finding herself alone, missing her family and feeling isolated, with no one to talk to, no one who could understand what she was going through, and uncertain about what the future held, it would seem Mary’s Christmas was shaping up to be a real ‘Bah Humbug’ affair – the kind a lot of people would rather just forget all about – the kind that seems a little short on holiday joy, and far from being a very ‘Merry Christmas’.

Today…Christmas is coming…

 

And there are still people feeling lonely…people spending this Christmas without the familiar warmth of those they love…and whether it’s due to the likes of distance, divorce, or perhaps even death…this year’s memories won’t be like the ones past…there’ll be something (or more importantly, someone) missing…and they’ll know it…and it hurts.

 

There are still people feeling scared…people scared they won’t find the food or shelter they need; scared they won’t have the money to make ends meet; terrified everything’s going to fall apart around them, including their health (or the health of someone they love), and they wonder how they’re ever going to survive it all…and they’re afraid.

 

There are still people who feel no one can understand what they’re going though…that no one can understand their pain; that no one knows their hurts; that no one can fix their fears; or take away all their stress and anxiety…and they might be right…or maybe the only the people that could help are just too far way…and so they feel isolated…all the more alone, and all the more afraid.

 

Indeed, Christmas is coming…and there are still those dealing with the all too familiar feeling we’d imagine Mary must have felt…those for whom Christmas appears to be shaping up to be a real ‘Bah Humbug’ affair – the kind they’d rather just forget all about – the kind that seems a little short on holiday joy, and far from being a very ‘Merry Christmas’.

 

And yet, when we think of Mary…we think of someone whose response to the angel was first and foremost a response of faith. And it’s that faith that somehow, in some way, at some point, helped Mary through all her fears and struggles…and helped her to discover a sense of joy. Was it instantaneous? Probably not. Did it happen? You bet!

 

I say that, because the only words seemingly ever recorded during her pregnancy are the words we read today from Luke’s Gospel. They’re Mary’s words, and believe it or not, it’s a song. It’s a song praising God, a song giving thanks to God…a song of joy…a song in which Mary says “all generations will call [her] blessed”. Or to put it another way, “All generations will call [her] favoured and happy.”

 

‘Blessed’? ‘Favoured’? ‘Happy’? If you’re shaking your head, wondering where those came from, consider Mary’s song for a moment – it’s about how God has always kept his promises to his people (‘from generation to generation’ as the saying goes). And in particular how he’s always kept his word to look after the ‘humble’…or the ‘lowly’…words that refer to more than just the poor and the hungry, but include (among other things) people who find themselves feeling sad, or frightened, or alone – people, coincidentally, a lot like Mary, and perhaps a lot like you and I.

And perhaps she suspected what you and I already know to be true, because you and I know rest of the story, the rest of the story of Jesus… 

Perhaps she suspected that in this child she was carrying…God was not only keeping his promise to look after the lowly, but was about to make a new promise that would forever change the lives of his people.

 

Perhaps she suspected what you I already know – that it was God himself coming into the world in the life of this child...a promise that God would never be far away from her, in fact would be so close he’d be inside her…right there with her through it all…through thick and thin…a promise Jesus later confirmed, in giving us the gift of the Holy Spirit…God’s presence inside us, with us through it all.

 

And perhaps she suspected that in through this child God would keep his promise to care for the lowly – a promise we know to be true, because we know how Jesus befriended the lonely, how he cared for the hurting, how he provided for the needy, and how he called to people like you and I to carry on that work as his body here on earth – richly and generously sharing whatever blessings we’ve been given to make difference in the life of someone else, and to make that difference in the name of Christ. We know that!

But perhaps Mary never suspected just how far God would take that whole bit about ‘lifting up’ his people, because it seems God wasn’t satisfied with just lifting people up out of the gutter, out of depression or out of whatever kind of mess they found themselves in. God wanted to ‘lift them up’ – to free them from sin, to offer them eternal life, and to right a happy ending everyone could count on, despite whatever problems they encountered in this life…and a happy ending where you and I and those we love will be reunited, together forever, in the kingdom of God…where fear, and sadness, and loneliness will be long forgotten.

 

Now, that’s a BIG promise, indeed! There ain’t none bigger!

 

Yet it’s a promise God kept in Christ on a cross, a promise made real in an empty tomb…and a promise that’ll be sealed lock and stock and barrel when Christ returns to right a happy ending for not just us, but all of creation.

 

In the mean time however, as we journey towards Christmas and think about these promises…maybe…just maybe…joy will slowly overtake us. It might not be right this minute…but perhaps through faith it will come…when Mary’s song will be our song, and Christmas will never again be just another ‘humbug’ holiday…not for you, not for me, not for anyone.

Amen.