This is not the stuff of Christmas, not yet. No Hallmark card here.
In those days…poor Mary…literally dirt poor…no status…
In those days…she flees “in haste.”
An unmarried girl, barely a woman…
12 or 13 years old…
No ring on her finger…
Living in a small village…
A lot of censure…
Untold shame…
A lot of sidelong glances…
Untold disgrace…
You could sense and feel all the starring…
A lot of whispering and finger pointing…
Frequently told gossip…
Frank stares and outright rudeness…
Disappointment everywhere…
Shamed. Demeaned. Without honor. Humiliated. Beyond reproach. Condemned.
Parents, her betrothed, her rabbi, her neighbors and friends…the “other kids”…
“Pregnant” without the social protections of marriage…
You would want to run away and flee too…and you would probably do so “with haste.” It was awful.
She disappears…
It’s time to get out of Dodge…and to do it with “haste.” She does as quickly as she can…
Mary “flees” her village and all of its people and heads for the “far away hills,” could you blame her?
Heading for the “hills” seemed like the right thing to do…maybe even, it was the only thing she could do…
But hold it right there for a moment-travel for other than religious purposes was considered to be “deviant behavior” in antiquity.
Suspicious…distrustful…suspect…
While traveling to visit family members was considered to be legitimate, the report of Mary traveling alone into the “hill country” is highly unusual and totally improper.
We are talking judgment at its worst.
It was about 70 miles from Galilee to Judea, more than 100 miles if you take the longer route around Samaria as Mary undoubtedly did.
Remember she was on foot. She walked. She rested. She slept. She walked some more.
The text indicates that Mary walked this distance by herself. “That” was unheard of…disgraceful…
A young woman, a girl really, with child and all alone…
Elizabeth her cousin must have been “one cool old lady”…for Mary to go her.
She doesn’t go to see Zechariah, the priest, but rather his spouse, Elizabeth…an older woman, who has a higher social ranking than Mary, an unmarried teen.
In the first century Israel, one could hardly be more abased, lower or more humiliated than a dirt-poor unmarried teenage girl.
Elizabeth too, is with child, “in her old age,” it too, seems to be something of the miraculous…her shame is removed…her status rises…people are left wondering…what does this mean?
But “old Elizabeth” is in good company…just as the “elderly Sarah” became the mother of Isaac and the “old Hannah” became the mother of Samuel, Elizabeth could receive and rejoice in the birth of a son, even at a ripe “old age.”
Would she now condemn Mary, would she react as “others” did?
When she enters Zechariah’s house she doesn’t find judgment or doom and gloom. Instead, she is met with joy.
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” she is told.
Blessed…not condemned. Not despised. But blessed…
What sweet succor was spoken to her.
What it must have meant to Mary to have heard those words. Like cool water on a hot day. Like a soft stool after being on your feet for days…
After feeling weeks and months of shame and disgrace – after feeling like a disappointment to everyone, to all who were around her…she was declared to be a blessing. As was the child within her…
There is so much going on here.
We need more Elizabeth’s in this world of ours. We need more people willing to move past judgment and shaming and to offer up a simple blessing…
Remember to bless means to give life. To curse means to take life.
Mary is blessed.
We need more people who look upon the world and see God’s redeeming hand at work and not just see the worst in other people and in ourselves.
We need to lighten each other’s burdens and to stop causing or adding to them. We need to be more like Elizabeth.