Richard Bollman, S.J.

4th SUNDAY ADVENT / C / 2009

"The Good News Children"

Luke 1:39-45

I’d like to explore the significance of this story of the two women,

what it means in itself, and what it means to us now.

You recall, when Mary listened to the angel about her own future child,

"you will conceive and bear a son . . . ."

she expressed some hesitation and doubt since she was not married.

Well, you know the story: the messenger told her that this new birth

would happen not as the result of a human decision, an act of sexual encounter,

but as the direct result of the will of God.

The Spirit would accomplish the birth. God, in that sense, would do something.

And besides that, the angel messenger gave her a sign to believe in:

that her older cousin, long unable to conceive, was already six months pregnant.

As Gabriel summed it up: Nothing is impossible with God.

Go see Elizabeth if you don’t believe.

That’s what makes this story, the visit to Elizabeth,

so important to both women.

The younger woman, Mary, sees that Elizabeth is six months pregnant,

and the older woman has a message from within her womb

about the true nature of Mary’s pregnancy: it is a Spirit birth,

a Spirit event. It is Good News. The Lord is with her and in her.

So the meaning of these childhood stories comes from

the Spirit events that are happening.

That’s the truth of the story:

how God has formed a desire to bless and renew the human family,

and this desire was expressed in the pregnancies.

The Spirit was at work, as in the days of Moses and the Patriarchs,

as in the days of the first Creation,

the Spirit is moving again and these two children are the fruit of the Spirit.

They each have their calling, their purpose, their mission,

and they are linked to one another,

as herald of the Kingdom, and fulfilment of the Kingdom.

That’s the truth about John and Jesus.

This is at the same time a story about two mothers,

how their maternal role puts them in the center of a great new story

that will change hearts, heal bodies, open eyes and ears,

release sinners, and raise the dead.

As they meet each other, they see that they can trust, they can believe.

And the life in them is a sign of something beyond

just populating the village, continuing the family line.

It is the beginning of Good News.

But what of our own story, all of us who have come from our mothers.

Could it be that there is a truth in this Gospel

that brings light to everybody’s birth,

how we are here for reasons that go beyond

just our parent’s hope to have children.

Think about it: this seems to me a deep core of Christians faith.

That hope to have children is blessed and powerful,

but it is, I’m suggesting, far more than just the will of the human couple.

Sexual encounter explains the pregnancy.

But then something new happens: the birth itself.

Isn’t that a Spirit event, that arrival?

"Who are you who has come?" we might say.

"What shall be your name and mission?"

Each of us, then, has been generated not just by mom and dad,

but by God, for a particular life, and work, and choices to make,

to be part of the story of faith.

Each of us with unique ways of serving and being fruitful.

Then look at this.

Joseph had dreams, Mary was visited by angels.

But it didn’t tell much of the story, it just awakened faith.

Sometimes many a parent here has a dream about their children

how and who they’ll be and what they’ll do.

And they take responsibility to feed and assist the life that comes.

But, from what I have known among families,

and even in my own,

what eventually happens seems to be unexpected:

only gradually then, God’s own intentions, Spirit intentions,

begin to show up. And that’s the Good News.

I’m just saying that children are more than DNA destiny.

They come to us from God, from a vast world of blessing,

with a mission to do, a set of possibilities to work with.

And the best attitude of any new parent is curiosity

Who are You?

And a willingness to accept what unfolds.

We learn about all this by looking back.

AND, to be sure, these stories of Jesus’ birth and John’s birth,

are the last stories to be written and sorted out. In hindsight.

A friend of mine once joined a circle of women

who met to write and to listen to one another's writing.

For a while, it was her place of visitation. Being with them.

She wrote a poem about her mother:

she framed a picture of her mother that she had only recently found,

her mother as a young girl.

The picture, and the small group of writers

helped my friend to find her own voice in a poem.

In discovering her voice, along came new appreciation of her own calling,

The struggles of her own life began to be acceptable,

even full of light.

Christmas reminds us that there is no joy so energizing as the story of good news.

What is happening now, the promise of God showing up

in Kathy or Tom, Mary, Jim, Helen, those people you keep up with.

So listen for the good news this season.

Expect it; our life is so much more than pain and gossip.

Truly blessed are they who believe

that the promise of God is being fulfilled in them,

in their hopes, their choices.

It is happening.

The Lord is near.

INTERCESSIONS, 11:00. 4^th Advent, 2009

1. Call us every day to be strong in faith,

to allow you to work miracles.

We cry to you:

2. Call us to sanity, to care for human beings and human rights

against the power of vengeance.

We cry to you:

3. Bring home the refugees of our earth,

bring them to dignity and safety and shelter against the cold

We cry to you:

4. Gather with all our families this week,

teach us again to meet each other,

and to listen to the hidden lives we all want to reveal

We cry to you:

5. Grant the gift of childbirth

to those who desire the blessing of raising a family.

We cry to you.

6. Remember the special needs we bring, the burdens we carry . . . . .

(Pause: count to 12)

We cry to you.