lectio: luke 1:39-45
December 18, 2009
Not long after being visited by the angel, Mary made a hurried trip to a village in the hill country of Judea. Once there, she entered the home of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth, embracing and kissing her. And the moment Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby inside her suddenly moved as if leaping. Elizabeth, for her part, was filled with the Holy Spirit and blurted out loudly:
“God’s hand is on you in a special way! And God’s hand is also on the child you’ll give birth to! I’m so honored to have the mother of my Lord come to see me! The moment your greeting hit my ears, the baby inside me suddenly moved, leaping for joy! You’re blessed for believing that what God spoke to you is going to happen!”
There is a communion among women who are carrying children or have born children that men will never directly experience. Men experience this fellowship obliquely, from the outside rather than inside. We are excluded by gender from the mystery of pregnancy, this profoundly embodied experience of carrying and nurturing life within us and then delivering that life into the world. As I slowly read and reread this small vignette, entering the story as best as I could in my imagination, I experienced several longings that touch on this intimate communion.
I longed first for my own “Elizabeth” to whom I would run in order to share something precious. I know so so many younger people. Most of my life exists among them. Of peers I have a good handful. But what I lack right now is that older, wiser person to whom I would naturally run to share something that I could count on to be understood. But I also longed for something precious to share, something that would produce the same level of joy and excitement in me that these two woman certainly shared.
In a spiritual sense, I guess you could say that I found myself wanting to be pregnant, wanting to have new and tangible life taking root in me, life I could identify and share with at least one other who really “got it,” something I could get excited about.
I also experienced a longing to see with more regularity and greater precision God’s “seed” in others, and not just to see it but also respond to it as enthusiastically as Elizabeth did to Mary — to identify the “fruit of their body.” I still have a strong tendency to leave my thoughts unverbalized. So much goes unsaid that needs to find daylight, so lately I’ve been making regular attempts to tell others what they mean to me and what I see in them that’s good and beautiful and holy. Elizabeth, infused by the Spirit, is an exemplar: “God’s hand is on you in a special way! God’s hand is also on the child you’ll give birth to!” John, too, even while still in utero, is an exemplar, because “he leapt for joy” upon hearing the voice of his Lord’s mother. (The verb used for “leap” is often used of animals frolicking out of sheer exuberance for life.) This tells me he noticed and responded to the presence of God in Mary.
“Lord, let your life come to me in surprising and unexpected ways as it did to both Mary and Elizabeth. Let me share the joy of carrying, nurturing and birthing — even at my own risk — the life you place within me. Give me as well the discernment to notice that same life in others. I want to name it loudly, clearly and with joy after noticing it. Whatever you’ve placed in others that reflects you, no matter how faint, may I learn to see it and bless it. Amen.”
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Amen.