Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent
“In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.” In what days? And who are these people?
The appointed reading for today has dumped us unceremoniously into the middle of a lengthy narrative in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel. The days, Luke tells us, are those of King Herod of Judea. Zechariah is a priest, married to Elizabeth; both are getting on in years, and they are childless, a source of deep embarrassment in that society. I should say, they have been childless, for it is clear that Elizabeth is now pregnant. Her young relative Mary is a virgin engaged to be married to Joseph, who doesn’t get a speaking part in Luke’s story. Elizabeth refers to Mary as a mother; in fact, Mary, too, is pregnant with her first child, and quite recently so. She remains a virgin, though; Luke quotes her as saying that she has no knowledge of man.
Oh, there’s another significant character in the story so far. He’s an angel named Gabriel.
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