We Cannot Imagine (Luke 1)

I made this video for an assignment for my class CMP 6027: Biblical Preaching with Dr. Aaron Wymer (Emmanuel Christian Seminary, Johnson City, Tennessee).

We Cannot Imagine (Luke 1)

If a VIP planned to visit your town, what kind of welcome would you expect them to receive? If a valuable project was scheduled, what kind of qualifications would you expect the workers to have? If a vital package needed to be delivered, what kind of arrangements would you expect to be made? If you or I could have eavesdropped on the arrangements being made prior to the events in Luke chapter one, we couldn’t have imagined what was about to unfold.

Luke 1:39-45 (NRSV) – “At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!’”

Usually when this passage is mentioned, the focus is on Mary or Jesus, and rightly so. It would be easy to miss the significance of this short, supernatural encounter from Elizabeth’s perspective. Mary had, days earlier, been visited by an angel who told her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:30-33). Although we’re not given the reasons why she hastened to Elizabeth’s house, perhaps Mary hoped for an empathetic ear, as the angel had also told her of Elizabeth’s unusual and unexpected pregnancy. Mary realized a few things about her relative, Elizabeth. Elizabeth understood what it was like to be misunderstood. The Gospel of Luke kindly applies healing balm to Elizabeth’s reputation by telling us that both Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah were righteous before God (Luke 1:6), for childlessness was assumed to be a defect of the woman and a punishment for sin. Elizabeth understood what it was like to be labeled. The very word “barren” bore enormous sorrow, shame, and stigmas. She would have endured exhausting enquiries about how they would be supported in their old age. Elizabeth understood what it was like to be judged. Judgmental looks and gossip are bad enough; today we would go as far as to call it spiritual abuse when religious teachers then insisted that a man divorce a childless wife so that he could procreate.

We cannot imagine whom God will choose. It was Elizabeth – marginalized, misunderstood, labeled, judged – whom God chose to both reveal and confirm the identity of the baby in Mary’s womb. This amounts to nothing less than a total reversal of fortune. Every Jewish woman hoped to be the mother of the Messiah, a hope that utterly drained away as Elizabeth left her childbearing years far behind. Yet now she had been chosen to bear the forerunner of the Messiah! How did she know who Mary’s baby was? The text tells us that when Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth’s baby, John, leaped in her womb. Perhaps Elizabeth began to glimpse the beginning of the fulfillment of the angel’s words to her husband concerning their promised child, “With the spirit and power of Elijah he [John] will go before him [the Lord]” (Luke 1:17). Could John’s calling as the one who was to go before Messiah as the first proclaimer of the kingdom have caused him to leap, in his first wordless proclamation? The text goes on to say that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and then, in a loud voice, proclaimed the identity of the blessed Mary’s blessed baby as “my Lord” – my kýrios – my long-awaited Messiah. God chose and empowered the very unlikely Elizabeth to confirm for Mary what God was doing in her. We cannot imagine whom God will choose in any particular situation. God has chosen you to proclaim and demonstrate his unstoppable kingdom and will empower and direct you as you follow Jesus. God has chosen others to proclaim and demonstrate his unstoppable kingdom and will empower and direct each one of them as they follow Jesus. We cannot imagine whom God will choose.

We cannot imagine how God will empower and direct us or others. In Elizabeth’s day, God’s people knew they were included in God’s promise to Abram, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse” (Genesis 12:3). They understood that blessings could not flow from curses and vice versa. However, they mistakenly construed that childlessness was an indicator of God’s removal of blessing and therefore a confirmation of being cursed. No one would have expected any kind of blessing to flow from a cursed person like Elizabeth. And yet, she was empowered and directed by the Spirit of God to bless both the Messiah and his mother! God graciously restored and transformed Elizabeth (her womb, her status in society, her reputation, her old age, her legacy, her ministry, her voice). It was precisely in the most broken and devastated places of Elizabeth’s life that God chose to empower her and direct her in ways she could not have imagined. She was not cursed; she welcomed unimaginable fruitfulness and flourishing, diffusing uncontainable joy and blessing.

How often do we disqualify ourselves or someone else from receiving God’s empowering or direction? Throughout Scripture, God seems to show up in the most unusual ways, at the most inconvenient times, and through the most awkward of circumstances. Are we open to receiving God’s empowering or direction however he chooses to bring it? What if God chooses to communicate to me in a way that sounds weird when I try to tell someone else? What if God chooses to direct someone else through a supernatural means which makes me feel uncomfortable? What if God chooses to fill me with his Spirit such that I start doing things that are out of character for me? We cannot claim to know how God will show his presence and power to us, but we can confidently know and expect that God will show his presence and power in ways that we cannot predict or imagine. How can you and I better cultivate openness toward the empowering and direction of the Holy Spirit? We cannot imagine how God will empower and direct us or others.

We cannot imagine what God will do in and through us and others. After his resurrection, Jesus instructed his followers with what we call, “The Great Commission” – “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). Jesus also taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Jesus calls all who would follow him to be witnesses of God’s kingdom, which is to make God’s kingdom visible right here (wherever we are) and right now (whenever we are). But how exactly do we do that? We make the kingdom of God visible as we participate in healing, do justice, deliver those held captive by evil, pray, proclaim, demonstrate, and are present with God and others and ourselves, always pointing to the source and sustainer of life, Jesus Christ. We use all of our gifts and graces and experiences and imagination, as God empowers and directs us to do small things with great love. We seek to love God wholeheartedly and choose to will the good of neighbors and nations, wherever and whenever we are. The good news of the kingdom of God, the gospel, is always good news of great joy and blessing. As we do these things, proclaiming and demonstrating the kingdom of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we welcome unimaginable fruitfulness and flourishing, diffusing uncontainable joy and blessing in every direction.

The good news of God’s kingdom (that Jesus described with words like “near” and “has come”, also describing the final consummation in future terms) is far bigger and far better than we could ever imagine. We don’t know what God will do but we know that at any moment, because of what Jesus has done, the future reign of God can break into the present by the power of the Holy Spirit. Eugene Peterson renders Ephesians 3:20-21a so evocatively, “God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.” What could happen if we attended to God’s direction and then made God’s kingdom visible, by the power of the Holy Spirit, by saying what he gives us to say, doing what he shows us to do, starting what he directs us to start? We cannot imagine what God will do in and through us and others.

We cannot imagine whom God will choose. We cannot imagine how God will empower and direct us or others. We cannot imagine what God will do in and through us and others. Jesus came, lived, died, and rose again that we might receive, experience, and give away abundant life. May God give us the grace today to more fully believe, embrace, and live in the good news of great joy that Jesus brought. May God, by his Holy Spirit, empower and direct us, as unlikely individuals in a world filled with other unlikely people, to proclaim and demonstrate his unstoppable kingdom. May God help us to lean into, live in, and invite others into the fullness of the kingdom of God, the place of unimaginable fruitfulness and flourishing which is already but not yet fully here. And may our lives ever diffuse uncontainable joy and blessing, for the greater glory of God and the good of all people and all of creation! We cannot imagine, but “God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams!”