Three Women

I Samuel 2:1-10, Luke 1

December 14, 2008

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

If you want to see God laugh, make a plan.

Elizabeth and Zechariah had a plan. They married and he began to rise in the ranks of the priesthood. They began to build that house in the suburbs, adding bedrooms for the children to come. But the children did not come. Years passed and Elizabeth changed her plan. She prayed faithfully, living a righteous and holy life, dedicating herself to work as did Zechariah. Her plan was to die a righteous woman, revered by her family and community. End of story.

Then God laughed, and Gabriel surprised Zechariah in the Temple with a tale of a child to be born. To Elizabeth. Zechariah thought these things only happened in ancient history, God didn’t really speak to people any more, so he boldly doubted the angel’s story. Until Elizabeth’s belly got very large. Did God really strike him mute or was he speechless with shock and surprise? Then, one day, both of them remembered Hannah.

Long, long before God conceived a surprise in Elizabeth, Hannah had prayed in the Temple. Younger than Elizabeth, still longing, aching for a child, Hannah had almost given up her plan. Her husband, Elkanah, had long ago changed plans. “Why do you keep hoping for a child? Don’t I love you enough for 10 children?” So Hannah went to the Temple and wept.

Then God laughed, and Hannah bore Samuel, destined to be one of the greatest prophets of Israel, justice bringer and king-breaker and maker. In her joy and surprise, Hannah sang, “My heart exults in the Lord!”

Mary of Nazareth, much younger than both Elizabeth and Hannah, had a plan. She had been matched for marriage to the carpenter Joseph, a kind man who worked hard and lived righteously. It was a good match. She sewed her wedding garments and imagined their future together, working side by side, raising sons and daughters, as many as their house could hold!

Then God laughed, and the angel Gabriel once again visited that small, barren piece of land near the Mediterranean Sea. Mary dropped her needle in surprise, watching all her dreams vanish with a wave of Gabriel’s wings, and then began to figure out how she was going to change her plan. When she heard about Elizabeth, she rushed to see her, seeking guidance and support from her relative, desperately hoping to find some confirmation that such things happened and she wasn’t simply losing her mind. When the child who would be John the Baptist leapt in Elizabeth’s womb, and Elizabeth called Mary the bearer of her Lord, Mary discovered her own laughter, and she sang in an echo of her ancestor Hannah, “My soul sings praises to God!”

Three women with unexpected babies. So what’s the big deal? Unexpected babies, or not being able to have an expected baby, these things happen all the time in our world. Why do we make a big deal about it in Advent?

Because these three babies showed us God’s laughter at the plans of the world in amazing ways. Years ago, when I was struggling with infertility and prayed earnestly like Hannah, I couldn’t understand why God heard Hannah’s prayer or blessed Elizabeth with a pregnancy and not me, never me. Why were they so much more deserving than I was?

The answer, of course, is that they were not. But God needed prophets, and they were chosen to bear them; to bear them, and to lose them. God looked at the world in which Hannah lived, and at the world in which Elizabeth and Mary lived. God saw the plans of the powerful. God saw that the rich of the world hurt and ignored the poor. God saw that nations were quick to go to war with one another. God saw commerce regulated only by greed. God saw that the religious leaders did not claim their voices for love, for justice, for truth. The more God saw, the angrier God got.

Then God laughed, and threw Samuel and John and then most amazingly, Jesus, into the carefully laid plans of Kings like Saul and Herod and Caesar, and of priests enjoying the perks of their positions, and of nobles secure in their riches and power, and of the poor who had given up hope of release. They should have known something was coming when these three women, whom everyone had defined, whom everyone thought they knew, suddenly carried a surprise. The women knew it, and the songs they sang reflected that they understood these were not just babies, not just rewards for long-suffering women and a righteous teenager, but sonic booms that would turn the world upside down.

They heard God laugh, and they sang exuberantly, boisterously, almost inappropriately, right along with the laughter. Who did they think they were, singing prophecy? They knew who they were, the harbingers of hope for those who needed hope, and trouble for those who took away hope from many.

They heard God laugh. I am listening this year for God’s laughter. No, I don’t expect to be pregnant, but I think our world is pregnant, or at least I hope so. Change is coming, in expected and unexpected ways. The way we have always done things in our economy is shaking like an earthquake. There is disarray in places as diverse as Zimbabwe, Greece, Pakistan, and the perennial Middle East. It’s a scary time.

There are, I think, two ways to react to this. One is to become afraid, very afraid. The other is to listen for God’s laughter, as did young Mary. Somehow I don’t think she felt like singing or laughing right after Gabriel’s visit, but when she heard Elizabeth laugh, old Elizabeth, whose worn and aged body strained under its burden, she let go the fear and the disappointment. She understood the big picture here. And she laughed and she sang and she radiated hope, such that when Joseph had his angel visit, he could believe what he had been told.

If you are an elder like Elizabeth, in middle age like Hannah, or a teenager like Mary, go ahead and make your life plans. If you are rich and/or powerful as the world defines these things, or if you are poor and feel powerless, or are somewhere in between, go ahead and make your plans. If you think the world is, as mother is wont to say, “going to hell in a handbasket,” and you don’t believe anything can save it, go ahead and be resigned, or depressed, or angry.

But under it all, under all the noise of trouble or certainty or arrogance or apathy, under it all like a bass guitar, like the organ pedals, or like the music from our neighbors next door, there is a sound you might want to attend to now and then. God’s laughter. Because sometimes it gets loud. And those angels, “still through the cloven skies they come, with peaceful wings unfurled. And still their heavenly music floats o’er all the weary world; above its sad and lowly plains, they bend on hovering wing, and ever o’er its Babel sounds, the blessed angels sing.” And God laughs. Amen.