We've most likely all been put "on hold" when we've made a phone call. It might be the pizza place we're ordering from before the Steeler game starts--and we' get put on hold because a lot of other people have the same idea at the same time. It might be the pharmacy when you're getting prescription refills and they need to look up your records. It might be the time between the person answering the phone and the person you need to talk with coming on. But as you know, if you've ever been put on hold, generally one of two things happens. You get to talk with the person you need to talk with, and you accomplish what you need to accomplish--or find out that you can't. Or, the call gets lost in transition somehow and hangs up on you, and you have to start all over again.
2020 has sometimes felt like the former--we're still "on hold" but it's only a matter of time before we get to get on with the call--and it could happen any moment. Lately it has felt more like the latter--the call got lost and we're starting all over again--with many of the same adjustments that we made in March and April having to be made again. However, like with Mary the mother of Jesus and her older relative Elizabeth (in Luke 1), maybe it's more like their mutual circumstances--as the sermon title puts it, "Anticipating Life in the Midst of Life."
Here we have two relatives, both pregnant--in the "midst" of that time where you are carrying a baby but haven't yet birthed that baby. Mary--well, it's an unexpected, basically unprecedented, situation, as she's most likely only in her teens and has received a celestial messenger from God with this opportunity to be part of this gargantuan, world-transforming plan. And so she is in that anticipatory stage of things. In Elizabeth's case, she's longed to have a child, and for many years it hasn't happened, and now, almost miraculously--like Mary, there has been communication from on high that her child will be a part of that same big plan from God--she too is in that time of anticipation. But life continues. They don't get to put everything else "on hold" as they continue to care for one another, and for Elizabeth, the role of supporting her husband, the priest Zechariah. As they anticipate the new life that each of them will bring into the world, current life continues.
Christmas, the more we figured out what it was about, did indeed stop the world. But as it was being lived out, it happened in the midst of day-to-day reality, with only the briefest of moments outside of life's regular patterns. And then, of course, once the child is born, life continues both in the same way, and entirely differently--true for Mary and Elizabeth--true similarly for anyone whose life is both the same and different because of the birth of a child.
Maybe that's the sense we need to have with our life in pandemic times--we're not on hold, waiting for regular life to start again at some point--maybe "hold" will be over soon, or our metaphorical call is dropped and we have to start the same call again. Maybe, like with Mary and Elizabeth, we anticipate the new life in the midst the current life, and live now as it is while planning for the "different" it will be.
Maybe every Christmas should be like that?
GOSPEL Luke 1:39-45, 56
39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’
56And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.