Advent: Strength For Our Song

Mary and Elizabeth, Lauren Wright Pittman.

Dr. Gregory Thompson

I think that it was the day after Halloween that I heard the first Christmas music warbling happily from the speakers above the storefront. It was a bit early for me (in our house not so much as a jingling bell is heard before the start of Advent) and I wasn’t yet in the mood, and so I decided to use it as a “teaching opportunity” to remind my four children of the wisdom of the liturgical calendar, the importance of respecting the boundaries of each season, and so on. Pausing for a breath, and noticing their glazed eyes and crossed arms, I got the sneaking sensation that—for some reason—they weren’t appreciating the wisdom that I was dropping. An impression that was confirmed shortly thereafter when my 13 year old daughter said, “Hey Reverend Grinch, just let them sing. This year we can all use as much help as we can get.” 

Though it pains me to say it, my daughter was on to something important. Namely, that as we enter into the seasons of Advent and Christmas, the seasons of darkness and light, silence and song, we need one another. It is, in fact, in the presence of one another that we find strength for our own Advent songs.

This is, I think, one of the meanings of Mary’s joyful encounter with her Auntie Elizabeth. Both women, you will recall, have recently learned the joyful news of a hidden life growing within them. And yet by all appearances, each of them is largely silent. For her part, Mary is being kept largely out of view to avoid a scandal. And Elizabeth, though married, is both voiceless and married to a (temporarily) mute husband. Noise is all around them, but—in the early days—their voices are largely absent.

Until, that is, they are together. When that happens, when they come to one another, the passage is suddenly aflame with song. Upon seeing Mary, Luke tells us:

“Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.  And why is this granted to me that the mother of my lord should come to me?  For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”  Luke 1: 41-45.

Likewise, upon seeing Elizabeth and hearing her words, Mary sings her own song:

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.” Luke 1: 46-55.

This movement from silence to song is extraordinary. And while there are many reasons for this movement, one of them, surely, is this: When these two women carried their Advent burdens alone they were, as we all are, bound to their own secret wonder, their own silent sorrow. But when they came together, they remembered once again that they both were, to borrow from Tolkien, “sharers of a secret hope.” And in this, in one another, in the midst of a shadowed and confusing world, they found the strength they needed to sing their respective Advent songs.

In the coming days, in the midst of our own bewildering world, each of us bears a secret hope within us. But to turn this secret into song we need one another; one another’s voices, one another’s love, one another’s reminders of the blessing that is ours in Jesus. Because of this, I urge you—as you are already doing—to seek one another out, to remind one another of truth, and, in time, to join one another in the joys of redemption. For it is with one another, perhaps more than any other place, that we find the strength for our song.