Lectionary for Dec. 22, 2024
Fourth Sunday of Advent
Micah 5:2-5a; Luke 1:46b-55;
Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45
When I first started dating my wife, she lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in a house that had been subdivided into four units. Her apartment’s front door led into the room she used as the bedroom, and the back door led into a super thin galley kitchen. It felt improper to enter the bedroom of a woman I was just getting to know, so I always used the kitchen door when I visited.
In a prominent yellow note stuck on her cabinet (I hit my head on that cabinet many times over the years in that cramped kitchen!), she wrote the closing line from our Gospel text for this week: “Blessed is she who believed that what the Lord spoke to her would be fulfilled” (Luke 1:45). As my wife has weathered spiritual abuse, a cancer diagnosis, the birth of our kids and being married to me, this verse on the now-faded Post-it note has been a guiding principle for her. God promised that God would be with her, and she believes that she will never be alone.
In this week’s lectionary readings, we have stories of people who are blessed because they have believed God’s promises.
In the Micah passage, we learn that the people were in deep trouble. The Assyrian army had completely obliterated the Northern Kingdom of Israel. In a rough period in history, the Assyrian army was particularly noteworthy for its brutality and cruelty. The people of Judah would have seen and heard of their relatives and former countrymen being tortured to death or exiled to the corners of the rapidly expanding Assyrian Empire. But Assyria wasn’t content with just conquering the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Rabshakeh and the Assyrian army also sacked town after town in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, leaving death and destruction in their wake.
It’s in this context that Micah prophesied that a ruler would come from Bethlehem, which was planned from eternity beforehand. This ruler would lead the return of the exiled children of Israel and protect the citizens as a shepherd protects her flocks. So, when the Assyrian invaded the land, God would raise up shepherds against the invaders (Micah 5:5). The people believed Micah’s prophesy, and, in short order, the Assyrian threat was removed.
We do not forget the old promises, because God doesn’t either. Blessed is she who believed that what the Lord spoke to her would be fulfilled!
But the beauty of prophesy is that it is polyvalent. God’s promises to raise a delivering shepherd from Bethlehem weren’t forgotten as soon as the Assyrian threat was lifted. Instead, when a woman who was engaged but not married was told that she would give birth to a child who would be the Son of the Most High, and also the Son of David, she recalled the old promises of God. Mary proclaimed that God’s mercy is from generation to generation. God works might with the divine arm and scatters the proud, bringing rulers down from their thrones and sending the rich away. God gives help to God’s servant, Israel, as promised to Abraham and to the ancestors. Mary situated the salvific work that her son would do in the long continuum of God’s mercy and salvation to God’s people.
And Mary wasn’t alone in her recognition of the role Jesus would play in actualizing God’s promises and prophesies. Elizabeth and her not-yet-born child, John, both recognized Mary as the mother of the coming Messiah and rejoiced to be in the presence of the fulfillment of God’s promises. Elizabeth said to Mary, though she also qualified for the blessing she pronounced, “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
Mary, Elizabeth and the saints across time and space have believed not only in what they have been told directly but in the promises of God throughout the generations, as recorded in Scripture. God’s word to Micah didn’t cease its power when the Assyrians left. God’s word to Mary didn’t cease its power after her son was born. God’s word through Elizabeth didn’t cease its power when Mary left her home.
Isaiah proclaimed for the Lord, “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (55:11). We do not forget the old promises, because God doesn’t either. Blessed is she who believed that what the Lord spoke to her would be fulfilled!
