In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And 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 has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’
And Mary said,
And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
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 powerful from their
thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’
In the Reading Between the Lines section of this week’s Bible Workbench Bill Dols asks: What is a story you tell about your family or yourself that you have polished and embellished over the years in order to revels something true about you even though it didn’t happen?
I suggest you keep Bill’s question in mind and you read and reread this week’s lectionary.
Perhaps Luke is telling us that the possibility of a new kind of justice coming into the world, a justice that is opposed to the retributive justice that their, and our, world know so well. In first century Palestine the political and economic systems were rigged so that the rich became richer and the poor poorer. Luke, I suggest was proposing the possibility the dawn of a new era where distributive justice prevailed.
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