Luke the Evangelist would have made a good filmmaker. He does a great job “cross-cutting,” these two miraculous pregnancy tales. First the angel comes to Zechariah, and then Elizabeth becomes pregnant after he returns home. Elizabeth stays in seclusion for five months, and in her sixth the angel appears to Mary, who then becomes pregnant. And then these parallel stories come together: “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.” (Today's passage is here.)
Luke doesn’t tell us why Mary made that journey, but reasons spring to mind. She may have wanted to “get out of Dodge” and the increasing questions and stares at her notably unmarried pregnant state. Her situation was more than socially awkward – adultery was punishable by death, and it was hard to reckon any other explanation for her expanding figure. We don’t know about her parents; were they supportive? Did they believe her tale of the angel and what he said? Would you?
A deeper reason for her journey may have been what the angel told her about Elizabeth’s improbable pregnancy, “… and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Maybe Mary needed to be with the only other people on earth who had a clue what she was going through. Maybe she needed some confirmation that she wasn’t losing her mind.
If that was the case, she received it the moment she came into the house.
“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.”
When God has outrageous revelations or instructions for us, we can trust God to give us independent verification – at least, that’s what happens in the Bible. One person gets a strange notion or order, and the Spirit makes it known to someone else as well. It’s like in Field of Dreams, when Ray and Annie have the same dream one night, just when she’s ready to write him off. In Mary’s case, God offered confirmation not only via Elizabeth, but even by the unborn John with his in-utero “leap for joy.”
And Elizabeth utters words that must have settled Mary’s heart for the first time since her encounter with the angel, calling her “blessed among women,” and the “mother of my Lord.”
Have you had occasion to offer confirmation to someone on a call they believe they’ve received? Has someone done that for you? Are you wrestling with a question of call and discernment now? Who might be your “Elizabeth?” If no one comes to mind, you might ask God who you should talk to. A name or encounter might just crop up.
Elizabeth’s affirmation of Mary goes to the heart of what she must have been feeling. “And blessed is she who believed that there would be* a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
Sometimes, even when we go forward in trust and faith on something we believe God has invited us into, we are still assailed by doubts. “Was I an idiot to believe that?” we think, especially if we don’t see outcomes. In those times, we can hold onto Elizabeth: Blessed is s/he who believes.
If God has spoken it, God will deliver.
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