Yes Christmas is about a baby – and at last, on our fourth Sunday of Advent we finally get to the baby (Lk 1:39-45). In fact not just one baby but two. And perhaps almost more importantly, for this moment, two mothers.
Mary and Elizabeth couldn’t really be more different. Elizabeth is much older, past child-bearing age – perhaps 45. Mary is young, far too young to be married by the standards of our time, and yet to be married even in her time – so maybe 13. Elizabeth was from the priestly family of Aaron and her husband was a priest in the Temple – a family with some status. Mary was a nobody, engaged to a carpenter – respectable perhaps, but only a tradesman.
But there is clearly a deep bond between these women. As soon as Mary hears of her cousin’s pregnancy she rushes to visit her. This wasn’t a quick trip on the highway, or even a bus ride. This was strenuous hiking through rough and difficult terrain. The moment Mary arrives this bond is clear – but it is more than a bond between the women – the bond also links their children. Where one might expect that Mary would be subservient to her elder cousin, in her prestigious house befitting a well-established temple priest, well advanced in her pregnancy, we find the opposite. Elizabeth and her child immediately recognize that Mary is the greater. We see in this very domestic situation the same reversal of roles as we will see when wise men (“kings”) kneel before a baby and his mother.
This baby is the most remarkable human ever conceived. He is the human that upends every understanding of what it is to be human. He is the human that we came to understand is the presence of God in our world. He comes from a place that is so insignificant that it didn’t even count as a recognized clan within the Israelite people (Mi 5:1-4a). He was born to a woman so young as to be a girl in our eyes, unmarried. He was born in a barn.
This is the baby that Elizabeth and her baby knew was lord of all, that kings would fear or worship, that was God with us. He came for all of us, he is God with us, here and now.