We come to the fourth Sunday of Advent, anticipating that in a matter of two days we will begin the celebrations of the great Feast of Christmas. The feast of the incarnation. And what is presented to us today is this image of Mary. Mary, who has been had an encounter with the angel Gabriel, and who basically lays out before her God’s plan that she should become the mother of the Son of God.

And how Mary initially confused and somewhat anxious and afraid, embraces the Word of God with those very beautiful words. I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your will. So she surrenders herself into the hand of God. But what is interesting as Luke presents the story, is that Mary doesn’t stay there in Nazareth.

But part of what the angels shared with her was that Elizabeth is with child. Six months with child. The famous story of Zechariah and Elizabeth and Mary and the word is interesting. Mary goes in haste. Not an easy trip to make, for Mary is up in Nazareth, and Elizabeth is down in the Judean Hills just outside Jerusalem. And so she must literally transverse 100 miles.

We don’t know if she came by way of the water route, in the sense of coming down along the river along the Mediterranean side of Israel, or whether she came down along the Jordan side. Either way, it would be a very difficult and challenging journey. But she comes motivated by the need of her cousin. It’s always very interesting if you read Luke’s gospel, what you will find over and over again is that when someone has the encounter with God, maybe through an angel or maybe through some other circumstance, but there’s always a reaction, a reaction in a sense, to the experience and the reaction is always one of service.

The person goes to serve one who is in need. And so Mary goes to serve Elizabeth toward the end of her pregnancy. Right. Elizabeth is an older woman. Six months, three months, probably to go. Maybe it happens sooner, but she goes in service. But she’s probably not aware of the much deeper service that she’s bringing, because it’s not merely that she’s going to goes there and aid Elizabeth’s, maybe make a dinner for her or something like that.

But the greatest service is that she’s bringing with her the child within her. She’s bringing with her the gift of God. And the gift of God makes the situation very unique, because Elizabeth says the child in her womb leaped for joy. The child in her womb recognized the child in Mary’s womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit in the sense that the power of God came alive in that moment.

Through this encounter between Mary and Elizabeth. But it was an encounter that was mediated by the presence of Jesus within Mary. So Mary becomes the tabernacle of the Lord. She brings the presence of Jesus into the midst of that situation, and bringing the presence of Jesus into that situation, she brings joy. It’s an interesting way that Luke puts it, because one of the things that I have discovered over the years and many, many years and now with Luke’s Gospel, is that Luke’s gospel is basically riffing out of a model.

And the model that Luke uses, at least in my opinion, the model that Luke uses is the model of the liturgy. Almost all of his stories that he includes in his gospel have that motif. Yeah, they are liturgical stories. And this is a liturgical story. For in a sense, what Luke is saying to us is that Mary brings us into the presence of Jesus and bringing us into the presence of Jesus.

She brings joy into our life. We’ll apply that to the liturgy. Apply that to why we’re here. Mary, the tabernacle of the Lord brings the Lord to us.

Do we feel the joy of Jesus in our life? And are we then moved by that joy? To be of service within families, within friends, within communities? Because in a sense, that’s the end result. Of what an experience with the joy of Jesus means for us. And so we ask ourselves, as you walk out of here, yeah, will you be filled with the joy of the Lord?

And will that joy cause you to reach out to others?