Preaching Paths 21 December 2025

Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary

Preaching possibilities abound in today’s Gospel reading (Lk 1:39-56). Two unlikely expectant mothers—one long considered barren, the other young and unmarried—join in Spirit-inspired celebration of God’s surprising ways. After the angel Gabriel’s life-changing visit, Mary travels to the far Judean hills to visit her older cousin, Elizabeth. At Mary’s greeting, the babe Elizabeth carries leaps in recognition of the holy one in Mary’s womb. Elizabeth, filled with the Spirit, declares her young cousin “blessed …the mother of my Lord,” (that is, of divinity). Her hopes confirmed and fears stilled, Mary exults in her blessed state and God’s world-reordering justice and mercy.

That Luke places two low-status women center-stage in the story of the birth of Jesus would be startling to first-century readers. These women would be held in contempt by their peers—the elder, for her barrenness, the younger for her shocking out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Yet Luke insists that God chooses precisely these women for key roles in the redemption story of God-with-us. It is their willingness to put their lives in God’s hands, not superiority by the standards of Jerusalem or Rome, that qualifies them to bear into the world God’s agents of redemptive change.

Their story is also a story about being the church with and for one another. The Spirit-imbued encounter between these two women—and, one could argue, between the sons they carry—reminds us how much we need the validating witness of others in the difficult process of discerning what we are meant to be and to do in God’s name. Trust in the ways of God is born in community.

Embedded in this remarkable narrative is Mary’s song of praise, known by its opening word in Latin, “Magnificat.” Her song is akin to the song of Hannah in 1 Sam 2:1-10, but by no means identical to it. Like Hannah, Mary marvels at God’s favor to her, despite what others may say. While most modern translations cast the verbs of Mary’s song in present tense, Mary celebrates God’s past actions as evidence of God’s kept promises in the present. She sings of a God who redeems humanity by inverting the social and political order. God has raised up the lowly and dethroned the haughty.  The hungry are filled, while the rich are turned away empty-handed. Yet this is not punitive; it is, in fact,  redemptive. Rendered impotent and hungry, those who took comfort from power and wealth have no choice but to entrust ourselves to the mercy of God. In this very dependency lies their salvation.

A preacher might also explore contrasts between the responsiveness of Mary and Elizabeth, on one hand, and the skepticism of Zechariah, on the other (Lk 1:5-23). “Righteous,” and a priest educated in Torah, Zechariah cannot bring himself to trust an angelic visitor who declares that he and his long-barren wife will have a son. Perhaps we are like him: after too many disappointments over too many years, we can’t afford the risk of hoping. Yet, while John gestates in Elizabeth’s womb, Zechariah’s faith is remade in a womb of God-appointed muteness. At John’s christening, Zechariah’s voice returns, and like Mary and Elizabeth, he, too, breaks into prophetic song (Lk 1:69-80). Neither life’s bitter disappointments, nor a hard shell of truculent rationality, is any use against the loving overtures of a God who will use any means necessary, gentle or not-so-gentle, to pry us out of our self-made fortresses of disbelief. Baptismal water can erode the most impervious rock, leaving us vulnerable to God’s surprising grace, wooing us to embrace God’s promised future of life made new.