The Visit

Back around thirty years ago, I was in a bad way.  I had hurt my back, and as a result of this injury, found myself out of a job.  Then, my wife at the time asked me to leave the house, so I was homeless.  It was lucky for me that my parents lived close by.  They bought a little travel trailer in the same mobile home park in which they lived so I could have a place to live.  It wasn’t much of a trailer.  You could literally sit at the dining table and stir a pot of soup at the same time.  It was tiny.  It was so small I had to get a folding toothbrush.

So there I was, broke, lonely, and disabled.  Strangely enough, this led to a certain amount of depression.  So then I got fat (hey…food is comfort).  So then I was broke, lonely, disabled, and fat.  I guess I wasn’t much fun to hang around so my friends mostly stayed away—all except my friend, Paul.  Paul called or visited just about every day.  When I felt all alone in the universe, he was there.  And I don’t know if I would have made it through that time in my life as well as I did without him.  Sometimes a well-timed visit can make all the difference in the world, don’t you think?

When my wife’s mother, Carmen, was in the nursing home, a volunteer from our church, from a group called The Stephen Ministry (named for Saint Stephen), named Stan, would come to visit her several times a week.  He came to bring her Holy Communion and to chat.  Mostly, he just listened to her.  His visits brought her so much comfort.  Stan, himself, has passed on now.  I am sure there is a special place in heaven for him.

There are several important visits in the Bible that come to mind this time of year.  According to the gospel of Luke, the angel Gabriel came to visit Zechariah to tell him that his son would be the “voice of one crying in the wilderness” foretold by the prophet Isaiah.  Gabriel must have earned a few frequent flier miles too, because he also visited Mary to ask her to consent to being the mother of the messiah, and to Joseph in order to tell him not to dump Mary just because she happened to be knocked-up with a kid not his own.  In the Bible we often read of God coming into someone’s life through a visit of an angel or of a human being.

According to Luke, Mary, even while pregnant, made the arduous journey to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, who was pregnant at an advanced age with the child that would become John the Baptist.

Mary set out
and traveled to the hill country in haste
to a town of Judah,
where she entered the house of Zechariah
and greeted Elizabeth.
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
the infant leaped in her womb,
and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit,
cried out in a loud voice and said,
“Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And how does this happen to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” (Luke, Chapter One)

Now, as always, you don’t have to believe this really happened.  In fact, it is almost certain the words spoken by Elizabeth were taken from an early Jewish Christian Hymn about Mary.  Just consider the symbolism here.  Here we have a young, unmarried woman, pregnant with the savior, coming to visit an aged woman, married many years, also pregnant, with the precursor to the savior.  The yin and yang of it are simply exquisite.  It would be easy to focus on the details and miss the real meaning of this story.

Mary, having been told of her cousin’s condition by the angel, is bringing Christ to Elizabeth.  Elizabeth is so moved by being in the somewhat indirect presence of the messiah that the child in her womb leaped for joy (which must have been rather uncomfortable).  According to the teachings of Jesus, each one of us carries the Christ within.   Each one of us carries the spirit of the divine.  Moreover, each one of us carries also that voice calling out in the wilderness, calling us and those around us to change our way of thinking, to see the world in a different way.  My friend, Paul, was both of those voices for me, and I was certainly more joyful for it.

Of course, I have no problem in believing that this story is basically true.  That is, I have no reason to disbelieve it.  There are two points in the story that give it a certain amount of credulity.  For one thing, I find it interesting that in two such male dominated societies as existed in both Judea and in Rome, the authors of Matthew and Luke choose to have the son of God born to a poor woman.  You would think that if you were making up a religion, you would have your deity come from more auspicious beginnings.  It would seem to me that were you Jewish or Roman, you wouldn’t make a poor unmarried woman so central to the story.

The story of Mary’s visit also lends credibility to the story.  I like to put flesh and blood on these characters.  Consider Mary.  Here is this young woman, a girl, really.  She has a vision.  Some sort of being calling himself an angel comes to her and asks her to be the mother of the savior.  Mary agrees, which implies that God requires our acceptance of His/Her plans for us (which is awfully damn nice considering that S/He is the creator of the universe and all).  Then the angel tells her that her aged cousin, Elizabeth, is pregnant also.  So what does Mary do the first chance she gets?  She goes to visit her cousin, of course.  Why?  To see if it’s true.

Once Mary visits Elizabeth and sees that she is, indeed, pregnant, she knows that what the angel has told her is true.  Mary has the same doubts we all do.  Some religious people are afraid to question, afraid to doubt.  And some non-religious people think that being religious means you cannot have any doubts.  You have to accept everything without question.  The stories in the Bible, however, seem to indicate the opposite.  God doesn’t mind a little questioning.  In fact, people in the Bible stories question God all the time.  Let’s face it, if you’re the supreme being, creator of the universe, the Tao, the Atman, the Most High, you can take a little questioning.

I suspect that a lot of religious people are afraid to question.  They are afraid they will discover that there is no God.  Non-religious people are also afraid to question; they’re afraid they’ll discover that there is.

There is one thing that I know for certain, without question.  My friend, Paul, the Jew, brought Christ to me in that trailer.  And I bring Christ with me wherever I go, to each person I visit.  My hands are the hands of God on earth.  And, like Mary, like Elizabeth, I have the blessing of being allowed to share the love of God with the world.  The Advent season is all about hope.  And as long as we can love and serve one another, as long as we can reach out and comfort one another, there is hope for our world.