Rev. Paul Simpson Duke, co-pastor of First Baptist Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan, asks this enlivening question in the season when we ponder the meanings of Christ's birth. Sometimes, given all the stresses we face, it can feel like we are suddenly in the days after Christmas, having hurried so much that we now worry that we may have missed out on the gift we need most: the wonder of God's love being born anew into our hearts, to calm us, to reassure us, to shine through us into the world.
Still, it is always the "right time" to pause, take a deep breath, return to our bodies and find that God's love is, yet again, as near to us as our breathing.
In Rev. Simpson Duke's exploration of Luke 1:39-45, where Mary and Elizabeth are finding out how amazing God's faithfulness is, he suggests that "if these two women are a prototype of church, they certainly embody how improbable and how subversive the church can be. They make quite a pair: a postmenopausal woman and a middle-school-age girl, both impossibly pregnant."
Mary runs across the hill country to Elizabeth's house, where they "lift their voices in praise of God's newness alive in them. So it will always be: the Spirit chooses whom it will to be voices and agents of the divine purpose, and the chosen will often be those who have little social status or economic power. In the church and beyond, anyone can be at the forefront of the Spirit's work."(p.61)
Even we. The Spirit's forefront is everywhere. With God's love alive in us, and God's light shining through us, all things are possible. Even now.
The "forefront," says the Oxford Dictionary, is "the leading or most important position or place."
The Rev. Paul Simpson Duke is co-pastor of First Baptist Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan. His reflections on Luke 1:39-45 can be found in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary, Year C, Volume 1, p.61.