The scene in the Gospel lesson this morning is called, "The Visitation." It's about two women, cousins. They have something in common. They are both going to have babies, and both, miraculously. Elizabeth is too old, and Mary is so young, she is a virgin, betrothed, but not married. What does this mean?

Mary comes to Elizabeth's house in the Judean hills. It sounds upscale, doesn't it, the "Judean Hills." Elizabeth is the city cousin. She is sophisticated, from a patrician family. Her folk are the Aarons. They trace their ancestry clear back to Moses' brother. They are the priestly class. Zechariah, her husband, is part of the same class. He, too, is a priest, with high enough status to have been chosen to preside at the altar of the Temple in Jerusalem. Which is where he met the angel Gabriel, and heard the announcement, "Your wife, Elizabeth, is going to have a baby."

That news shocked him so that he was struck dumb. The text says that he asked, "How can this be?" and that is when he was struck dumb. You don't ask angels dumb questions. But anyone in Zechariah's position in life, who has just been told, your wife is going to have a baby, would have had the same response. They would have been dumbfounded.

This scene, "The Visitation," takes place six months later. He still can't speak. In the meantime, the angel Gabriel has flown down to where Mary is, at Nazareth, to tell her, "You're going to have a baby, too."

Mary is the country cousin. She lives in Nazareth, which is in the north, the poor part of Israel in those days. I used to illustrate what it meant to be from Nazareth by comparing it to some town around San Diego, only to have people come up to me after the service, and say, "Wait a minute. I live in that town!" They were offended at that, so I don't do that anymore.

There is only one town, I've discovered, that everybody in San Diego would agree is a disreputable place, and that is Los Angeles. So I could compare Nazareth with Los Angeles and get away with it, except that is where I'm from. So I am not going to do that. You will just have to use your imagination. Think of the most unsophisticated, small, out-of-the-way, undesirable place, a place where you would never ever think of living, and that's Nazareth. Even in the Gospel someone asks, rhetorically, "Can anything good come from Nazareth?"

Mary is from Nazareth. She is just a girl, betrothed to a man from her village, probably arranged by the family, probably an older man. He is a carpenter, named Joseph. Now she hears this news from the angel, who also announces, "Your cousin, Elizabeth, is also going to have a baby." So the text says, "In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth."

I imagine Mary came to the older woman because she thought Elizabeth would have some wisdom as to what all of this meant. At "The Annunciation," it said, "Mary was greatly troubled, and considered in her mind what sort of greeting this might be." That is why she went to Elizabeth, to ask her, "This has happened to you, too. What does this mean?"

Luke says as soon as she walked into Elizabeth's house, Elizabeth's baby "leaped in her womb." Elizabeth cried out, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!" Which then prompts Mary to sing the Magnificat, "My soul doth magnify the Lord, because he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden."

That is amazing. All expectation would have been that Elizabeth would have been the one chosen, her baby would be the Messiah. She had the credentials, she had the family, she had the status in society, she, herself, and Zechariah, conformed to the pattern of God's intervention in the past. When God was going to give the people a leader, a savior, he always chose some old couple, like Abraham and Sarah, and told them, "You're going to have a baby."

So the precedent was with Elizabeth. But the blessing went to Mary. The greater defers to the lesser, the older to the younger, the first-born, "leaping in the womb," acknowledges the priority of the second-born, just like Esau and Jacob. The mighty defers to the powerless, the wealthy to the poor, the proud to the humble.

That's who Mary is. That's who Mary represents, the humble, the poor, and the powerless. This is made all the more obvious and dramatic by "The Visitation." They are cousins, but that is all they have in common. They are so very different. It is Mary, poor Mary, who is favored. "Blessed are you among women." What does this mean?

You read this material in Luke's story of the nativity and you come to the conclusion that Christmas isn't just about Jesus, it is also about Mary. There are two chapters that deal with the nativity in Luke. The first chapter has eighty-five verses in it. It is the longest chapter in the book. It is amazing. All of this material, and it is all about Mary. And what is emphasized about Mary is her status in the world, "the low estate of your handmaiden."

In the paintings of Mary, the kind you find on Christmas cards, she is often dressed like a queen. That is because Mary, in Catholic piety, has been bestowed with many titles, all of them exalted, including queen. She is the Queen of Heaven. So that is how she is often portrayed, regally. She even has a crown on her head. Even when she sits in the stable in Bethlehem, they picture her in royal robes with a crown on her head. Which means, the image we are going to think of when we hear the word "Mary," is that of royalty.

But that is not the way Luke sees her. He draws this portrait so that you will see, Mary is not Elizabeth. Elizabeth is sophisticated, undoubtedly wealthy given her status, married to a prominent priest in a day when that mattered and was compensated accordingly. Mary, on the other hand, is from a country town. She is betrothed to a man who worked with his hands and by the sweat of his brow. Poor Mary. She's a country girl, and she is the one who is chosen. What does this mean?

I don't know about you, but I have to fight back looking upon the poor with some contempt. I have been conditioned in this society to see them that way, as lazy, immoral, as certainly failures in many respects. We are raised, probably all of us in this room this morning, to believe that with a little gumption and some hard work, and just a modicum of intelligence, that anybody can make it in this life. So when we see somebody who is poor, somebody who is seriously poor, we conclude they must not be worth very much. We probably don't give them the time of day.

They come here for food, you know. Often in old gas guzzling cars, fifteen year old Oldsmobiles, loaded down with children, just a few months a part, out of state license plates. Often the man, if there is one, sits in the car. He doesn't come in. The woman comes in, only she is probably in her late teens. At least she looks that way, just a little waif. She will come in and ask for food, or gas, or diapers, or something that we have to offer.

I confess my reflex is judgmental, "Why are they in the state that they are in?" Then a quick prescription. I don't say this out loud, but I think it. "Get a job. Stop having kids. Get some discipline in your life." I can pick them out anywhere. I could draw you a picture. You could pick them out, too.

Luke is telling us, and you may not like this, but Mary was one of them. If so, we have to come to terms with the fact that God chose one of them, one of the poor, to be the mother of our Lord.

And our Lord identified with them. He said, "Blessed are the poor." He said that when the Kingdom comes, the poor are going to go into the Kingdom first. At the Kingdom banquet with the Messiah, the poor are going to have the privileged places. We look upon the poor in terms of what they can become. They can become like us. God looked upon the poor the way they are, as his children.

We even look upon them as having some kind of curse. That is the way it was in the old days of Protestantism. They were seen as examples of the doctrine of human depravity. It was believed in those days that your outward life was going to reflect the state of your inward life. So if you were a sinner, if you were immoral, or lazy, or slothful, or any of the deadly sins, it would be manifested in the way you lived.

The opposite was true, too. If you were prosperous and successful, it must be because you are righteous and moral. Which was the attitude not only of our forbearers, but also of the religious establishment in Jesus' time. The poor were considered to be cursed. They were beneath us and we would have nothing to do with them.

So, what does this mean? What does it mean that poor Mary was chosen to be blessed among all the women in the world? What does it mean that when God sent his Son into the world, he sent him to live with poor folk?

It means this. You read the gospel, and you ask, "Who is it who would be elevated, overjoyed, exalted, by hearing this announcement?" Those of low estate. Those who are the outcasts in this life.

The poor, certainly. They were first, probably because there were so many of them. Eighty to ninety percent of the people in those days were considered to be poor, and they would always be poor. But there were also others who were considered outcasts. Those who were ritually unclean, who led lives frowned upon by the majority, the foreigners, the enemy, the sinner, those people that respectable people had nothing to do with, they would be exalted.

So when Mary sings, "My soul doth magnify the Lord, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden," it means the status she had in that society. When she sings, "Thou hast knocked the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree," it means, from here on we are to regard outcasts as children of God, as our brothers and our sisters.

Wilfrid Sheed, a Catholic writer, has a poignant illustration of this. He said one day he was driving through Sag Harbor on Long Island. He saw three hopelessly homely looking girls, who in no way could be considered to be attractive. He also overheard their conversation and reached the conclusion that they were nearly stupid. He said, "I thought then, I have a friend who would make this judgment if he saw those girls. He would say, `Why do these people marry and procreate, and produce such ugly children.' Then I thought, no Catholic could ever say anything like that, because nobody is worthless to us."

When I read that anecdote, I thought, that's like those girls who come here, the poor. Luke wants us to see, Mary was one of them. If you get your picture of Mary from Christmas cards, you'll see Queen Mary, beautiful Mary, crowned in royal robes. But if you get your picture of Mary from Luke, you will see poor Mary, the peasant girl.

Luke goes out of his way to tell us this. He tells us where she was from. He tells us she was of low estate. He contrasts her with somebody of high estate, her cousin, Elizabeth. Then he confines her to the stable. The man running the inn probably said, "They belong out there anyway, those people. They are probably more comfortable there with the animals." The poor in the gas guzzlers are used to seeing, "No Vacancy."

Then he has shepherds come to visit the stable, not kings, or wise men. Matthew has kings and wise men come and visit Jesus, because Jesus is royalty. But Luke says shepherds came to visit him. Shepherds are poor and humble. They're teenagers, wild boys who live on the periphery of society. What does this mean?

Well, it means that at Christmas, God declared every single one of us as precious, every one of us. And we should be treated that way. Everybody is precious, no matter what our status is in this world, no matter who we are. We are precious.

A man in the hospital is being treated for cancer. He is estranged from the Church. He has this long list of things he can name for you in his indictment. He doesn't like the Church in its present institutional form. But he is in the hospital. One day a priest walks into his room. He didn't invite him in, he just walked in. The priest asked him, "Do you want to be anointed?" That is the Catholic rite for the sick. The man said, "Yes." Then he wrote this. "Lying on my narrow, hospital bed, feeling the oil of gladness and healing, I knew I had little time. More importantly though, I felt by a wondrous grace that this was the first time in my memory that the Church was paying attention to me, individually, by name, naming me, praying for me to deal with my painful circumstances and my suffering, the suffering that is uniquely mine. All of a sudden I realized, I matter, I really matter. I still can't get over the power of this feeling of mattering, of being an irreplaceable individual."

When the angel came to Mary, Mary must have said, "I matter, I really matter. I know now that I am an irreplaceable individual."

You know at first they only anointed kings and queens, just royalty. Then after Mary, after the Church was founded and began baptizing people, they anointed ordinary people when they were baptized, with oil on their forehead, or the laying on of hands. Then they started baptizing and anointing babies who were beginning their journey, to say, you are irreplaceable, you matter. Then they started anointing the dying, those who were at the end of this life and embarking on another journey, to tell them, you are irreplaceable, you matter in the eyes of God.

That is what it means, this visitation. It was an anointing. "Blessed are you among all of the women in the world."