Faith is a journey you don’t do alone.

This is one of the most important distinctions about the Christian faith. If you are Buddhist, you can and must pursue your personal enlightenment alone. If you are a Hindu, you can make your personal sacrifices, carry out your personal rituals, and attempt to attain “nirvana” alone. If you are of one of the other Abrahamic religions, you try to live morally by the laws and teachings set before you. It’s a personal journey.

But if you are a Christian, you cannot live out your faith alone. Because Christianity is a relational faith. It’s all about relationships. Your relationship with God. Your relationship with Jesus. Your relationship with each other. Your relationship with yourself. Your relationship with the world. Your relationship with nature. Everything about your faith requires you to be engaged with someone or something else.

When we engage in a relationship with Jesus, our next requirement is to live out that relationship in relationship with others. That’s discipleship. That’s the great commission. That is Christianity.

God’s promise to God’s people is a shared promise: salvation for all, including for the earth itself. Redemption and healing is a togetherness journey, a building of a kingdom community, a “last will be first” kind of loving and giving.

Whenever I hear someone say, they can have faith all on their own, I wonder what religion they could be talking about, because that is not the definition of Christianity. It just doesn’t work that way.

Christians were designed to be traveling a journey of faith with Jesus, and with others. This is not just a definition of what it means to be a Christian, but it’s one of our greatest blessings. It may not feel like it sometimes when we get annoyed at our brothers and sisters in the faith. But the reality is, they are part of who we are as a community of Christ. We may be a dysfunctional family. But we are a family just the same. We have each other’s backs. And we support each other in faith.

This is why when we witness marriage vows, we too as a congregation vow to support the couple in their journey of unity. This is why during a baptism that we as a congregational witness to the event and vow to support and raise up the child in the faith and support that child’s parents in nurturing that faith. This is why when we partake of holy communion, we do it together. This is why when someone joins the church, we gather around that person and assure them that we will support them in their journey of faith, even when it’s hard.

Christians are a people who live and love in community.

We need each other. Faith can be hard. Discipleship can be challenging. Life can be even more challenging and sometimes frightening.

It certainly was for Mary.

I want you to think about that this morning as you read through that scripture again in Luke. Imagine how Mary must be feeling.

Mary is most likely young, a pre-teen, perhaps 12 years old. Perhaps 13 or 14 when she is impregnated by the Holy Spirit. She’s betrothed to an older man named Joseph, who trusts that his future bride is pure and unsoiled. Her family’s honor is at stake as well. And that of her extended family. If she is discovered to have committed adultery, she will most likely be stoned to death. She will definitely be forever disgraced. She is in quite a dilemma.

What does Mary do? She doesn’t go to her family. That would be a mistake and could be a fatal one. She is petrified to tell her future husband. How will he believe her? She is most likely frightened out of her wits. She knows the message she received from God, but it sounds awfully unbelievable to everyone else. She cannot handle this alone. Mary needs council. She needs advice. She definitely needs a shoulder, some back up, and direction.

Young Mary travels (under a guise of visiting her relatives I’m sure) to Judea to her kin Elizabeth, who is significantly older than she. We don’t know if Elizabeth was Mary’s aunt, or cousin, or half-sister, or in-law. But we do know she was in some way related. And we do know that Mary obviously trusted her. Elizabeth she must have thought was older and wiser. She was the wife of a priest. Surely, she could understand Mary’s experience and what she was going through. Surely, she would know what to do.

How wonderful it must have been to receive the welcome that she did –the non-judging, non-threatening, safe haven that was Mary and Zechariah’s home. There, the two women bonded over their mutual pregnancies. And Elizabeth confirmed Mary’s blessing from God and her role in carrying the future messiah.

In faith they bonded. And in faith, Mary would go forward to talk to Joseph, find protection in her future husband, travel to Bethlehem, and under cover there, bear her firstborn son.

Elizabeth was a mentor to Mary, a sister, a sojourner, an uplifter, a friend.Without Elizabeth, Mary may not have had the courage to do what she knew she needed to do next: face Joseph.

It’s no mistake that the gospel writers tell us about this visit between Mary and Elizabeth. It’s important to understand what it means to be a brother or a sister in faith and an encourager when things get tough.

No one’s life is perfect. God never promises us a picture perfect life with no problems, stressors, or pain. Life is filled with experiences, both good and bad, challenges and joys. And our lives are filled with people who can share both of them with us.

We as Christians live as part of a community of faithful. Some are right here in your own church community. But you are also part of a larger community, a world community. You have brothers and sisters all around the world, who know what it means to follow Jesus, to experience tough times and lean on others for comfort, to share the joys of mountaintop experiences and the Lord’s blessings.

Like Elizabeth and Mary, we all need those friends, mentors, colleagues, and supporters, who understand our dilemmas, our doubt, and our questions, who are there for us reminding us of Jesus’ precious gift of love and hope, and the messiah’s salvation.

Everyone needs a mentor, a sister or brother in the faith. Everyone needs a community, in which we are not judged but accepted for who we are, in all of our struggles and celebrations.

This is what it means to be part of a Christian community. This is what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

In this final week of advent, as we approach the celebration of the birth of our Lord, I want you to think about those who have nurtured your faith, who have been there for you in your darkest times and in your brightest times, those to whom you can go with your doubts and questions, those who will have your back no matter what you do. Who are your sisters and brothers in faith? To whom can you run when you don’t know where to turn?

Look around you at your faith community? Are you a safe place for any one of you to be when you run into trouble?Can you be a place of support and comfort to those who don’t know where to turn or what to do? Are you a place without judgment, a place of Christian love and acceptance?  Will you journey together, in all of your diverse personalities, with all of your differences and directions, because your faith in Jesus creates a bond among you that cannot be broken and shines like a beacon to all who can see?

If you can answer “yes” to these questions, then you are a true Elizabeth. And your church is a blessed and holy place.

This season of joy, let us all strive to be an Elizabeth to someone in our lives. Let our churches be havens of hope, beacons of light, places of peace, and compasses of compassion for all who come our way. This is your gift. This is your responsibility. This is who you are.

May Christ bless you and keep you.