Luke 1: 57-66 When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy. On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.” They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name.” Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.” Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God. All the neighbors were filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, “What then is this child going to be?” For the Lord’s hand was with him.
Forty years ago, my mother and sister were both patients on the OB/GYN floor at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Paterson, N.J. My sister had just given birth to my youngest niece and my mother was recovering from a hysterectomy. Those were the days, remember them, when you would stay at least a week in the hospital to recover from major surgery. My mother possessed this uncanny knack of knowing the details of the lives of the nurses in the hospital. Those nurses also knew that my mother and sister were on the same floor.
My sister had planned a Cesarean and when she developed an infection, she was removed from the floor. Of course, my mother asked if she could feed her new granddaughter. When I was visiting my mother, another visitor noticed my niece being brought into my mother’s room and the visitor commented: “Look at that old lady who gave birth to a child.”
Perhaps the neighbors of Elizabeth and Zechariah made the same comments when Elizabeth, a would be resident in a 55+ community, became a mother to John. I hope that all the people who participate in our Bible Study would tell you that Elizabeth and Zechariah fall in line with other elderly couples who gave birth to children well past their prime. You know them: Sarah and Abraham, Rebekah and Isaac, Rachel and Jacob. These women birthed their babies when everyone thought they were barren. All the angels of God look down on women in sacred history and comment: “Look another old lady who gave birth to a child!”
Now I am not suggesting that all the senior women in our congregation start checking our dating apps in the hope of having children once again. No, all of us, women and men, can discover the ways God continues to give birth in unexpected and unanticipated ways. Some of you were here in 2017 when many of you may have felt like Elizabeth and Zechariah, never imagining that God could step outside the patterns which defined your church life. Yet if you compare where we are today with where we were six years ago, could you have imagined the difference?
Over that past six years, God gave new life to a church which others may have ruled out. Perhaps you count yourself among the new people who have discovered a new home in this church. Perhaps you are doing things at church you never imagined doing in the past. Perhaps you are seeing people come in and out of this building and discovering that this church is open to all people, all people can find a place, all people can discover themselves loved by God, all people can find a place at Jesus’ table.
If you listen carefully to the story about the birth of John the Baptist, you will discover that the Holy Spirit continually hovers over events and people, transforms what was dead, brings new life. Can you imagine that the Holy Spirit would forget how she operated in the past? Would you imagine that the Holy Spirit could not perform that same miracle among us again?
Yesterday, Bishop Kevin Robertson of the Anglican Church of Canada, preached at the ordination of Bishop Sally French. He used words to define the ministry of John the Baptist: Connection and Courage. John connects times and people. John links the time of the First Covenant with the era of the Second Covenant. John brings together a band of disciples and connects them with Jesus.
Courage – for us who know the rest of the story about John the Baptist, we know that he needed courage in the face of conflict. In the face of conflict, John showed courage – courage to combat the evil of Herod Antipas who jails John and then executes him. Courage to put away his ego to make room for Jesus.
We too are asked to model connection and courage. We have all discovered the importance of connecting with others in our community. We connect through our Thrift Store as we build relationships with the other members of our community. We connect with others through our outreach, our engagement with our local community and communities far from us. We show our courage as we build challenging relationships. We show courage as a multi ethnic community building relationships that connect us with people unlike us. We show courage in championing the marginalized, people whom other church exclude we invite to the table.
We are convinced that God is leading us to create new possibilities, new opportunities, new relationships. We have more work to do to live into our call of connection and courage. We have more people to meet, more opportunities to develop, more bridges to build. As we celebrate the Birth of John the Baptist, we discover that God continues to give birth, to breath new life, to surprise us with the Holy Spirit. All the angels of God look down on us in wonder and cry out: “Look another old lady gave birth to a child!”