Marginal Christianity

Exposition Mary receives Gabriel’s message, opens herself to it and hotfoots it 70 miles to visit Elizabeth. Their exchange illustrates Luke’s reversal theme. Mary, the younger greets her elder as is proper. Elizabeth, unknown to Mary but not the reader to be pregnant, hears Mary’s greeting and her child leaps in her womb. And she then acclaims “the fruit of Mary’s womb” and Mary herself as “blessed” and treats the young woman as her superior. The God whom Mary will shortly acclaim as one who sponsors reversals of this kind is already at work in the lives of these two women! Garland observes: “The greeting is mentioned three times for emphasis, and it creates three effects: the child leaps in Elizabeth’s womb, Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit, and she announces twice that Mary is blessed and interprets the meaning of the child’s leap in her womb theologically” (Garland, Luke : 2389-2391).    Filled with the Spirit at this point (v.41), Elizabeth realizes the s...

Exposition A faithful priestly family, Zechariah and Elizabeth, were living faithfully - “righteous before God” (v.6), that is, within the story line that governs Luke’s account. He carefully situates them in this story within the history of the world going around them. God’s work is this world, in this world, and for this world – “in the days of King Herod of Judea” (v.5). “Righteous” means living in right relation to God and for right relations in the world God created. Far from a stuffy, priggish, rule-keeping fetish, righteousness is the freedom to live for God and from his good order and intentions for his world. Just one problem: Elizabeth was barren! A curse from the world’s point of view, though from the story line of divine promise from which Luke worked, just where she needed to be. A barren “mother” of Israel, Elizabeth takes her place alongside Sarah (Gen.11:30), Rebekah (Gen.25:21), Rachel (Gen.29:31), and Hannah (1 Sam.2:5), as those who received from God new l...