Remembering Krister Stendahl
'And Why Is This Granted to Me?'
A sermon preached by Krister Stendahl on the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination.
Fourth Sunday in Advent
5 Micah 2-4
10 Hebrews 5-10
1 Luke 39-45
In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."
Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with you.
Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Amen.
This is the day when even Lutherans can join in praying the prayer that is, next to the Lord's Prayer, the most pervasive and beloved in Christendom. For today is the Fourth Sunday in Advent.
I was ordained on December 17, 1944. Fifty years ago, December 17 was the Third Sunday in Advent. But this year the Sunday closest to that date is the Fourth Sunday. That shift feels symbolic and meaningful to me. The Third Sunday in Advent is reserved for John the Baptist's acid sermons, and while I did not really address people as "you brood of vipers," my early preaching was often in that key, and my theology was certainly full of moralism. What a strange oxymoron it is when Luke calls John's preaching about Jesus' call to judgment—with winnowing fork in hand—"good news."
For years I spoke to the will—my own and others—but now, after fifty years, I have become more fascinated with the heart, more absorbed by the mysteries of salvation and by that which calls for meditation and contemplation. What better gospel for such a fascination than today's story about Mary and Elizabeth, especially if we follow the direction of one lectionary and save the Magnificat, Mary's canticle, for another time. That magnificent song could tempt a preacher to pass by the mystery and delve into "scattering the proud" and "putting down the mighty from their thrones." No, let us have this day with the mystery itself, the mystery about which Ignatius of Antioch wrote to the people of Ephesus some eighty years after Jesus' death: "And the virginity of Mary and her giving birth were hidden from the Prince of this world, as was also the death of the Lord. Three mysteries of a cry wrought in the stillness of God. . ." That is enough to meditate on for the rest of my life, and into the world to come.
Elizabeth, Mary, and the loud, inspired cry of Elizabeth in the stillness of their meeting. Two women, no men around, just as in the end at the grave of Jesus. Two women in the time of wonder, wonderment and wondering—those nine months men do not, cannot know, just as it is hard to imagine "a cry wrought in the stillness of God."
Two women. One too late, it seemed, for "this is the sixth month with her who was considered barren," just like Hannah, the mother of the prophet Samuel and the first singer of a magnificat. The other, it seemed, too young, too early, premature—the Virgin Birth. I don't know what I think about the Virgin Birth, or, rather, I do know what I think, and that doesn't help me much. Could the Virgin Birth be the Church's ultimate critique—in spite of itself—of men's self-aggrandizement, of taking their indispensability for granted? Who knows the mystery of the Virgin Birth? Could that be one of its meanings?
The scene of the women alone makes my thoughts wander around in the Old Testament—the First Testament. My thoughts go "channel-surfing" in the Bible, not unlike the way my car radio chooses the signal that is strong enough to be heard the most clearly. That is how the first Christians read their Bible. They perceived and recognized Scripture's meaning in the light of what they saw and heard in their own blessed time. I would not necessarily speak of fulfillment of prophecy, although some theologians like to see it so in their anxious, apologetic hunger for proofs, even where no proofs can be found. Rather, there is a distinct shape to God's way of doing things, a shape that the Scripture reinforces and helps us to recognize.
Elizabeth's cry is there in Micah: "But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore they shall be given up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth." Bethlehem Ephrathah was the place where Rachel was buried, and the words recall her loud cry in Ramah, echoed at the birth of Jesus in Herod's pogrom in Bethlehem. Jeremiah remembers the cry in that salvation-pregnant thirty-first chapter about the renewed covenant, when God's law is written on people's hearts. In the same chapter of Jeremiah we read, "The Lord has created a new thing on the earth: a woman protects a man," or as one translation has it, a woman "courts" a man.
In the same way, the writer to the Hebrews was struck by the word "body" in his allusion to the Greek text of Psalm 40: "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me." "Body" is a fitting word, indeed, for the letter's main theme is how Christ's death on Calvary makes all sacrifices obsolete. We Lutherans would perhaps have preferred it if the writer had stuck with the Hebrew text of the psalm, for it says". . .ears you have prepared for me," and we surely do celebrate Paul's idea that faith comes from hearing.
But my thoughts continue to wander, and they wander all the way back to Genesis, the book about beginnings, births and survival. Those who originally heard in Luke's gospel how the baby leaped in Elizabeth's womb probably thought of Rebekah, in whose womb the painful struggle and strife between Esau and Jacob had already begun. Rebekah cried in despair, "If it is thus, why do I live?" Her pain and misery at the leaps of strife change into what Elizabeth experiences as the leap for joy of her child John, the older cousin who says in another gospel, "The bridegroom is the one who has the bride; the best man who stands by rejoices at his voice." The strife was not to be repeated.
Elizabeth and Mary, guardians of the mysteries of Christmas. This story is about life—as mothers are: "And the Word became flesh." In the Virgin Birth it is not so easy anymore to draw a sharp line between the divine and the human. Mary was called "Mother of God," and in the Virgin Birth the clear demarcation between the possible and the impossible is gracefully blurred, as Gabriel told Mary.
Perhaps this is the mystery of our salvation—that God becomes most divine when God becomes most human, that we cannot use our human limitations as an excuse, and that first when we live in the image of god, the imago dei, we are fully human.
Two pregnant women alone with one another in their wonderment—that is the icon at the end of Advent, an icon of women as bearers of our hope and our salvation. It all makes me say with Elizabeth, as I summarize fifty years of priesthood, "And why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?"
I invite you to join me in making that question—that in gratitude for grace—also your own.
krister stendahl, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Divinity Emeritus, was Dean of Harvard Divinity School from 1968-1979. He preached this sermon at University Lutheran Church in Cambridge, Mass., on the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination.
