“We Find Joy in Connection”
Isaiah 40:3-5
Luke 1:24-45
There would have been no telephone. No postal service. No email. No texting or WhatsApp, no Facebook on Instagram.
The only way Mary could connect with her relative Elizabeth was to go to her home, and the only way for a poor, young, pregnant girl like Mary to get to Elizabeth’s home in the Judean hill country was to walk. All 80 miles or so.
All blisters and aching muscles. Likely little to no time off for morning sickness, and certainly no rest stops or safe, public places to pee.
And yet something—or someone—drove Mary to make the long, lonely, possibly unsafe journey. Something—or someone—in her yearned that deeply for connection, for community, to hear someone say, “No, you’re not out of your mind; no, you are not a disgrace. You, Mary, are blessed above all women!” Someone to say,” You’re not alone. God is with you, and so am I.”
And so Mary went. Word of Elizabeth’s unlikely pregnancy had come to her by way of the angel and perhaps it had also traveled from Elizabeth and Zechariah’s community west of Jerusalem up north to Mary’s home in Nazareth. Neither woman had access to what would have been an equally unlikely book, What to Expect When You Have No Earthly Reason to Be Expecting, and so they could turn only to one another for perspective, confirmation, support, wisdom, experience, and—last, but not least—joy.
Now it may be that you’ve never given much thought to Mary’s time with Elizabeth, and even now you may consider it an insignificant detail in a hard-to-believe story. You are, of course, fully entitled to your perspective.
But on this particular second Sunday of Advent, when so many of us are vacillating between—on the one hand—preparing, waiting, and hoping for God’s love to break into the world all over again, and—on the other hand—despairing over the violent, distressing, and even inhumane state of the world, I want to suggest that Mary and Elizabeth have something important to teach us:
That true, life-giving connection—that is, going out of our way to spend time with the Holy, another person, or a community—is far more than socializing. If we let it, connecting with God and others can become a spiritual practice, a way of grounding ourselves in God’s goodness and making room for God’s love, peace, hope, and joy to grow within and among us, no matter what is happening in our lives or in the life of the world.
And when we practice the gift and the grace of connection, we can begin to understand that we are not alone. When we are intentional about making connections, we have the potential to create community, solidarity, compassion, and new ways of seeing and understanding. When we pursue connection, we open our minds to being changed and our hearts to finding and expressing joy. And all that understanding, all that community, all that compassion, all that joy, can heal and change us. All those fruits of connection might even, by the grace of God, become pathways of healing, justice, and peace, in the world.
Let me try to explain.
Unlike Mary and Elizabeth, most of us have any number of easy ways to connect with people. We text. We email. We post on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. And if all else fails, we can actually call or meet up with someone.
We have all these ways to connect, but we often feel too tired, busy, or unsure of ourselves to make the effort. We have all these online tools for staying in touch, but our real-life connections can feel fleeting shallow. We may even count ourselves as having lots of friends, while at the same time feeling there’s no one we can call when we need practical or emotional help.
We have worship service and choir practice, ministry teams and prayer groups and book groups, sports clubs and men’s groups, activist affinity groups, volunteer activities and play groups, 12-step meetings and groups for just about every other kind of activity, many of them available on Zoom or YouTube. And yet the U.S. surgeon general has declared a national epidemic of loneliness.
We have a thousand ways to connect but many of us live in bubbles where we have less and less contact with people of different religions, races, political parties, economic classes, or sexualities. And so the group-think reinforces itself, and the divide between people like us and people unlike us grows deeper and wider.
And yet our faith tells us that there is no place that the love of God is not. There is no person who is not a beloved child of God.
To connect with another person is to connect with the Holy One.
To open our hearts to the heart of another is to open our hearts to the transformative love of God.
To reach across divides to build bridges of solidarity and connection is to prepare the way of the Lord.
To connect with and honor the image of God in others is to make peace possible.
Connection has less to do with sharing our joy than with noticing and giving thanks for the deep joy we feel when a connection has been made.
The Instagram poet Hannah Ro writes, “I still haven’t figured out how to keep my shower floor clean or make morning smoothies or respond to stress calmly. Same, same, same my friends tell me, a love note of sorts. Maybe the world doesn’t need us to cut down on carbs or make more money or waste less time. Maybe instead it needs us to reach those who feel alone in their messy homes or difficult relationships or unresolved issues. To impress less and connect more. To share one simple message: Same. Same, same, same.”
We don’t know if it was joy that motivated Mary to make the arduous journey to be with Elizabeth. It could just as likely have been fear or shame, loneliness or confusion, or a deep longing for someone who might understand, someone with whom she might share a holy connection.
And that’s another thing about connection: It often requires a “yes” from us, some kind of opening on our part. It requires awareness of our own feelings, needs, desires, and probably also the needs and desires of another. It often requires us to take a risk, to make ourselves vulnerable. It usually requires intention, time, and energy. Sometimes the effort involved is just plain inconvenient. Making the effort to spend time with someone is sometimes expensive.
And, yes, sometimes we will be disappointed. Sometimes the connection won’t hold.
Oh, but when it does! Oh, when someone says to whatever we’re feeling or experiencing or struggling with, “Same! Same! Same!” Oh, when someone weeps with us or rejoices with us. Oh, when we delight in someone who delights in us.
Then our heart leaps for joy, and suddenly the world is a little less cruel. Suddenly peace feels a little more possible. We become more aware of God With Us. For a moment, if only a moment, all is right with our world.
Beloveds, Christmas is about a Holy Love longing for connection. It is about a God so besotted with their creation, so in love with us, so deeply yearning for our healing and wholeness and connection, that God willingly took on the clear danger of becoming one of us. And so the Word made the long and harrowing journey from Spirit to flesh and bone, from the cosmos to the womb, from eternal glory to a borrowed tomb.
All for the love of us. All for the hope of transformative, healing, empowering, joyful connection.
That longing you and I sometimes feel, that emptiness we notice when we’re not trying to numb it with busyness or substances or even life-giving activity, is us longing for the connection for which we were made: union with the Holy One. The deep joy of being in harmony with our Creator.
All we have to do to make the connection is say yes to love, open our heart to possibility, take the risk, and make the effort to live with the intention of fostering connection.
Love is coming our way, beloveds. The joy of connection is ours for the giving and taking, the sharing and deepening.
The least we can do is prepare the way.
