As many of you know, I have a mildly unhealthy obsession with Hallmark Christmas movies. And so quite often during the season of Advent, something from one of those movies ends up in one of my sermons. Well, I am sorry to inform you that this year will be no different. During our time of COVID sickness the past couple of weeks, I had a lot of time to watch a lot of movies, which included, but was not limited to, getting caught up on all of the new Hallmark Christmas movies of the year. Amongst those movies was one on the Hallmark Movies and Mysteries Channel entitled “Time for Him to Come Home for Christmas.” While the name gives virtually no clues about the content of the movie, it was really quite the complex mystery. Without giving away any major spoilers, the story involves two characters who were both dealing with the impact of a life-changing event that had occurred for them three years earlier and guilt that each of them felt about the event. Near the end, the two characters sit down and share with each other the pain they’ve been carrying all these years. And one character says to the other, “It seems we’ve been carrying this guilt around for too long. Is it okay if we set it down?” That line for me was a symbol of what peace looks like.

Martin Luther King Jr once said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.” While I agree with King, I think we might also say it this way: True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of wholeness. In fact, the Greek word for peace, εἰρήνη, is actually more properly translated as “wholeness.” And I think that wholeness is the essence of what we see in the story we read this morning from Luke. And also in the familiar words of Isaiah 11. As we think about wholeness this morning in light of those two passages, I hope that we might all be able to look deep within ourselves and discover what burdens we have been carrying around. And may we ask ourselves, “Is it okay if we set it down?” That way we may all be able to find wholeness.

Elizabeth had a lot of burdens she was carrying in her life. She was getting along in age and had spent all of her childbearing years barren. In her community, the mark of a successful woman was the birthing of children for her husband, particularly a male heir. Yet Elizabeth had been unable to do so. And to make matters worse, Elizabeth’s husband was a priest. And the priesthood was an inherited role, so typically when the son of a priest grew up, he would take over the priesthood. Perhaps you recall that from the story of Eli in 1 Samuel. So, the fact that Elizabeth had been unable to get pregnant to this point would have been a challenge for her, to say the least. She had probably dealt with whispers and judgmental stares for many years. Perhaps some didn’t even bother to hide their disappointment with her and criticized her aloud. Elizabeth probably felt ostracized and broken. And by the time an angel of the Lord appeared to her husband Zechariah to tell him that Elizabeth was about to get pregnant, she’d probably given up hope. The burden of her disgrace, her guilt, her brokenness was probably like a boulder strapped to her back. She saw no way out of it, no way to set it down. But God had other plans.

Isaiah talks about a shoot coming out of the stump of Jesse. As I’m sure you know, a stump is what is left of a tree when it is chopped down. Isaiah sees the people of Israel like that stump. The remains of a broken people. Now, we don’t know for certain what event in Israel’s history inspired these words of Isaiah. Perhaps it was the exile, or maybe the downfall of Assyria, or possibly the assassination of King Amon that left 8-year-old Josiah as king of Judah. The truth of the matter is that Isaiah’s image of the stump could have been applied to numerous moments in Israel’s history. We see that all throughout the writings of the prophets and in the Psalms. There were many times when the people of Israel felt burdened by their brokenness and separation from God. And they probably felt helpless to set it down. But just as God did for Elizabeth, God had other plans for Israel, too. And, in fact, both stories of brokenness would find their healing in the same place.

Isaiah prophesies that a shoot will come out of the stump of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots. New life is coming, Isaiah tells the people. It will be a new beginning, but it will still come out of the same foundation. And, of course, for the people of Israel at that time, new life for them would have looked like a return to their land and a rise of a new monarch like David. One that would reunite the nation. A monarch so good and pure in the eyes of God that Isaiah says, “Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist and faithfulness the belt around his loins.” This is a monarch who would lead the wolf to lie down with the lamb, the leopard to lie with the kid. Isaiah proclaims the message that under this monarch’s reign, “They will not hurt or destroy on all [God’s] holy mountain.” This coming monarch will restore the dignity and honor of the people and will reunite all who’ve fallen astray, been driven out, or are otherwise disconnected from the people. In this new monarch, the people will finally be able to set down their burdens and find wholeness and joy again.

Elizabeth probably couldn’t imagine a scenario in which her burden of barrenness would ever be set down. But the angel Gabriel had appeared to her husband and told him that Elizabeth was soon to conceive and bear a son. And lo and behold, she did. What had seemed an impossibility was suddenly happening. And not only that but soon after, Elizabeth got word that her young, unmarried niece was pregnant as well. Though many people, even in their family, were judgmental of young Mary for getting pregnant out of wedlock, Elizabeth welcomed Mary. Elizabeth understood what it was like to be shunned and mocked and taunted. So, instead of adding to Mary’s burden, she welcomed Mary into her home. And Mary greeted Elizabeth upon her arrival at the older woman’s home. And when she did, something strange happened for Elizabeth. The baby inside her womb leaped.

Now, I don’t know how many of you have ever put your hand on a pregnant belly and felt the child inside the womb kick or move around, but it is an incredible feeling. And the way Luke describes the scene with Mary and Elizabeth, I get the feeling that this was even more powerful of a movement than that. The child leaped, Luke says. The original Greek means to leap for joy or to skip. Could you imagine what it might feel like to have a baby skipping inside you? And then Luke says that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. That skipping child inside her led her to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Perhaps she was caught up in the joy of it all. Perhaps she’d just had a little bit too much wine that morning. Or maybe the leaping child in her womb gave her the strength to finally set down all of those burdens she’d been carrying for so long, and in doing so, opened her heart to be filled by the Holy Spirit.

We are not so different from Elizabeth or Mary or the people of Israel who Isaiah wrote to. We’ve experienced pain and loss and tension in our lives. And sometimes, maybe even all the time, we feel majorly weighed down by the extra baggage we are carrying around. And we may feel like it is impossible for us to ever set it down. But Elizabeth’s story shows us that God has other plans for us. God will never leave us without hope. God’s deepest desire for us is wholeness. And we can never find that unless we can find a way to set down those weighty burdens that flatten us and break our backs constantly. But even if we can’t find a way to do that, even if the burdens have weighed us down so much that we can’t see hope anywhere, even then God has other plans for us. Elizabeth’s story proves that. I’m certain that she had given up hope of ever conceiving a child. That was a burden she never thought she could set down. But God made a way for her. And God can make a way for us too, even if we can’t see it.

In that Hallmark Christmas movie that I mentioned at the beginning of this message, the two characters who’d been so burdened with guilt and grief over what had happened years earlier weren’t miraculously healed or made whole in that moment when they set down their burden. But that act of setting it down, allowed their hearts to be open to something else. The same can be true for us. When we lay down those burdens, those things that separate us from one another or from God or even from ourselves, our hearts suddenly and miraculously may have space available for something else, something better, space for the Holy Spirit, space for love, space for peace and healing.

When Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit, she exclaims to Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” We don’t see it in the English, but in the Greek, Elizabeth actually uses two different words for “blessed” in this proclamation. The first is a word that emphasizes that Mary and her child will be spoken well of. And the second word is actually the same word Jesus uses in the beatitudes. This is a transformative blessing. It is a blessing that upsets social norms in order to promote wholeness and justice and equality. Mary is blessed with honor rather than shame because she has believed in the promises of God.I can’t begin to imagine how heavy each of your burdens are. And I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it probably feels to even think about setting those down. And even if you never can, you are still beloved by God. But I want to leave you with two things I learned from these passages. First, God never leaves us without a way to move toward wholeness. It may take a miracle, but lucky for us our God is good with miracles. And second, all God asks is that we believe. It doesn’t even take much belief…a mustard seed is all. But in our belief, belief that wholeness is possible, belief that miracles can happen, belief that God truly loves us and won’t abandon us in our need, in our belief, God blesses us and fills us with the Holy Spirit in order to move us toward wholeness. We’ve all been carrying these burdens for way too long. Is it okay if we set them down?