What’s Taking Up Space In You?

Sermon by Pr. Craig Mueller on the Seventh Sunday of Advent + Sunday, December 22, 2024.

You’re at a store. Or you encounter someone you haven’t met before. And their greeting is: hey, how are you? Without thinking you respond: fine, how are you? You are not going to tell them that you are having a bad day. Or that your heart is breaking. Or that you’re totally stressed. Maybe you comment on the weather. Or how busy you are. Do they want to know how you really are?

There are other ways to check in. How are you doing? What’s new with you? And my own favorite, which I use, but catches people off guard. What do you say? What I mean is, you can say anything about anything. But if people don’t know the phrase, they quip back, “about what?”

If he knows someone well, my good friend Jack will ask: how are you holding up? Or someone else suggested: what are you working on these days? Or: what are you looking forward to next year?

But my recent favorite way to check in with someone is: what is taking up space in you? In other words, what is filling your thoughts? What are your worries or joys these days? With Christmas nearly upon us, I am sure there would be a lot of different responses if I brought the microphone to you and asked, what is taking up space in you?

In today’s beloved gospel, holy space is shared by two women experiencing unplanned pregnancies. Young unwed Mary and her older relative, Elizabeth. Not only is the space in their bodies bulging with new life. I imagine their hearts full of joy, full of wonder, and let’s be honest, full of questions. Over a cup of something warm, they check in. Using my words, they might say, what is taking up space in you? How did this happen, they ask each other. What it does it mean? What will people say? How will I get through this?

What a beautiful image of an older woman mentoring, supporting, enveloping a younger woman. It is truly sacred space. There is more than fetuses growing in their wombs. They are growing in wisdom, growing in trust, growing in solidarity with each other and with a divine purpose they are only beginning to understand.

As they make space for each other, they make space for the Holy One as well. And they offer words of blessing. Elizabeth has such a bodily reaction to the whole scene that the babe leaps in her womb. She feels the movement of the baby, yes, but of the Spirit as well. And she proclaims words that echo through time. In prayers, in the Hail Mary, on the lips of multitudes. Blessed are you among women, dear Mary, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

And if you haven’t noticed: there are no men around. And it may be one of the only conversations between two women in scripture! Mary responds with words that have echoed through generations—known as the Magnificat, our psalm for today. My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. You, O God, have filled with the hungry with good things. You have lifted up the lowly.

Mary stands in the long line of prophets who announce hope for all those without dignity or social standing. All those on the bottom of life’s heap. Mary’s words are radical and revolutionary. The status quo is overturned. The rich sent away empty. The powerful deposed.

Mary’s son will embody this liberation for the world. Jesus will make space in his heart and in his ministry for those despised and rejected, all those left out, all those who limited by disability, social standing, poverty, or sorrow.

Twenty years ago, a number of Lutherans and other Protestants got together at a conference called Mary, Mother of God. They discussed how the exaggerated cult of Mary at the time of the Reformation diminished her role for then on. Luther called Mary the Mother of God, and had a high regard for her. Luther taught that in saying the Hail Mary we are not praising Mary, but giving God glory for what was accomplished through her.

One of the speakers at the conference spoke of Mary as “space for God”. Through her assent, through her “let it be” she offered to be God’s space in the world. In the Orthodox tradition Mary’s womb is considered more spacious than the heavens for it contains the uncontainable. The very mystery of God made flesh.

During these gray and dark days, we decorate our spaces with lights and glitter, with flowers and greens. When there seems to be no hope, it’s as if we are saying: life goes on. Everything is cyclical. Change is built into the universe. The seasons will turn. The light will dawn again. Spring will come. God is faithful.

But what is taking up space within you? Are you tending to that as well as the decorating and baking? Are you holding gently the many feelings that come upon you this time of year, some understandable, some seeping up from deep places within you beyond your reckoning.

We carry so much from Christmases past, and it all takes up space in us, whether we are aware of it or not. A reason to not only hold our own inner space with compassion, but to do the same for others, honoring whatever grief, pain, regrets, sadness—the disappointments or unmet expectations that may be taking up space in them.

Maybe you will not greet people with a literal blessing like Elizabeth did, but look at them with through the eyes of blessing. With an open heart to all that may not be said.

What is taking up space in you? Three days before Christmas I imagine there is a to-do list. Maybe a bundle of worries. Along with the delights of food and music and cheer.

But there is more. Even on these dark days, new life is coming to birth in you. Like seeds in the earth, a space for hope is being prepared. You are pregnant with possibilities more than you can imagine. In baptism God calls you highly favored, calls you blessed. Through the Spirit, the mystery of God takes up space in your very being. Fills you with longing for a more just world and for a peace that will last.

You may not be great with child but notice what is happening in your body, whether you are young or old. Pay attention to what is happening within you. Hold it all gently. Hold it with the same compassion that Mary and Elizabeth do as they embrace one another. And welcome whatever is yet to be.