Jesus’ first sign, launched by Mary in the context of a community celebration with the help of the servants, needs still more people to bring it to completion.

At Christmas, God Almighty – creator of the earth and heavens; sovereign over all time and space -put Godself in the place of the weakest among us and at the mercy of the strongest. This is good news – good news about God, good news about what is means to be human and good news for all creation.

It’s important to recognize God’s subversive choice in making Mary and Elizabeth prophets of Jesus and of God’s kingdom because that that is what they were – prophets. The scene before us today may seem cozy and domestic – and perhaps it was. But it was not tame.

for Luke, the world into which Jesus is born; into which John’s voice cries out is relevant to the story. God’s salvation does not come in the abstract, as a disembodied idea or a pretty theory, but in the real time, in real places, through real people and real events. As one commentator (Troy Troftgruben, from Working Preacher) puts it: “God saves not in Nevernever land or “somewhere over the rainbow” but in history.”