Each year I love to return to the first chapters of Luke and ponder the nativity scene. This year, I found myself reflecting about Elizabeth. I see her fulfilling two unnamed roles: that of prophet, and that of mentor.
First to Speak of the Messiah
Zechariah, Elizabeth’s priestly husband, may have sung his now famous prophecy in Luke 2 after his nine-month-plus period of not even speaking. Yet, it is actually Elizabeth who first prophesies in Luke.
She hears Mary’s voice, and feels her child leaping in her womb with joy, as the Spirit fills her. Then she exclaims loudly what no one else but Mary could know (Lk. 1:42-43, 45):
Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of the Messiah should come to me?…Blessed is she who has believed that what our God said to her would be accomplished.
Elizabeth knows Jesus’ identity before He is even born. There is no record of how except the implication of the Spirit’s prophetic leading. Gabriel, the angel, had visited Zechariah and not Elizabeth, and only spoken of Elizabeth and Baby John.
Elizabeth had secluded herself for five months after becoming pregnant. Zechariah had not been able to talk to her, after the angel Gabriel’s rebuke for unbelief. During those days she presumably hears only the sound of her own voice, the wind in the trees, the birds, the sounds of her and her husband’s own movements. Could she have also heard God prophetically during this time? She certainly grew spiritually.
Luke records that at the beginning of her pregnancy, she focuses on her own blessing: “our God has done this for me,” she says, “In these days, God has shown favor to us…” (1:25). Yet by the time of her sixth month, she has a clear understanding of both Jesus and Mary and stands aside as they take center stage, as her son John would do later. Through Elizabeth’s humility, she becomes the first to prophesy about Jesus.
A Mentor to the Poor of Reputation
God chooses Elizabeth not only to be the first to prophesy about Jesus, but also to mentor Mary, who would need it in the months and years to come.
Elizabeth came out of a long life of childlessness in which others likely assumed she was somehow at fault for not having children. She lived her life, until about the age of 60, with the feeling of not-being-good-enough. And so Elizabeth knew about emotional survival in a small community.
Mary was still single. She had gone to see Elizabeth without Joseph; and gone without her family. When she returned to Nazareth, she would be in her fourth month of pregnancy–without a husband, without a reason. Just pregnant and single.
She would have to find a way to tell her parents and Joseph, her sisters and brothers, neighbors, and the townspeople, and face them through the pregnancy. Though Joseph eventually believed her due to his own visitation from an angel in a dream (Mt. 1:20), and married her, Mary’s reputation could not have survived all of this. As Matthew puts it, “”before they came together, she was found to be pregnant…” (Mt. 1: 18). Even her wedding day would have felt tarnished by the opinions of onlookers. (See “The Price of Being Mary” for more on Mary’s strength).
But, she had Elizabeth. Elizabeth understood. Elizabeth knew the truth. Elizabeth saw her as “blessed among women,” rather than the worst of them. Elizabeth knew Mary to be a true believer in God, and would throughout both John’s and Jesus’ lives. And later, if she lived into her 90s, she would be able to comfort Mary as a mother who had lost her only son, also through the evil plots of those in power.
After the resurrection, Mary gained the honor she deserved. But until then the prophet Elizabeth saw with the mothering eyes of God, watching both Jesus and Mary grow up into all God called them to be.