Leaping in the Womb

Luke 1:39-55

A baby leaping in the womb…being a man I am speaking a bit out of line here I’m afraid.  I have no idea what it would be like to feel the sensation of a baby kicking around in my belly.  I got to feel and see my two children kicking around inside of Dana, and see them born and all that.  But, I was just a very scared and inept observer.  I asked Dana about this but all she said was you mostly just go about the day to day stuff and you marvel a lot.  That wasn’t much help I was looking for some deeper thought because I had this sermon to write.  Anyway, if memory serves what I saw her thinking and doing was more like: “What will this child be like?  Is it healthy?  Can I do this?  Can I eat that?  I really want to eat that?  My hormones are out of wack, look out?  I feel like barfing could you get me some crackers.  Heartburrrrnnnnn!  Pull over, I need to pee again, now!  Can I do this?  Why God?  Wow God!  Umph, this baby must be Chuck Norris.  Wow God!”  A new human life growing inside of you, a part of you but not, that bond…it’s a marvel…a wonderful mystery.  But, it’s not for me to know.  That’s a special gift God gave to women.

With that in mind, think of Elizabeth.  Imagine your child not just kicking inside you, but leaping, and leaping for a reason.  Here’s Elizabeth pregnant way past her safe childbearing years.  She had suffered the label of “barren” nearly all her life.  In her day they believed a woman’s main purpose was bearing and rearing children.  She would have had to deal with a lot of scorn.  And here she was pregnant, just like the angel told her husband Zechariah she would become that day he went into the Holy of Holies to offer incense and then the angel struck him mute when he didn’t believe the good news.

In comes her cousin’s daughter, Mary, probably fifteen coming for that extended visit that young daughter’s of cousins sometimes used to have to make when they got pregnant (said with a whisper).  The baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps and she is filled with the Holy Spirit and instead of saying, “You poor child.  Everything’s going to be just fine.  You look beautiful.”  All the while thinking, “Mercy me, child.  What were you thinking?”  Instead of all that sappy, Southern politeness she loudly exclaims, “Woman, you are blessed.  Your baby is blessed.  And who am I that the mother of my Lord has come to see me.  Even my baby’s leaping.  Believe that angel, Honey.  You are blessed.”

Now there’s something deeper going on here that we would be remiss not to note.  Both Elizabeth and Mary stand as representatives of two phases of God’s people.  Elizabeth represents the faithful people of Israel.  She has the new life of the greatest of the prophets growing in her womb.  She’s married to a priest and herself of a priestly family, indeed the chief priests, a descendent of Aaron.  Yet, she was barren and shamed.  Elizabeth stands for the people of Israel who sang the lament of Psalm 80. 

Psalm 80 was written somewhere between 701 BC when the Assyrians destroyed northern Israel to sometime just after 586 BC when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple and carried the Israelites away into exile.  It was Yahweh’s doings to kick his people off the Land because of their idolatry and wanton abuse of the poor.  Yet, in the midst of all this wickedness there always was a faithful remnant of Israelites who had had to suffer the fate of their wicked kin without cause.  These faithful innocents are the people who are crying out in Psalm 80: “Restore us, O LORD God of hosts, let your face shine, that we may be saved.”

Elizabeth and Zechariah were such people.  Luke says at 1:6, “Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and ethical requirements of the Lord.  Yet, they had no children, since Elizabeth was barren, and they both were getting on in years.”  They were faithful among the priesthood; a priesthood who in that day were largely either politically corrupt, hypocritical, or devoutly legalistic.  Yet, though they were faithful it appeared as though God had cursed them and cut them off from having a future generation.

Mary was a young woman still really just a child, maybe just fifteen.  She was innocent in her own right yet about to be scorned for a scandal that was God’s doing.  Mary, this child, was to be the mother of the God/man, the mother of the new humanity.  Her baby will be Yeshua, Joshua, salvation if you remember last week’s sermon.  Israel’s faithful remnant prayed for restoration, for salvation, and Mary’s child Jesus (Yeshua or Joshua) is that salvation.  He is the one at God’s right hand come not just to save God’s people, but to save God’s whole creation from sin, and evil, and death.

I look around at churches today.  The majority of them grown small, aged, nearly barren of children and I think of Elizabeth and her baby, John – John the Baptist – leaping in her womb.  We are like this faithful remnant that she represents.  The culture around us that we used to could call Christian started going secular in the 60’s and now has largely gone pagan.  People with spiritual experiences and ideas about God abound.  “Spiritual but not religious” is a predominant attitude.  We can’t call our culture Christian anymore.  Indeed, anything that looks like institutional Christianity is suspect or scorned.  There are big forms of Christianity out there, the mega-church phenomena, but you have to watch them and ask where the mega-money coming in goes.  Are they really doing anything to eradicate poverty, clean-up neighbourhoods, or get people back on their feet.  Or, are they just getting filthy rich offering spiritual opium to a multitude that suffers existential angst for having gotten lost and grown obese from worshipping the false gods of money, sex, and power.  We, the remnant, may look old and barren but we still got Jesus and the voice of the prophet leaping in our bellies that points to him.  We’ve got Truth.

I want to tell you something about Mary, the fifteen-year-old young woman standing outside our doors pregnant with what’s coming.  Let’s not write her off, amen?  Who is she?  How about a little family history?  The Baby Boomers left the church in the 60’s.   Those that stayed gave the church its last 1950’s–style heyday in the 80’s.  A good many of the Boomers wanted their children to be able to decide for themselves about matters of faith so they dropped them off at church programs for children.  When those children reached their teens they did not stay with the church because it wasn’t a family thing for them and, let’s face it, we only segregated them inside these walls with our children and youth programs. and didn't get to know them.  Then these children of the Boomers started to have children in the late 80’s and early 90’s and saw no need to take them to church.  A generation more or less lost?  Now these very un-churched, secularized, well-gadgetted, social media addicted grandchildren of the Boomers are having children.  The oldest of which would be the 15-year-old young woman outside our door pregnant with what’s coming. 

So what is coming?  Well, whatever it is won’t be coming here.  It just won’t and we have got to accept that and change.  We have to go out there and really be like Jesus whom we know and worship in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.  We have to get out there and really be the family of God.  I emphasize family here because a lot to most of these young folks are wanting for family, family like Elizabeth and Mary.  Elizabeth didn’t judge Mary for her predicament.  She called Mary blessed and herself blessed to be in Mary’s presence because Jesus was there growing in her.  So also with the children and youth who are out there.  We need to be calling them blessed and counting ourselves blessed to be in their lives. 
            One of the most astonishing social realities happening right now is young people awakening to and responding to Jesus and even taking spiritual leadership in their homes.  “and a little child shall lead them” so goes the Scripture.  Let me give you an example.  A couple of weeks ago I was up at the hospital and I went into the chaplain’s office to get my free-parking-clergy-perk-ticket.  While I was talking to Patti, the hub-meistress, a young boy maybe fifteen came in.  He asked for a rosary.  He said his friend told him he could get one their.  Patti got him one and asked if he knew what it was for and if not she’d help.  He thanked her and left.  Friends, I hope you’re feeling a leaping in your bellies.  Something really wonderful is going on out there.  Go find it and bless them and be blessed.  Amen.