{"id":1609,"date":"2024-12-23T11:39:43","date_gmt":"2024-12-23T16:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=1609"},"modified":"2024-12-23T11:39:45","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T16:39:45","slug":"leaping-love-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2024\/12\/23\/leaping-love-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaping Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Leaping-Love-122324-11.29\u202fAM.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of Locust Grove, PA<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Fourth Sunday in Advent\/C \u2022 December 22, 2024<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/bible.oremus.org\/?ql=601971628\">Micah 5:2-5a<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/bible.oremus.org\/?ql=601971652\">Luke 1:39-55<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ever since Thanksgiving, and even before in some cases, in stores, in media, in daily life, we\u2019ve been bombarded with Christmas. Our culture encourages a season of frenzied spending and parties, of decorations we buy and hang to show the Christmas Spirit. But where is that Spirit? Our Lectionary, the guide to scriptures we hear each Sunday, has taken a different tack. This whole Advent season, we\u2019ve been asked to look not to Bethlehem, not to the stable but to other events. We began with the end: Jesus coming in power, and the heartfelt command to be alert, to watch and listen for Jesus appearance. The last two Sundays we heard about John the Baptist whose testimony is that one more powerful is coming. Finally, today, the last Sunday in Advent, we hear this story on the eve of Jesus\u2019 birth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Strange Story<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s a strange story, isn\u2019t it? Luke doesn\u2019t begin his gospel with Jesus; he begins with the parents of John, his father, Zechariah. Zechariah is a priest and during a service in the temple, the angel Gabriel appears and tells him that he and his wife Elizabeth are going to have a son. Zechariah doesn\u2019t believe him because Elizabeth is too old. So Gabriel tells him he will be mute until his son is born. Never mess with an angel! So today we don\u2019t hear from Zechariah; we hear from Elizabeth. She is, indeed, pregnant; she\u2019s had her own inspiration, and now she\u2019s about to bear a child who will be known later as John the Baptist. There\u2019s no statue for Elizabeth in nativity scenes but let\u2019s pretend there is and set her aside for a moment while we talk about the other person in this story: Mary.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now if you were Roman Catholic, you\u2019d have heard all about Mary. But what you would have heard is about Mary characterized as the mother of Jesus, not this Mary, not this young unmarried woman. There are endless theological debates about Mary in which the word \u2018virgin\u2019 figures prominently. Most of those debates are in Greek and none of them tell us about the reality of someone we would call a girl. Most Biblical scholars suggest Mary would have been about 14. That\u2019s very young in our culture; it was common in hers. What is shocking is that she is pregnant without being married. Girls who became pregnant out of wedlock were often shamed, sometimes stoned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Mary&#8217;s Story<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So we have this story that becomes stranger the more we listen to it. Mary has had her own angelic visitation; you\u2019ll have to come back another time to hear that. Already engaged to Joseph, the angel tells her she will become pregnant with one who will become king, one who will reign in David\u2019s line. She\u2019s from Nazareth, up in the north; now she\u2019s made the hundred-mile journey to Judah, to see someone who may be an aunt or a cousin, Elizabeth. These are two pregnant women who have no business being pregnant: one is too old, one is too young. There are no men in the conversation; this is women\u2019s business. And at the moment they meet, something happens only a woman would understand: the baby in Elizabeth\u2019s womb leaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is the second time in the last few weeks when I feel totally unable to speak to a Biblical story. What does a man know about a baby in the womb moving? Nothing, not a thing. So I did what I did last time, I asked Jacquelyn about it. She said, \u201cWell, May didn\u2019t move around much; mostly she hiccuped.\u201d I tried to imagine what that would be like, having someone hiccup inside you. It sounds awful. I mean, what do you do? You can\u2019t feed them sugar, you can\u2019t scare them, you can\u2019t do anything but just wait, I guess. The one time she remembered May moving sharply was at a baseball game when some unthinking guy holding a beer, didn\u2019t see her belly, tried to go past her and accidentally punched her belly. \u201cMay punched back,\u201d she said. So, a word of caution; May isn\u2019t here often, but if she is, don\u2019t punch her, she punches back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The reading goes on with two songs of praise, one from each woman. But I want to come back to this meeting. Luke\u2014who, like me, is a guy, and therefore really doesn\u2019t know anything about babies leaping in a womb\u2014is the only place that tells this story. But we do have a story in Matthew about the same general time. Matthew tells us,&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.<br \/>Matt. 1:18f<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Joseph is usually described as a carpenter but the word translated \u2018carpenter\u2019 actually isn\u2019t about someone who does what we think of as carpentry. It\u2019s a person who makes tools out of wood: Joseph is a toolmaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Looking for Safety<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So this is the story when we put it together. An angel visits a young girl, Mary, tells her she\u2019s going to become pregnant. She\u2019s already engaged; maybe she\u2019s in love in that can\u2019t stop thinking about him crushy way 14-year-old girls have. The Holy Spirit overwhelms her; she\u2019s pregnant. Joseph knows the baby isn\u2019t his. Honestly? Nazareth is a small place, if you know anything about small towns, you know they don\u2019t keep secrets well. Joseph is planning to end the engagement; while he thinks about this, Mary leaves town, goes to visit her cousin or aunt Elizabeth. It\u2019s a long way to go, a hundred miles, perhaps. Remember that the main way you get places in that time is you walk. What makes a young, pregnant girl walk a hundred miles? I can only think of one thing: she\u2019s scared, and she\u2019s looking for a safe place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s what she finds with Elizabeth; that\u2019s what that leaping baby in Elizabeth\u2019s womb means. Maybe Mary still doesn\u2019t quite believe the angel sent to her; maybe she\u2019s already felt too many stares and heard too many questions. Maybe she\u2019s figured out what\u2019s going on with Joseph. But when she meets Elizabeth, when Elizabeth tells her own story, when Elizabeth\u2019s baby leaps recognizing the special significance of Mary\u2019s baby, she\u2019s already safe.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So we have these two stories of praise from two women who aren\u2019t supposed to be having babies but are, who aren\u2019t the sort of people we think of as especially blessed, but are. The rabbis who teach the history of God\u2019s grace in Israel are all male but here it\u2019s two women who say in the most profound way possible that God\u2019s love is still active, still present, still making things happen in the world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Elizabeth speaks of the Mary\u2019s baby as a fulfillment of the angelic message. Mary says,&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[God] has come to the aid his child Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever. [Luke 1:54f]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She also connects this aid to God\u2019s special love for the poor, the weak, the powerless. Leaping love is for all, but it begins with loving those who need it most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What about us?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What about us? What does this kind of love that leaps when Jesus is near mean in our lives? There is a big temptation here for me as a preacher. I want to suggest some specific thing to do.<br \/>I want to endorse some mission. I want to tell a story of some other church, some other time, some other people who leapt at a chance to express God\u2019s love and helped someone or some people feel safer, fed them so they were less hungry, cared for them in a way that transformed their lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But those are other people, other times, other places. So I\u2019m going to simply leave the story here with you. Mary went to Elizabeth, seeking safety, and found it. When did you feel safe? How did that feel? When have you helped someone feel safe? When can you do it again? How can we do it together as a church? We have this sign: \u201cA small church with a big message\u201d. Isn\u2019t that the message?\u2014that here, you are safe in the arms of love, God\u2019s love. In Reformed Churches, we don\u2019t use the word \u2018sanctuary\u2019 much. But perhaps we should. Because that\u2019s what this place is meant to be: a sanctuary of safety, where all are reminded we are children of God together. If you want to feel that leaping love, you don\u2019t have to be pregnant with a child: we are all pregnant with possibility. May we turn that possibility into the reality of helping people find safety here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mary finds safety when Elizabeth&#8217;s child leaps in the womb. We can all express this leaping love when we encounter Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[68,371,3,32],"tags":[132,98,67,172,5],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advent","category-luke","category-sermon","category-year-c","tag-advent","tag-hope","tag-jesus","tag-love","tag-sermon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1612,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions\/1612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}