Luke 1:39-45; December 22, 2024; Fourth Sunday of Advent
Truth be told, I never knew how to respond to this text.
I mean, how was I supposed to answer it? It makes little sense. It seems silly and far-fetched.
“Dad, I’m watching alone at home.”
I mean, what does that even mean?
Did Anya really leave Seth at home to watch TV all by himself? He’s 8! What could be so important that she would do that??? It would be improbable. Far-fetched. But, my mind started racing all the same.
“Dad, I’m watching alone at home.”
Then I paused and remembered just who my son is… and then I understood.
See, when Seth gets excited about something he wants to tell everyone about it. And because his brain often races ahead of him, especially when he’s excited, he sometimes doesn’t think about his grammar or syntax before speaking or in this case, texting.
So put another way, in Seth speak, “Dad, I’m watching alone at home” would be more accurately translated as “Dad, I’m watching Home Alone.” As in, Dad, I’m watching the Christmas movie. With Macaulay Culkin. Called “Home Alone.”
“Dad, I’m watching Home Alone” was apparently so exciting to him that he just couldn’t wait to leap off the couch with joy to text me about it. While I was in a Session meeting.
God bless him.
And God bless Elizabeth too. No, not our Elizabeths, as many as there are in our active membership (I think we have 5…) but the Biblical Elizabeth who also couldn’t contain her joy, when the child in her belly leapt himself.
Truth be told, I’ve never really known how to respond to this text either. On the surface, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of scientific sense. It seems a tad silly and far-fetched.
Fetuses leaping in wombs?
How does that work?
A kick, sure. An emerging hand-print, okay. But, a full on leap? C’mon. And ouch.
I had a friend who said this story of leaping babies made him question the rest. That it seemed so silly and far-fetched, that he wondered what else in scripture was just as silly and mythological.
But I told him that’s only a problem if you think it’s all literal.
If you put God’s word, or God, in a box.
I’ve shared this before: but, John Dominic Crossan, one of my favorite theologians reminds us: “My point is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”
And while I’m certainly not disputing the Truth of our scripture, it does seem that in verses like this, it’s best to read them through the lens of symbolic expression. A figurative leap for joy, because of the excitement of what was taking place. And quite frankly, isn’t that a better reading, anyway?
Especially as it reinterprets the Old Testament with the New, as in Genesis, Jacob and Esau also had a leaping match in Rebekah’s womb; but unlike those babies who would always struggle against each other, these babies, John and Jesus, would always work with each other.
Also to keep in mind:
Mary is a young girl. And her relative Elizabeth is described a couple verses before as being of old age.
A Lukan theme is at work signifying that God’s promises to the old are repeating in the new, but in new ways.
For it is through these two women that two children are born. One who paves the way, and the other, who becomes the Way. And through each, the course of our human history is altered forever.
So much so, my friends, that here we are 2000 years later still worshipping. Still singing.
Still leaping with joy, for the joy that first came into this world through a baby born of Mary. Who labored not in a hospital, or in a bed, but in a manger, surrounded by sheep and oxen, and onlooking wisemen who apparently got there by following a star.
And as silly, and as far-fetched as that sounds, it gives us joy, doesn’t it?
And, in the end, what really matters except for that?
My friends, in this world that so often can feel so cruel, so heartless, so joyless… what other truth matters except the Gospel? The Good News. That all of God’s children have been so loved that God’s own child was born to save us all (John 3:16).
And more, that all of us deserve to eat, drink and be merry for as many the days of life they are given under the sun (Ecclesiastes 8:15-16).
So, yes, let us respond to our texts today with leaps of joy!
Let us leap like unborn fetuses!
Let us text like excited children!
Let us sing then old and young women!
And let us holler and scream “Amen!” like this pastor is about to do in your pulpit. Amen!
And then, let us all fall in love again with a story so wonderfully far-fetched and yet so beautifully true, that we do goofball things like let our hearts get ahead of our brains, and tell everyone we know about the greatest story ever told.
That God’s son was born into our human flesh. Not to judge us or condemn us. But with the mission to love and save us. And not just a select group of us. But young and old, old and new. Yes, every single one of us even though there’s not one of us who deserves it.
I mean, isn’t that as silly as it gets? Loving the undeserving?
But thanks be to God who is always doing that and thinking outside of the box!
Amen
