Leap with John

[00:00:00] Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:00:08] Well, we're approaching the darkest time of the year here. I don't actually know when the solstice is. [00:00:15] It was yesterday. [00:00:18] All right, it's getting lighter, I guess. [00:00:22] Let's just pretend it's the darkest time of the year. [00:00:29] There's that passage In Isaiah, Isaiah 9, I think the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light right on those dwelling in the land of shadow, something like that. On them, a light has dawned. [00:00:44] We look to Jesus in hope. We look to his coming in hope here in this last Sunday in adventure. And, well, it's like we look in the darkness. He's the light that lightens the darkness. We look in hope to his coming that he would lighten the darkness of our hearts. As we said a couple weeks ago in the collect of the day, the prayer of the day. Well, this morning we prayed. [00:01:18] Stir up your power, O Lord, and come and help us by your might that the sins which weigh us down may be quickly lifted up by your grace and mercy. [00:01:31] Stir up your power, O Lord, and come and help us by your might. [00:01:38] So we're looking to Jesus. [00:01:42] Well, to God's power. Stir up your power and come help us by your might. [00:01:49] In the gospel reading this morning, we see the Holy Spirit doing a lot. [00:01:57] And so we get to see Elizabeth and Mary's faith and even the faith of John the Baptist. [00:02:04] Just notice how full of the Holy Spirit this reading is. [00:02:09] In those days, Mary arose, went with haste into the hill country to a town in Judah. She entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. [00:02:23] Well, there's the Holy Spirit. You know, it's like, wow, the baby gets excited first. John the Baptist gets excited first. And actually, the angel Gabriel had said this to his father Zechariah, that John the Baptist, John his son, would be filled with the Holy Spirit even in his mother's womb. So that's kind of cool. There's a promise fulfilled already. [00:02:50] You see God at work. [00:02:54] So John the Baptist leaps in his mother's womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. There we go. And now her voice is going to praise God because she's been filled with the Holy Spirit. [00:03:09] She exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. [00:03:15] And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? [00:03:21] You see, Elizabeth could say, like, yeah, come on, you know, I'm your older cousin and I'll take care of you. It's going to be. I mean, maybe she did those things, you know, but she could kind of take on a motherly, like, I own you kind of, kind of attitude. I don't know, I'm just making it up. But, you know, but instead she says, like, I'm not. [00:03:48] Why do I get to have you come to me? [00:03:52] Not because. [00:03:53] I mean, not because of Mary. Right. But she calls her the mother of my Lord. [00:04:00] So Mary is lifted up for the sake of the one that she's carrying, for the sake of Jesus. [00:04:07] So you see how the honor and the glory go kind of through Mary to Jesus, but it doesn't skip Mary. You know, it's kind of cool. [00:04:18] It's kind of like if somebody interacts with you and encounters Jesus. [00:04:24] Let's say that you are living in faith, looking to Jesus, and somebody comes to you with a problem, and you've got Jesus in mind, and he gives you something helpful to say in faith. You're speaking in faith, which means receiving from. From above, receiving from God through Jesus. You receive something to say so that it's not just you speaking, but God speaking through you. [00:04:52] They might say, thank you, that was so wise, or, you really helped me out. [00:04:59] And the praise could stop at you. [00:05:02] Or you could say, well, thank God because he gave me the words to say, or something like that. And so the praise goes through you to God. But it's still, they're thanking you. They're not like, forget you, thanks God. Right? [00:05:17] You see that pattern going on here? So Elizabeth responds in humility, which is to say, responds in faith. [00:05:29] Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, exclaimed, blessed are you, the fruit of your womb. Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? [00:05:38] For, behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. [00:05:46] And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. [00:05:54] So here now she sort of explains. She comes back to Mary and says, blessed are you. Blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. So what is she blessed for? [00:06:18] For believing. For believing the word of God. [00:06:23] Well, this is the same for. [00:06:26] For any of us. Like, what would God count as righteous for us? [00:06:34] There's that passage in Romans that says that Abraham's faith was counted to him as righteousness. [00:06:41] His faith was counted to him as righteousness. He Believed God, he believed God's promise. And so God called him righteous, counted him righteous. It's the same for Mary. It's the same for you and me. It's faith. Now, this is important because the focus on faith means it's not really a focus on us at all. [00:07:09] It's not that you have something to bring to God for him to be happy with you. [00:07:18] I guess you could put it this way. The angel Gabriel comes to Mary and says, you have found favor with God. [00:07:27] Well, don't you want to find favor with God? [00:07:31] You know, I mean, that's. Favor is the same as grace. That's like in Greek, it's the same word, favor and grace. So if somebody shows you favor, then they have, like, you hold a good place in their estimation, right? Like, they like to show somebody favor or to favor somebody is to sort of lift them up and be gracious toward them. Again, grace and favor, the same word there. All right. So the angel Gabriel comes to Mary when he tells her that she's going to give birth to Jesus and that Jesus is going to reign on the throne of David forever and that he'll be holy, the Son of God. [00:08:18] First, the angel greets Mary and says, you have found favor with God. [00:08:27] Can you find favor with God? Can I? Yes. How? [00:08:32] The same way as Abraham, the same way as Mary, by believing in God's word. [00:08:43] Now, again, faith, like believing, that's just a posture, right? That's receiving from above. It's like being a container to be filled with something from outside, to be filled with God's word to receive from him. And so faith is kind of the opposite of, like having something. Faith is receiving something from God. [00:09:11] In that sense, you could think of it as being, like, empty or full. [00:09:16] We're not full of glorious things and so glorious. Like a king. A king has everything, has authority. People come and go when he says, and he's got riches and everything that he wants and a palace, and he's lifted up, like physically seated on a throne. He's filled with good things. [00:09:42] But the person who doesn't have a home and doesn't have food and whatnot is empty. You see what I mean? Well, faith is a kind of emptiness, as opposed to maybe the opposite of faith or humility, which would be pride. Like, well, I've already got it all. [00:10:04] This is the way that God works. He counts as righteous faith. [00:10:09] This emptiness, this readiness to be filled by God, this accounting God as full of goodness, the giver of good things, and counting ourselves as nothing, as Simply containers to be filled with God's goodness through faith. [00:10:32] This is why God works in this way, this sort of reversal of strength and weakness, of wisdom and foolishness. We see it especially at Christmas. [00:10:48] We have an example of it in our reading from Micah. But you, O Bethlehem, Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, one whose origin is from. Of old, from ancient days. [00:11:11] See, this is just the pattern that God chooses to use that he work. Strength in weakness, greatness in littleness. The Savior is going to come from Bethlehem, this little town, Podunk town, you know, in the middle of nowhere, that doesn't even have a name for itself. [00:11:32] Why does he do this? [00:11:34] He does it because sin works the opposite way. A worldly perspective is the opposite. Let's choose something grand, something that grabs attention, something that looks and seems worthy of glory and honor. [00:11:50] And God says, well, that's not the right perspective to sort of build up from below and try to be great apart from God. Instead, what he wants is faith for us to be turned toward God, not toward something else, to be turned toward God, ready to receive. And so he chooses the small and the weak and the foolish. [00:12:16] Paul talks about the cross as foolishness for those, for the Gentiles, but strength, the power of God for salvation for those who believe. [00:12:32] So what do we have here? As we wait and hope for Jesus, as we look to his coming in a couple of days, as we remember his coming at Christmas, but also as we look to his coming to us, what do we have to greet him with? How do we celebrate the coming of our Lord Jesus to us? [00:12:55] Well, we celebrate in humility, with repentance, and that means partly repenting of our worldliness. [00:13:06] When we consider those things that seem powerful or worthy of our attention, those things that seem wise in the eyes of the world? [00:13:16] One way to think of it is the entire world is getting ready for President Trump to enter office. [00:13:25] There's a lot of turmoil, too. Things are kind of swirling in the political world and, well, that can grab a lot of attention. Maybe it's not grabbing your attention, maybe it is, but it's just one example of something that seems like a really big deal, you know, or you can think of, like, all the stuff that's going on in the Middle east or those sorts of things. How much attention does that. Does that draw in terms of gravity? Like, what kind of gravitational force does it have? And then how does that compare with Jesus Christ? [00:13:57] In terms of drawing attention, we want our attention to be drawn to what is truly glorious. But what's truly glorious isn't glorious or worthy of attention in the eyes of the world or from a worldly perspective. It's not obvious how you are going to increase your power by paying attention to Jesus Christ this Christmas. [00:14:22] But if you pay attention to the markets or to the right, then you can increase your power. So you see, this Christmas, as always, we're challenged to pay attention to the thing that doesn't always pay to pay attention to, to consider our Lord Jesus Christ, who is glorious and who has everything and who gives everything. In faith. It's just that for now it's in faith, not sight. We don't see the outcome of our faith yet. The promises have not been completely fulfilled yet. That will come when he comes back in glory, when it's obvious, when things are flipped to normal, when even those with worldly perspective will be confronted with the reality of Jesus power, when he comes in power and makes things right. May we be found with faith and joy in his coming, looking to him who alone is worthy of all glory and honor. In Jesus name, amen.