Scroogy McGrinchypants

The Holy Gospel According to St. Luke the 1st Chapter

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” 

And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

At this time of year, I’m known by my holiday nickname… Scroogy McGrinchypants.  In my mind, since Christmas the THIRD most holy day of the Christian year (after Easter and Pentecost) we should decorate and celebrate with just slightly less intensity than we decorate and celebrate for Pentecost.  You may be surprised to learn that I’ve never been able to sell that at home or church!  

But as every Grinch learns, you just can't keep Christmas from coming and at some point it can’t be held back any longer.  Something happens… a sign, even for those of us most Grinchy, that signals the turn into Christmas.  For stores and children it seems that Halloween is that sign.  Halloween costumes put away and Candy Corn on the clearance table… THAT is the sign that Christmas is coming!  For my wife, it’s hearing Vince Guaraldi’s Christmas music from Charlie Brown.  For her, THAT’s the sign.  For me, it’s hanging the greens at church.  From that point on, completely in spite of my usual Scroogy McGrinchypants self, the excitement and anticipation builds and builds until kids and adults and yes, even Pastor McGrinchypants can’t sit still any longer.  From the moment we see that sign, we begin to live our lives jumping around, ready for Christmas to happen.  

John the Baptist, while still in his mother’s womb, had that kind of excitement!  Way before he was even BORN, John was to that jumping-for-joy state of excitement!  Even the most aggressive retailers can only seem to pull off that excitement starting after Halloween, but here, John the Baptist had that excited level of anticipation for the coming of the birth of Jesus, months and months and months before that first Christmas would even arrive!

The even more extraordinary thing is that John isn’t excited for the toys, the food, the parties, eggnog, trees or lights.  John is excited, and excited to the point where he is jumping for joy, because GOD came into the room.  John isn’t jumping for joy months before Christmas for the presents with wrappings and bows… but for the PRESENCE... God with us.  It’s sad really, that the world’s focus on presents with bows leaves me less excited to celebrate God’s presence… God with us.  Because if there’s anything in this world worth exerting the energy and endangering the knees to actually jump for joy, it's God coming to enter the world to be with the likes of me and you!

And God has come for the likes of me and you.  Will Willamon says that if God is willing to get a poor, teenaged, unmarried girl pregnant and then have the audacity to call her blessed, THAT should tell us that this God will go to whatever lengths might be necessary to be with us.  If our God is willing to be born in this regular and very earthly way; is willing to be born to the poorest of the poor, into a scandalous family, then you and I can never make the mistake and say, “Jesus was not meant for the likes of me.” 

God has bent so low and so deep on purpose, so that every single bit of creation could be scooped up into God’s presence, explicitly including the likes of you and me!  Can you imagine being scooped up by God and held in God’s loving presence?  We adults don’t often allow ourselves to show that kind of joy, do we?  When’s the last time you literally jumped for joy?  My last time was at a Maine hockey game.  Sports may be the only time we jump for joy as adults and worse is that aversion to jumping for joy seems to have leaked into the church!  I’m not sure where it started, this idea that church should be a place where people are quiet, stoic and reserved.  Where did it come from, that being in the presence of God should be solely somber and proper?  That certainly wasn’t John’s reaction!  Here in this lesson, John literally does cartwheels in Elizabeth’s womb because he finds himself in the presence of Jesus!  “Well” you might say, “That was John as a child.”   But that’s not the only time Christ’s presence led to great joy!    

You can’t tell me that the mood of the crowd remained somber, with proper Victorian British reserve and Scandinavian stoicism when Jesus turned 180 gallons of water into REALLY good wine?!  You can’t tell me that the people remained calm and subdued when Jesus healed their blindness, cured their leprosy, cast out their demons or raised the dead!  You can’t tell me that after 5000 plus people were filled with delicious fish sandwiches with leftovers to spare, the crowd’s only reaction was to calmly dab the corners of their mouths with a perfectly pressed linen napkin!  NO!  The presence of Jesus… the presence of the ONE who scatters the proud, brings down the powerful, lifts up the lowly, fills the hungry with good things, and sends the rich away empty… THAT isn’t a QUIET affair!  It demands a LEAP from the oppression of the earth into the extravagant freedom of the heavens!  It demands we jump for joy!

John's jumping for JOY was the first earthly reaction to the presence of Christ.  Elizabeth's shouts of joy and thanksgiving were the next, and BOTH pointed the world to Christ’s presence… God with us!  But THAT was only the beginning.  John’s whole ministry was spent pointing to Jesus… telling the world THERE is the Lamb of God… THERE is your source of LIFE… THERE is the ONE who brings light into our darkness, JOY into our pain!  

But John and Elizabeth don’t JUST point us to Christ, they also serve as models for OUR ministry too, and not just the ministry of those of us in funny shirts either!  ALL of us are called to BE like John and Elizabeth, continually pointing to Jesus.  We too are called to use words and actions to tell and show our family, friends and neighbors, “THERE is the source of LIFE. THERE is the light that shines into your darkness no matter how deep your darkness might be.”   

We all, like Elizabeth and John, have been filled with the Holy Spirit in Baptism.  We all, live in the presence of Christ.  There at the Table each week we taste and see Christ’s presence most clearly and most reliably in the bread and the wine, but the truth of this story tells us that Christ comes to us… walks into our lives wherever we are, in whatever we’re doing, no matter who we are… God in Christ comes to us and with Christ present in our lives, we are transformed from death to life, from sadness to joy... how can we NOT just jump for joy!  So take your neighbor by the hand.  Even the Scroogy McGrinchyest neighbor you know, and point them to Christ!  Tell them, “THERE is Jesus, the light of the world!”  Show them with your love and compassion and your working for justice, that Jesus has come for them and for us all!  Then invite them to join you and jump for JOY!  Amen.