From the Womb

In case you don’t know, in Greek, the study of time, chronos, is like the actual time that we know that we calculate in this world. Kairos is the time that is the heavenly time, the time of God that comes before all of creation. All of that stuff.

And I tell you that to tell you my dog chewed up my strap on the wrist, on my wrist watch. So I don’t have my watch, so we’re totally on God’s time today. It’s Kairos, baby.

As we approach Christmas time, it kind of becomes nostalgic, and you think of certain things, and especially as I’m looking towards, you know, the different sermons we do throughout this season, it reminds me of when we were so close to, when we were having our children, and having babies, and I look back, and as I think about it, I believe, and I’m not sure why, but Holly understood the point of the view from the womb better than I did. And that point of view was so cool. I remember the process of going in there, and the first time putting the stethoscope on there, and hearing that little heartbeat going.

It was so cool. And then a little while later, seeing the sonogram, and those grainy photos of the baby there in the womb, and then a little while later, Holly set up this thing with her family, and we had color live shots of the baby, and everybody got to see these shots in color, and it was so amazing. And then as the baby grew, there were times where Holly, her stomach was just bulging out right here, and we could tell by the pictures that there was a posterior part protruding right into her side, which was an opening of knowing this child would not know proper boundaries.

And then it came to the day of the baby being born, and Holly’s family was out in a waiting room, waiting for this time to come. And we were in the room, and her sister tells the story of how when it was close, she got right up to the door in the delivery room, and she could hear what was going on. And when the baby was born, she heard her mother say, he’s beautiful.

And she heard her father say, he’s purple. Oftentimes, we don’t think of the view from the womb. As we turn to this fourth Sunday of Advent, and we think of Mary, there is a view from the womb that is the most amazing thing you would ever imagine.

Will you stand as you are able? Our scripture this morning comes from the book of Luke, chapter 1, 39 through 45. In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a town in Judah. And she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.

And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. The word of God inspired by God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Sometimes I don’t finish the story.

He’s not purple anymore, in case you’re wondering. Mary had heard from Gabriel that she was going to conceive a baby. And this baby was a miracle.

For Mary, her one thing was she said, hey, this is impossible because I am a virgin. And Gabriel said, look, your relative Elizabeth is having a baby too in her old age because God opened her womb and did this amazing thing. And so Luke then says in those days, which probably means not too long after Gabriel greeted her, she went to see her relative Elizabeth.

And it says in those days, Mary arose and went in haste to the hill country. And Luke probably brings that emphasis out to remind us of another miracle birth of a baby in 1st Samuel where they lived in the hill country and Elkanah and his wife and she could not conceive and bear a baby. And Hannah was praying and praying and praying and praying and God miraculously, it says in there, opened her womb.

The hill country is a connection Luke gives us to remind us that both Mary and Elizabeth had miraculous births, which God had to clear a lot for Jesus to come into the world. And it’s pretty amazing when we look at this and we see, it says, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry. Now, when it says she was filled with the Holy Spirit, it means that when Mary came into the room in the presence of Jesus, she was filled with the Holy Spirit and the exclamation of a loud cry, which sounds kind of odd if you go to greet someone and they start yelling really loud, wouldn’t that kind of scare you off? But it’s a way of saying that it was an ecstatic proclamation, that the Holy Spirit was speaking through her and she wasn’t speaking shyly about this.

The Holy Spirit was saying amazing things about Mary. And she said, blessed are you among women. Now, as she says, blessed are you among women, it’s a phrase that kind of says you are the greatest among women.

Blessed are you among women. And it goes on to say, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And blessed is the fruit of your womb because she knew prophetically that Jesus was in there.

And it’s really cool because Elizabeth is saying this all from the Holy Spirit. I mean, imagine Elizabeth’s position of this miracle of having a baby in her old age when she wasn’t supposed to have one. And yet Mary comes in and she says, blessed are you among women, which means you are the greatest among women.

In that day, and we see it in the Old Testament too, one of the greatest signs of value of a woman was how well the fruit of the womb turned out. The better the child, the greater the child, the better esteemed a woman was. So Elizabeth humbled herself before Mary and said, you’re the greatest of all women.

This is because you have the greatest of all children within you. And then prophetically she says, you are the mother of my Lord. You know it’s the Holy Spirit because Mary hasn’t even gotten to, Mary had an exciting story to tell her relative and she couldn’t even get it out.

Do you ever have someone that tells you stuff before you can even tell them? She couldn’t even get it out. The mother of my Lord, and she knew this prophetically because the Holy Spirit was in her. And to me it’s just amazing to see that.

How I read that is, even from the womb, that baby has a connection with God. Because it was the Holy Spirit that came through John, jumping in the womb that knew when Jesus was present. So from the time of conception that baby has a special connection with God that is then later broken by sin and needing to be restored by a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Arthur C. Brooks tells the story of Johann Sebastian Bach. How many composers from the Baroquean period can you name? How about Bach? Johann Sebastian Bach is the only name that is that familiar. If you would have taken music listening lab for the guaranteed A at K-State like me, you would have known that.

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in 1685 to a long line of prominent musicians in Germany. Bach quickly distinguished himself as a musical genius. In his 65 years, he published more than 1,000 compositions for all the available instrumentations of his day.

Early in his career, Bach was considered an astoundingly gifted organist and improviser. Commissions rolled in, royalties sought him out, young composers emulated his style. He enjoyed real prestige.

But it didn’t last. In no small part because his career was overtaken by musical trends and ushered in by, among others, his own son, Carl Philip Emanuel, known as CPE to the generations that followed. How many of you have heard of CPE? It’s not clinical pastoral education.

CPE exhibited the musical gifts his father had. He mastered the Baroquian idiom. And eventually, CPE’s prestige boomed while his father’s music became passe.

Bach easily could have become embittered. Instead, he chose to redesign his life, moving from innovator to instructor. He spent a good deal of his last 10 years writing the art of the fugue.

This was not a famous or popular work in his time, but one intended to teach the techniques of the Baroque to his children and students and to any future generations that might be interested. In his later years, he lived a quieter life. As a teacher, as a family man, Bach died beloved, fulfilled, and though less famous than he once had been, respected.

We forget that Jesus said we must come to him like a child. Even a child in the womb is excited in the presence of Jesus. Christmas, the season of expectation.

Often at Christmas in church, we celebrate Christmas like love, joy, peace, hope. But to those, I want to add humility. Jesus said now they were, or the Bible says, now they were bringing infants to him that he might touch them.

And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him saying, let the children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall never enter it.

Luke 18, 15 through 17. When I read about Mary and Elizabeth, that brings that scripture into new light for me. When Jesus says, let the little children come to me.

And then he goes on to say, unless you become like a child, that doesn’t mean play video games all day. What that means is that you humble yourselves, that you let yourselves be in a position of total and complete reliance on God. Like a baby in a womb who needs her mother for every breath, for every ounce of food, for everything in life.

So we rely on God like children, like infants. They were bringing infants to him and he said, you got to be like this infant, like a small child who doesn’t think they have everything together, who doesn’t think they control their own destiny, but who admits they need God. We don’t control the world.

It’s hard to even control putting everything together for Christmas. What we can do is humble ourselves before the cross. We can trust in God.

We can receive the gift of that baby that was in Mary’s womb. That baby that made John leap for joy from the room. That connection and that joy and that excitement that you see in a child’s eyes.

I pray that we in our humility would have that every single day, looking in wonder and amazement at how great God is and the wonderful things that God has done for us. D.L. Moody said it like this, Christ sends none away empty but those who are full of themselves. If we’re full of ourselves, has anybody ever told you you’re full of yourself? Besides D.L. Moody.

If we’re full of ourselves, then we are not open to receive all that God has to give us this Christmas season. We, in this season of expectation, are expecting whatever we want instead of expecting what God has in store for us. It is only with humility and dependence on God that we can know the pure joy of being in the presence of Jesus.

We strive our lives so hard. We try so hard to be good, to do the right thing, to follow God, to learn about God, but yet it’s the joy of John in the womb that reminds us that all we need to do is say, God, I’m here. God, I need you.

God, I humble myself before you and I give all that I have to you and I receive all that you have to give me. And that is when pure joy can hit us and the power of the Holy Spirit can overtake us. Remember the amazing examples of humility and faith.

Mary and Elizabeth. What examples are those? They both humbled themselves. Mary humbled herself and was blessed with every generation afterwards because she believed God.

Elizabeth was blessed to have John and to be a part of the miracles of God in her life and to even say, Mary’s child is going to be greater than my child, even in the midst of that, knowing how amazing Jesus would be. This season, spend time humbling yourself before God. Remember your first love.

Expect leaping for joy during the season of expectation. Let’s pray. Almighty God, thank you so much for the wonderful and amazing examples of humility and faith that we have in Mary and Elizabeth.

Thank you for showing us an example of if we become like a little child, that we can come before you, that we can trust in you, that we can truly follow you and we can expect all that you have in store for us without expecting you to do what we want, but instead expecting amazing things that bring us joy, help us to leap, and help us to love you more. In Jesus’ name, Amen.