Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.
Just once in my life, I would like to leap for joy. Even when I can no longer physically leap; even if the “leap” I am talking about is in my mind or my heart, I would love to leap for joy.
Have you ever done this? Really: have you ever, for any reason, literally or figuratively, leapt for joy? Well, maybe I did leap literally for joy when I was a small child. Maybe jumping on a trampoline, or jumping on the bed, counts as leaping for joy. That was great fun, but the last time I had access to a trampoline, I declined the invitation to jump. Two kids were preparing for baptism and I was over at their house, chatting with their mother in the kitchen. The kids were jumping impossibly on that trampoline, terrifying me with astonishing, gravity-defying moves. I thought they would surely crack open their heads if they put one foot even a little bit wrong. But I didn’t begrudge them their joyful leaping, even as I cowered in the kitchen. We need all the joy we can get, we humans. We collectively seem determined to destroy all the joy that erupts on the face of this old earth. Let the kids leap.
But we are all invited to leap for joy, not just the kids. It’s ironic that I took a pass on joy-leaping when I made a pastoral visit to that family: the kids were getting ready for Baptism, and in Baptism we are particularly, expressly invited to leap for joy. What a dunce I was, passing up a literal opportunity!
And speaking of kids, John the Baptizer leaps for joy inside Elizabeth’s womb. Luke the evangelist uses the same Greek verb for “leap” when telling us this prenatal story. Elizabeth cries out joyfully (in my reading, she squeals) when she hears her pregnant younger cousin Mary calling at her doorstep. Elizabeth squeals to Mary, “For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb jumped on a trampoline for joy!”
Luke is making a conscious allusion here. The leaping baby foreshadows the leaping martyrs Jesus blesses in today’s Lukan Beatitudes, the leaping members of the Jesus Movement who can hardly contain themselves. They are fit to burst with the thrilling news that… that… they are being “hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed.”
Okay, stop. Let’s go back and hear that again. Baby John the Baptizer leaps with joy at the news of his younger cousin, who is the One, the Anointed One, the One who was promised, the One who will liberate the people, bring down the mighty and lift up the lowly, devastate the stock price of Tesla and restore USAID for the hungry. Okay, I’m with them so far. Of course, both John and Jesus will be executed, and that doesn’t sound like something that would get me leaping, but sure, I see the joy in their mission, the joy in their eschatological (end of the world, fulfillment of all things) mission.
But then the martyrs get up on baby John the Baptizer’s trampoline, as it were, and join in the wild, joyous leaping. The martyrs. They were the first to hear the Good News: the first followers who were being persecuted, hunted, dragged into circuses to be devoured, nailed to crosses, beheaded by swords, hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed. “Rejoice on that day and leap for joy,” Jesus tells them. “Just like my cousin when he learned I was coming.”
We had better unpack this.
Jesus says the martyrs (and we!) will leap for joy while being “hated, excluded, reviled, and defamed” because, he says, “surely your reward is great in heaven.” (‘Heaven’… I’ll unpack heaven in a moment, too.) Our reward is great in heaven, and, says Jesus, we will leap for joy when they hate us, “for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.”
So it works like this: when we stand up for our faith; when we step forward and speak the truth; when we do what we can, where we can, in a calamitous time, no matter the consequences for us; we will take our honored places alongside the prophets who went before us. We are like Isaiah and Jeremiah, like Elijah and Nathan and Jonah and Micah. We are also like Miriam and Anna, like Moses and Simeon, like all who stood up and stood out, come what may, and said what needed to be said, and did what needed to be done. And the people who come back at us, the people who hate, exclude, revile, and defame us — they’re just like the people who raged against the prophets. This has all happened in ages past. It will happen again long after we are gone. We are leaping for joy because we are in the mighty company of the prophets. Hooray…?
I have to think about that for a while, but when I do, I can begin to see it, to understand it. There is something stirring and encouraging about joining a mighty band of prophets, an army of scholars and teachers and poets, a regiment of protesters and sanctuary providers, a squadron of singers and artists and cooks and social workers and healers and sages. Yes. That can feel good. We’re like the happy Torah followers in Psalm 1, delighting in the law of the Lord like trees planted by streams of water.
And again, don’t forget, we should leap for joy while being persecuted because our “reward is great in heaven.” Now, this may not mean exactly what you think it means. It doesn’t mean that it’s fine if we suffer now because later, after death, we will find ourselves in the Good Place, in a blissful amusement park above the clouds where we will enjoy an endless vacation together. “Heaven” isn’t that.
Heaven is the renewed community of faith on earth. Heaven is the Body of Christ flourishing right here. Heaven is allies working to liberate the oppressed, right now. While we Christians do proclaim the great news of eternal rest in the embrace of God — in our burial rite, we say faithfully that our beloved dead have gone where there is no sorrow, nor crying — while we do proclaim that, we also proclaim the Good News of heaven on earth, heaven right here.
But I suspect not many of us feel all that much like leaping for joy today, even though some things really are joyfully prophetic here, if you look carefully. We have about a half dozen people interested in Baptism or Confirmation in the next few months. We have teenage members who provoke and evangelize us with their insights, their challenges, their sorrows and their joys. We have toddlers leaping for joy in our baptismal font, showering us with the gladness of their very existence. We have elders deep in contemplation, faith leaders saying Yes to the mission, artisans and carpenters renewing our mission base, pastoral caregivers rescuing people from loneliness, deacons pulling our wagons, neighbors quietly stocking our pantry. If we installed a trampoline here, a few willing souls might jump up and leap for joy.
But it’s rough out there, and rough in here, too. “The world is falling down,” one of my friends said last week. When I talked with her about some recent personal struggles, she reflected that almost nobody is at their best these days.
Meanwhile, I found myself in an emergency room last Saturday, mainly because I’ve been over-functioning and under-hydrating, and forgot that I am finite, that my body is vulnerable, that I am not all that essential. “Our bodies don’t work all that well,” a doctor said to me at my follow-up visit. (He seemed to be in a rueful mood, which is understandable enough for a healthcare worker.) And so I have rested and hydrated over the past few days. None of us is too important to rest, and we are all exhausted. Leaping for joy sounds like a lot of effort, and it doesn’t match the mood. Read the room, Jesus.
And yet I pray that you can leap for joy, as bone-tired and anxious as you may be. I hope you can join us in all the great and lovely things happening here, and I particularly hope you can join us in discerning our role as companions of all the residents of our city, regardless of their documentation or status. We are a church, after all. We are called to welcome the stranger in our town, for we were once strangers in the land of oppression. The Episcopal Church has joined a religious-freedoms lawsuit challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement in churches. We can do our part as advocates for those in peril.
Our member John Hill recently shared a reflection by Anne Lamott, a Christian prophet of our time. Here are some of her words:
[Many of us] see the future as a desert of harshness. The new land looks inhospitable. But if we stay alert, we’ll notice that the stark desert is dotted with growing things. In the pitiless heat and scarcity, we also see shrubs and conviction.
She continues:
“Give me those far away in the desert,” Saint Augustine said, “who are thirsty and sigh for the spring of the eternal country.” I can tell you this: The resistance will be peaceful, nonviolent, colorful, multigenerational — we older people will march with you, no matter our sore feet and creaky joints. There will be beautiful old music. There will also be the usual haranguing through terrible sound systems, but oh well. Until then, this will be my fight song: left foot, right foot, breathe. [Left foot, right foot, breathe.] Help the poor however you can, plant bulbs right now in the cold rocky soil, and rest.
I can’t speak for you, but our confident, resilient march through the desert, holding on to each other, helping each other, doing what we can and doing what we know how to do… this march through the desert may — maybe not today but someday soon — it may inspire me to climb onto a trampoline and leap for joy.
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Preached on the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany (Year C), February 16, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Jeremiah 17:5-10
Psalm 1
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
Luke 6:17-26