Advent
4 – December 22nd and 23rd, 2018 – Luke
1
In the Name of Christ Jesus, our Advent King +
In the Name of Christ Jesus, our Advent King +
One of
the adages one of my fellow pastors likes to say is “follow the
verbs.” It’s a great little guide for keeping on track when
reading the Bible. Follow, pay attention to the verbs – keep your
focus on who is doing what. If you do that, whenever you read the
Scriptures the wonderful thing that you will see is that God is the
One who is active, who is *doing* things for you. December is such a
time of busy-ness for us, where we run around with lists and
decorations and plans and all that – but in the Church, Advent is a
season where we wait and listen and see what God is doing for us.
And this fourth week of Advent there is nothing better to ponder,
nothing with better verbs to follow, than our Gospel text, where Mary
will sing forth her song, the Magnificat.
Let’s
remember the set up. Mary is pregnant – not married, young,
probably 13 or 14, Joseph was planning on divorcing her, calling off
the marriage – God has to send him an angel to get him to relax.
You want to talk about your weird, stressful situations? You want to
talk about times where we’d get thoughts of “what am I going to
do?” Here’s one for you. And Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth,
and Elizabeth just starts gushing. “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?”
We’ve got Elizabeth gushing, we’ve got baby John jumping in the
womb, it’s all wild and caddy wampus!
And
then Mary speaks. She speaks the words of the Magificat – words
the Church has sung for over 1900 years. And listen to this, pay
attention to the verbs, pay attention to Who is doing What. “My
soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior”.
Here we have Mary doing something – she is rejoicing, she is
praising God. That’s what “magnify” here means – if you have
a magnifying glass, it makes whatever you are looking at bigger –
Mary’s praise is showing the bigness, the greatness of God. And
from Mary – that’s it. That’s the last time Mary talks about
anything *she* does. All that is on her plate to do is to praise and
rejoice – there’s nothing left for her to do, because God is
going to do it all. “For He has looked
on the humble estate of His servant” –
who is Mary? She’s just a humble nobody. A simple servant. Yet,
what happens? God acts on her behalf – God does all the work
required to make her the mother of God. And because God acts, well:
“For behold, from now on all generations
will call me blessed; for He who is mighty has done great things for
me.” Mary was just sitting there, and
God acts, and wham, she is going to be called blessed. Even
Elizabeth is praising her – and not because Mary has done anything,
this is all solely because God has done something great for her.
Now
pause here for a moment. There’s a reason why the Church sings
this as well. Let me ask you a question. Are you blessed? And I
don’t mean this in a “are you buying your spouse a lamborghini
like that televangelist” sort of way, but I mean this: Are you
blessed – that is, has God looked upon you in your lowly state, and
has He done great things for you, so that from now on, until the end
of time and even beyond unto eternity, you will be called blessed?
Yes. Your answer is yes, too. It is not just that Jesus came down
and now Mary gets to say, “I’m the mother of God, see how blessed
I am” – Mary may be His mother, but Christ Jesus is your brother.
Think on that – you are, in Christ, the brothers and sisters of
God Himself. And not because of anything *you* do – rather He
comes and declares this to be true. This is why Jesus came, to win
you salvation with His death and resurrection, these are the great
things He has done for you, and come the last day when you are raised
from the dead by Christ, you will reign with Him. From now on even
the angels in heaven will declare you blessed, for you are one
redeemed by Christ Jesus. And again – all about what Jesus has
done.
“and
Holy is His Name. And His mercy is for those who fear Him from
generation to generation.” Again, we
get more focus on God, who God is, what He does. God’s Name, the
God who does all this for you, His Name is holy, and He is full of
mercy. Mary sees that – and her name will ever be associated with
God’s Name. She will forever be remembered as Mary, the Mother of
God. And she sees the great mercy that she has received, that she, a
sinful being, receives such wonderful things from God.
Now,
dear friends, consider the fact that you are Baptized. You have been
joined into God’s own Holy Name, His own holiness has been applied
to you. The proof, open and public, that you actually are Christ’s
brother, Christ’s sister, it’s right there at the font – for
you have been Baptized. You have been adopted as sons and daughters
of the Father. You now have Christ for your brother. You are part of
the household of God – and as such, you receive His Mercy. This
reality, this truth of who you are in Christ all flows not from your
strength or what you do – it flows from His mercy. You have been
forgiven on account of Christ – you have been given the gift of
faith and welcomed into the family of God. God in His great mercy
and love for you has called you out of darkness into His marvelous
light, and this is something that is for eternity – and it’s not
dependent upon you, but flows totally from Him. It is all Jesus for
you, for your good.
“He
has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the
thoughts of their hearts; He has brought down the mighty from their
thrones and exalted those of humble estate.”
Mary shows us more God at work – and with something we don’t
focus on as often in the Church today. We do not need to look very
hard to see the mighty and powerful abuse and harm others, indeed,
even harm us. But Mary’s words remind us of a truth that we can
forget when we see wickedness and oppression in this world – there
is so much more that God prevents, there is so much that God brings
to an end. The proud are scattered, their plans fall apart and so
often do not come to fruition. The tyrants on their thrones fall,
the powers crumble – evil doesn’t endure because God brings an
end to it. And this is a comfort to us, it gives us a new
perspective – for even when evil is done to us, even when we are
getting it heaped upon us – we know that God does not let it last,
that it will crumble and fail sooner or later, and that He will
deliver us.
Indeed,
the great example of that is the very fact that Mary is pregnant with
the Christ Child as she says this. No more will God be content to
have fallen king after fallen king come and rule on this earth – no
more will He let this world’s prince have His sway – no, God
Himself comes to be our king, to be our Lord, to defeat Satan – and
because He has come we have victory assured. The brief battles we
face now in this life will give way and yield to the eternal victory
celebration of the life of the world to come, because God’s strong
arm wins the victory by being nailed to the cross and rising again on
the third day.
“He
has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent
empty away. He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His
mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to His offspring
forever.”
God’s great actions for you continue. The coming of Christ changes
things; things will be different because of Christ. Wickedness will
be overcome, the powerful will be cast down. The failings and the
disappointments that we face in this life eventually will go away.
And instead, God fills us with all joy and blessedness. And as those
of the New Testament, we see these words of Mary and the promises
they point to all gathered together in the Lord’s Supper. If you
are so dumb as to think that you in yourself are spiritually “rich”,
that you are fine on your own, that you need no forgiveness, that you
have no need for God’s mercy – you will remain as empty and
shallow as you were. But for you, dear friends, you who see and know
your own sin, who know your own struggles, who feel the pressures of
life in this world and who are burdened – you who are hungry for
righteousness – behold what God does for you. He calls you to His
own table, and here He fills you with not merely good things, but the
very best thing – He fills you with Himself – Christ Jesus gives
Himself unto you, in a way most wondrous and amazing – He forgives
your sins in His Supper, He gives you His own strength – He helps
you face down the fears of the past and helps you to face the trials
of the future, because in His Supper we see the proof that He is with
us, indeed, in His Supper He is with us.
And
then Mary stops. She’s pretty well covered everything, hasn’t
she? These are all the things God has done for her, done for you.
And all of them, all of them depend upon God, upon His strength, His
mercy, His righteousness. My dear friends in Christ – rejoice in
Him, for He has done all things for you already, and now we simply
await His return when we will see all things in full. Come quickly,
Lord Jesus. In the Name of Christ Jesus, our Advent King +