Advent 4 – December 21st,
2014 – 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, and when you read the Scriptures, the
wonderful thing 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
look 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 so, 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
probably 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 require to make her the mother of God, and what happens? “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 she has done anything, but 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 Joel Osteen how
big and ritzy are the presents under your tree going to be 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 mighty things for
you, so that from now on, until the end of time, you will be called
blessed? Yes. 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 He 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 Christ
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 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 His family – 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.
God is rightly praised for this.
“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 the 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 heaven, 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 all gathered in to the
Lord’s Supper. If you are so foolish as
to think that you in and of 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
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