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12. Sunday after Pentecost, 08/15/2010
Sermon on Luke 1:42, by Steve Saxe
Blessed are you among women & blessed is the fruit of your womb!
As Lutherans, this festival may bother us.
-After all, we Lutherans tend to ignore Mary, or at least have a certain distrust, if not disdain for her. So we don't spend much time talking or thinking about her, except perhaps at Advent.
Mary, the Mother of our Lord, makes us Lutherans anxious!
-consider, for instance, Lutheran Service Book hymn# 670, Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones ; verse 2
Oh higher than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim, lead their praises, alleluia! Thou bearer of the eternal Word, most gracious, magnify the Lord...
-whom do you think this refers to?
(Note also the same hymn in #308 Lutheran Worship, predecessor hymnal to the LSB, where that very same verse is omitted!)-the Scriptures that we call the source & norm for the Xn faith, have quite a bit to say about Mary.
-more than most of the Apostles.
Yet we so easily give attention to other bible personalities. No problem for us w/ Apostle Paul and all that he stands for. We love to talk about great figures of the O T saints such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob...Moses! Famous men of the New Testament such as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We even enjoy talking about women like Mary Magdalene, & the sisters Mary and Martha. But the Virgin Mary; she is another story! Yet Mary, Mother of Our Lord has a history in church also:
-tradition & 2nd century gospel of James, tells us that her parents were Joachim and Anna. Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. where the title, "theotokos," or "god bearer"
-the name Mother of God was first given to Mary in the western Catholic Church.
-you might be surprised to know that Lutheran teaching accept these titles for Mary.
Luther did: Mary is the Mother of the true, veritable God who was crucified not only as the Son of Man, but the veritable Son of God.
-as Lutherans are vitally concerned about the virgin birth.
We confess that reality in Creeds: Apostles & Nicene: conceived by HS of Virgin Mary...
Athanasian: He -Jesus- is God, begotten of the substance of the father before all ages; & He is man, born of the substance of His mother in this age.
-in the New Testament -BESIDES Jesus- only John the Baptist is praised as much as Mary.
Yet in spite of her scriptural credentials she is referred to less in Protestant theology than John the Baptist.
Our thinking about Mary is often unbiblical then, for the Scriptures claim that Mary is the most blessed of all women. It doesn't say that the Apostle Paul was the most blessed of men.Yet this festival & Scriptures remind us concerning Mary -blessed are you among women &"blessed is the fruit of your womb" Pretty clear: Mary, the Mother of our Lord Jesus, is most blessed among all women... -NOT because of who SHE is, or what she does of herself, but because of her part in God's plan to rescue us.
-Mary was the only human being to be pregnant w/ God!
-it is who Mary carries that matter!
She was literally full of grace!
-just as we know someone by the care they drive, we know and honor Mary for who she carries!
She was the only person to love Jesus before he was born.
-only a mother is aware of how much she loves her child before he/she is delivered. Mary did that! She was with Jesus throughout his whole earthly life, and then at his death. And all the while, her position in society was less than a commoner; she was a servant girl. Not the girl with brains; the valedictorian, or #1 genius of her generation. God didn't go for a young girl with beauty, bread or brains... God chose Mary. A teen age, virgin who -as the epistle reminds us- when the fullness of time had come...bore God's Son. She became the vehicle for the Lord of Glory, and carried Him in her womb for 9 months! Imagine! The One whom heaven and earth cannot contain was contained for 9 months in utero! Thus Mary was a vessel of God; it is through her that Christ enters the world to redeem us. -the God we worship and adore in Christ was born of a woman...
Jesus, the divine God-man who died for us & rose again was the fruit of her womb!
Mary, a woman blessed by God's choice to become Mother of Our Lord...
-& this is what sets her apart from all other believers. I wonder how many of us would praise or consider blessed a young teenage, unmarried pregnant girl? Few nowadays would consider that an act of grace.
-but it was!
-& Mary's song we call the Magnificat -our gospel- clearly reveals that she does NOT talk about herself, but about her Lord! The One who does great things...He is the One who acts!
-& Mary's part? believe & carry...
St. Luke tells us that when angel Gabriel announced God's plan to fill her with grace, she replied...
Here am I, the servant of the Lord; be it done to me according to your Word!
-certainly, Mary was filled with the child of grace, but grace helped her to say what we also pray in the Lord's prayer.
-Thy will be done!
Doesn't the grace of God in Jesus help us, not only to say that, but to believe & live it as well?
-to be full of grace in a world that is full of rejection of God, death, sin, selfishness?
-too tall an order? Absolutely!
But God's grace in us starts in Baptism and it happens over & over again when, like Mary, we heard Gabriel say:
"Do not be afraid Mary, for you have found favor with God."
Instead of Mary, substitute your own name:
Do not be afraid (say your name) ______
You have found favor with God and God is with you.
Who? Me? After what I have said, thought & done?
-Yes, we too find favor w/ God because of the One Mary carries.
-& who forgives & fill us with His divine life to make us God bearers too.
That's what the Church is...people who carry Jesus words and actions to others...
-only because XC, the One Mary carried has carried our sins!
-on the cross...which comes to us in Baptism, Eucharist & Holy Absolution!
-Sacraments: physical things where we find forgiveness in Jesus death & resurrection.
At the root of which is God's initiative and mercy.
We did NOT make ourselves, we cannot redeem ourselves.
Everything we are comes from God, who fills us in Christ.
And Christ comes to US
How can we fail to realize that we have all been made pregnant by God's grace in Christ?
As the church, we are like Mary; we carry Christ into the world as members of His Body, the Church!
Let us wonder, believe and praise Him whom Mary carries!
Amen!