Sermon on Luke 1:46-55

St. Mary, Mother of Our Lord (15 August 2021) | Sermon on Luke 1:46-55 | by Paul Bieber |

Luke 1:46-55 Revised Standard Version

⁴⁶ And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,

⁴⁷ and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

              ⁴⁸ for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.

For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed;

              ⁴⁹ for he who is mighty has done great things for me,

and holy is his name.

⁵⁰ And his mercy is on those who fear him

from generation to generation.

⁵¹ He has shown strength with his arm,

he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,

              ⁵² he has put down the mighty from their thrones,

and exalted those of low degree;

              ⁵³ he has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent empty away.

⁵⁴ He has helped his servant Israel,

in remembrance of his mercy,

              ⁵⁵ as he spoke to our fathers,

to Abraham and to his posterity for ever.”

(Also Galatians 4:4-7)

Jesus’ Mother—and Ours

Grace, peace, and much joy to you, people of God.

Let’s take a break from the Bread of Life discourse to celebrate a feast day of the Virgin Mary that has been widely observed since the sixth century. Known originally as the Dormition, the “Falling Asleep,” of the Virgin—and still called by than name in the Orthodox Church—as its observance moved West it came, by the ninth century, to be called the Feast of the Assumption. The notion that Mary was assumed, body and soul, into heaven, was a controversial doctrine until Pope Pius XII proclaimed it as a dogma for Roman Catholics in 1950. Some Lutherans have believed it; most have not. But the feast day of the Virgin Mary survived on some Lutheran calendars well beyond the Reformation, and it was restored in the calendar in the Lutheran Book of Worship, our worship book.

The Gospel for this day a familiar one, especially to those who join in the Church’s Evening Prayer. Mary’s song, the Magnificat, is the Gospel Canticle for that prayer office. The biblical context for the Magnificat is the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, her kinswoman. After the Annunciation to Mary that she would be the Mother of the Son of God, she went into the hill country to visit Elizabeth, whom Gabriel, the angel of the Annunciation, had told her was also expecting—the baby who would become John the Baptist, the Forerunner of Christ. As two expectant mothers discussing their hopes and fears, transfigured by the eternal purpose of God, Mary bursts into her song proclaiming the glory of the Lord, “magnifying” him.

For the Epistle of this day we hear the oldest New Testament reference to Mary, as St. Paul reminds the Galatians that God’s Son was born of a woman. If that seems like a disrespectful way to refer to Mary, recall that Jesus addresses his mother as “Woman” in two important interactions: at the wedding in Cana and at the cross when he commended her to St. John. If we think that Jesus was being disrespectful, then we are implicitly accusing Jesus of breaking the commandment to honor your father and your mother, something that seems rather unlikely.

“Born of a woman” is a way of saying that Jesus is genuinely human. “When the fullness of time had come,” the time for God’s promises to be fulfilled, for the kingdom to draw near, “God sent his Son.” Jesus refers often to the Father who sent him. His claim to have come from heaven was thought blasphemous by those who did not believe in him. But his heavenly origin—and destiny—do not tell the whole story. The first Christian heresy was Docetism, from dokeo, “to seem”: the notion that Jesus only seemed to be truly human.

Mary is the authentication of the true humanity of Jesus. The Son has not only a Father in heaven but a mother here on earth. When the Father sent him, it was by way of a real birth from a real mother. Jesus as a human with a specific history and a specific pedigree. He took his human flesh from his mother, that saving flesh that he gives for the life of the world.

But being a real mother is more than being pregnant and giving birth! We begin to know who Mary rally is at the Annunciation, when she offers her free assent to the role she is offered in the eternal purpose of God, to be the mother of God’s Son: “Let it be to me according to your word.” Luther held that Mary’s faith in the word of God was a greater miracle than the virgin birth. God’s grace did not overwhelm her free will, her authentic humanity. She is the first disciple, the person who chose to say yes to God’s invitation to grace and holiness.

We honor the saints because they are examples to us, and Mary is a model of what each Christian ought to be: prayerful, humble, joyfully responsive to the will and word of God. Mary is the sign of our own discipleship, our response to God’s presence in our lives. We are all asked whether we will surrender all that we are to the Holy Spirit and allow Christ to fill the emptiness formed in us by the particular shape of our lives. Mary shows us how we make a place for God in our world—by saying, yes, let it happen to me according to your word.

Now is not the time to go into whether Mary was sermper virgo, always a virgin; that’s the argument about whether Jesus had brothers and sisters, or just cousins. Nor in whether she was immaculata, conceived without sin; that was made a dogma for Roman Catholics in 1854—the day before yesterday in the history of the Church. Nor whether she was assumpta, assumed into heaven body and soul.

I do think a sermon from All Saints Lutheran Church might usefully dilate for a moment on the question of our relationship to Mary and so to all the saints. The saints serve as examples of discipleship, of course, but is there more to our relationship than that. When Jesus at the cross commended Mary to the beloved disciple, she became his mother and he her son. The nucleus of a new community, the Church, was formed. As Lutherans, one of our Reformation solas is Solus Christus, Christ alone. But Christ alone is never alone. He is always found in the company of a whole range of his friends, living and dead (to us). This is the communion of saints, and it strengthens our communion with him.

Saints show us how the grace of God may work in a life, what patterns of holiness look like. In the person of the Virgin Mary, the Church has seen an image of itself, the representative of the community of the faithful; indeed, the mother of all who have received adoption as God’s children, those who in the Spirit of the Son call God Father with delight. So how do we relate to her? How, if at all, does she relate to us?

Even in the midst of Philipp Melanchthon’s invective about invocation of the saints, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession says: “Now we grant that the blessed Mary prays for the church.” (XXI, 27) This is not to say that Mary or any other saint has a particular power over God to obtain benefits from him for us. But it does say that, from the time of the veneration of the tombs of the earliest martyrs, the Church has believed that the fellowship of those adopted as God’s sons and daughters is not severed by death. Just as I might ask any of you to pray for me, so I might ask Mary to pray for me. I don’t think she would want me to “magnify” her; her soul magnifies the Lord: proclaims him to be great.

Any exalted notions we have about Mary are strictly derivative from the high view we take of her Son, and the praise she offers to God: “O higher than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim, lead their praises.” Mary’s relationship to God is all acceptance and praise. And Mary’s relationship to us is encapsulated in the last of her words recorded in the New Testament: her directive to the servants at the wedding in Cana—and to us—when she has laid the problem before her Son: “Do whatever he tells you.” This—Mary’s directive, and Mary’s acceptance, and Mary’s life—is precisely what St. Paul in Romans calls “the obedience of faith.”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

—

The Rev. Dr. Paul Bieber

San Diego, California, USA

E-Mail: paul.bieber@sbcglobal.net