Sermon on Luke 1:39-56

Advent 4, 12/18/2021 | Sermon on Luke 1:39-56 | by Andrew Smith |

Luke 1:39-56  [English Standard Version, © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers]

³⁹ In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, ⁴⁰ and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹ And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, ⁴² and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! ⁴³ And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? ⁴⁴ For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵ And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

⁴⁶ And Mary said,

“My soul magnifies the Lord,

⁴⁷        and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

⁴⁸    for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.

For behold, from now on 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 for those who fear him

from generation to generation.

⁵¹    He has shown strength with his arm;

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;

⁵²    he has brought down the mighty from their thrones

and exalted those of humble estate;

⁵³    he has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich he has sent away empty.

⁵⁴    He has helped his servant Israel,

in remembrance of his mercy,

⁵⁵    as he spoke to our fathers,

to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

⁵⁶ And Mary remained with her about three months and returned to her home.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

The Gospel reading for today dovetails nicely with the OT reading.  There the prophet Micah reveals the Lord’s promises for final victory through the one from Bethlehem of Ephrathah.  Here in Luke 1 that final victory is beginning to happen but in an unexpected way, that is through a baby in the womb of a lowly handmaiden.

You know the story as well as any in Scripture.  Mary just received some fantastic news from the archangel Gabriel, “the power of the Most High will overshadow her.”  The child born to her will be called holy–the Son of God.  Elizabeth, Mary’s elderly and up until know, barren, kinswoman, let’s just say cousin because we don’t really know how they are related, Elizabeth is in her sixth month of pregnancy already.  Mary flees into the hill country to visit with her kinswoman, Elizabeth, now about six months pregnant with John the Baptist.  So Mary, having been overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and therefore pregnant with Jesus, goes up to visit Elizabeth in the hill country of Judah.

And this is Elizabeth’s greeting to her, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”  That’s some greeting.  Elizabeth knows.  Elizabeth believes.  And Elizabeth confesses that the unborn baby in her womb leaps for joy at the sound of the greeting of the Mother of Jesus.  Babies are known for their kicks and turns at the sound of familiar voices.  Kim will tell you that both Erika and Daniel used to do summersaults during devotions or when I was preaching in church or I was talking for any length of time at home.  But I think Elizabeth is trying to say something more profound than John kicked a little bit at the sound of Mary’s voice.  What is for John a leap is for Elizabeth to say, “Why is granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”  I don’t think it is too much to say that these are acts of worship for the unborn John and the aged Elizabeth of the unborn Christ.  Jesus, even in the womb is worthy of worship, and his mother worthy of honor.  Mary is in every way a portable Temple, if you will, carrying around in her womb the immanent presence of the true God to be born in Bethlehem.

As I said, our reading this morning comes on the heels of some rather amazing news from Gabriel the archangel.  But Luke follows up that amazing news with an account even more amazing and I think that as this news is in every way amazing to Mary and Elizabeth and other people of faith in their day, it remains amazing and even challenging to us today.  The first challenge is to our culture, and whatever of that culture we have adopted into our own worldview.  The first challenge is in one little word, the Greek word for baby.  This word is used for baby or infant, both before and after birth.  The word occurs a total of eight times in the NT, six times in Luke-Acts.  Twice in our passage referring to John, and twice referring to Jesus after he was born (Lk 2:12, 16), to the young children brought to Jesus (Lk 18:15) and to newborn babies in Acts 7:19; 1 Pet 2:2.  Paul describes Timothy as knowing the Scriptures from infancy, (2 Tim. 3:15).  Compare this worldview with our own.  We call a beautiful baby born into this world what it is, a baby, an infant.  Before the baby is born, many call it a clinical term like “fetus” and try to convince themselves and others this is no more than a mass of complex tissue.  Thankfully the same technicians have provided us with the eye of God.  We too can now see into the womb of a woman and see the beauty of an unborn life that only God used to be able to see.  We simply thwart God’s will and his Word if we try to say something less than what he says about life in the womb through the psalmist, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.” (Ps. 139:13)  There is no other Biblical point of view.  Human life is sacred in the womb or outside it.

And look at what God is trying to tell us and our world here.  “I care for the world and I care for people so much, I sent my Son into the world and not just as an almighty superhero, but to be able to sympathize with you in every way.”  We cannot say to God, “God, You don’t know what I’m going through here.”  He does in every way, in sickness and sorrow, and even death.  Look also at what God says is important, a woman.  A young woman and an old woman, bearing children.  Babies.  These are the important things.  All of things we act like are the most important things pale in comparison.

There are at least two other themes in the Gospel reading this morning that I think should make us wonder a bit.  The first is the unabashed praise of Mary, the Mother of our Lord.  “Blessed are you!  And blessed is the fruit of thy womb.”  Mary, the mother of our Lord.  Instead of truly giving thanks to God for Mary and what He’s done for the world through her, we’re more worried that it might be a little Roman Catholic to be thankful to God for Mary.  Elizabeth, the mother of the prophet John, says, “Blessed are YOU!”  Maybe we would be surprised to read what one of our own says about the blessed Mother of our Lord.  In a Christmas sermon in 1531, Luther describes Mary as the “highest woman and the noblest gem in Christianity after Christ . . . She is nobility, wisdom, and holiness personified. We can never honor her enough.”  Note the date, 1531.  This is late Luther. This is not a hold-over idea from his “monkish ways.”  Luther rightly warns that “honor and praise must be given to her in such a way as to injure neither Christ nor the Scriptures” but it robs God of His glory to fail to honor what He has done through her.

The second element is very simple.  It is faith proclaimed in the great aria of the Magnificat itself.  A professor of mine used to say, “Pay attention to the verbs.  The theology is in the verbs.  These verbs are in that past tense.  “The Mighty One has done great things for me.”  “He has shown his strength with His arm.”  “He has scattered the proud in their conceit.”  “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and he has exalted the lowly.”  These things are spoken of by Mary as having already been completed.  Mary is speaking prophetically in her song from the same perspective of God.  In the advent of His Son into this world, even still in-utero these things are already beginning to be accomplished in a babies born to Elizabeth and now to Mary.  These things are the coming of the kingdom of God for which we pray.  Jesus doesn’t just come to save individuals but to redeem the world.  Mary sings about the radical reordering of society.  Because of these socio-political themes that almost everyone gets wrong, these themes are either never heard by libertarian conservatives or interpreted badly by liberal progressives.  Progressives could only dream of such a radical reordering of the world and the power structures in it.  Those libertarians get it wrong when they think they have no responsibility to help others.  Another of my professors said, “[Jesus] is the deliverance which extends to the political realms of the earth.  Mary is not kidding when she says… ‘he cast down the mighty from their thrones,’ because this is God’s world.  This is not Satan’s world.  God is not just going to give this world up to injustice and death but one day He is actually going to visibly put all things right and He’s going to do it through this child.”

The Gospel is that, in Christ, the great reversal has begun.  The high and mighty are cast down and the lowly are being lifted up.  The conception of Jesus in the womb of a handmaiden is the advent of the promised Davidic kingdom.  God is making good on His promises to restore that kingdom through the birth of His own son in the house and lineage of David.  In small ways, sure.  In unexpected ways, most certainly.  But most assuredly, it is happening, had happened, just as He promised and He will bring it completion on the Last Day when He will come again.

For those who by the Holy Spirit believe these prophetic past tense verbs, the world is even now, radically reordered.  Suddenly, a car with a bow on in the driveway on Christmas morning seems empty and hollow and instead singing again the great Gloria in Excelsis on Christmas morning seems far more important.  The sale at Macy’s seems to pale in comparison with the unemployed neighbor who needs food or whose kids need a flu shot.  The Magnificat does not mandate a uniting of the civil and sacred realms of God so much as it proclaims the redemption of the whole world and take in what we thought of as the secular under the righteous rule of the true king.  The kingdom of God brings blessing to his people.

This is the beginning of what finally comes to pass in Rev. 21, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”  It is certain.  It will happen just as he said.  It has already begun.  It is, then, as good as done.  Our God is with us.  Amen.

 

The Rev. Andrew Smith

Heavenly Host Lutheran Church

Cookeville, Tennessee, USA

E-Mail: smithad19+prediger@gmail.com