+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
We may hear various predictions every day: predictions about such things as the weather, the economy, and the national political situation. Depending on who is making the predictions, we may even take some action based on them: such as taking an umbrella with us in the morning, changing our investment portfolio, or considering moving out of the country. In today’s Gospel Reading, we heard St. Luke’s unique report of what, after a “prediction” of a sort, the Virgin Mary did and the responses to being in the presence of the Lord that the Holy Spirit brought forth from Elizabeth’s baby and from Elizabeth herself, who spoke about who was blessed. This morning we reflect on the Gospel Reading under the theme, “Blessed believers in the Presence of the Lord”.
Before today’s Gospel Reading, St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired account reported the angel Gabriel’s announcing miraculous births to both Elizabeth and Mary (Luke 1:5-25, 26‑38), including Gabriel’s using Elizabeth’s pregnancy essentially as a sign for Mary of the truth of what he was telling her about her own pregnancy. Mary submitted herself to the Lord and His Word, and then, as we heard this morning, pretty much immediately, she quickly marched off to see Elizabeth. Now admittedly we do not know exactly why Mary went to see Elizabeth, whether she took Gabriel’s words as a command to go, whether there was some doubt in her mind or whether she simply wanted to strengthen her faith (even Elizabeth, at least rhetorically, asks “why” Mary came to her), but Mary’s visit to Elizabeth ultimately resulted in Elizabeth saying that Mary, like Abraham’s wife Sarah before her (Hebrews 11:11), was blessed for believing that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.
What was spoken to Mary from the Lord in some ways was more incredible than what is spoken to us from the Lord, and yet we may believe less what is spoken to us from the Lord. For example, God says that we are His children, that He forgives us our sins, and that He will provide for and protect us through this life to the next. Do we always take Him at His Word and firmly believe those things? What about when He gives us signs of the truth of what He tells us? We should note that Elizabeth’s and Mary’s unborn children are fully regarded as living human beings, as equally valuable as anyone else (notably, the same Greek word is used for the baby in the womb as for the baby out of the womb). Yet, when God blesses us with such lives, as He blessed Elizabeth and Mary, who both acted curiously right after they became pregnant (see Luke 1:24-25), some in our time may ask whether or not they want the pregnancy and then, perhaps out of shame, hide away, or maybe even, due to the “inconvenience”, end the life, instead of either themselves receiving God’s gift or letting others so receive it. Imagine if Elizabeth or Mary had acted in that way with their relatively “unexpected” or “surprise” children!
Whether or not we sin in regards to human life, in regards to our faith in God’s Words to us, or in regards to something else, we all sin, for we are sinful by nature. We deserve nothing but punishment and death now in time and torment in hell for eternity. But, God wants something better for us, and so God calls and thereby enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin, whatever it might be. In the Psalm this morning (Psalm 80:1-7), we sang of the great measure of tears of those who pray and fast, as in repentance, and we asked God to restore us, to let His face shine upon us, that we may be saved. When we repent, as especially this season of Advent calls us to do, then God answers our pleas for forgiveness, and we believers are blessed in the presence of the Lord.
When Mary greeted Elizabeth, the unborn John the Baptizer leaped in Elizabeth’s womb and the Holy Spirit filled Elizabeth to declare, for example, that the Virgin Mary essentially was the most-blessed of all women. Moments later Mary herself said all generations would call her blessed (Luke 1:48), and St. Luke later reports an exchange between a woman in a crowd and Jesus over the blessedness of His mother (Luke 11:27-28). Anti-Roman Catholic ears may not like hearing about Mary’s blessedness, perhaps wrongly associating Mary’s blessedness with abuses of Mary, but we should note that her blessedness, like ours, depends on the presence of the Lord. The unborn John, whom Gabriel said would be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb (Luke 1:15), leaped not as some ordinary baby kicks, but he leaped at that precise moment for the kind of joy that is related to the coming of the Messiah, the Christ (Fitzer, TDNT 7:401-402; confer Bultmann, TDNT 1:19-20). And Elizabeth declared Mary’s child both the Lord (that is, God) and the fruit of Mary’s womb (that is, human). Everything depends on the presence of the Lord, Who, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Hebrews 10:5-10), came to do the Father’s will, offering Himself on the cross once for all, sanctifying (that is, making holy) all those who believe in Him. When He comes and helps us by His might, as we prayed in the Collect for Him to do, the sins that weigh us down are quickly lifted by His grace and mercy.
As the Holy Spirit was necessary for John’s leaping and Elizabeth’s confessing, so the Holy Spirit is necessary for our believing and being forgiven. As God’s Word was given to Mary by Gabriel, so God uses His Office of the Holy Ministry, purely preaching the Gospel and rightly administering the Sacraments, to give the Holy Spirit, Who works faith when and where He pleases in those who hear the Gospel (AC V:1-2). The Word from the Lord to us and so also the Holy Spirit may come with water in Baptism, whether we are eight days, eight years, or eight decades old (confer Luke 18:15). The Word from the Lord to us and so also the Holy Spirit may come in individual Absolution following private Confession. And, the Word from the Lord to us and so also the Holy Spirit may come in the Sacrament of the Altar, with bread to which it adds Jesus’s Body and with wine to which it adds Jesus’s Blood. The Word from the Lord to us and so also the Holy Spirit in all these ways creates or strengthens the faith that believes there will be a fulfillment of what the Lord speaks and so makes us blessed in His presence.
In the Gospel Reading, the unborn Lord Jesus came in His mother’s womb to be present with John and Elizabeth, and John and Elizabeth responded. The presence of the Lord elicited from Elizabeth a response like unto the Old Testament psalms and the liturgy and hymns of the Church. We do well to do likewise, responding to the presence of the Lord graciously lifting our sins with liturgy and hymns of praise. We do well also to imitate Mary’s humility and her faith (Apology of the Augsburg Confession XXI:27 [German]). So, we repent and believe that there will be a fulfillment of what is spoken to us from the Lord: that we are His children, that He forgives us our sins, and that He will provide for and protect us through this life to the next.
We may hear various predictions every day, we may even take some action based on them, and we may experience consequences as a result of our inaction or action: such as getting wet if we ignored the prediction of rain or losing equity if we made the wrong change in our investment portfolio. But, no consequence is greater than that which comes from unbelief or belief in what is spoken to us from the Lord. When we repent, we are “Blessed believers in the Presence of the Lord”, we are forgiven and share in His salvation and Kingdom, now and for eternity. For, there will also be a fulfillment of what is spoken from the Lord, such as that by the prophet Micah in today’s Old Testament Reading (Micah 5:2-5a): the Lord’s Ruler will stand and shepherd His flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of Name of the Lord His God, and His flock shall dwell secure, for He shall be great to the ends of the earth, and He shall be their—that is, our—peace.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +