Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + 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. (Amen.)
As you have heard, today is the feast or festival of The Visitation, when the Virgin Mary and her unborn son, Jesus, “visited” her relative Elizabeth (Luke 1:36) and her unborn son, John the Baptizer. Pilgrim has celebrated this festival in past years, although in future years we certainly could be more consistent in celebrating this festival and the other so-called “principal feasts of Christ”, which have been described as “days when we remember, celebrate, and give thanks [both] for the life that our Lord Jesus Christ lived in flesh and blood like ours and for the death by which He procured eternal life for us and for all people.” In this feast today, we are primarily glorifying not the Virgin Mary, Elizabeth, or even John the Baptizer, but we are primarily glorifying our Lord Jesus Christ, Whose earthly life was so intimately connected with their lives that, it has been said, “their stories are an integral part of [His] Gospel itself.” (Stuckwisch, LSB:CttS, 263.)
There are any number of interesting things about The Visitation, but, as I prepared to preach this evening, one of those things that especially interested me had to do with the title of the feast. In tonight’s Gospel Reading, we heard of the Virgin Mary’s going with haste, her entering the house of Zechariah, and her greeting Elizabeth. In turn, the Divinely-inspired evangelist St. Luke and Elizabeth both refer to the Virgin Mary’s greeting, and Elizabeth asks about the Virgin Mary’s coming. But, not until the verses after tonight’s Gospel Reading do we find any explicit references to a “visitation”. With the Virgin Mary and the unborn Jesus maybe still present in Zechariah’s house, after John the Baptizer was born, when the time came to circumcise the child, his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit, and Zechariah blessed God for His having visited His people, as if in the past, and Zechariah prophesied of the “Sunrise”, arguably a term for Jesus (Schlier, TDNT 1:352-353), visiting them, as if in the future (Luke 1:57-80, especially vv.68 and 78).
Now, if armed officials from the government showed up at our door, what would we think? If we were innocent of any wrongdoing, we likely would suspect the armed officials of wrongdoing, or at least we would think that they were guilty of an innocent mistake. But, if we were guilty of some wrongdoing, we probably would think that the armed officials had come to bring us the judgment that we deserved. Perhaps with a view to the Virgin Mary and the unborn Jesus’s still being in his home, the “visitation” that Zechariah mentioned, in general, could be a visitation of judgement or a visitation of deliverance, or even a “visitation” of both judgment and deliverance at the same time, though not judgment and deliverance of the same person (Beyer, TDNT 2:601-603). For her part, Elizabeth seemingly recognized that she was unworthy of a “visit” from even the mother of her Lord, but Elizabeth seemed to share the joy of the Lord’s deliverance that the unborn John the Baptizer expressed by his leaping in her womb. Similarly, the Virgin Mary seemingly recognized her unworthiness of any part in the Lord’s plan of salvation, previously having been greatly troubled at the angel Gabriel’s greeting to her when he “visited” her—so troubled that Gabriel had to both tell her not to be afraid and assure her that she had found favor with God (Luke 1:26-38).
The Lord’s visiting us rightly would cause us fear and dread over our sinful nature and all of our actual sins, for which sinful nature and actual sins we deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity, if the Holy Spirit did not call and so enable us to turn in sorrow from our sins and to trust God to forgive our sins. Just as there was nothing in the Virgin Mary, Elizabeth, or John the Baptizer deserving of God’s love, so there is nothing in you, me, or anyone else deserving of God’s love. Mary’s song, what we call the “Magnificat” after its first Latin word, has been described as “a hymn to God for His gracious gifts to the least in the world, whom He has lifted up out of lowliness solely because of His grace and mercy” (LSB:CttS, 986). So, the Lord’s visiting us who repent is to deal with us in grace for Jesus’s sake. “The Lord visits us to deliver us.”
In Jesus, the Lord, as Zechariah said, has visited and redeemed His people. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth in tonight’s Gospel Reading recognized the Virgin Mary’s unborn son as both the fruit of the Virgin Mary’s womb and as her Lord, the Son of God the Father. Out of God’s great love, that God-man Jesus Christ died on the cross for the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins. He died in our place, the death that we deserved. Even the Virgin Mary referred to God as her Savior, and, though her womb bore Him and her breasts nursed Him, she was blessed because she heard the word of God and believed it, kept it, did it (Luke 11:27-27; 8:19-21). In Jesus, the Lord not only raised up a king from a seemingly-dead line of kings, as we heard in tonight’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 11:1-5), but the Lord also raised up that King Himself from the dead. Upon that King the Holy Spirit rests in full measure, so that with righteousness He judges the poor and with equity He decides for the meek of the earth—“equity” not as some in our secular world think of “equity” but as in keeping with God’s character. So, together we, who are at least spiritually poor and meek, in joy celebrate—and thereby both acknowledge and receive the benefits of—God’s work of saving us (Bultmann, TDNT 1:20).
In the Greek version of the Old Testament, the verb for “visiting” sometimes was associated with appointing, commissioning, installing someone, for example, installing someone so that the congregation of the Lord would not be as sheep without a shepherd (Numbers 27:16 LXX); and, the Greek noun related to that verb for visiting, which noun gives us our English word “episcopal” and sometimes is translated “bishop”, was one of the words that was used to refer to pastors, perhaps emphasizing their responsibility of oversight (for example, Philippians 1:1; confer Beyer, TDNT 2:602-603). Pastors read and preach God’s Word to groups such as this, and they apply the Gospel to individuals with water in Holy Baptism, with touch in Holy Absolution, and with the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar that are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us. And, the Word of God in all of these forms is powerful and works what He intends! In tonight’s Gospel Reading, the Virgin Mary’s words arguably were the means by which the Holy Spirit filled Elizabeth and John the Baptizer (confer Luke 1:15), and Elizabeth may have exclaimed the Virgin Mary and Jesus blessed, but, the two women notably did not take upon themselves the Office of the Ministry that was not given to them, nor did they encourage other women to seek the Office which, once granted to the apostles, afterwards was transmitted only to certain men (Stephenson, CLD XII:85). Perhaps more-obviously, as we hear tonight’s Gospel Reading, we note well that John the Baptizer, who arguably also heard the Virgin Mary’s greeting, had faith in Jesus while still in the womb, and, because unborn and born infants can have faith, Jesus Himself blessed even infants (Luke 18:15-17), and the Christian Church baptized eight-day-old children and, at least early on in Church history, even young baptized children ate and drank of the Sacrament of the Altar, even as their Old Testament circumcised counterparts ate and drank of the Passover Meal. As surely as the Lord Jesus in the womb of His virgin mother visited Elizabeth and John the Baptizer to deliver them, so surely does the Lord Jesus in His Word and Sacraments visit us to deliver us, regardless of our age!
“The Lord visits us to deliver us.” As the Lord’s in-the-flesh’s visiting of Elizabeth and John the Baptizer led to their rejoicing, so the Lord’s in-the-flesh’s visiting us leads to our rejoicing—and that rejoicing is the rejoicing in the joy of the Messiah and His Last Day. As we heard in tonight’s Epistle Reading (Romans 12:916), we do such things as rejoice in hope, contribute to the needs of the saints, and seek to show hospitality; we rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep; and we feed and give something to drink even to our enemies. God had regard for the poor and lowly and despised—including us—and so do we have regard for the poor and lowly and despised, even when they are, from our sinful perspective, a child of an unplanned or difficult pregnancy or an aged or other person with what we think of as a low quality of life. For, insofar as we “visit” and do such things to the least of our brothers, we “visit” and do them unto our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. On the Day of Judgment, He sees such good works as the evidence of the faith that God has given to and worked in us, and so we, who are blessed by His Father, will inherit the kingdom prepared for us from the foundation of the world (Matthew 25:3146, especially vv.36, 39, and 43).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +