15 August 2021
Text: Luke 1:39-55
The world doesn’t know Jesus. A couple days ago, I saw an internet meme that was intended to be serious that said, “If Jesus were alive today, He would not be a…” followed by the name of a political party, as well as things that our Lord apparently wouldn’t do (things the author doesn’t like, of course), that is, if He were alive today. The worst part is that people who claim to be Christians shared this. “If Jesus were alive today.” It beggars belief.
While loathing Christians with a seething hatred, the secular world wants to claim Jesus as their own. They miss the point entirely. They obsess over His skin color (which is irrelevant). Their self-made narrative of Him is an illusion of Him as being perpetually “nice” (Are you kidding me? Clearly, they have never read the Gospels). With straight faces, they claim that Jesus would be tolerant of every manner of sin and vice, and that He is apparently everything that they are, and that they approve of. Thus they create God in their own image. Well, if He were still alive, anyway.
The Scriptures are emphatic that Jesus is completely God and completely man. And nearly every heresy and false doctrine denies one or the other of these realities of who Jesus is. Some deny His divinity, reducing Him to a happy Mister Rogers Yogi of Niceness, or to a first Century Che Guevara-style revolutionary Communist long before Karl Marx and Fidel Castro were ever born. Some deny His humanity, usually reducing Him to a kind of literary figure, or a legendary or mythological teacher whose followers turned Him into a religious figure centuries later.
No matter what crazy theories the world puts forth, dear friends, the real Jesus is to be found in the Scriptures, on our altars, and from the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And that’s why this feast of the church celebrated today is so important, dear friends.
Jesus is the Son of Mary. He is human, and completely so. He came into our world as a fertilized egg inside His mother. But His mother was a virgin. He has no earthly biological father. God is His Father. Jesus is a Man. Jesus is God. In His humanity, he can die on our behalf, shedding His perfect blood as a sacrificial atonement for the sins of the world. In His divinity, He is that Lamb without blemish, the one who neither inherited nor committed sin. He created us, and He redeems us. He is God in the flesh. And He comes to our fallen world to rescue us.
He died on the cross, rose again from the dead, and then empowered the apostles with the Holy Spirit, ordaining them into the Holy Ministry, authorizing them to absolve sins, to make disciples by baptizing and teaching, and to consecrate bread and wine, by His Word and by His command, giving this miraculous Eucharist to Christians of every time and place. For Jesus has promised to be with us to the very end of the age.
But before there was the church and the ministry, there was the resurrection of Jesus. And before there was the resurrection, there was His death on the cross. And before His death, He lived thirty-some years as a boy and as a man. And in order for Him to take flesh as a preborn baby, He had to have a mother.
It is the unwritten tradition of the church that St. Mary - the Blessed Virgin, in the words of the hymns, our “most highly favored lady,” who is “higher than the cherubim, more glorious than the seraphim,” in the words of the early church fathers and of our Lutheran confessions, the “mother of God,” and in the words of Holy Scripture, the one who is “blessed among women” - died on August 15 in Ephesus, at the home of the apostle John.
But different churches honor Blessed Mary differently, even celebrating this holy day with different emphases. Unfortunately, ignoring her own instructions to listen to her Son, some Christians have turned her into an idol, a kind-of goddess or genie that hears and answers prayers by means of her mighty superhuman power. Other Christians, reacting to this Pagan emphasis on Mary, reduce her to being no different than any other Christian.
But what does Scripture teach us, dear friends? Holy Scripture teaches us that Jesus is God, and Mary is His mother. She is truly the mother of God, unless you want to be like the world and reduce Jesus to a mythical teacher who isn’t really God at all. The Blessed Virgin Mary is a saint of the church to be emulated and loved, for when the “Angel Gabriel from heaven came,” he announced to Mary that she was selected to be the mother of the incarnate God. “Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head, ‘To me be as it pleaseth God,’ she said.”
For St. Mary is not a genie in a lamp granting us wishes. The Blessed Virgin is not a goddess to be worshiped and prayed to seeking salvation “in the hour of our death.” Our “most highly favored lady” is even greater than this: she is the mother of our Lord. She is a mother, dear friends. That is a sacred vocation by which God creates life. And it is a vocation hated by the devil. In nearly every language, the foulest curses involve the use of the word “mother.” The most vile of insults given to men involve their mothers. And the most deadly holocaust in history is the ongoing slaughter of the innocents in their mother’s wombs by mothers, who falling for the devil’s lies, unlike the mother of God, bring forth new life, but refuse to meekly bow their heads in awe of this miracle, who refuse to accept the holy vocation of mother that “pleaseth God,” and instead sacrifice the life for which our Lord died. And in a parody of Holy Communion, some women actually celebrate abortion as a virtue, saying, “This is my body.”
Dear friends, the devil loathes motherhood, for through this particular mother, God took on flesh. And this man who is God resisted Satan’s temptations. And this God in human form died as an innocent sacrificial Lamb, shedding His blood to save mankind from Satan, death, and hell. For it was on the cross that this Descendant of Eve (whom the devil had tricked), that this Jesus tricked the serpent and crushed his head. And this God in human flesh, this Christ child, came into the world in Mary’s womb. By tempting Eve, the mother of all men, Satan brought death into the world. But by means of the mother of our Lord, Satan was defeated at the cross by the Son of Mary, the daughter of Eve. If you were Satan, could you think of many things more repugnant than motherhood, or this particular mother, dear brothers and sisters?
So we love Mary, but we do not worship her. We look to her as a saintly example of faith and submission to our Lord, but we do not pray to her. But nor do we reduce her to just another person. She isn’t. She is unique in all of history. She is our Lord’s mother, and every good man loves His mother. And so should we, dear friends.
And Mary’s song is our song, the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” For Mary’s Son is also God, Mary’s Savior. He died on the cross to forgive her sins. And because of this cleansing of Mary by the blood of her divine Son, it is right and fitting that we call her “holy” – even as all Christians are made holy by the blood of the Lamb, by the waters of baptism, and by hearing the words of Jesus that give us life.
And through Mary’s humility, mankind is raised up. Through her meekness comes the “strength of [God’s] arm.” Through her humble submission, the proud are “scattered.” Through her comes the Lord’s “mercy,” fulfilling that which God “spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to His offspring forever.”
And because of the humble obedience of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we can sing, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.” Indeed on this feast of Mary, let us rejoice in Mary’s Son. The world doesn’t know Jesus, but Mary does, and we do also, dear friends! “Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns,” now and even unto eternity. Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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