Luke 1:39-55 Advent 4
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace-Tucson, AZ
December 22, 2024
This morning we heard about Mary visiting her relative Elizabeth, who was quite a bit older than she was—Mary, a virgin and likely just a teenager, and Elizabeth well beyond the normal child-bearing years—but both pregnant. Both of their babies were special—one, John the Baptist, the messenger who was to prepare people to see the Savior when he came, and the other, Jesus, that promised Savior. Can you even imagine the conversations at this meeting of the moms?! Some of you know what it is like to be pregnant while a friend or family member is also pregnant. There’s lots of excitement…and sharing how you’re feeling…and potential names… and all sorts of things! Imagine the things these two had to talk about in addition to the usual stuff! They both knew who their babies were and what they would do! In addition to one special baby bouncing around inside of his mom once the other special baby and his mom got there, this was not a quiet arrival! Elizabeth blurts things out in excitement—“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me? In fact, just now, as soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy! Blessed is she who believed, because the promises spoken to her from the Lord will be fulfilled!” She was bursting with blessings and questions and commentary! Then Mary responds to Elizabeth. It’s what Mary said that we want to take a closer look at—and we can learn some things from her. This morning… Let Humble Mary Show You How to Celebrate Christmas 1. She Gives God All the Glory 2. She Praises God’s Acts of Mercy 3. She Rejoices in God’s Salvation
(46-49) (50-53) (54-55)
She Gives God All the Glory (46-49) If I give you a line of a song, I’m guessing some of you can tell me what musical it comes from. “Seventy-six trombones led the big parade” (The Music Man) “If I were a rich man” (Fiddler on the Roof) Maybe you can do the same with Disney movies, animated musicals: “Let it Go” (Frozen) Or maybe my favorite, “We don’t talk about Bruno” (Encanto) I don’t really watch musicals much, and I don’t break into song about everyday things as I wander through my day. Other than one person in my life who is prone to doing things like that—and who can actually sing like a Disney princess—I don’t think it happens much.
But is that what happened with Mary as she responded to Elizabeth? We call what she said, The Song of Mary,” and it has been sung in the Church going back to maybe the 1400s. You will also find the song titled The Magnificat, which comes from the Latin word for “magnify or glorify,”—and that comes from Mary’s words “My soul glorifies the Lord or My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.” Unless she came up with the words on the trip to see Elizabeth and practiced singing them, I suspect she spoke this as she sat with Elizabeth talking about their babies. And yet, we have it in song form in our hymnals. We’ve been singing it as part of our opening liturgy for weeks. We just sang another setting of it just a few moments ago. And that’s okay. We do things like that. We sing the Song of Zechariah and the Song of Simeon too, although they also seem unlikely to have been sung by those men. More important than whether it was spoken or sung are Mary’s actual words. They tell us a lot about her and how she celebrated the coming of her son, who was also the Son of God. Did her excitement match Elizabeth’s? Maybe we should have exclamation points after the things that she says! Mary’s excitement was not just because she was having a baby or that she and Elizabeth were both having babies at the same time. She was excited because of what God was about to do and about and who her baby would be. She was proclaiming God’s greatness because she knew this was so much bigger than the fact that she was going to be a first-time mom and that she and Joseph would have a family. She had this humble awareness that people of all time were going to look back on her as the mother of the world’s Savior. The God who had done great things in the past was doing another one now—he was fulfilling a promise, remembering to be merciful to his people as he brought them a Savior from their sins and One who would open the gates to heaven for all the spiritual descendants of Abraham. Was there ever a more exciting time than this?! Christmas is exciting for us. Kids are anxious to open presents—and adults too. Will we receive just what we were hoping for under the tree? We’re going to get to see family. We get to have all sorts of Christmas treats. We’re looking forward to a special Christmas dinner. What do you notice about those exciting things? I want presents. I want to see my cousins. I love Christmas dinner. There’s a lot of I and me in there. It’s not wrong to be excited about holiday things, but for us—for Christian people— there is something more important than all that, something bigger than us. You know this already. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop us from favoring family and festivities over the birth of the baby in Bethlehem. That is sinfully putting ourselves first over a Real Christmas that focuses on Christ. Let’s let Mary teach us about humility and glorifying God. See how she thought about the importance of God’s love and sending a Savior. Those personal things—a baby, a family, a shared time of pregnancy with Elizabeth—those were exciting things, but far from the main thing.
Instead of being self-centered and rejoicing mostly over our gifts or our food or our family at Christmas, our focus is to be on “the greatness of the Lord,”—just like Mary’s was. That’s easier to do if we recognize, like she did, that we deserved nothing from God, but in spite of that, he looked on us with favor. Mary knew that it took the grace of God to notice her…lowly her. Who was she to capture God’s eye as “the one?” In humility, she confessed that God had looked favorably on her. Like any other person, she too needed a Savior too. That she was just another sinful human being was evident when the angel Gabriel came to her to tell her that she would give birth to the Savior. There was the usual reassurance from the angel to not be afraid as a human being saw a glorious, heavenly creature. There was also a typical human lack of understanding on her part when the angel told her the miraculous thing God would do through her. But you know what she did have? Faith. With humble faith, Mary trusted God and the angel’s words. And her words to Elizabeth were full of proclaiming God’s greatness and rejoicing over her Savior. Follow her lead. Are you not in the same position before God—undeserving, yet chosen by him, favored by God and blessed by him? You too have been given a Savior. Just as she gave God all the glory, you can give him all the glory too. She Praises God’s Acts of Mercy (50-53) Although our world gives us lots of bad examples, it is not wrong to take appropriate pride in things that you do, and it’s not wrong to have lots of money, and it is not wrong to serve in the government or have authority over people. So, when you hear Mary talk about God scattering the proud and bringing down rulers and sending the rich away with nothing, it might be confusing. But you’ll notice that the people she is talking about do not respect the Lord or recognize their lowly state before the almighty and holy God. They reject the need for God because they’ve got things covered. They’re doing well. They don’t need God. Those people are the opposite of those who do respect the Lord, who see his strength, and who have been lifted up by him and given blessings from his gracious hand. Be careful though. Realize that we are not in a position to look down on those people. No. Like Mary, we understand that we are, according to our nature, the lowly people that God has lifted up. Undeserving people. People with nothing to offer God, but who needed God to bend down from heaven and raise them up. How are things going for you right now? Christmas is Wednesday, right? Do you have everything done? No stress? No concerns? No worries? Even outside of things related to Christmas, you doing okay? Nothing that makes you uncomfortable? No family drama? No aggravating travel plans? No rude neighbors or unfriendly people?
Why am I asking? Because I want you to think of Mary. How do you think life had been for a pregnant teenage girl in that culture—engaged to a man who had thought about breaking it off with her? Was there family drama over the daughter who sees angels? Do you think anyone in their little town looked at her sideways? Do you think there was gossip? Did she maybe have some sleepless nights, thinking about what the angel told her? Was it uncomfortable for her to travel to Zechariah and Elizabeth’s house? Mary knew that life is hard, just as we do. It can bring us to our knees—any of us. And we often contribute to our own difficulties. Sometimes we don’t know what to do. We are humbled and brought low. It is sin in us, and it is sin affecting us from every side. What happens when we’re in that spot? We look up to God for help, and the Lord lifts us up. He fills us with good things. He does this because he loves us. He is merciful to us. He does not treat us as our sins deserve, but forgives us. The Mighty One uses his strength to take care of us just like he has always taken care of his people. That’s what Mary said. And she was right. She experienced it. Mary is an inspiring young lady, don’t you think?! Great faith at a young age! She praised God for his acts of mercy—not just for all the people of the past that she was aware of from the Scriptures, but from her own life. Humble Mary was living this “lifting up from the Lord.” You think there’s a lesson there for you about celebrating in spite of our difficulties? Instead of being consumed by our troubles, repent and look to the Lord. Mary shows us that we can praise God for mercifully lifting us up and giving us the good things we need. God has always lifted up his people—and you’re his people now. She Rejoices in God’s Salvation (54-55) Mary’s reason for rejoicing was that she was seeing God fulfill the promises he had made to his people over a very long period of time—generation after generation going all the way back to Abraham. No doubt, she was thinking of God’s promise to him that a Savior would come through his family line: “All of the families of the earth will be blessed in you (Genesis 12:3).” Mary wasn’t merely rejoicing that she was having a baby or that she got to be the Messiah’s mom, she was rejoicing in God’s salvation of the world! God is pleased when you and I celebrate like Mary—when we take our celebration beyond the things that we enjoy this time of year and even beyond the good news that Jesus came for us. We celebrate like Mary when we rejoice that God sent a Savior for the whole world, that Jesus is the gift God gave for every person. May God move us to celebrate the Savior of all people coming into this world like humble Mary did—giving God the glory, praising him for his mercy, and rejoicing over his salvation. Amen. Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.