TITLE: “His Word for our Salvation”

 

Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.  Our text for today is the Gospel lesson just read, the Annunciation of our Lord’s conception to the virgin Mary.

Thus we begin the first sermon on the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The angel Gabriel appears to a young virgin, and announces to her that she will bear the Son of God in her womb, and that His name will be Jesus, which means “Yahweh saves.”  Now today, if a thirteen or fourteen year old girl were to announce to the world that an angel told her she was pregnant with the Son of God, we would think that she was on drugs.  Ridiculous!  It would be news for Oprah, or perhaps for the National Enquirer!  But so it is, that the Son of God comes to this young girl in a miraculous way, and through the child of her virgin womb the world is redeemed from all sin.

There are several miracles that we should spend time reflecting upon today.  Perhaps we should begin with a simple question: why Mary?  God sends Gabriel, the archangel with a thousand angels at his beck and call, to announce to Mary that she will bear the Son of God.  Why didn’t God choose the daughter of a high priest like Caiaphas, or the daughter of some rich ruler or king?  Why did God choose this poor woman, who was barely old enough to be called such?

Well, this gives us a key to understanding God’s nature and the way He works.  We would have God come with pomp and circumstance, with a great show and mighty deeds.   We would have Him enter the world like true royalty, like a superstar or some sports figure that everyone idolizes and adores for their money and power.  That is, after all, a God that makes sense.  That’s a God that we can relate to, for that sort of God works by politics and power.  Like the rich young ruler, we want to buy our way into heaven with our good works, good looks, positive attitude, or whatever your sin may be.  But God doesn’t work that way.  He comes to a young girl who was probably doing her chores, or perhaps in prayer.  Impressive she was not, but she was a child of faith.

Greetings, you who are highly favored, says our translation.  Or the King James would have it, Hail, Mary, full of grace.  There has been a lot of ink spilt on this very verse, for some would want us to believe that Mary was without sin, that she was perfect, and because she was perfect, God chose her.  But this is not true.  Mary is highly favored because God chose her and blessed her, not because of her own worthiness.  And so it is with you.  You are blessed, you are a saint just as much as Mary.  Not because of your great piety or worthiness, but because God is gracious and merciful.  God shows mercy to the undeserving.  So it is that He chooses the least and the lowliest to bring about the greatest event in the history of the world.  It is entirely right and proper that we call Mary the Mother of God, or even the Blessed Virgin Mary, not because she was so great, but because of the great love and mercy of God.  And so it is that you, too, are blessed and great in God’s sight, because you have been clothed with God’s mercy in your Baptism.

We should also be amazed that God and man join together in the person of Jesus Christ!  Truly this is a great miracle.  Just like the yearly quest for the perfect Christmas, so too we all want to reach up and touch God.  We want to know Him, and to love Him, but we want it on our terms.  We want a God where we can sit on His lap and ask for whatever we want, and if we’re good enough, he’ll give them to us.  However, we’re never good enough.  This sin-sickness cuts us to the core, so that we cannot rejoin with God, because we are so tainted with pride and arrogance and selfishness. 

The creator, however, does not work on our terms.  His love is so great for us that He comes down as one of us.  In our Old Testament lesson today we heard about how God wanted a house to dwell in.  What God gave, though, was an eternal name and an eternal house that would come from the house of David.  That is Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of David.  God came down to earth and became man.  That is the great miracle of the Annunciation.

But one portion of the Annunciation often escapes us.  The angel says that the Holy Spirit would come upon her, and the power of the Most High would overshadow her.  And she believed him!  Mary believed that the Word of the Angel was a word from God Himself, and so she says I am the Lord’s servant…May it be to me as you have said.  Really the King James gets it better here, Let it be unto me according to Thy Word.  Mary trusts the Word of God above her own heart, above her own sense, above everything she had ever known.  Perhaps Mary thought of the prophecy from Isaiah, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son (Is. 7:14).  Mary was a good Jew, and she would have known her Scriptures.

Perhaps the miracle here escapes you.  Martin Luther said that this faith given to Mary was the greatest miracle that the Lord wrought in the Annunciation.  Luther even went so far as to say that if Mary had not believed, our Lord would not have been born.[1]  But here God is acting according to His Word.  At the creation how did He bring the world into being?  He said, Let there be.  For generations He spoke to His people of old by the prophets.  And just a few months before Christ’s conception, the last and greatest of the Old Testament prophets, John, is conceived miraculously.  By the Word.  And so it was the Elizabeth conceived a child in her old age.

Lutherans are always saying that God uses means.  God communicates by His Word.  He doesn’t come to you in miraculous visions, although He could.  He comes to us by His Word, in lowliness and humility.  So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ, as Paul wrote in Romans 10.  Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, is conceived by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary.  Gabriel proclaims the Word of God to Mary, and she believes it, and so it is that the Son of God, the co-creator of the world, is come into the virgin womb of a young girl from Nazareth.

The miracle is almost too much to bear.  But that is the kind of God we have.  We have a God that goes into the muck and junk of our lives and brings about healing and forgiveness by the Word.  I forgive you all your sins.  Take eat, the body of Christ; take, drink, the blood of Christ.  God is always using His Word to bring about miracles.

But what makes His Word so different from our words?  When you say to your spouse, I’ll take out the trash, does it automatically happen?  When you say to your parents or teachers, I’ll work harder at my homework, or I’ll try to do better, does it just (snap) come to pass?  No.  Your words don’t just make things happen.  You have to add your will and the gumption to actually do what you say.

But with God, ah, with God it is different.  God’s Word isn’t just scribbles on a page or sound waves going through the air.  When God says something, it is true.  But more than that, when God says something, it is.  With a Word He created everything that existed, with a Word His Son was incarnate of a poor girl, and with a Word “it is finished” all of the sins of the whole world were erased.  And with a Word today God flings your sin, your hurts, your fear of death and your fear of life into the midst of the sea.  As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us, says the Psalmist (103: 12).  God cannot lie.  So when He flings your miserable life into the depth of the sea and gives you a new life, it is so.

This is why the Blessed Virgin Mary is rightly considered a picture or image of the Church.  Because the Church believes and says AMEN to God’s Word upon us.  Whether it makes sense or not.  Whether our Old Adam likes it or not.  Among God’s people, His Word reigns supreme.  His Word reigns supreme because it is through His Word that He creates faith, indeed, it is through His Word that He comes to you even now.

So when Jesus Christ says to you Take, eat, this is my body, given for you for the remission of sins; take drink this is my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins, believe it.  Believe that God is here in the flesh every bit as much as He was in the womb of His mother, Mary.  Believe that God comes to you now to forgive your sins, and to draw you into the wondrous mystery of His eternal love for us sinners.  And so we join with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven to laud and magnify the name of God who comes down to us and releases us from captivity.  See how great His love is for you, that He would come to you to save you.  In the name of Jesus, Amen.

And now may the peace of God, which passes all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in true faith, unto life everlasting.  Amen.

 

Rev. Todd A. Peperkorn

Messiah Lutheran Church

Kenosha, Wisconsin

Advent IV-B, Luke 1: 26-38 (Annunciation)

December 19, 1999