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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And so, it comes to an end, the fourth Sunday in Advent, our last opportunity to gather together before we celebrate the great birth of our Lord. We tend to think of ourselves in this chasm of time as if everything is happening in the last 100 years, or maybe we think in terms of maybe everything happening in the last 1,000 years even. How very egocentric that is! For this promise fulfilled in Mary in our reading today has been around for thousands of years.

The promise came to our first parents in paradise where the woman was promised who would bear the Seed that would crush the head of the serpent, Satan. And they waited, and they waited, and they waited.

Waiting is not a hard thing to do when things are going very smoothly for us. When it seems as if we're on the winning side, waiting is easy, at least easier than when it seems like we're on the wrong side, the side that no one agrees with, the side that is looked down upon and scoffed, the side that is at variance with all those around us. Then it's not so easy to wait. Then it gets very arduous. Then it gets very tiresome.

For you and me as Christians in this country at this time, we are heading into an era that our children and our grandchildren will see through, and we are going to taste a great deal of it before God brings us home. And that is, we are at variance with the rest of this nation. We've always known that, but it hasn't come crashing home as it has over the last several years where we begin to see that our point of view of God and what He has done to us, how He has revealed Himself to us, what His promises are, and how He wishes to come to us, they are at direct variance with this world, and they are at direct variance with many people who used to be a part of this confession of faith. And then, it becomes harder to wait.

Why did it seem to work for our parents in their generation, and not ours? And what is the hope then for our children and grandchildren? That is a very good question. It's not as if we're the only generation to have experienced it, but it is a good point to bring back to keep being reminded of, because God…His gift of this Word proclaimed to us in its truth and purity can be taken away from us.

It is not as if we have the vested right to have it with us. It is a gift, and God has allowed this gift to rain upon this geographic region of the world for a time, and it could be that it's time for this raincloud of God's holy Word and truth and purity to move on, and where we're the minority, and where we're the ones who are looked upon with a canted head and a raised eyebrow as being markedly different, even radical. Interesting indeed, isn't it? And then, waiting becomes arduous, waiting becomes monotonous, and "Come, Lord Jesus" becomes very real.

The closest thing unto which we can kind of bring this is someone who is dealing with death, who is waiting for death to come, and knows that in a matter of days or weeks or months it will come very soon. It's interesting, isn't it? Is it coming any sooner once we become aware of it than not being aware of it? No, because we know not when that time or that day will come, just that it will come. But when it's right before our face in real time, then the reality of it comes home and we can cry out with understanding, "Come, Lord Jesus." Until that day, we practice. We practice, and that is what we're doing and have been doing here. That is what you grew up with practicing, "Come, Lord Jesus, come!"

And practicing those words which could seem to some as if a waste of time is the very thing that comes home to roost when you are facing in a very real time your predicament or dilemma. Then, the practice of "Come, Lord Jesus" through all these years of being raised with that and given that gift of God's holy Word in sacrament, then those words come, and they come with great meaning and power, where once they were merely said possibly, and the depth of them were not plumbed by our abilities.

So, when we think in terms of waiting, we're waiting for death right now. It's just a matter of time. It's only when we have been diagnosed with something or faced with something do we realize how close death is. But is not death always a breath away? This is not meant to be melodramatic; this is meant to be realistic. I thank God that our dear, beloved Dr. Luther was so realistic with death. We sterilize it in our generation. When someone dies, they're ushered off to a funeral home, and the body is never dealt with by the family. Historically, the family dealt with the dead body; hence, the wake, and being buried within 24 to 36 hours, because you buried the body the next day.

It can sit in cold storage for quite a while as we arrange our schedules to fit the funeral arrangements. And then when it comes, someone else brings it and takes it away. It used to be that you stood there and threw dirt on that casket as it was in the hole. Now, we drive away, and it's sterilized, done by someone else who we will never see. And the next time we come back, it's done.

The reason I bring this up is because this text is of such a nature. Elizabeth was a woman who had waited a long time for the blessings of a child, for her own flesh and blood to come from her own womb, and it didn't. And now, she was well beyond the age of being able to ever bear a child, and yet God brought forth from her dead womb life in the form of John the Baptizer, the miracle of birth.

And then, having given her such a miraculous gift of mercy shown to her, she is tied into the other great woman of the New Testament, the mother of our Lord, Mary, who without even having been married…meaning sexual relations, though she was married in the eyes, waiting for the service to occur…not having had any sexual relations with a man, as a virgin, conceives and has a Son within her womb.

And then, when these two women get together, John, being in the womb of Elizabeth…and we live in world that says that that is a clump of tissue that is not real, that is not alive, that is not a human being. This clump of tissue, which this world declares as not real and not alive and not a human being, did leap in Elizabeth's womb at the sound of Mary's voice! Not at the sound of God's voice, Jesus, but at the sound of the mother of God, Mary. These are miraculous things indeed for us to grapple.

She exclaims with not just a statement, but with a loud cry, this woman of God, "Blessed are you…" meaning Mary, "…among women." For thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years, women had been waiting. Who would be the woman? From where would she come? When would she be the one? Thousands of years…not 10, not 100, and not 1,000, but thousands of thousands. And here she is!

But the focus is not on Mary; the focus is on the fruit of her womb, when Elizabeth says, "Blessed is the fruit of your womb, the One that God planted there, the One that God knit together using you, Mary, and Himself, combining God and man in one without compromise nor stain, but a unified one Person, Jesus," and then proclaims her to be the mother of "my Lord, my God" does Elizabeth speak.

But it is the last statement of Elizabeth that is the most important. "Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord." Now, this was a very short, short waiting of fulfillment. As we just finished singing, the angel Gabriel announced to Mary she would be the bearer of God in the flesh, and she goes and travels to Elizabeth, and in her hearing does she hear immediately the affirmation and the confirmation of that promise, but she is not the fulfillment.

You and I are the fulfillment, for blessed are we who is the bride of Christ, the "she." Blessed are we who have believed that the fulfillment that has spoken to us shall come true. That is what we wait for, that fulfillment to come true in us, the Church, the one that in this generation stands at odds with the rest of the world. There were times when we were the crown jewel of the world around us, and they looked to us, and we controlled all things, and then there are times when the Church has been despised of this world. And that is where we are at now.

Mary responds to this great statement of Elizabeth with her own song that we have sung many times, the Magnificat…Latin for "My soul shall magnify" or "Magnification." We sing it often in an evening prayer. "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices." You remember. It is a great statement of the Church, for we are the bride of Christ.

Now, Mary talks about the great gift to her personally in the first half of this Magnificat. She uses the personal pronoun of first-person me. "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has looked on the humble estate of His servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for He who is mighty has done great things for me."

And that can be applied to you as a person. He has brought you from death to life. He has raised you from the dead. He will call you from the grave and raise you with body. He will bring you together with all those who have preceded you in this faith. He binds you together in a fellowship or a communion of saints that transcends time, that is eternal, and shall never be parted one from the other.

But lest we become egocentric, which is our nature as sinners, does Mary broaden it to the Church. "He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts…" He's done that to us too, hasn't He? Humbling us without our desire, but for our good that we may not think too highly of our understanding of God or this world.

"Holy is His name…" the name you bear, the name that you were given at your adoption, the name that God placed upon your forehead and upon your heart as God's child, "…And His mercy is for those who fear Him from generation to generation." This is what you are a part of. It preceded you before you came into this world, and it will follow after you long after your memory is gone…not your own memory, but that the memory of you and who you are in this world.

Just consider for a moment about how transient this is. All these street names around here with last names of people, no one knows who they are, few if any, and yet you know how much wrangling there was to ensure that that name would be on that street in this town. You and I will be long and forgotten. We are but a vapor. It is the promise of what God did to this vapor that matters most. It changes nothingness into something. It changes no name into the name of God. It changes that which lacks everything into that which has everything in Christ.

From generation to generation has He done mighty things. Some of them are remarkable and can be remembered. Some of them are even unaware to us because of our inability to see them, and yet the promise stands.

The subject is the mighty One, and the theme is mercy. You have been shown mercy by the mighty One, and holy is His name that you bear. And though we may wait, and though it gets old, we wait with many in our company who have waited a long time and in worse conditions than we, and Jesus came for them too. So, He shall come for you, and you shall rejoice, and the waiting game will be over, and joy will be all that there is. In the name of the One born of Mary, the fruit of her womb, Jesus, Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting, Amen.