[Machine transcription]
Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the Gospel reading. You may be seated. Every day of every week, you and I, whether we realize it or not, and whether we want it or not, get schooled by the world in the world’s ways. It’s a remarkably different way than the way of God, isn’t it? The way of the world sees things through a different set of eyes than the eyes that have been opened by the Holy Spirit’s prompting and great gift of faith. The world sees things and acknowledges things and reasons things in a far different way than how you and I find ourselves here in this place where God’s Holy Spirit works through this preached and proclaimed Word.
God’s ways are set before us each time we interact with His Word, whether it’s devotions, Bible studies, or here, especially in the divine service, where God serves us Himself, giving us again a refocus of what His ways are. The world, however, mocks God’s wisdom, and the world decries God’s ways. The world opposes God’s mercy and God’s grace. Mary said it so well: He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. And so God scatters the proud thoughts in their hearts by becoming a frail and dependent infant, being conceived as flesh and blood in the womb of Mary.
Look at what the world sees this text as. The world sees this text as being ridiculous. The world sees anyone who holds to what God proclaims in this text as being simple-minded and a simpleton. And the world looks at what is going on in this text as being completely and utterly a fairy tale. Here, a young virgin who is pregnant, and that’s an oxymoron, isn’t it? The miracle that you and I cling to! She visits an elderly woman who was also pregnant. Another unusual and miraculous thing. And the world says it’s a fairy tale. The elderly woman who was pregnant in a miraculous way, albeit not as miraculous as the young virgin, the elderly woman who was pregnant, Elizabeth, proclaims that the woman’s womb contains her Lord. Her Lord. And the world says, poppycock, balderdash.
Then the child within Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy at the sound of the voice of the mother of his Lord. And the world says, fairy tale. This is the marked difference between the world’s ways and God’s ways. And every single day, you and I are accosted by the world and its wisdom and its ways. And thanks be to God that we have our eyes refocused here with His Word, without which we too would have our proud thoughts scattered.
Now, there are two parts or two verses in Mary’s Magnificat that I especially want to point out: God’s ways toward you. He who is mighty has done great things for me. And holy is his name, and his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. Those two verses, these truths mean something to you and to me who have received them. They have substance and they have great importance. It is upon which we cling.
But again, the world looks at that and says it’s merely a quaint historical, maybe historical fact. At best, it is merely man’s putting upon those words of his own and have nothing to do with God. For you and I who have received these, they have meaning. And the reason that these words have meaning, he who is mighty has done great things for me, the reason that the words “and his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation” is because we know our sin is… Without knowing one’s sin, these words mean nothing, because you know how the world deals with sin: justifies it, explains it away, blames it on something else.
Just look how the world laid its judgment upon the young man who did those heinous murders in Connecticut. The world says to you and to me, he was cut from a different bolt of cloth than you and I. He had something totally aberrant that doesn’t flow through your and my veins. That’s how the world views evil and sin. It’s always in somebody else or something else. Brothers and sisters, we share the same humanity as that young man. We share the same father and mother, Eve and Adam. We are of the same bolt of cloth as he. And if we do not, then we are succumbing to the world’s wisdom and not God’s.
For the more distance we place between ourselves and that young man, the less do these words, he who is mighty has done great things for me, mean to me. The further I hold myself away from that heinousness and say it has nothing to do with me, the less his mercy will… Think about how Mary responded when Gabriel told her she would be the vessel that would give birth to God. She cried out, “Who am I?” In essence? Who am I? The world would never say that. The world would completely embrace it. Look upon oneself and say, “Yes, I am different than the rest. I am cut from a different bolt than the rest. I did get hewn from a different quarry than the rest.”
God gives Mary this wonderful miracle, and then, do you know what Mary had to do? She had to go back to the mundane things of her life. See, this world says if you’re really great and glorious, you never have to go back to mundaneness. Mundane life. She would have her moments, absolutely. Scripture reveals that she had that aha moment when they went to find him in the temple, and he said, “Did you not know that I should be in my father’s house?” She had the aha moment when Simeon proclaimed he had held and seen the salvation of God. And yes, she would have, again, that aha moment as she watched him breathe his last breath on the accursed tree. For her sins. For her sins.
Yes, she had to struggle with the day-to-day life of her own sin. She had to live with pride and vanity and self-righteousness and struggle with it. Just like, just like you. She was very well acquainted with her sin. Just like you. But the world does not preach that sermon to you, does it? The world tells you something totally different about you and about your sin. And this is where God is saying, stop listening to the sirens of this world and be refreshed again here.
Mary understood her place in this whole scheme of things. Though she proclaimed such beautiful truths, she knew she was only the workshop in which God did all the work. She could not look at the baby within her womb and say, “This is from me.” She could… But God would remind her that this is her Lord and Savior. Yes, he bears the same flesh and blood as her, but it is not from her in the sense that she could do it herself. No different than the work of God in your life.
The world would say, you are what you make of yourself. If we are what we make of ourselves, and we truly believe that, then we truly believe we are cut from a different bolt of cloth than that young man in Connecticut. Would we not rather say, “But by the grace of God, go I,” as that young man from Connecticut? Christ himself gathered twelve men around himself, and yet one, one walked away and hung himself. And the rest also denied him. Yet why were eleven brought back and not all twelve? You know they had to ask themselves that same question.
For that text to mean something, that he who is mighty has done great things for me, we do have to be aware of our sin, or it means so little. And if his mercy is for those who fear him, then we really are beginning to grasp what it means to fear God more than we fear what man thinks.
Here’s the hardest part of all. You see, Mary, who knew that the work of God was done by God within her, she had to come to the realization that she was not her own. Did she sign on for a trip to Egypt out of fear for death? Did she sign on knowing full well that all of those babies in Bethlehem died because of her childhood? Did she realize that everything about her life was not her own, but God’s choosing and doing? And then the very aspect of that text, if truly we believe he who is mighty has done great things for me, if truly we believe that his mercy is for those who fear him, then he can do with us as he wishes, can he not?
It was Mary who said, “Let it be done unto me as you have said.” And boy, did it get done to her, didn’t it? She had to watch the very child that she bore, bathed, and nursed be spat upon and rejected. She had to watch the very Son of God, her Savior, have their backs turned toward Him by those who didn’t believe Him. The world, her life was not her own, but your life is not your own either, is it? God does things to you and with you that would not be your choice, would it? And God does these things because he has you in the palm of his hand, because he who is mighty has done great things.
Those two phrases are so much easier to say than they are to live. And yet, and yet, when God does take away our worldly position, where do we look? Back to the one who alone took it and gave it in the first place. When God ruins our worldly reputation, to whom do we then look? The very one who alone has our reputation at heart.
You see, to fear God above all things is not fear as in terror. It is truly like the young boy who goes outside to play, has played far too long, and his father calls him inside. He grumbles and grumps and groans and backtalks to his dad, and as he comes in through the door, his dad swats him on the rear. Tears flow from his eyes, and all kinds of snot comes out of his nose as he plops himself down at the table to eat dinner. Sulking as only a little boy could, he finishes his supper and asks to go back out to play, and his father gives him that great privilege: “Go back outside to play now. Dinner is over.”
And as he’s outside playing, he’s riding his bike like terror and completely wipes out. His knee is bleeding down his shin. And to whom does he return? The very one who swatted him not more than 15 minutes earlier. That’s fearing God. No matter what the world says, let God do unto us as he wishes. We will believe in the one who alone has our interests at heart. Let God turn our lives upside down and inside out, and we will cry out, “Let it be done unto me as you have said,” even though we may also cry many tears and be frustrated. To whom else do we have unto cry except him who is our Lord and God, the one in Mary’s womb?
The world rejoices when it has money, when it has possessions, when it has power, when it has wealth and glory. But it’s a troubled, sorrowful heart like yours and mine that craves nothing more than peace and comfort knowing that we have a gracious God because of this baby in the womb of Mary.
Truly indeed, when Micah said to the people, “He shall be your peace,” that’s why he is your and my peace. He who is mighty has done great things for you. Holy is his name, and his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
In the name of Jesus, amen.