Visitation
Lk 1:39-45
7/2/24
What kind of reception would Mary
get? The thought had to weigh on Mary’s
mind as she made her way from Galilee to Judea.
Mary’s trip had been prompted by remarkable circumstances to say the
least. The angel Gabriel had appeared to
Mary. She had told her that she was going to give birth to the Messiah. Gabriel
had announced, “He
will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord
God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will
reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no
end."
Of course as a virgin who was betrothed
but not yet married, this did not seem possible. However, Gabriel had told her,
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to
be born will be called holy--the Son of God.” Mary would conceive through the work of the
Holy Spirit, and she would give birth to the Son of God.
Then Gabriel
had gone on to explain, “And behold, your relative
Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month
with her who was called barren.
For nothing will be impossible
with God.” This too was amazing
news. Faithful Elizabeth had never been
able to have a child, and now was too old to have one. But Mary learned that God had acted to bless
her with a child.
This
was joyous news! And so Mary went with
haste to visit her relative Elizabeth.
She went to celebrate Elizabeth’s pregnancy, but she had to wonder what
kind of reception she would get if she shared her news. Should she tell Elizabeth about her own
pregnancy? After all Mary was not
married. It certainly looked like she
had broken the Sixth Commandment. Would
Elizabeth believe what Mary had to say about the pregnancy?
Any
concern that Mary had was immediately removed.
We learn that Mary entered the house of Zechariah and Elizabeth. She greeted Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s child
John leaped in her womb. Then Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She
exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed
is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother
of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting
came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.”
Elizabeth
was filled with the Holy Spirit. This means that the Holy Spirit caused her to
make an inspired pronouncement. She
addressed Mary as the mother of her Lord, and explained that the child in her
womb had leaped for joy because he was in the presence of Mary’s child.
Elizabeth
did not know that John was already fulfilling the words that Gabriel had spoken
to Zechariah when he announced that John would be born. Gabriel had said that
John would be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. He had said that John would go before the
Lord to make ready a people prepared.
Even in the womb, John was already the instrument of the Holy Spirit bearing
witness to Jesus.
Rather
than condemning Mary or raising questions, Elizabeth provided a Spirit inspired
acknowledgment of Mary and her child.
Then she concluded by saying, “And blessed is she who believed that
there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” She praised Mary who had believed the Lord’s
word.
Today
we are celebrating the Visitation, as Mary went to see Elizabeth. On the surface, this event is about Mary and
Elizabeth. But in truth, it’s really
about Jesus and John meeting for the first time. Even before birth, John is carrying out his
role of bearing witness to Christ. And this points forward to the key role that
John will play for Jesus.
Jesus
and John would meet again some thirty years later. John would prepare the way for Christ by
proclaiming a baptism of repentance. He
would be the fulfillment of Isaiah’s words: “The
voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the
Lord, make his paths straight.’”
John called
people to repent because God’s judgment was coming. He was preparing the way for One more
powerful than he. John proclaimed, “I baptize you with water, but he
who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not
worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and
with fire. His winnowing fork is in his
hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his
barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Then
Jesus came to John to be baptized by him.
The Spirit descended upon Jesus as a dove and God the Father said, “You
are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” With these words God identified Jesus as the
Servant of the Lord. At his baptism
Jesus stepped into the place of sinful humanity. He became the Servant of the
Lord – the suffering Servant of Isaiah chapter 53 who received God’s judgment
in our place.
Jesus
met John the Baptist at the Jordan in order to take on this role. The baptism of our Lord pointed his ministry
in only one direction – towards the cross.
By his death Jesus has redeemed us from sin. Jesus was able to die because he was true
man. He was the child of Mary, born in
this world.
Yet
Jesus was more than a man. As we hear
Elizabeth say by the Spirit in our text: “And why
is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” The baby in the womb of Mary was the Lord –
the Son of God. The second person of the Trinity entered into our world in the
incarnation. Jesus came as the One who
is true God and true man. He came to be
the sacrifice that alone could break the hold of sin.
Jesus was present in
the womb of Mary as she met Elizabeth.
True God and true man, he was present in the flesh. The Son of God had taken on humanity in order
to die. He bore our flesh in order to be
the sacrifice that takes away sin. Yet
he also bore our flesh in order to do more than that.
Jesus came to die,
but Jesus also came to rise from the dead.
By his resurrection our Lord has defeated death. In his resurrection he has transformed
humanity so that it can never die again.
He is the first fruits of our resurrection. Jesus bore our flesh in order to pass through
death and give us resurrection life in which we will never die again. He has begun this in his own resurrection,
and will give us a share in it when he returns in glory on the Last Day.
In our text,
Elizabeth says, “And blessed is she who believed that there would
be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” Mary received a word from the Lord through
Gabriel. It was a word that turned her
life upside down. Yet she believed God’s
Word and trusted him. She trusted there
would be a fulfillment of the Word and in faith she believed that God was at
work in her life.
This is something
that we often struggle to do. We hear
God’s Word that declares his forgiveness and continuing love for us. Yet when illness arrives, or circumstances we
didn’t plan on, we struggle to trust God. Our tendency is to doubt God’s
Word. We focus on what we see in life
instead of God’s promises. In doing so we
sin for we fail to fear, love, and trust in God above all things.
Elizabeth’s words
about Mary call us back to trust in God. We follow Mary’s example because the
baby in her womb grew up to die on the cross and rise from the dead. God has revealed the death and resurrection
of Christ to us. In the midst of circumstances that appeared to be failure, God
was working our salvation through the cross.
We know this because Jesus rose from the dead on Easter. This allows us to trust in God in the midst
of all the circumstances we don’t understand. The resurrection of Jesus shows
us that God’s Word is true – his promise to care for us will not fail.
God’s Word teaches us
how we are to view our life. And it also teaches us where we are to see life.
In the Visitation the pregnant Mary meets the pregnant Elizabeth. The unborn John bears witness to the unborn
Jesus by leaping for joy in the womb. Our
text shows us that those in the womb are living children.
We dwell in a state
that violates this basic fact as it allows and promotes abortion. Sadly, every week children are being killed
just down the road in Carbondale. You do
not have to be a Christian to believe that life begins at conception. The scientific facts make this point. But as Christians we are especially committed
to confessing this fact. God’s Word teaches us that Jesus and John were
individual human beings in the womb. This means that every unborn child is a
human being. Each is a creation of God who needs to be cared for and protected.
The Son of God cared
for us by entering into the world as an unborn child in the womb. True God and true man, he was present when
Mary visited Elizabeth. John was present
too, and while still in the womb, he began his prophetic ministry. We see in our text that two meet before they
are born, and this points forward to the day when they would meet at the Jordan
River.
Through John’s
baptism, Jesus began his ministry that took him to the cross to win forgiveness
for us. Yet Jesus was in the flesh in
order to defeat death and transform our humanity into one that can never die
again. He has done this through his
resurrection, and this resurrection gives us confidence to trust in God no
matter what is happening. In the risen
Lord we find the reason that we can follow in Mary’s steps as we trust God’s
Word in the midst of all circumstances.
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