Mid-Advent 2
Lk
1:39-56
12/9/15
On October 9 of this year the St.
Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs met at Busch Stadium in the first game of
the National League Division Series. The
atmosphere was electric. It was the first time in history that these rivals had
met in a playoff game.
Yet to describe the Cardinals and
Cubs as “rivals” does not seem to do justice to that word. In truth you could hardly find a greater
mismatch of organizations. The Cardinals are proud and mighty … with good
reason. They are the baseball royalty of
the National League, having won eleven World Series titles and nineteen
National League pennants. Since the
National League Central Division was formed in 1994, they have won it 10 times,
including this season and the previous two years as well. During the 2015 season the Cardinals had the
best record in the baseball.
The Cubs on the other hand had only
won two World Series titles and the last one of those was in 1908. They had won sixteen National League
pennants, but most of those occurred prior to the end of World War I. They had
not won the National League since 1945, the year World War II ended. They have been the lovable losers with an
ability to turn success into failure. Up
two games in the 1984 league series, they lost three to two. Leading in the eighth inning and about to win
the league in 2003, they managed to lose the series. Going into the game on October 9 they had
lost eight consecutive post season games.
When the Cardinals won the first
game 4 to 0, Cardinals fans naturally celebrated. The mighty Cardinals were
still the mighty Cardinals, and the humble Cubs were still the humble Cubs. But
then, something unthinkable happened.
The Cubs proceed to win the next three games. On October 13 in the friendly confines of
Wrigley Field the Cubs clinched the series.
In the first playoff series in history between the two teams … the Cubs had won. The mighty Cardinals had been brought down,
and the humble Cubs had been exalted over them.
In the Scripture reading for
tonight, Mary describes this kind same kind of great reversal. The mighty are
brought down, while the lowly are exalted.
She says that this is the way God
works. God has worked in this way
for Mary. And we learn that through the
child she carries in the womb, God has done the same thing for you.
Our text tonight describes what
happened after Gabriel announced to Mary that she would conceive through the
work of the Holy Spirit and would give birth to the Son of God. The angel had told Mary that her aged and
childless relative Elizabeth had also become pregnant, because with God nothing
was impossible.
We learn that Mary quickly went to
visit Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. Luke tells us that when Elizabeth heard
Mary’s greeting, John the Baptist leapt in her womb. In turn, Elizabeth was filled with the Holy
Spirit and 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. And blessed is she who believed that
there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
Guided by the Spirit, Elizabeth
declared that Mary was blessed – favored by God – because of the child she was
carrying in her womb. This was not just any baby. It was in fact Elizabeth’s
Lord. And the confirmation of this was found in the reaction of John the Baptist. The one whose prophetic calling was to
prepare the way for the Lord and point others to him was already doing so when
still in the womb!
Last week we learned that when Mary
heard Gabriel’s shocking announcement, she responded by saying, “Behold, I am
the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” Now,
Elizabeth calls Mary blessed because of her reaction. She says, “And blessed is she who believed
that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
In our text Mary replies to what
Elizabeth has just said. She begins by
speaking about her own situation. Yet
her words soon move toward a broader truth.
She says, “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 holy is his name.”
Mary begins by praising God because
of what he had done. He had taken Mary
who was a nobody and transformed her. By
his grace he had chosen her to bear the incarnate Son of God. This was not something she had any part in
doing. God had chosen her. God had
conceived the Son in her through the work of the Holy Spirit. But this action
by God meant that all generations would call her blessed.
Mary was right. All generations
since have called her blessed. Look
right over there - we have a picture of her on our church’s wall. Sometimes this appreciation of Mary has gone
beyond what God’s Word allows – such as when Mary is viewed as an intercessor
between God and man. But there is no
doubt that Mary is to be honored as the means by which the incarnation took
place. She is to be praised and emulated
because of the way she humbled herself before God and believed his word.
As Mary continues, her words take on
a broader outlook. What God had done for
Mary becomes an illustration for the way he works in general. She says, “And
his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown
strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their
hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of
humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has
sent away empty.”
Mary says that God is the One who
shows mercy towards those who fear him.
And in his mercy he does surprising things with his strong arm. He scatters those who are proud in their
thoughts. He brings down the mighty from
their thrones, and yet at the same time he exalts those who are humble. He sends the rich away hungry, and yet he
fills the hungry with good things.
That is exactly what God was doing
at that very moment by means of the baby Mary carried in her womb. She
concluded by saying that God had helped his servant Israel – an act that
remembered his mercy that he had spoken to Abraham and his descendants. God was acting in the baby Jesus to fulfill
all of the promises that he had made to Israel.
The One born in Bethlehem means the
same thing for you. He does, not because
you are a descendant of Abraham according to the flesh. Instead you
are included in the promise God spoke to Abraham that “in you all the families
of the earth shall be blessed.” Because
you have been baptized into Christ who is the seed of Abraham, now as those who
are in Christ you are included in this promise.
You are included – provided that you
recognize that you need to be. It is the humble who are exalted. It is the hungry who are fed. Mary freely acknowledged her humble estate. God’s word calls you to do the same. It calls you to recognize and admit your
spiritual condition. Of yourself, you
are spiritually broken. You are spiritually empty. The only thing you are full of … is
yourself. Sin infests your thoughts,
your words, your deeds – even in the days before Christmas.
Jesus Christ calls you to confess
this. He calls you to repent. He calls
you to admit your lowly and lost status, and your need for him. Yet in
confessing your humble status; in confessing that you are empty, Jesus exalts
and fills you. He declares that you are exactly the kind of person he came to
save, for Jesus said, “the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
During Advent we are preparing for
Christmas. We are preparing to celebrate
the fact that the Son of God humbled himself to enter our world as he was born
of a virgin and laid in a manger. He
humbled himself by taking your sins and making them his own. He humbled himself to the point of death –
even death on a cross.
He was laid in a tomb. But then on
the third day God exalted him as he raised him from the dead. Jesus ascended into heaven and now is seated
at God’s right hand. Because of this, in
the humility of repentance and faith, you now find the exaltation of being a
child of God. Because of this, though a
Gentile, you are part of the people of God.
Because of this you are filled with the body and blood of Christ – good
things that give forgiveness, eternal life and resurrection on the Last Day.
God has done this for you in
Christ. And because through the work of
the Spirit you are now in Christ he also sends you to act in the same way. He sends you to act in mercy toward others –
to forgive and to help. He sends you to
fill the hungry with good things – those who hunger for food and those whose
hunger can only be fed by Jesus the bread of life. You are now uniquely qualified to do this
because of what God has done for you.
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