All Generations Shall Call Her Blessed: A Meditation on Luke 1, for the fourth Sunday in Advent

And Mary said,

My soul doth magnify the Lord,

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.  

For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden:

for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

For he that is mighty hath done to me great things;

and holy is his name.  And his mercy is on them

that fear him from generation to generation.

He hath showed strength with his arm;

he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.  

He hath put down the mighty from their seats,

and exalted them of low degree.

He hath filled the hungry with good things;

and the rich he hath sent empty away.  

He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;  

As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.

Mary, the Mother of Our Lord, is probably one of the most abused personalities in all of Holy Scripture.  From the excesses of some of our Roman friends who want to make of her a Co-Mediatrix (a co-mediator) of our salvation with Christ and the primary object of intercessory prayer for the faithful, to our various Protestant friends who are afraid to grant her any dignity at all or perhaps even to mention her in a salutary light, Mary has often received less than proper remembrance.  In our Gospel reading for this Sunday, however, we have recorded a beautiful and inspired song of Mary which helps us to keep things in their proper perspective.  This lovely little song is often called The Magnificat.

What we first learn from Mary’s lips, is that she has been blessed by God entirely apart from her own righteousness or worthiness.  She freely acknowledged even as she magnified and rejoiced in God her Savior, that it is He who had regarded her lowly estate only then to lift her up.  Mary knew that she could not earn what God had done through her, and nor could she earn the honor that every successive generation of Christians would bestow upon her by calling her blessed.  She was not worthy to bear the Son of God, the Savior of the world; to give to Jesus of her own humanity, that God would be incarnate among His people; to be the bearer of God Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.  Indeed, as the wood and gold of the first Ark of the Covenant given at Sinai was unworthy to hold the divine Law carved by the finger of God upon stone tablets, so too was this daughter of Eve unworthy to hold the Lamb of God in whose Body and Blood the New Covenant of salvation would be written at Calvary.  Mary was not worthy in herself to be the Mother of God, but it is God who lifted her up and made her worthy of His work by His grace.

What we learn most centrally from blessed Mary the Theotokos (an early Greek title given to Mary, meaning “God bearer” or “Mother of God”) is that God’s salvation always comes to His people by grace through faith in His Word.  From the Old Testament into the New, God came to His people by His Law and Gospel—His Commands and His Promises—offering the free gift of forgiveness, life, and salvation to all who would repent, believe, and live in Him by faith.  No earthly measures of holiness or grandeur amount to anything before God, who is Himself the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings.  No one who stands before God in pride to justify himself receives anything but condemnation and judgment from His hand.  But to all who humble themselves before Him, acknowledging their own unworthiness, turning from their evil and clinging to His Word by faith, He gives honor and blessing that can never be taken away.

If the Word of God finds you today, thinking that you deserve the Son of God and that you are worthy of His presence in your life, beware and repent—for there is no person since the fall of our first parents who could stand worthy and holy before Almighty God.  You are certainly not worthy in yourself to receive the King of the Universe under your roof, for the Law declares your sin and judgment even in your own heart.

But if the Word of God finds you today, thinking that you are unworthy to receive the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the whole world, be of good cheer—for the King of the Universe is the One who regards the lowly and the downtrodden, and His mercy is upon those who fear Him in every generation.  You are no less worthy to receive the Great and Mighty King under your roof, than the humble Mary Theotokos whom God raised up to bear the Word of God Made Flesh.  And just as Jesus gave Himself to blessed Mary to be both her Son and her Savior, so He gives Himself to you by the Word of His Gospel Promise—washing you in the sacred waters of Holy Baptism, feeding you on His sacrificed Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist, and forgiving your daily sins by His Holy Absolution.  There, in Word and Sacrament, at the hands and by the mouth of unworthy servants, the Lord of Glory condescends to come to you that you might live by His grace through faith in His Only Begotten Son… just as blessed Mary lived, and yet still lives, glorified in her Son forever.

We are right, on this day and on all days, to follow the injunction of Holy Scripture to call Saint Mary, Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Theotokos, blessed.  We are right to honor blessed Mary because it is God who has blessed and honored her to be the bearer of the Word Made Flesh; and as the mother of Jesus, by extension, the mother of all the faithful who are joined to Jesus Christ by grace through faith in Him alone.  Blessed Mary is to be honored not because she herself is worthy of praise, but because God our Savior has honored her by lifting her up in His grace.  And in honoring blessed Mary, the whole household of faith looks to Christ our Savior, knowing that it is He who lifts up the humble and the unworthy, giving to all His saints the crown of life and victory over sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil.  Blessed Mary becomes a sign of Christ’s love and mercy to the whole world, and so we declare the Lord’s salvation to the humble and the faithful of every generation when we give thanks to God for the gift of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  For the same Christ who saved her, comes also to save us all.  Amen.

What did you go out to see? A Meditation on Luke 7, for the 3rd Sunday in Advent

And the Lord said, Whereunto then shall I liken

the men of this generation? and to what are they like?

They are like unto children sitting in the

marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying,

We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have

mourned to you, and ye have not wept.  For John the

Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye

say, He hath a devil.  The Son of man is come eating

and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a

winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!  

But wisdom is justified of all her children.

A brief survey of what we entertain ourselves with, shows us to be a strange assortment of folks.  From our music to our movies, our games to our hobbies, there’s an endless variety of things we enjoy going out to see.  We post the things we enjoy or stimulate us on social media, and we send each other a dizzying array of communications from various sources—it’s just part of our technologically interconnected lives together.  Often people don’t need to go anywhere to see almost anything, or to communicate with almost anyone.  From the small glowing window on our cell phone, to the larger glowing windows of our monitors and televisions, we can see things in almost every corner of the globe.  But the question Jesus asks of the people around Him regarding John the Baptist (and indirectly about Himself) still applies to us:  What did you go out to see?

Whether we go out in person, or we go out through an electronic portal, we go out to see a great many things.  We see things that are noble, and things that are disgusting—things beautiful and things ugly.  But when we go out to see Jesus, His Prophets and His Apostles, just what exactly are we going out to see?

The question rings in our ears, because we bring a lot of baggage to the quest to see Jesus.  In our sinful pride, there are some who want to see Jesus as a supporter of all our personal goals and ambitions; as our cosmic concierge; as a voice of sympathy for our self inflicted stupidity; as our source of power to accomplish our designs; as our absolution for our unrepentant wickedness.  This wide array of desires people have when they seek Jesus often betray self centered idolatry which lies so deeply in our hearts, and which seeks to bend all things around us to our service.  Of course, those who don’t think they need Jesus, or don’t think he’ll support them in their selfishness, only go out to mock and deride Him, some going so far as to slander Him or deny that He ever existed.  The sin inside ourselves which prompts us to seek or abandon Jesus isn’t what prompts us to know Him rightly—it is the motivation of a sinful heart to enslave Jesus to our desires, or to disregard Him for the pursuits of our own corrupted liberty.

Recognizing this, many theologians over the centuries have observed the Biblical witness that no one actually seeks God rightly on the basis of their own personal piety.  Fallen mankind doesn’t seek God out of faith, because the fallen nature doesn’t really trust God—somewhere way down deep, the sin which infests us cries out against us, and the Law of God which is also written on our hearts speaks out our condemnation.  The sinner doesn’t seek the true God in his sin, because he knows that the true God is his inescapable Judge.  Therefore the sinner, of his own evil resources, seeks out gods who will approve of his sin, distorts or curses the true God, and finds for himself only the company of demons and other wickedly self-absorbed men.  They pipe for God to dance with them, and then ridicule Him when He doesn’t prance to their tunes.  They call for God to mourn with them, and then scorn Him for not placating them while they suffer in the wages of their evil.  The sinner doesn’t seek the true God, because the true God does abide their delusional claims to self divinity.

Fortunately for us, God does not leave our salvation hanging on our ability to seek Him.  Instead, He sends His Prophets and Apostles in the power of His Holy Spirit to bear His Word to us, and ultimately sends His Word Incarnate to seek and to save lost sinners by bearing the weight of our sin upon Himself.  Knowing that we cannot in our wickedness seek God for our life and our redemption, God sends His Only Begotten Son to be our salvation, and to gather unto Himself all who will repent and believe His blessed Gospel.  Yet such a Word of salvation can be fierce and unsettling to sinners lost in their own prideful debauchery.  It will reach unbidden into their darkness, shining the light of truth which dispels all their self justifications.  That Law which annoyingly gnawed on them through their conscience, is now refined into a hammer which shatters every pretension.  Without the cover of dark delusion and the distraction of prideful pretense, the sinner is brought naked and broken before the Judgment Seat of Almighty God—a place in which only deep sorrow for one’s own sin, and complete despair of one’s own works, may abide.  It is not a gentle or kindly place, but it is the necessary place where true conversion begins:  where we are met by Jesus, finally seeing rightly who we are and who He is reflected in the brilliant but deadly mirror of His Law.

But it is here, in this place of broken contrition, of despair for our own ability to save ourselves or those around us, that we are finally met by the awesome and incalculable love of that same true God.  When every false hope is finally stripped away, Jesus holds out the one hope which will never fail, and will never fade:  that by His Cross He has paid your debt of sin, by His dying He has shattered your death, and by His resurrection He secured your life forever.  This gift of grace is not of your doing, not of your seeking, not of your imagination, but it is of His immutable work of love to seek and to save you.

What we go out to see in the world is often just a reflection of our own inner darkness, but what God comes to bring to us is a reflection of His own most marvelous light.  And to you, who have been sought by God, who have heard His Word of Law strip you bear and His Word of Gospel clothe you in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who live by grace through faith in Christ alone, you are a child of His eternal wisdom, justified by His eternal love and mercy.  Do not be surprised that the world misunderstands you and your saving Lord, or that they seek from God all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons.  That same Word which came to you and called you to life by His Holy Spirit, comes to the whole world, and is reflected through you into the darkness all around you.  That same Word which enlivens and enlightens you to faith in Jesus Christ, seeks to enliven and enlighten every soul which will repent and believe the Gospel.  Yours is not to save the world, for you know already that you could not even save yourself.  Yours is to trust in the God who alone saves, and whose love alone is powerful enough to seek and to save the whole world through that same Eternal Word which saves you.  To Him alone be honor and praise and glory, now and forever.  Amen.

John the Baptist: A Meditation on Luke 3, for the Second Sunday in Advent

 

…the word of God came unto John the son of

Zacharias in the wilderness. And he came into all the

country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance

for the remission of sins;

Many pastors have found throughout history that the least popular thing they must do as they serve God is to call people to repentance.  As the life and martyrdom of St. John the Baptist demonstrated, calling people to repentance can end up putting one’s head on a plate—which was what the wicked household of King Herod had done to him.  Preaching love and grace and peace and acceptance is usually either well received or generally ignored by society at large; but the preaching of repentance gets a lot of hostile attention very quickly.  As we enter into the Advent preparations for Christmas, it is worth meditating on why people get so angry when they are called to repent.

Of course, considering repentance in the abstract isn’t going to get the same visceral reaction as studying it in concrete particulars.  The general call to repentance might generate a general irritation among folks, or perhaps even a smugness that others may need to repent but not ourselves.  The pointed call to repentance actually addresses individuals, and names particular sins which must be put away lest the judgment of God fall upon them.  For example, telling people in general to avoid adultery may gain the irritation of a general public which wallows in debased sexual sins, or a holier than thou attitude by people who think they’ve never committed adultery despite their lustful hearts; but telling a specific person to repent of his fornication with his girlfriend, or a specific woman to repent of her adulterous affair with her neighbor’s husband, will get a potentially violent or evasive reaction.  This is true, because way down deep inside ourselves, we love our sin.  We love our pride, our lust, and our covetousness.  We love to think of ourselves as our own sovereign gods, and that no one has the right to judge us.  We even come up with bland but pious sounding platitudes to dismiss such calls to repentance, declaring everyone a sinner in general, so as to take the heat off of us personally.  If that doesn’t work, we’ll attack the preacher of repentance until he either shuts up, goes away, or we eradicate his witness from off the face of the earth.

In reality, my neighbor’s sin is not a license for my sin.  Attacking the messenger does not remove the call to repentance.  The truth of God is revealed against us all, and we will all bear the weight and the guilt of our own sins.  Our lack of love for God and our neighbor, our murderous ambition, sexual deviance, oppression of the weak and poor, destruction of nature and the natural order, and every other vice we’ve absolved ourselves from, cries out for our judgment.  Sin and evil, no matter how we may want to whitewash or popularize it, is damnable.  Not just sin in general, but my sin and your sin—my evil and your evil—call out to the Judge of the Universe for us to be consigned to death and hell for all eternity.  My sin is what damns me, not the Judge who passes righteous judgment upon me; just as the call to repentance shows me my sin and my need for a Savior, not the preacher who calls me to repent.  I cannot hide from my sin by denying the Judge, anymore than I can hide from the call to repentance by ignoring or abusing the preacher.  This Law of God is inescapable, and even if we were to silence every preacher, the universe itself and the witness of God written in our own body and soul declares it to us.  We are without excuse:  the works of our own hands, the words of our own mouths, and the thoughts of our own minds, declare our righteous condemnation.

Though absolutely necessary and foundational, the preaching of repentance alone is not the fullness of God’s Word to mankind.  As John the Baptist demonstrated, and as Christ Himself later sent His Apostles to preach, the Law of repentance must be paired with the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins.  While the preaching of the Law and the call to repentance from our own personal sins creates in us a holy terror, a sadness, or even an anger of rebellion against God, it does not give us what we need to be saved from our just judgment.  The Law is holy and good and pure, but we are found unholy, evil, and corrupt.  The call to repentance is hopelessness and despair for a sinner who cannot change his own nature, or root out of himself the twisted vices which impel him to never ending acts of evil.  While eternal and inescapable, the Law of repentance alone cannot save us, because we alone are not able to meet its perfect demand.

But the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake alone, does what the Law cannot do—it washes the believer in the Blood of the Lamb of God, and absolves our sins.  The debt we could not pay with an eternity in hell, Jesus pays once and for all upon His Holy Cross, suffering in His own body and soul the condemnation we have earned.  There in the Cross of Christ our sins are paid for, and the Law is satisfied.  This is the forgiveness of sins which is brought to the repentant sinner, because only the sinner who believes in the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake can turn from their evil toward the grace and holiness of God.  The unbelieving sinner remains trapped in his sins and the judgment sure to come upon him, but the believing sinner turns from his sins toward the Cross of Christ, by living faith receiving the gift of grace which only Jesus could earn for him.

This new life of faith and repentance is not easy.  It is marked with humility and a broken heart for one’s own sins, together with a constant desire to be called out of the darkness we so naturally fall back into.  This godly sorrow for our sins, coupled with the faith which clings to Jesus alone for our forgiveness, life, and salvation, inspires us by the Holy Spirit to rise up in a new life marked by the goodness and purity of God.  We do not live into the Law for salvation, but rather because we are saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, we bring forth the fruits of faith which befit a life honest repentance.  A life without repentance nor its fruits, is also a life without saving faith or saving grace.

May we remember the inseparable link between repentance and the forgiveness of sin, between the Law and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that we may also do the hard and dangerous work of bearing witness in a dark and dying world.  Preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins may result in our martyrdom, but it is the eternal truth which the world needs—which we all need—for eternal life.  May we also always give thanks for the preachers of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in every age, who came to us in the spirit of Christ like John the Baptist, through whom the Word of God has been made known unto the salvation of all who will repent and believe the Gospel.  Amen.

Let Not Mine Enemies Triumph Over Me: A Meditation on Psalm 25, for the first Sunday of Advent

 

Unto thee, O LORD, do I lift up my soul.

O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed,

let not mine enemies triumph over me.

Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed:

let them be ashamed which transgress without cause.

Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths.

Lead me in thy truth, and teach me:

for thou art the God of my salvation;

on thee do I wait all the day.

It is a dark world, and there’s no getting around it.  Though the whole universe was created good, and continues to bear witness to its good Creator, through the Fall into sin and wickedness a darkness has come which no one can escape.  Every human being experiences the pain and suffering of a darkened world, some more urgently and pointedly than others.  In various places and times our human race has experienced starvation and disease, war and pillage, theft and abuse, enslavement and oppression; all marks of a fallen world.  A world that was originally constructed without death, disease, war, or tumult according to the holiness of Him who fashioned it, has become a place where people of every tribe and tongue sit in darkness yearning for the light.

In this fallen and darkened state, our enemies are many and close at hand.  The material world seems at war with us, as forces of nature destroy our homes and communities.  The microscopic world seems bent on our destruction, as chemicals, viruses, and bacteria plague us with disease.  The animal world frightens and pursues us, with tooth and claw that wound and kill.  And perhaps worst of all, our own brothers and sisters plot in sinister delight how to take, to conquer, to subjugate, to malign, and to murder even their own flesh and blood.  Inspired by our own fallen nature which is itself inclined always to evil, and goaded on by the dark forces of the devil to descend ever further into the black abyss of perdition, we sit surrounded by brutal enemies bent wholly upon our destruction.  The devil, the sinful world, and our own sinful flesh encompass us on all sides, driving us inexorably toward our deserved destiny of death and hell.

The truth of our imperiled state was not lost upon King David, as he penned the 25^th Psalm.  He knew all too well the enemies within and without, as well as his hopelessness in the face of such great monstrosities.  His solution, however, was not to depend upon his own strength, or cunning, or holiness—rather, he fell down before the Lord his God, and begged for salvation.  David not only knew that he was surrounded by enemies he could not of his own power defeat, and that his destruction was deserved because of his own sin, but he also knew that salvation was alone by the grace of God, and that such salvific grace could come only to those whose faith clung to Him through His Word.

At various times and places, the people of God sat in darkness, praying for His salvation from every enemy of mankind.  They prayed for protection and deliverance from Egyptian slave masters, from plague and hunger and weather, from Philistines and Assyrians and Babylonians, from evil kings and queens in their own country, from false prophets and false teachers.  But ultimately, the people of God have prayed not just for salvation from the troubles and troublers of this transitory life, but from the sin, death, hell, and power of the devil which have tormented them ever since the Fall.  They knew that salvation was from God alone both in this world and the next, and they sat in the darkness waiting upon the Light of God to break into the world which would save them from every enemy.

That Light for which the people of God waited in ancient times, broke forth in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  1000 years before Jesus, King David could write and sing to God for salvation for himself and all who put their trust in Him, praying that the faithful saints who clung to God for His grace might not be gloated over by their enemies.  And the faith of King David, together with all those who came before him and all those who came after, was made victoriously present in the Messiah.  In Jesus, every enemy of mankind was defeated, and the curse of death and hell was dispersed.  The malice of wicked people, the lure of sin within our own bodies, the persecution of murderers and tyrants, and even the terrible power of the fallen angels were conquered through the Cross of Jesus.  There in Jesus’ sacrifice for human sin was the curse lifted from mankind, and there in His resurrection was the confirmation that even though we die, we will live forever in Him.

This is the great Light which the people of the Old Testament looked forward to, and the people of the New Covenant look back upon, knowing that King David’s prayer for salvation was fulfilled for him and for us in Jesus.  And though we find ourselves in an ever darkening world, ravaged by wickedness both human and demonic, we stand victoriously in the midst of so great a morbid throng.  For we know by faith that we are saved by God’s grace in the person and work of Jesus Christ—a Holy Gospel of salvation which comes and abides with us by His Holy and Eternal Word.  Here in Jesus we stand in the Light which the darkness can neither comprehend nor overcome, knowing that even though we die, sin, death, hell and the devil shall never triumph over us.  We are a people freed from the curse of the Law, called unto holiness and life eternal, marked with the signs of repentance and the forgiveness of sins.  We are a people who need fear no evil, for Christ our King reigns victorious over all our enemies, and it is His good pleasure to give to us His Kingdom.

Be not afraid of the perennial enemies of our race, dear Christian, for your Savior lives and reigns unto all eternity.  And though weeping and suffering may mark our time in this world, we look forward to that great Dawn when our Lord shall return to claim His own, and all evil shall be forever put away.  For with your eyes you shall see the Lord of your Salvation, and your enemies will be seen no more.  All glory and honor be His, now and forever.  Amen.