Rorate Coeli (Advent 4) 2025

Text: Luke 1:39–56

Introduction: Rediscovering the Mystery and Beauty of Christmas

Christmas is familiar. You know the story. You know the words. You have heard them year after year. And then you decorate that familiar story with so many traditions—not to mention expectations—and the mystery and beauty of what God has done can easily fade into the background. The story becomes something you hear the children recite in school programs.

Advent gives you this final Sunday not to rush ahead, but to listen again. It invites you to recover the mystery and beauty of Christmas, not by inventing something new, but by paying attention to what God has actually done.

Luke invites you to do that by placing a song on Mary’s lips. In that song, Mary beautifully expresses the mystery and beauty of what God has done for her. God has looked upon her lowliness. God has done great things for her.

And in doing so, Mary also points beyond herself. Without yet realizing it, she speaks more truly than she understands. Her words point to even greater things that God has done for you.

I. God’s Promise Is Already at Work Before It Is Seen

Mary has just heard the promise of God. She has been told that she will bear the Son of the Most High. And as confirmation of that promise, the angel has pointed her to Elizabeth—old, barren, and now pregnant. So Mary rises and goes with haste into the hill country. Not to test God, but to see what God has already begun to do. She moves because God has spoken, and because He has attached His Word to a sign.

That is already the first confession of this text. God’s promise is not distant or abstract. It is active. It is already at work before it can be seen.

When Mary greets Elizabeth, something remarkable happens. John leaps in Elizabeth’s womb. Before a word is spoken, before an explanation is given, recognition takes place. The Holy Spirit reveals Christ before human understanding can catch up.

Faith recognizes what the eyes cannot yet see.

II. Faith Recognizes Christ Before the World Can Explain Him

Elizabeth then speaks, filled with the Holy Spirit, and she confesses what the world cannot yet explain: “Why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Christ is confessed before He is born. The Lord is named before He is visible.

And Elizabeth names Mary’s blessedness clearly. Mary is blessed not first because of her role, but because she believed the word that was spoken to her. Faith does not wait for resolution. Faith rests in the promise as sufficient.

The contrast is already taking shape. Faith trusts because God has spoken, not because circumstances are settled.

III. True Joy Is Grounded in God’s Promise, Not in Resolution

Then Mary sings. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Mary does not magnify herself. She does not magnify her courage or her obedience or her understanding. She magnifies the Lord.

And notice that her circumstances remain unresolved. Joseph has probably not been told yet. The road ahead is uncertain. Nothing about her situation has become easier. And yet she rejoices.

Why?

Because God has spoken. Because His mercy is already at work.

That is an important correction for you and I as well. Joy, in this text, does not grow out of clarity or control. It grows out of promise. Faith rejoices not because everything is resolved, but because God has been faithful.

IV. The Great Reversal Is Accomplished Through the Cross

But Mary’s song does not stop there. It moves outward, and here her words grow sharper.

“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 low degree. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty.

Mary is not offering a hopeful vision of how the world might one day be. She is declaring what God has done. These are not aspirations. They are verdicts.

And this is where her words press in on you.

The mighty whom God casts down are not only rulers and tyrants somewhere else. The thrones He overturns are not only political or public. They are closer than that. They are internal. They are the places where you rest your confidence without even thinking about it.

The false strength Mary’s song exposes is not necessarily loud arrogance. It is quieter and far more common. Control. Competence. Self-sufficiency. The sense that, if nothing else, you can manage. You can hold things together. You can stay upright.

And Mary declares that God casts that down.

That is not poetry. That is law.

Because if you stand before God on those things—on what you manage, on what you provide, on what you hold together—you do not stand. You fall with the mighty. The Magnificat leaves no neutral ground.

But here is the heart of the Gospel: that judgment is not avoided. It is not ignored. It is not softened.

It is borne.

God does not condemn pride from a distance. He does not simply announce that the mighty will be cast down. He enters the world. He allows human pride, human strength, human certainty to do its worst to Him.

This is where Mary’s words reach further than she yet understands.

The great reversal she sings about is accomplished through the cross.

At the cross, human power has its way. The mighty rule. The proud mock. Strength prevails. And in that very moment, judgment is rendered—not against you, but for you.

Your pride is judged there, and its judgment is taken up by Christ.

Your false strength is exposed there, and its collapse is borne by Him.

He is cast down.

He is emptied.

He is brought low.

And therefore—because of Him—God has exalted you.

Not because you are naturally humble.

Not because you finally learned to trust properly.

But because Christ has taken your place among the condemned.

You are raised because He was cast down.

You are filled because He was emptied.

You are given what you did not earn and could not secure.

This is what Christmas is actually about.

Not simply that God has come near,

but that God has come near in order to give Himself away,

to bear judgment,

and to lift you up.

V. The Certainty of the Promise Rests in God’s Mercy

Elizabeth’s words earlier in the Gospel help us here. When Mary arrives, Elizabeth does not speak as someone who has achieved something or prepared herself properly. She speaks in wonder at what has been given: “Why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”

That same confession belongs on your lips as well.

Christ does not come to you hidden in a woman’s womb, but He does come to you hidden. He comes hidden in His Word. Hidden in the water of Baptism. Hidden in bread and wine. And like Elizabeth, you do not receive Him because you are worthy, but because it has been granted to you.

Mary’s song ends where Advent must end: with mercy remembered and promises kept.

“He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

God has not changed His mind. He has not abandoned His promise. He has done exactly what He said He would do. And He has done it at great cost to Himself.

That is why this promise is certain.

Not because you feel ready.

Not because your life is settled.

Not because Christmas finally feels calm.

But because God has been faithful.

Conclusion: Faith Still Sings Before It Sees

So the story remains familiar. You will still hear the same readings. You will still sing the same hymns. Nothing about Christmas needs to be reinvented.

But Mary’s song has done something important for you today. It has restored the mystery and the beauty of what you are about to celebrate. It has reminded you that these are not merely well-loved traditions or comforting sounds. They are confessions. They are declarations of what God has done.

When you sing this Christmas, you are not singing sentiment. You are singing the great reversal: that the mighty have been cast down, that mercy has triumphed, that judgment has been borne, and that you have been lifted up in Christ.

And so faith still sings before it sees.

Not because everything is resolved.

Not because life has slowed down.

But because God has spoken,

because Christ has come,

and because He has already done great things for you.