Untitled Sermon

O God, we thank you for your Saints. We thank you for their lives and example. Help us to learn from your Word what would draw us closer to the image of your Son. Amen.

I grew up in a non-Mary faith. Maybe you did, too. In an attempt to not be like the Romans, the tradition I grew up saw any admiration of any of the saints as idolatry, and none flew closer to idolatry than anything that had a whiff of the Blessed Virgin. But in an attempt to downplay the Mother of our Lord, we made up for it at Christmas. She was there, in the creche, bowed over the manger, Joseph tall beside her. The statuaries always made her look so much older, wiser, and calmer than she must have been that night. I’ve been the witness of four births and I’m not sure Heather would have been ok if someone has asked to kneel over this manger right afterwards while I stood over them.

But we give her that kindness, bringing her out Christmas, talking about that brave young woman who endured pain and ridicule at being an unwed mother.

In our attempts to downplay the Saints, and especially the Blessed Virgin Mary, we downplay Christ. St Augustine told us that “they are to be honored for imitation, not to be adored for religion.” We must be careful, as John Cosin said, to keep God as the center of our worship and not raise any of them to such a distinction as to worship or venerate them. And for St Mary, we should do what we can to redeem her name from the gross imputation of glory that cannot belong to the most excellent creature, that is but a creature.[1]

In our remembrance of the saints, we are asked to remember Christ first and foremost. In celebrating them, the point will be to remember who Christ is and how he changed their lives. We have a few stories in the New Testament about St Mary. We have less of them than we do of St Peter, but certainly more than we have of St Bartholomew. We have to ask ourselves “why?” Simply, because in knowing the Mother of our Lord we truly get to know Jesus in a way unlike we do from anyone else. She was there for the birth of our Lord. She was there at the Cross. She was there at Pentecost. All of these pivotal events, and she was there.

In St Luke’s Gospel this morning, our reading points us to the Magnificat, Mary’s Song of Praise. She has left her hometown and travelled to see her cousin Elizabeth. She had been told that one of the signs that she can be sure that what the Angel Gabriel said to her was true was that Elizabeth, her very old and very barren cousin, was also pregnant. We cannot assume that Mary had been told ahead of her trip that Elizabeth was pregnant. News just didn’t travel as quickly back then as it does with us.

Even before they see each other, Elizabeth hears Mary’s voice and the baby Elizabeth is carrying leaps or joy. And Elizabeth greets Mary: 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.”[2]

Something amazing has happened. When Gabriel greeted Mary, the angel says: Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”[3] Gabriel and Elizabeth greet Mary in such a high and noble way. This young woman is being addressed in a way that has never happened before. The story is the same: Mary is exceptional. She cannot be duplicated in manner or in fashion. What has happened to her will not happen again.

But it is not because of anything Mary has done. I would repeat that the Saints, and especially the Virgin Mother, are not incredible on their own. What makes them incredible is what God has done through and with them.

Mary’s Song of Praise is not a model for how we should and can pray to her, or for her, or even for ourselves. It is a praise of God and the great work he has accomplished. It is the Gospel. It’s the gospel before the gospel, a fierce bright shout of triumph thirty weeks before Bethlehem, thirty years before Calvary and Easter.[4] What has God done?

He has done what he has always said he would.

It is impossible to read Mary’s Song without even a brief understanding of the waiting the Israel has endured. When we look at our Isaiah text we see that God has been in the works in accomplishing this for awhile. The chapter we read from in Isaiah is a string of chapters of promises and hope. God will rescue Israel from her great self-imposed exile. She has not listened or been faithful, but God will recure her. And not just “again”, but finally. God will come and do what he has always promised, he will forgive their sins. He will give them the garments of salvation, and the robe of righteousness. This is more than just the prayers for forgiveness. It is the guarantee that God is calling them his own. They are his people and he will dwell with them, the way a husband lives with his wife. He will not leave them or forsake them.

The angel who stood at the gates of Eden will be relieved, and his people can now find rest in his presence. This is the reason for this praise: It is God’s doing.[5] The praise is not based on Israel’s new situation. It is not self-glorification. It is all owed to who God is!

And when we move to verse 11, we are assured that it will happen.[6] The verbs are all in future tense, like the rest of the chapters. But it is certain to happen. God will do this as surely as the Earth turns, seasons change, and gardens grow. It cannot be stopped. By anyone or anything, not even borders.

The big promise to Abraham is that all nations would be blesse through him. And Isaiah makes it clear that this blessing is not just for Israel, but for all nations. God is going to do something that will bring the world back to where it is supposed to be. He will.

And in Mary’s womb, he has done it.

This is the wonder of language. In Mary’s Magnificat, St Luke makes sure that the verbs are no longer future tense. Mary is living in the moment of the accomplishment.

He has looked

He who is mighty has done

He has shown strength with his arm

He has scattered

He has brought down

He has filled…

Do you see the theme? All of what Isaiah and the Psalmist had been looking forward to has now been realized.

This is why we celebrate St Mary. She carried the change of the world, from future hope to present reality in her womb. We should call Mary “blessed.” However, the fact that Mary rejoices in “God my Savior” means she is fully aware of her own need for the wondrous salvation that she so beautifully sings about (Luke 1:47).[7] In celebrating and remembering Mary, we are celebrating and remembering what she recognized: God has taken the initiative—God the Lord, the savior, the Powerful One, the Holy One, the Merciful One, the Faithful One. God is the ultimate reason to celebrate.[8] The Virgin Birth, St Mary, is key to this.

The Virgin Birth is part of our confession of faith. J. Greshem Machen said that “even if the belief in the virgin birth is not necessary to every Christian, it is certainly necessary to Christianity.”[9] We do not need to understand it.[10] Our ability to accept the virgin conception, the testimony of Saint Mary and Saint Joseph, will ultimately depend on our willingness to embrace the testimony of the ancient church.[11] That’s not our task here. Our task is to echo forever what Mary has rejoiced in: God our Savior. What is at stake, regarding the Virgin Birth, is nothing less than the identity of Jesus in relation to God the Father. The Virgin Birth answers who Jesus is. We cannot take it lightly.

The virgin conception means that Jesus was not simply a holy man whom God honored with divine status. It means Jesus was not a cosmic ghost disguised as a man dispensing philosophically savvy self-help advice to be true to ourselves. The virgin conception means that God’s deliverance comes through the people, the story, and the covenants of Israel.[12]

This is what our text from the letter to the Galatians is to referring to. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” [13] The Virgin Birth, specifically through Mary, a young Jewish girl, accomplishes the work of our salvation. “The one whom God sent to accomplish our redemption was perfectly qualified to do so. He was God’s Son. He was also born of a human mother, so that He was human as well as divine, the one and only God-man. And He was born ‘under the law’, that is, of a Jewish mother, into the Jewish nation, subject to the Jewish law. Throughout His life He submitted to all the requirements of the law. He succeeded where all others before and since have failed: He perfectly fulfilled the righteousness of the law. So the divinity of Christ, the humanity of Christ and the righteousness of Christ uniquely qualified Him to be man’s redeemer. If He had not been man, He could not have redeemed men. If He had not been a righteous man, He could not have redeemed unrighteous men. And if He had not been God’s Son, He could not have redeemed men for God or made them the sons of God.[14]

God’s purpose was both to ‘redeem’ and to ‘adopt’; not just rescue from slavery, but to make slaves into sons. And not just Israel. God’s intention was to do what he had said to Israel’s earliest ancestors: ALL nations would be blessed through Abraham’s family. And this, again, is the importance of language. Just as ST Mary’s pointed to the realized reality that salvation had come, St Paul, writing to people who had once been hostile to Jews, outside of that family by long stretches… he now turns to them and makes sure that they know that the Lord’s long arm of salvation includes them.

Because YOU are sons…

“The birth of Jesus is God reaching down into human life so that humanity can become the fist that shatters the dynasty of evil once and for all. ”[15]

Then the birth of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, is the reality that a new world really might be starting up within the midst of the old, leaving us with the stark choice of birth to death; leaving us … no longer at ease: leaving us, in other words, as Christian people faced with the Herods of the world.[16]

Proper: O God, you have taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of your incarnate son: Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Ame

[1] William Clagett, A Discourse Concerning the Worship of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Lk 1:42–45). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Lk 1:28). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[4] Wright, T. (2004). Luke for Everyone (p. 14). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

[5] Oswalt, John N. The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40-66. NICOT. (William B Eerdmans. Grand Rapids, MI. 1998), 574.

[6] Ibid, 575.

[7] Michael F. Bird. “Evangelical Theology, Second Edition.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/evangelical-theology-second-edition/id1502926813.

[8] Wright, T. (2004). Luke for Everyone (p. 16). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

[9] Machen, J Greshem, The Virgin Birth of Christ. (New York: Harper, 1930.), 396.

[10] Michael F. Bird. “Evangelical Theology, Second Edition.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/evangelical-theology-second-edition/id1502926813

[11] Bockmuehl, Markus. This Jesus: Martyr, Lord, Messiah (London: T&T Clark, 1994), 33.

[12] Michael F. Bird. “Evangelical Theology, Second Edition.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/evangelical-theology-second-edition/id1502926813

[13] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Ga 4:4–7). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[14] Stott, J. R. W. (1986). The message of Galatians: Only one way (p. 106). Leicester, England; Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

[15] Michael F. Bird. “Evangelical Theology, Second Edition.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/evangelical-theology-second-edition/id1502926813

[16] NT Wright, “A Power to Become Children: Isaiah 52.7-10 and John 1.1-18” sermon, Cathedral Church of Christ, 25 December 2007, http://www.ntwrightpage.com/sermons/Christmas07.htm