The Annunciation to Mary – Luke 1.26-38
Some of the phrases and most all of the thoughts in this sermon are cribbed from Luther (The Festival Sermons [Mark V Publications] and the House Postils [Baker]).
Rejoice, highly favored ones, the LORD is with you! Blessed are you among the children of Adam, for in your baptism, you received grace, and in the Communion you have been filled with grace! Rejoice and be glad!
But as you know well, this dark world, along with the devil and our own wicked inclinations, would deny us that gladness. This particularly happens through the exercise of our reason, fallen human reason. The things that Christians believe in most dearly – the virgin birth, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, the forgiveness of sins, the coming resurrection of all men on a day of judgment, the kingdom of heaven – all of it goes against our experience, which says that this life is all there is, suffering or success are arbitrary, there is no god, there is no meaning to your life.
To a young virgin girl, probably 14 years old or so, an angel comes. How are we to believe that? But even if it is true, how is she to believe what he says? But note how Mary reacts. When Gabriel comes, she does not first speak, but listens. What the angel tells her is contrary to all human reason: “You, Mary, will become pregnant and give birth to a son without the aid of a man.” Never in all the history of the world has such a thing happened, before or since. How can such a thing be believed?
But then there is more: “The child you will bear will be the Son of God, incarnate deity in your womb.” None of this can be understood or apprehended through her reason, or ours. So Mary must, and does, let everything go, and she clings only to this Word of God spoken through the angel. Dr. Luther says, “Faith builds on nothing nor allows itself anything but the Word of God.” So Mary is for us the premier example in the Scriptures of what it means to have faith. She does not doubt, she does not waver. She hears the Word of God and says her “amen” to it.
Now extraordinary things like this do not happen to us. Angels do not appear to us, virgins do not conceive. But as Christians, our reason is no less challenged than was Mary’s. For the angel, the messenger, the pastor and Scriptures come to us with incredible claims: claims about Christ and His virgin birth, His crucifixion and resurrection, His payment for sins as our substitute, His ascension, His coming at the final judgment; but then also incredible claims about ourselves – your many and great sins are forgiven in Jesus; death has no power over you; your body shall rise again; the almighty God truly does love you, even you, and will welcome you into the kingdom of heaven. And in the face of our sins and the threat of death, amidst the scorn of the world and the fears of our own damaged and frail psyches, how is any of this to be believed? Who am I, that I should gain heaven? Who are you, that you should receive God’s favor?
How is any of this to be believed? In the same way as Mary. By setting aside our reason and clinging to the Word of God. Of course, we are reasonable people. We need to use and employ our God-given reason in our work and in the things we do each day, the equipment we operate, the calculations we make, etc. But this Word of God surpasses all that, and God comes to us saying, “With Me, nothing is impossible.”
So we do not cling to the promises of Holy Scripture as though we were believing a fairy tale. We believe these things, even though they are beyond our present experience, because of the testimony of God’s Word. If a man said and invented nice stories to comfort us, then it would be the greatest folly to believe it. But what we have is not the words of men, but the promises of God.
So give glory to God for what seems to you to be impossible. “How can it be,” says the blessed virgin, piously, “that I shall conceive, since I have not known a man?” With God, all things are possible. “How can it be,” says reason at a Baptism, “that this washes away sins?” With God, all things are possible. “How can it be,” says reason kneeling at the altar, “that this bread is the body of Jesus?” With God, all things are possible.
And so God’s Word tells us the truth, even when we cannot see how it can be so. And the great truth we marvel and revel in today is that God was made man in the womb of a young virgin in Nazareth. The child in her womb was true man, of the substance of His mother Mary, but true God, of the substance of His Father, God the Father. Listen to how beautifully Dr. Luther puts it: “In that hour when [Mary] said, ‘Be it unto me according to thy word,’ she conceived and became the mother of God; and Christ, therewith, became true God and true man in one person. Even though he is a tiny fetus, at that moment he is both God and man in Mary’s womb, an infant, and Mary is the mother of God.”
This beautiful and lofty doctrine is our greatest comfort. For God chose not just to come among us, to visit us and help us; He chose to take on our nature. He takes on our nature to redeem our nature; He becomes man to redeem man; He became one of us so that we could become like Him. And in that flesh He died, so that our flesh would not die forever, but live forever in and with Him. Today is conceived the One whose death and resurrection we will in a few short weeks remember. It is all of one piece, God comes into our flesh, dies in our flesh, rises in our flesh, and now in this Sacrament gives us His flesh in order to redeem our flesh.
To that unbelievable, incredible, wonderful saying full of love, the blessed virgin Mary had nothing to say but, “Amen. I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be to me as you have said.” And kneeling at the altar, we in effect repeat those words, and rejoice that with God, nothing shall be impossible. +INJ+
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