Christmas Eve Magnificat 4

Luke 1:39-56 - Christmas Eve - December 24, 2014
God Remembers His Merciful Promises

“He has helped His servant Israel,
In remembrance of His mercy,
As He spoke to our fathers,
To Abraham and to his seed forever.”

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It is said that God helps those who help themselves.  It’s a clever little saying.  There’s some truth to it.  But there is also a great error in this way of thinking.  We’ll consider both. 

The truth of the matter is clear: God does help those who help themselves.  We can’t deny it.  We see it happen.  Laziness is met with poverty.  Industry is met with wealth.  This is how God’s world works.  It is tempting God to pray for daily bread, but then refuse to work for it.  It is tempting God to pray for the betterment of your neighbor, and then refuse to assist him yourself when you can.  It is tempting God to pray for your brother’s repentance and conversion, and then refuse to admonish or encourage him to hear the word of God when the occasion arises.  To pray for God’s help is to pray that God might give you the strength and opportunity to do what needs to be done.  God works through means.  You just may be the means through which God desires to work. 

But this does not mean we trust in ourselves.  No, we trust in God.  It is not like God rewards our self-help by helping us the rest of the way.  No!  God just so happens to use our own responsible decisions as a means of blessing us, and others. 

But here lies the error of our clever little saying: When people say, God has helped me, because I first helped myself.  This is not true!  Our efforts might look like they are what get the job done.  But all our labor accomplishes nothing if God does not bless it.  Our helping ourselves does not cause God to help us.  It is merely the means by which he often works.  

Unbelief always exalts the means and despises the source.  There are many means, but one source.  But this is what unbelief has always looked like.  I’ll give a couple examples from ancient times. 

Sun worship is perhaps one of the oldest forms of idolatry.  People worship the sun because they suppose the sun is the source of light.  But in reality, God is the source of light.  The sun is only the means by which God brings it.  It is God’s helpful servant. 

All the planets are named after false gods for the same reason.  Since ancient times they have helped guide travelers and have been used to set times and seasons.  So, since the planets were helpful, people began to call on them for help.  Of course, this was silly.  Such heavenly bodies are merely the means by which God has proved helpful. 

Calling on the sun or the planets for help sounds foolish to us.  But it is really no more foolish than when someone today trusts in the economy to make ends meet or trusts in medicine to be healed.  People worship these things as gods, when they are really just the means by which the Lord God helps us.  As the Psalmist says, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”  In him alone should we trust. 

The basic error behind every form of idolatry is to confuse the means of God’s help with the source of God’s help.  There are many means, but one source. 

Ancestor worship has been even more common than sun worship or planet worship.  And this isn’t surprising.  If God helps us by means of the sun and other heavenly lights, our parents and grandparents serve as the brightest lights we have on earth.  Through them God has helped us and cared for us.  Through them we have traditions that are useful, wisdom that proves true, and so many other things.  God even tells us to honor and obey them; and he promises long life to those who do.  But the reason we should is not because they are the source of all we have.  It is because they are the means by which God blesses us.  God works through means.  He is the source. 

The most obvious form of ancestor worship is to pray to those who have died.  But there is a more common form that is just as harmful — when people honor their traditions above God’s word.  We as Lutherans have a very high regard for our traditions.  We have the purest and most edifying liturgy.  We have by far the best and most evangelical hymns.  Our traditions are helpful – and that’s a great understatement.  But we do not keep our traditions for the sake of tradition.  We keep our traditions because they are the means by which God teaches us and trains us.  God is the source.  His word determines the value of any tradition.  We honor what our fathers have passed down, because through these means God helped them, and he continues to help us – through his word. 

When we keep traditions for the right reason, because they are useful and good, we honor our parents who went before us.  When we hastily throw out tradition for no good theological reason, we dishonor both our parents and the many teachers of the Church whom God has given us. 

When we honor our parents, we honor God.  But we don’t confuse our parents with God.  Nor do we confuse tradition with God’s word.  Traditions can err; God cannot. 

But many do confuse them.  The pope places the church’s tradition above the word of God.  Those who follow his example are guilty of ancestor worship of the worst kind.  They despise the source of help, which is God, and worship the means by which God has helped us instead.  They honor their traditions, even when their traditions have grown unhelpful and dangerous.  

This is no less wicked than worshiping the sun or planets instead of God.  It is no less foolish than trusting in one’s ability to help himself rather than in the help that God offers for free.  In fact, regarding tradition more highly than God’s word leads into this very error, as we can see in the case of the Roman Catholic Church. 

God helps those who help themselves.  Well, yeah, sure – but not unto salvation.  The pope teaches that God’s help consists of God helping us do the good works that we must do to be justified.  But this is not what help means in the Bible.  For God to help us does not mean that he lends a hand so that we can do what needs to be done.  It means that he becomes a Man in order to accomplish our entire salvation himself.  Here God does not help those who help themselves. 

God helps those who don’t help themselves.  He helps those who can’t.  He helps those who hurt themselves – who have done nothing for themselves but heap up grief and heartache.  He helps sinners who have inherited corruption from their parents all the way back to Adam and Eve.  He helps by saving us single-handedly from all sin, death, and hell. 

It’s good to work – even Adam had to till the earth.  It’s good to see, in the things we do, the hand of God providing for us and our family, and to know that God is pleased with what we do.  But we must not trust in the things we do.  Otherwise, we will despise the true source of all help. 

If we trust in our works, then we are trusting in our curse.  If we trust in ourselves to overcome pain and sorrow, then we are embracing the curse that God spoke to Eve.  If we trust in ourselves to overcome the hardships of life, or to improve ourselves by pulling out the thorns and thistles of our hearts, then we are trusting in the curse that God spoke to Adam.  If we trust in our obedience or devotion to God, then we are embracing the curse that God speaks to all men: “The wages of your sin is death.” 

But dear Christians, “the free gift of God is eternal life.”  This is your Help!  Eternal life.  This is what Adam trusted in – the free gift.  He named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all living.  Yes, her children would be under the curse.  Yes, her children would need help from God.  Yes, her children would die.  This is what would come of all the living.  But one of her children, the Child that was promised, the Seed of the woman, would be the Help we all needed.  He would have life to give.  He would not be born under the curse, but would be conceived by the Holy Spirit of a virgin mother.  And yet he would willingly place himself under the curse for us to remove it forever.  Here help is found.  He who lives forever would give his own life into death.  He would crush the devil’s lying head by dying in our place.  This is what help means. 

It is in our helplessness that God our Helper comes.  He has been promising this since sin entered the world.  He promises to join us in our helplessness by becoming helpless himself.  He joins us in our pain by becoming a Man and suffering in our place.  He joins us in our sin by bearing it.  He joins us in our lowliness by having regard for his mother.  By honoring her in her lowliness.  He did so to honor us. 

Mary is the means of God’s incarnation.  She is the mother of God.  But we do not hail her or worship her.  We remember her.  We honor her.  Unlike the Roman Catholics who are taught to trust in their own works for salvation, we do not pray to Mary or to any of the saints for help.  We pray to her Son and worship him in whom all saints have hoped. 

Mary was the Lord’s maidservant.  What defined her as his servant was not that she needed a little assistance, but that she received God’s divine help.  Israel was God’s servant.  What defined him was not in his faithfulness, but in the help that God promised.  As Mary sings, “He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever.”

Mary herself identifies as a lowly maidservant.  God helps his servant.  He doesn’t assist his servant.  He doesn’t lend his servant a hand.  He helps.  He delivers.  He does everything that need to be done.  He helps Israel by remembering what he had long since promised.  God is faithful.  He fulfilled the divine tradition that the children of Israel had received from their fathers Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. 

And so forever and ever it is to this promise of help that the Magnificat leads us, because here is where every promise of Scripture leads us – to the manger where our God and Helper joins us in mercy. 

And so generation after generation this is where our wonderful traditions guide us – not least of all our Christmas traditions — to the promises that God has made – to the promises that God has kept.  God remembers his mercy.  The Seed of the woman is the Seed of Abraham.  And he has become the Child of Mary, our Brother, our Savior.  God is faithful.  We don’t help ourselves.  God helps us.  He has remembered his mercy toward you by joining your flesh and blood forever as he promised to our fathers.  This means he cannot forget you.  He remains your almighty Help in every need. 

Amen.