Advent 4

Luke 1:39-56 - Advent IV - December 18, 2011
Mary’s Song Is the Church’s Hymn
On the occasion of the Baptism of Anne Elizabeth Preus
(From a sermon by David R. Preus)

Beholding the marvels of God by witnessing the birth of a child is about the most magnificent thing in the world.  And the advent of this little girl right here is beyond doubt for me the highlight of this winter season.  I can count on one hand the number of times that I have been even close to this happy.  Mary was pregnant too.  Great joy and happiness awaited her.  But she did not wait to rejoice.  She didn’t wait till Christmas.  It is Advent right now.  People call it the Christmas season.  And for everyone, it’s a time of cheer and joy in the midst of and despite short days and long cold nights.  People find all sorts of ways to fill this time of year with reasons to rejoice.  Whether it be babies, or the excitement of Christmas shopping, or time with family, there is an air of festivity in this Christmas season.  But seldom do we find in the predominant mood around us, the true joy of Christmas.  Seldom do people truly rejoice.  

Most people have never learned how to rejoice.  And this is because most people have never learned to sing the song that Mary teaches us in our Gospel lesson this morning.  It is called the Magnificat.  In this song, Mary teaches the Church how to rejoice in God.  But her joy was not simply that a life was being brought into the world like Monica here.  No, it was the joy that through her Child, life would be restored to sinners.  In the Magnificat, Mary teaches us how to rejoice in Christmas by providing three lessons on what it means to rejoice.  First, rejoicing means recognizing God as our Savior from sin.  Second, rejoicing means finding joy in God’s regard for us.  And third, rejoicing means recounting the works of God through faith in His promises.  Let’s consider each of these lessons, and so discover how humble sinners find perfect and lasting joy in the forgiveness of sins through the promised Christ Child.

If we want to rejoice, we must first acknowledge that we are sinners in need of God’s mercy.  Now, if you ever want to spoil someone’s mood, the first thing you should do is bring up the subject of sin – especially during Advent time.  Talking about sin is like the Grinch stealing Christmas.  People tend to avoid the topic of sin since there’s no graceful way to talk about it.  If your aim is to charm, the topic of sin will surely cramp your style.  The best way to avoid it is to get rid of the idea altogether.  People do this all the time by exaggerating human virtue and carefully covering up every stain of sin’s corruption. 

If I may offer a personal example of how this is done, I’ll direct you to the cute little girl in her mother’s arms right there.  She’s a sinner.  She was born in sin, and in sin her mother conceived her.  I saw her born.  But I didn’t see her sin.  No one else did either.  She’s perfect they all said.  I smiled.  I agree – as far as things go.  But she’s a sinner.  People don’t want to hear it.  But it has to be said.   Literally.  It has to be confessed with words, because otherwise we won’t believe it, that the purest form of life that any of us have ever beheld, that a sweet little baby no crying she makes is a sinner as bound to die as her most elderly and sickly counterpart.  Naked we came into this world and naked we must return to the dust.  But who wants to talk about sin and death at a time so ripe for celebrating new life?  We do.  Because it is in the death of Christ that our life begins.  By bringing this little sinner to be baptized into the death of Jesus who was born to be her Savior, she has been taught to sing what Mary sang.  Because it is in our Baptism that God exalts the lowly. 

Since God comes to sinners, you better be a sinner.  Until you’ve come to the conviction that apart from God’s grace you’re a slave to sin and doomed to hell, the Advent of the Messiah will never arouse more than mild curiosity in you.  It’s when you know how desperately you need Him that the Lord lifts your spirit from mourning and despair to gladness and praise.  A man who knows he’s hopelessly in debt, who thinks every waking minute of his inability to pay that debt, reacts with joy at hearing that his entire debt has been canceled.  If the joyful trumpets of Christ’s final Advent will mean anything to us, we must ourselves be poor, brokenhearted, captive to sin, bound in chains, and mourning our spiritual death.

So this is our first priority this Advent.  If we will rejoice, we must lay all of our sin before our Savior, whatever we have done against His holy law, whatever accuses our conscience, whatever robs us of joy despite all earthly joys besides.  We must ask ourselves, “Do we need more or less mercy now than when we were first born?  What have we done?  What have we not done?”  Lay it all before Him.  Don’t sift through your conscience trying to figure out what has been a sin and what hasn’t.   Instead, confess what you are, and throw yourself on God’s mercy in Christ and admit that you haven’t loved God or your neighbor as He demands.  Admit that you are a sinner, and rejoice, with Mary, in God your Savior! 

This brings us to our second lesson on what it means to rejoice in Christmas.  Mary teaches us that true joy is found in God’s gracious regard for our lowly estate.  She sings: “[F]or he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden…”  Mary found joy in God’s regard.  She didn’t rejoice in her humility.  No. She rejoiced in God’s mercy. She rejoiced that every good thing came to her because God had regard for her.  And nowhere is God’s favorable regard for us made clearer than where He saves us.  For what else is our salvation than our justification?  And what else is justification than to be regarded as righteous, that is, to be declared innocent and blessed in God’s sight?  And this is exactly why we rejoice! 

But if we hold God’s regard as a small thing, if we put our trust in how good we have been, how successful or popular we are, how wealthy, how wise, then we cannot rejoice in the Lord, and whatever joy we will have will be shallow.  Our flesh prefers this joy.  Our flesh doesn’t want to be exposed by God.  So our flesh searches for whatever it can find to justify itself before Him.  It pretends to cover its filth with social virtues and feel-good stories of moral improvement or basks in the romantic innocence of new life.  But these efforts will never satisfy us.  Because our failures come to light again, and even our beautiful children grow up to be poor miserable sinners.  Dear Christians, we will not discover joy by looking into ourselves, regardless of what we find or feel—no matter what we call it. 

If we want to be truly happy, if we want to truly rejoice, we must take Mary’s example and look to God, who regarded our lowly state.  Look to the Son of God who took our human flesh into Himself and sanctified it by His grace even as a little baby.  Look to the manger in Bethlehem, where the Word made flesh joins our humble estate and sympathizes with our weakness.  Look to the promised Christ child, who grew up in the presence of the Lord, living our life to God’s glory, and dying our death to God’s eternal satisfaction.  That is how God regards you, dear Christian!  When God looks at you, He doesn’t expose your sin and misery.  In fact, He doesn’t even see it.  Instead, He sees you through blood of His dear Son and regards you as righteous, innocent, pure and holy.  God Himself adorns your soul with holy gladness, as the prophet Isaiah wrote so long ago: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, My soul shall be joyful in my God; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (Isaiah 61:10).

This brings us to our third lesson.  By recalling the wonderful works of God, Mary teaches us what it means to live by faith in God’s promises.  Mary didn’t wait to rejoice until her child was born.  She didn’t fret in the meantime, asking, ‘Is it a boy or a girl? Is he or she healthy? What joys will he bring me?’  No. She recounted the deeds of Jesus, the unborn fruit of her womb, as if they had already taken place: “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.  He has put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted those of low degree.  He has filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he has sent empty away.” 

Throughout the Old Testament, those saints “who feared God from generation to generation,” would often rejoice in things that were not yet accomplished as if they were already done.  God’s promises are so certain that we are able to speak of them as if they already took place.  Consider Abraham.  Abraham died nearly two thousand years before the Advent of Christ, and yet Jesus tells the Jews in John 8: “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).  With his physical eyes Abraham saw only what we see—his own sin and his own death, but the glorious vision of his eternal salvation was granted to him through the promise of faith.  In the same way, God’s promises to us require – not sight, not feeling, not emotion – but faith alone.  When Mary sings the praises of our Lord, she demonstrates how “the righteous will live by his faith” (Hab 2:4), which is “the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). 

When we possess Christ by faith, we have everything that God has to give in heaven and on earth; and we have it right now.  As the hymn goes,

We have all things, Christ possessing:
Life eternal, second birth,
Present pardon, peace, and blessing
While we tarry here on earth;
And by faith’s anticipation,
Foretaste of the joy above
Freely giv’n us with salvation
By the Father in His love.

This is a very important lesson because we do not always find reason to rejoice in our lives.  Our lives are full of grief—even in times of joy and happiness.  We suffer disease.  Our loved ones die.  The economy fails.  Our friends desert us.  Our children disappoint us.  Depression seizes us.  We get discouraged.  We fall into sin.  We lose heart.  But Mary teaches us to take heart even in our darkest hour.  If God’s promises were seen or felt in our bodies, if they were characterized by a seasonal cheer or a good mood, then they wouldn’t be by faith, would they?  As long as we are living in this world, clothed in the mortality of this flesh, God’s promises will be granted to us through the faith that He works in us through the gifts here offered where he fills the hungry with good things.  True Joy arises out of this conviction that even when nothing seems to be going right, when our next effort is another failure, yet God’s deeds in Christ are certain and sure. 

If we will rejoice this Christmas season, we must do so in a humble spirit.  We must rejoice in God’s word of promise, and confess with Mary: “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; As he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed forever.”  You see how it works?  God promises, and we believe Him.  Abraham believed God’s promise.  Mary believed it.  And we believe it.  And we rejoice.  We rejoice because God never stops being gracious to us.  We rejoice because God continues to forgive our sins.  We rejoice because God continues to regard our lowly estate. 

Advent is a time of emotion and feeling.  And all feelings, good or bad, will pass away.  You can’t hold on to them forever, and you certainly can’t put your trust in them.  Even the illusionary innocence of this little sinner here will manifest itself for all of us to see.  But like us, she has been taught this morning to sing what Mary sang, and to delight in the fact that God has regarded her lowly state.  So, whether you are experiencing joy or sadness, whether your life is happy, or hectic, or lonely, may this conviction rest in your hearts and minds this Christmas season: “that unto you was born this day a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”  Yes, unto you, dear Christian, a Savior from sin and the highest regard from God our Father!  Dear Christians, one and all, rejoice!  Let us pray:

I lay in fetters, groaning;
Thou com’st to set me free. 
I stood, my shame bemoaning;
Thou com’st to honor me.
A glory Thou dost give me,
A treasure safe on high
That will not fail or leave me
As earthly riches fly. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.