A blessing from two godly women

Sermon for the Visitation of Mary

Isaiah 11:1-5  +  Luke 1:39-56

Today, July 2^nd, has historically been celebrated as the Visitation of Mary, which you heard about in today’s Gospel. The birth of John the Baptist is celebrated on June 24^th, six months before December 24^th, because John was six months older than Jesus. Using those dates, John would have been circumcised on July 1^st, and since we’re told that Elizabeth was about six months pregnant when Mary first came to her, and that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months, it’s likely that she stayed until John was born, circumcised and named, so July 2^nd marks the time when Mary would have completed her visit with Elizabeth and returned to Nazareth.

But the Gospel for today’s festival tells us, not about the end, but about the very beginning of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, about her arrival at Zacharias’ and Elizabeth’s house, when Elizabeth was about six months pregnant with John. This encounter between these two God-fearing women was something the Holy Spirit chose to have recorded for us, so that through their words of blessing, we, too, might receive a blessing.

“Blessed are you among women!” Those were the words of the angel Gabriel to Mary when he informed her that God had chosen her to bear His Son by the miracle of a virgin-birth. Now Elizabeth echoes those words verbatim, as she has been “filled with the Holy Spirit.” “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” calling her the “mother of my Lord.” We can certainly go overboard in honoring Mary; we are not taught by the Christian Church to practice any kind of devotion to her, nor are we taught to pray to her, or to seek help from her. But we certainly don’t deny the words of Gabriel or the Spirit-inspired words that Elizabeth spoke to Mary. Mary was blessed among women. That doesn’t mean she was better than or superior to other women. It means that God had given her a greater gift than He had given to other women. She was the only one in history whose womb gave human life to Him who is the Life. She was the mother of Elizabeth’s Lord and ours. Her womb and her descended-from-King-David genes were the Holy Spirit’s raw material for crafting a human body and soul that was taken up into the Person of the Son of God, so that there is now one Christ who is both true God and true Man, God incarnate (made flesh) as a man to save men from their sins. Mary was given a vital, intimate role in the incarnation of Emmanuel, God-with-us.

Even Elizabeth’s unborn child perceived that and leaped for joy in the presence, not of Mary, but of God-with-us. That was a confession of faith on the part of John, not just that the Lord is present, but that it’s a good thing, something to jump for joy over.

Why? Not for any earthly reason. Jesus wouldn’t make anything better here on earth, especially for John the Baptist, who would one day be put to death for his faithfulness to Christ. But now the Lord was finally present, not as He is always present everywhere, but tangibly present in human flesh. Not “God-out-there-somewhere,” but God-right-here-in-the-midst, to reveal God to us, to carry our sorrows, to receive our stripes, and to die our death, to make atonement for the sins of all men, and to grant eternal life to all who believe.

That God-right-here-in-the-midst is no longer growing in Mary’s womb, or lying in a manger, or walking around the land of Israel, or hanging on a cross, or lying in a tomb. He’s sitting at the right hand of God, which means He’s ruling everywhere, though still right here in the midst in the preaching of the Gospel, in the waters of Baptism, and in the giving out of His true body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar.

Finally, Elizabeth said to Mary, Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord. What a contrast with Elizabeth’s own husband Zacharias, who had disbelieved the word of the same angel Gabriel and had been struck dumb for those nine months that John was growing in Elizabeth’s belly. Zacharias was “cursed,” in that sense, but Mary was blessed—fortunate, enviable—because, unlike Zacharias, she believed the angel’s word, even though what he had told her was humanly impossible. And in believing God’s Word about something that was humanly impossible, Mary was walking in the footsteps of her forefather Abraham, who believed the Lord, against hope, that he and Sarah would have a son in their old age. Abraham believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. Mary believed the Lord, and she, too, was blessed. These examples spur us on to faith, too, to trust in God’s amazing promises, to believe in the Word of God, even if no one around us believes, because He is faithful, and through faith in His promises, we will be blessed, because faith is counted as righteousness in the sight of God.

Then we have the beautiful words of Mary, which have been sung in the Church ever since in the canticle called the Magnificat, “magnifies.” My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

First, Mary gives thanks to God and rejoices in Him for what He has done specifically for her. For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed. For He who is mighty has done great things for me, And holy is His name.

Mary knows the source of her happiness, the source of her blessedness. It’s the Lord God, her Savior. We often point to this verse as inconsistent with Rome’s unscriptural teaching of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Mary didn’t need a Savior if she wasn’t conceived in sin, like the rest of us. But we don’t need to rely on this verse alone. The teaching of original sin is very simple. Everyone born in the natural way, of man and woman, inherits the innate corruption of our nature. Mary, too. She was righteous in the eyes of God only by faith, and from that faith came a righteousness of life, obedience, and love. But still, she was only righteous by faith, because God, her Savior, had brought her to faith and pronounced her righteous through faith in Him and the promised Christ, who was now growing in her womb.

And so she magnifies the Lord. She “makes His name great” because of the “great things” He, the Mighty One, had done for her. She hadn’t suddenly been made rich, nor would she ever be. Her life hadn’t gotten easier with this conception; it had gotten a good deal harder. The great things were all wrapped up in Christ. God had given Mary the gift of bringing His Son into the world. Through Him, Mary’s sins were forgiven. Through Him, Mary received grace upon grace. Through Him, Mary knew her God personally, and she knew that He cared for her and would never abandon her. And because of her Son, she also knew that she would be called blessed, that is, remembered fondly by all generations, not because she deserves our honor, but because God had shown her favor, and so we recognize and give thanks for her.

Then Mary goes on to bless the Lord for how He treats the rest of His believers. And His mercy is on those who fear Him From generation to generation. Mercy on those who fear Him, in every generation, from Adam and Eve to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to David, to Mary, to you and me, to our children and grandchildren who fear Him. What a promise! This is the special, personal, fatherly mercy for those whom God has brought to faith and who continue now in faith and the fear of God, who fear and revere, not just any god, but the God who sent His Son into the womb of the blessed virgin.

This is why we Christians cry out in our liturgy, Lord, have mercy! Because Mary was right. His mercy is on those who fear Him, and we can count on His mercy, from generation to generation, even when we don’t understand how His mercy works.

In this sense, God treats those who fear Him differently from how He treats those who don’t fear Him. Mary goes on to show the great contrast:

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 thrones, And exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, And the rich He has sent away empty.

It’s very much like Jesus often said, whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. How has God “scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts”? How has He “put down the mighty and sent the rich away empty”? By telling them the truth: All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You want to take pride in yourself? No human being has any reason to do that. God doesn’t let anyone trust in their own works, in their own strength, or in their own riches. God says to the proud, You will surely die, unless mercy steps in to save you.

But mercy did step in, wrapped up in Christ Jesus. So despair of yourselves and trust in Him. He has mercy on those who fear Him. He has exalted the lowly and the poor and the despised. He has filled the hungry with good things. As Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

And He raises up the lowly, as Mary confessed, out of faithfulness to His own promises—promises which He first made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—the fathers of the Israelite people—and to their seed forever. He promised those patriarchs that, through their Seed, all nations on earth would be blessed. That seed was Christ Himself, the Rod from the stem of Jesse, as Isaiah called Him, the Branch from Jesse’s roots, from the house of David, through David’s daughter Mary. This is the only reason why the nation of Israel has ever mattered in the world, and the only reason it should still matter, that God, in His faithfulness, gave His Son into the world through that chosen nation, according to His promises made to them long ago.

Of course, the same Isaiah to whose prophecies Mary had been alluding in her Magnificat prophesied about how God’s kingdom would extend through the virgin’s Son far beyond the nation of Israel, how the Christ would be a light to lighten the Gentiles, for the creation of one great Church to fill the world, the New Israel that proclaims the God of the Old and New Testaments, the Church made up of sinners only, who recognize their need for mercy, and God’s merciful gift of the Savior who visited Elizabeth long ago, still in his mother’s womb, and in whose presence John the unborn child leapt for joy.

The same joy is for all the humble and lowly who look to Him for salvation. Learn that from Elizabeth’s words and from Mary’s, and receive the same blessing that those lowly women received. Amen.