“Living the Mary Miracle”
Original sermon given December 24, 2023, written and delivered by Pastor Jeffrey Leininger at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church.
Watch the sermon live.
“Living the Mary Miracle”
Luke 1.26-28
Luke 1.26-28
In the name of the living God and the Christ who is coming soon. Amen.
It’s a lot of church today and tomorrow, and I happen to think that’s a good thing. As Christians at Christmastime, we celebrate the great message that the One True God, Righteous and Almighty; Creator of all that there is, seen and unseen; Ground of All Being—we celebrate that this God draws near to us in Jesus, the Word made Flesh. God is as different and separate from us as the far flung reaches of the universe; and yet as near to us as a baby in a mother’s womb. Lots to celebrate today and tomorrow, and I rather think three services in two days isn’t nearly enough!
This morning’s gospel records the beginning of the Incarnation—God joining our humanity. It’s not the birth, which we celebrate tonight and tomorrow, but the Annunciation which the historian/ physician St. Luke has recorded for us. The central character is Mary, and the important event is the Angel Gabriel’s proclamation that she will conceive a savior by the work of the Holy Spirit.
There are two great miracles I’d like to highlight in the account of the Annunciation. The first is the more obvious: that God chooses to dwell with the lowly. Mary’s own song of praise, the Magnificat, which we sang as this morning’s Psalm, sings of the Lord’s mindfulness of her humble estate. God chooses to dwell with the lowly, the humble and humbled. Not in the most powerful nation on earth; or in the heights of the temple; or in the halls of the Great Kings; or in the minds of the great theologians; not in the coffers of the rich or in the strong arms of the powerful—no, not in any of these worldly expectations—but precisely in the most unexpected place… God choose to dwell. In a remote part of the Roman world, in a back-water town far away from the capital, in a poor, working-class family, in a teenage serving girl, in the tiny confines of a mother’s womb…God choose to dwell. No more lowly place on the planet could be found, and so there is where God was to be found—Mary’s womb.
This is the way God works. Then, now, and always. God descends to the lowliest places, to the lowliest of sinners, and gives them abundantly more than they, seek, desire, or deserve. That’s the first great miracle revealed in the Annunciation, which is really a revelation of the gospel.
How important it is for us to know this miracle, today, with all that’s going on in our world. It’s the miraculous reminder that, no matter how low we go, we’re not beyond the reach of God. It doesn’t matter how far you’ve run; or how low you’ve stooped; or how lowly your condition; or how distraught your prayers; or how poor you are, or how depressed you’ve been. It doesn’t matter what back-water town you come from, or how pathetic you think your life is; or how isolated, afraid, and alone you feel at Christmas. It doesn’t matter how uncultured you think you are, or how dysfunctional your family might be. God dwelled within Mary, he dwells within us, through his Word and Spirit. It is precisely among those of low estate—with the broken ones like you and me—that God chooses to be found.
That’s the first great miracle, which will find it inevitable culmination in the suffering and cross of Christ, who descends into our lowly, broken, condition to bring life and hope.
But there’s another miracle revealed here, and at least by Martin Luther’s opinion, it’s the greatest miracle of the whole account. Mary believed. “May it be so to me according to your word,” is her “amen” of faith. She could have said, “No way. Not happening.” She could have said, “Forget it God, pick someone else.” She could have thought God was playing games, mocking her low estate, like “shah, right, nice one Lord!” She could have laughed like Abraham’s wife, Sarah, when told of her miracle baby; or asked for further proof, like Zachariah, John the Baptist’s old father when Gabriel appears to him. But here we see Mary took God at his word, delivered through his messenger, that God would do the impossible for her, in her, through her.
Now I’m no more the angel Gabriel than you are the blessed virgin—let’s just be clear about that! But I am his messenger for you, and we’re all in a lowly estate, together. Take God at his word. Not that everything will work out like we want, when we want, how we’ve got it all planned. But that the Creator of the Universe is at work in us, for our good; that the Lord does love us; and that he dwells with us, no matter the lowliness of our situation.
St. Luke’s gospel account of the Annunciation is more than the “so that’s how it happened” precursor to the main event of the Birth of Christ. We’re bid by these living words of scripture to live the Mary miracle today, and by the Holy Spirit, also believe. We are to add our “Amen, may it be so to me according to your word” to Mary’s own. We are bid to believe that just as God drew near to her, overshadowed her, worked the impossible within her, that he is with us as well—no matter how difficult the journey ahead.
Come soon Lord Jesus. Amen.