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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
I just greeted you! As you may know, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ” is often called the “apostolic greeting”, since the apostle Paul frequently used it at the beginning of his epistles, or letters. We might be more familiar with greetings, or salutations, such as “Dear”, “Good morning!”, “Hello”, “Hi”, “How are you?”, “’Sup?”—we might be more familiar with them if, in our day of email and text messages, we use greetings anymore at all. In today’s Gospel Reading, the angel Gabriel greets Mary in such a way that she was greatly troubled, thoroughly confused, and was trying to discern, debating, what sort of greeting it was. Bible commentators in our time still debate the meaning of Gabriel’s greeting, part of which inspired the theme for this morning’s reflection on today’s Gospel Reading. Ultimately, we recognize that, as the Blessed Virgin Mary was a “favored one”, so, in a similar way, we, too, are “favored ones”. Thus our theme, “Favored Ones”.
Today’s Gospel Reading is the Divinely‑inspired St. Luke’s report of at least the angel Gabriel’s “annunciation” of Jesus’s birth to the Virgin Mary, if not also his report of the actual moment that Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb. The three parts of Gabriel’s greeting are variously translated: first, as we heard it, “Greetings”, or “Hail” (“Ave” in Latin), or perhaps best “Rejoice”; second, as we heard it “favored one”, though sometimes (translated from the Latin) as “full of grace”, which Dr. Luther rejected in part because he thought Germans would have to think of a keg “full of beer” (AE 35:190-192); and, third, as we heard it and pretty much everyone agrees, “The Lord is with you”. So, taken together, we have, “Rejoice, favored one, the Lord is with you.” Regardless of the precise translation, the three‑fold greeting anticipates and begins to proclaim the full gracious and wonderful message.
Biblical accounts such as this morning’s Gospel Reading sometimes are so familiar and our understanding of them so influenced by dubious sources, that we may be led astray. For example, in a conversation this past week, a Christian friend spoke to me about his need to be as humble as the Bethlehem shepherds, in order to receive a glorious revelation, such as that which they received the night of Jesus’s birth. But, as I told him, St. Luke’s account does not say anything about the shepherds’ humility (Luke 2:8‑14), and there are any number of other potential reasons why God might have chosen them for such a glorious revelation (for example, the fact that they were Jewish outcasts, that Jesus’s ancestors had been shepherds, and so forth). Similarly, in today’s Gospel Reading, we might wonder why Mary was a “favored one”, why she had found favor with God, like Noah in the eyes of the Lord generations before her (Genesis 6:8). That St. Luke’s account does not tell us why maybe makes it worse, leaving us to fill in the gap based on our own experiences—in our families, at school, or with our jobs—where something in us, what we say and do, might earn us rewards or punishments. But, the favor of God and the salvation and the reason Mary had to rejoice rule out both anything in her and anything in us.
Perhaps the Virgin Mary was greatly troubled at Gabriel’s greeting because she knew how undeserving she was—undeserving not only of such an angelic visit but also (and all the more) of being the Mother of the Son of God. The Virgin Mary was not a “favored one” because of anything in her, any more than we are “favored ones” because of anything in us. She and we share the same sinful nature, which led her and leads us to commit countless and sometimes unspeakable sins, and so she deserved and we deserve not the same favor or reward but the same temporal and eternal punishment. But, the favor of God and the salvation and the reason Mary and we have to rejoice is that God acts out of His own love, mercy, and grace. God acts out of His own love, mercy, and grace both calling us to repent and to believe in Jesus Christ and then forgiving our sins when we do.
Jesus Christ truly is the holy Son of both the Most High God and the Blessed Virgin Mary. To be sure, Mary was a sinner: her blood line ran back through sinful David, through the Moabitess Ruth, through the prostitute Rahab, through incestuous Judah, to the original sinners themselves, Adam and Eve. Some Roman Catholics think that they have answered the question of how Jesus was sinless by imagining that Mary was sinless, but that just moves the question one generation back! Not to mention that Mary herself confesses her need for a Savior (Luke 1:47). No, as Gabriel says in the Gospel Reading, the Lord was with Mary, and the Lord was with Mary in a special way, for her to carry out her special vocation, or calling: for her, a virgin, to conceive in her womb and bear a Son and call His name Jesus. Gabriel’s announcement recalls Isaiah’s prophecy of the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior (Isaiah 7:14), if it does not also recall God’s own words to the man and the woman in the Garden, that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). The Virgin Mary did not “know” a man in the usual way, but the Holy Spirit, Who in the beginning had hovered over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2), came upon her, and the power of the Most High God the Father overshadowed her, as His glory had overshadowed the Old Testament Tabernacle (Exodus 40:35), and so the child was not only her Son but also the holy Son of God. By Divine inspiration, St. Luke gives us “chastely veiled expressions” for the Triune God’s supernatural miracle that caused Mary’s pregnancy (Weiss, cited by Grundmann, TDNT 2:300). In the creeds, we rightly confess that Jesus was “incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary” or “conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary” (confer Matthew 1:18, 20). Either the Triune God so purified the human nature that came from Mary, or the human nature’s personal union with the Son meant, that, already as an embryo, Jesus had our human nature but was without sin. Jesus not only was without sin then, but He was also without sin throughout His life, thought He was tempted as we are tempted (Hebrews 4:15), and He remains without sin even now. He was, is, and always will be the Holy Son of God. Thus, Jesus can be the spotless sacrifice that you and I need because of our sins.
You see, all this teaching about Christ—the technical term for which is “Christology”—all this Christology is, in a sense, worthless, if it is not for us. Again, we rightly confess in the Nicene Creed that Jesus came down from heaven for us and for our salvation. He was named Jesus because He saves His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21, 25). To save us from our sins, He needed to be both true man and true God—true man in order to redeem our nature and to die, and true God in order for His death on the cross to be a sufficient sacrifice for the sins of every person who had lived, was living, or ever would live. Such is the favor or grace of God, that He forgives all those who repent and believe in Jesus. When you and I repent and believe, then God forgives us: He forgives our sinful natures and all our sin, whatever our sin might be. He so forgives us by His powerful Word in all its forms.
The angel Gabriel was sent from God, or “apostled”, with a powerful word, as Gabriel himself told Mary, “nothing will be impossible with God”, or, perhaps better translated, “no word from God will be without power”. The preaching of the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Romans 1:16). Holy Baptism is God’s sanctifying washing of water with the word (Ephesians 5:26). Holy Absolution is God’s forgiving sins on earth and in heaven through the words of those whom He has sent, or “apostled” (Matthew 16:19; 18:18; John 20:21-23). And, Holy Communion is God’s powerful word with bread and wine that are Christ’s body and blood given and shed for you and for me for the forgiveness of our sins (Matthew 26:26-28; Luke 22:19-20). As Blessed Mary miraculously became a mother but remained a virgin, and as the human and Divine natures were personally united in the God-man Jesus, so here bread and wine miraculously are sacramentally united with Jesus’s body and blood. Again, God’s Word in all its forms are all for you and for me. Here, in these ways, God is present to show us His grace and favor with the forgiveness of sins (confer Exodus 33:16), making us His “favored ones”, and leading us to rejoice.
In these ways, the Lord is with us, the Holy Spirit comes upon us, for us to carry out our vocations, our callings (confer Acts 1:8). We do not judge the results on the basis of our own experience, but we trust His powerful words, and, like Mary, we let it be to us according to His Word. His preaching, water, the pastor’s individual absolution, bread and wine—they do what He says they do. We do not deny God’s work. As God purified a human nature from the sinful Virgin Mary for the man Jesus, so, in these ways He purifies and restores our sinful human natures—He purifies and restores our sinful human natures both now and, finally and fully, at the last day. As Gabriel greeted Mary by calling her a favored one, telling her the Lord was with her, and exhorting her to “Rejoice!”, so I greet you “favored ones”, the Lord is with you, rejoice!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +