Jesu Juva
St. Luke 1:39-55
August 15, 2021
St.
Mary, Mother of Our Lord
Dear saints of our Savior~
When it comes to Mary, the mother of our Lord, the artists usually get it right. For while the Blessed Virgin Mary has been the subject of paint brushes and canvasses too numerous to count, Mary alone is almost never the subject of a
And what’s true of all those paintings is also true for this day on the calendar of the Lutheran church. It may be the feast of Saint Mary—but it’s not about Mary alone. It’s not about the glorification of Mary, or about her enthronement in heaven where she stands at the ready to manage all of your prayer requests. Nope. We set aside this day not to magnify Mary, but to join Mary in magnifying the Lord. We rejoice with Mary in her Son, our Savior. We set aside this day to remember how in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
Mary was from Nazareth. In Nazareth is the Church of the Annunciation. It’s modern—built in the 1960s—right on top of the traditional site where the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would be the mother of God’s Son. And the design of this church is all based on the letter “M.” When tourists ask about the letter “M” in the design of the church, tour guides like to say: “M” is for Mary, and much, much more.
The “M” of Mary also stands for “mystery.” There’s much mystery about Mary. The gospel-writers tell us almost nothing about her. We know nothing of her life story up until that day when God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, “to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph.” And that’s it! We don’t know what she looked like, whether she was rich or poor, or whether she was in her teens or twenties. We just don’t know. The Bible doesn’t tell us. As far as Mary’s life goes, there’s a lot of mystery.
Much of the mystery about Mary is probably intentional. The Holy Spirit was wise to withhold all the details about Mary. Here’s why: If the Bible told us that Mary was very smart, we might be tempted to conclude that God chose her for her intelligence. If the Bible told us she was poor, some might conclude that God chose her because of her poverty. Or if the Bible said that Mary ran an orphanage and a soup kitchen, some might think that God chose her because of her good works. In other words, we’d always be tempted to think that Mary somehow earned or deserved to be God’s special pick. But I’m here to tell you that the M in Mary does not stand for “merit.”
Mary’s life is a mystery because it forces us to see that God makes His choices, not based on merit, but on grace. Mary neither earned nor deserved to be the mother of God’s Son, but that special role was given to her, all by God’s grace. Hail, Mary, full of grace! And the very same thing holds true for you and for every child of God. God has chosen you to be His own—not because of who you are, but because of who He is—because He is a God of grace and mercy, who always chooses the least and the lowly and the most unlikely. He chose you and gave you the gift of faith in His Son—not because there’s any merit or worthiness in you—but because of His fatherly divine goodness and mercy. All generations call Mary “blessed,” not because of what she did—but because of what God did for her and through her. And in the same way, you too are blessed. M is for Mary. M is for mystery . . . and more.
M is also for “memory.” How good is your memory? Is it like a steel trap? Or more like a sieve? The ironic thing about the human memory is that we always seem to forget the things we want to remember . . . and we always seem to remember the things we’d like to forget. Anniversaries, passwords, and locker combinations need to be remembered, but we often forget them. But the embarrassing, sinful and hurtful things we’d like to forget about—the memory of these things lingers long for many of us.
The M of Mary is also for “memory.” Part of Mary’s song we heard today has to do with memory—with God’s memory to be precise. Mary sang in her Magnificat about the Lord: “He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy, . . to Abraham and his descendants forever.” What that means is that God remembers His promises. When the Lord promised Adam and Eve that the woman’s offspring would crush the head of Satan, the Lord didn’t forget. When the Lord promised an old man named Abraham that he would have a son—that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky—the Lord didn’t forget. When the Lord promised David that one of his descendants would rule and reign over an eternal kingdom, The Lord didn’t forget. And when the Lord promised you in the waters of Holy Baptism that He would never leave you or forsake you, He hasn’t forgotten that promise and He never will. And the proof of God’s great memory is found in Mary’s Son, Jesus the Christ.
In Jesus, God remembers all His promises—not only the promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—but also to you. For in Jesus God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting your sins against you. In Jesus, God has adopted you as His own dear child. In Jesus, God has destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. In Jesus, your sin and shame were nailed to the cross. Your ugliest deeds and your most regrettable words—your trail of lies and broken promises—all the awful things you wish you could forget—in the blood of Jesus they are washed away, atoned for, forgiven. Because of Jesus, your God says to you, “I will forgive your wickedness . . . and I will remember your sins no more” (Jer. 31:34). M is for memory—for God’s memory. He remembers His promises and His mercy. But your sins He remembers no more.
M is for Mary, for mystery, for memory, and more! M is also for “magnify.” Mary sang, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” When you magnify something, your perception of it gets bigger. When you use a magnifying glass for reading, the letters on the page don’t actually change size; but what changes is your perception of the letters—they’re larger, bolder, magnified.
We so often magnify the wrong things in life—the sins of somebody else, the flaws and failures of others. It’s easy, too, for me to magnify my own suffering, my own troubles and disappointments. We’re naturals when it comes to magnifying all the unfairness of life and all the crosses that we bear.
But rather than make those things loom larger, Mary invites all who follow her Son in faith to magnify the Lord—to let His promises fill our ears and hearts—to let His grace and mercy be at the center of our lives. Mary’s song—the Magnificat—takes up eleven verses in Luke chapter one. And in those eleven verses, Mary refers to the Lord’s deeds and actions no less than eleven times. Mary doesn’t sing about herself. She didn’t magnify all the fear and uncertainty that she must have been feeling after hearing the angel’s message. Instead, she magnified the promises God has kept, the mighty deeds He has done, the mercy He has always shown.
Beloved in the Lord, let’s magnify with Mary. After all, those promises and those mighty deeds and that mercy are for you, as well. In Mary’s Son, God has made you His own child. And now neither life nor death can separate you from His love. M is for Mary—and so much more. On this day we thank God for the mother of our Lord Jesus. Blessed is she; and blessed is the fruit of her womb, Jesus.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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