The woman You gave me [The Visitation; St. Luke 1:39-45]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

Jesus speaks to you today, saying,

“and she exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”

Ah, the question that forever plagues Lutherans: 
what to do with Mary?

On one side, we do not want to fall into the Roman Catholic camp and confess her as co-redeemer alongside Jesus. Neither do we want to fall into the Protestant camp and completely throw her under the bus.

We can’t side with the Romans, because Scripture doesn’t say she hears prayers or comforts us. We can’t side with the Protestants because Scripture speaks so highly of her. So what is a poor Lutheran seeking the truth supposed to do?

Our first answer should be God’s answer, meaning what we hear in the Bible. What we find are two, very important people who say some pretty uncomfortable sounding things to St. Mary. The first is the Archangel Gabriel. I don’t know what you think, but he’s pretty high up the food chain.

He says, “Greetings, Highly Favored One”. No one else in the Bible is greeted as St. Mary is. The second address comes from her cousin, Elizabeth, who is pregnant with St. John the Baptist. Elizabeth greets Mary in the Spirit calling her the “mother of my Lord”. In other words the mother of God.

A third reference we don’t always think of, is from Moses’ first book, Genesis. In it, the Lord addresses the Serpent after the Fall and promises redemption. God says to the Serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall crush your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Gen. 3:15)

In Scripture, there is a woman who is highly-favored, who is Mother, and who is at odds with the serpent. Now, Scripture talks about women a lot. Some of it confusing, but most of it liberating. More liberating than most people think. Scripture also gives women the vocation of motherhood, which is highly prized and highly protected.

But, in the Bible there is one woman whose worth is far above jewels (Prov. 31:10), a woman who is clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars (Rev. 12:1), and one woman whose children will be more than the children of her who is married (Isa. 54:1).

Now, that may be Eve. Adam did name her the mother of all the living, but God’s Messiah was not any of her sons. That may also be Mary. Since she birthed the Lord of all Creation, you’d think she would be the leading candidate for those titles.

However, there is also a Bride in the running. A mysterious Bride who speaks and is spoken to in the Song of Solomon. A pure Bride who is purchased and won, made pure and holy, by her Husband.

In Revelation, the angel says this: “’Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed—on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” (Rev. 21:9-14)

The true woman of Scripture is the Bride of Christ, His Church, wherein are found all the blessings and gifts purchased and won upon the cross. It is protected by the high walls of the Word, it is adorned with the rare jewel of the cross of Christ, God’s glory, and the doctrine of the 12 tribes and the 12 Apostles are its entrances and foundations.

What we hear in St. Mary and St. Eve and all the baptized Christian women in our own lives is a shadow and reflection of the one, true Church. The Church who is so highly favored, that Jesus dies to purify her completely. The Church who holds so tightly to the Gospel and the Sacraments that she is afflicted by the serpent. The Church who is the Body of Christ and is with Him for all eternity.

Just as St. Mary gave birth to Jesus, the Author and Perfector of the Faith, so too does our holy mother the Church give birth to us by water and the Word. Just as St. Mary nurtured the one, true God, the Church brings us up in the Word. And just as Jesus nursed at St. Mary’s breasts, so too are we nursed by the true Body and Blood of Christ.

So, in the first place, St. Mary and all the women of the Bible should immediately remind us of the redeemed Church of Christ, of which we are a part. In the second place, St. Mary, like St. Peter, is special. No bones about it. How special? So special that she was a virgin and remained so even after giving birth, according to Jesus.

Now was she a perpetual virgin, having no more children after Jesus? When the Bible says “brothers and sisters of Jesus” is it literal or does it mean cousins or spiritual siblings? We don’t know. You can make the case for both; that she had other children or that she didn’t.

In either case, Gabriel is sent specifically to Mary, not just to give our children something to act out at Christmas, but to usher in the age of the Church. The age where true salvation and forgiveness is found outside Temples of stone and mortar.

For being birthed outside the Temple, Jesus teaches that now the whole world is sanctified as the Temple, or at least can house the Temple. Now that righteousness has been born apart from the Law, anywhere two or three are gathered can become, can manifest the Temple among them, in faith.

Jesus does manifest Himself among us. He does cover the sins of the whole world, by grace alone, and it is faith alone that makes all this possible for you. This same faith that entered into St. Mary, through her ear, comes to you today, revealing to you the specific location of your Savior.

There is a narrow way which the Christian walks, where St. Mary is not any more special than any other saint and yet more important than all of them. The Christian can be comfortable is hearing praises sung for St. Mary and not talking about her for quite awhile.

In any case, Jesus is the result of St. Mary and her faith. She was a necessary stop along the way to the cross and even before that, it was necessary for Jesus to receive a true body and soul through His mother, in order that He would act in our place under the Law and fulfill it for us. And, with the body and soul, be able to suffer and die for our guilt, because we failed to keep the Law.