St. Mary, flesh and blood [Dormition of the BVM]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Isaiah 61:7-11

• Judith 13:22-25, 15:10

• St. Luke 1:41-50

 

To you all, the Elect Exiles of the Dispersion; may Grace and Peace be multiplied to you (1 Pet)
 
Who speaks to you today, from His Gospel heard in His Church, saying: 
“…now all generations will call me blessed, because He Who is Mighty has done great things to me.”
 
Though we are Lutheran. Though we act like protestants and run scared from everything that smells too cat’lick. Though we read our Scriptures faithfully. You cannot avoid certain things. You cannot avoid kings David and Solomon’s adultery. You cannot avoid drunk Noah. And you cannot avoid St. Mary, the Mother of God.
 
As you confessed with your mouth and believed with your heart just a moment ago, “I believe…in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God…who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary”.
 
This is brought to our attention in the Gospel read today. Even though I know you’re distracted by the Judith reading earlier, it is important to note the time of events in our Gospel reading. There we see a wonderful godly order to things. First, St. Elizabeth, pregnant herself, hears St. Mary. At that specific sound from St. Mary’s mouth, John the Baptist leaps in his mother’s womb, being in utero himself and we see God’s Word does its work.
 
All this is capped off with the Holy Spirit, again, overshadowing the situation and moving St. Elizabeth to cry out loud, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”
She wasn’t blessing St. Mary’s devotion, dedication, or humility. By the Spirit, St. Elizabeth recognized the One Who blessed her, in St. Mary’s womb, and was returning the blessing to Him, the Work of the Holy Spirit.
 
St. Mary also believes this. In the small part of her song, The Magnificat, which I quoted and which we heard in the Gospel reading, she says, “…now all generations will call me blessed, because He Who is Mighty has done great things to me.”
 
Did St. Mary forget about the baby-to-come and focus on her heavenly assignment from God? Did she truly believe that her vocation was that of Evangelist, to run around and tell everyone the good news as some sort of recruiter? Its true, she had a very personal mission from God, but was it all that people try to force upon her, in these days of female empowerment?
 
St. Mary’s personal mission, her heavenly assignment, her evangelism was to be pregnant. It was to be a mother. St. Gabriel told her, you will be pregnant and give birth. This was not to make her a superwoman, but something more. This was to make her the Mother of God.
 
Jesus is God.  St. Mary is Jesus’ mother.  Therefore, St. Mary is mother of God. The Bible tells me so. 
Can’t we just read the Bible, pastor? Why do we have to deal with Mary and virginity and saints? We just need to know that Jesus loves us. Can’t we all just get along?
 
Repent! As Jesus has said, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Mt 22:29). We have sacrificed education and knowledge for tenuous peace and false security with the world and yet it was exactly that knowledge which Adam and Eve were attempting to gain by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil!
 
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”, says the Lord in Hosea 4, “Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children” (v. 6).
 
We have created a vacuum of theological depth to our faith which can only be and has only been filled by emotion.  And in modern, American Christianity, this is proving to be a disaster.
 
Of course, let’s read the Bible - every word of it, many times.  Let’s pore over it and study it in the original languages.  And let’s read it along with the Early Church and the Reformers.  Let’s hear the Word preached by Chrysostom and Augustine and Luther and today’s pastor’s and professors.  Let’s stand on the shoulders of our beloved fathers in the faith.  Let’s also study it through the lenses of Arius and Nestorius, lest we too fall into their heresy.
 
For all heresy is Christological, meaning it has to do with Christ. What then does that have to do with St. Mary and what we believe about her? For that we take a trip down heresy-memory lane.
 
Trigger warning: incoming fancy words. Don’t let me lose you.
Docetism (word number 1), is a heresy from the centuries before the Ecumenical Church Council that drew up the Nicene Creed. Unequivocally rejected, Docetism centered on the belief that Jesus was not human, but only appeared that way. Thus, St. Mary cannot be the mother of God, since gods don’t have mothers.
 
Therefore, confessing St. Mary to be the Mother of God is something the Docetists would never do and is a good way of removing yourself from that error. This heresy still exists today in the form of spiritualists and Unitarians. 
 
Word number 2: Arians. These people believed the other side of the coin, that Jesus was not true God. Therefore you saying that St. Mary is the Mother of God, protects you from them as well. 
 
And number 3 is the Nestorians. These were those in churches who taught that Jesus was two persons loosely tied together in one body: a god-similar person and a human-similar person. They would call St. Mary “Mother of our Lord” as our bulletin does, but not Mother of God. This heresy lives inside the Jehovah’s Witnesses of today.
 
All of these heresies center around Christ and all can be undone by confessing that Christ is true God, 100%, and true man, 100%, in simply saying that St. Mary is the Mother of God.
 
Dear Christians, today we celebrate the Feast of St. Mary, because she is a theologian of the cross, as we are. She is humbled to be the container of the humiliation of Christ. “All generations will call me blessed”, she sings, “because He Who is Mighty has done great things to me” (Lk 1:48-49). God acts first, without any merit or worthiness within me.
 
She is blessed, for she reveals to the whole world that in her womb is Mighty God and David’s Son. Her, but not her. She does not decide to birth Christ, The Almighty chose her and accomplished great things through her. 
 
This is a part of the wonderful good news of the Gospel, that when God acts, it is in and with men, not in some out of reach place. In order to understand Creation and the garden of Eden, you have to go through Adam. In order to understand the Flood, you have to go through Noah. In order to understand Jesus Christ, you have to go through St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Mary.
 
When Christ was made man, it wasn’t just so He could show off or look like us so He could talk to us on our level. It had nothing to do with Him, but everything to do with us. He came down to get us. He came down as far as He could get from heaven. He became a servant to sinners, below them, in order to save them.
 
In Christ, we see true man separate from sin. In Christ we see true God, able to overcome sin, death, and the devil. In Christ, God and man are joined together, without sin, and no one can tear that asunder. In Christ, God is born of woman and she retains her virginity and He remains unstained by Original Sin.
 
Thus we are educated on these things from God’s Word and from Church History. All of the history, none of the heresy. Sure, the Almighty is doing great things, but I am not a virgin nor can I get pregnant. I do not have St. Gabriel showing up in my house, nor do I have a cousin named Elizabeth who is older than me. 
 
The point of St. Mary is to show us where God is and what He is doing. Same with St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Polycarp, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. John of Damascus, St. Gregory, and on and on in God’s roll-call in the Book of Life. 
 
Where is St. Mary and any of the saints when we are introduced to them? They are living life in the humdrum and yet receiving God’s gifts handed out to them where they are. Where is God when we are introduced to Him? He is on earth, among His people, and in the depths. 
 
All generations call St. Mary blessed because the salvation of the world, that God was working out since the beginning, was accomplished through her being a virgin mother. The importance of St. Mary is the revelation that God is with us. And not just with us like an invisible best friend, but as the God Who has flesh and blood from His Mother and Who continues to commune with us.
 
Thus, the greatest lesson is that you can’t get to God without going through His Body and Blood. You cannot see His divinity without His humanity. You cannot reach His infiniteness, without His finiteness. You cannot achieve heaven without first leaving behind hell.
 
This, the Body and Blood of our Savior accomplishes, which came from the virgin, for you. In Christ, you share in St. Mary’s blessedness of housing the Body and Blood of Christ, by eating and drinking. In Christ, you share in St. Mary’s vocation by being pregnant with faith and birthing your own confession of Jesus, to the whole earth.
 
In Christ, all generations will call you blessed because the Mighty One has done great things to you: suffering, dying, rising again; saving, rescuing, purchasing sinners; and forgiving, communing, and enlightening His Church by His gifts. Holy is His Name.