The text for our meditation on God’s Holy Word is the Gospel lesson for the day. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Beginning in the 19th century and extending until the middle part of the 20th century there was, on the part of liberal scholars and theologians, a concerted attack upon the truth of Holy Scripture. For example, Adolph Von Harnack proposed that the truth claims of Christianity were not unique to it at all but rather an amalgamation of various ideas from other religions. Rudolf Bultman insisted that modern man could not be expected to believe in what was essentially an ancient myth—that it was absurd to think that a modern, scientific person would believe that God could or even would intervene in our world and do the miraculous—suspending the natural laws of the universe. Both of these men of course denied the Virgin Birth of our Lord.
Built into this kind of thinking is a kind of intellectual pride that assumes that ancient people were not as intelligent as modern people. That is simply not true. While they didn’t have access to our technology—their ability to think and reason and be discerning was no less than ours.
And so when Mary is visited by an angel she is afraid and confused and troubled. She tries to discern what it all means because being visited and spoken to by an angel just didn’t happen every day anymore than it does today.
When Mary hears that she is to bear a Son without a human father and that her elderly, sterile relative Elizabeth is pregnant, she wonders how this would take place because there is absolutely nothing in her world that would suggest such things are possible anymore than they are today.
All of this is reported by Luke, himself no fool, but instead a doctor and a man of science who no doubt had a healthy skepticism. But based on the evidence that he personally researched and collected, he could come to no other conclusion but to recognize that God did indeed intervene in the most wonderful ways in human history—that with God nothing is impossible.
I would like to say that the Von Harnacks and Bultmans of the world who worked to destroy the Faith from within the church are no more—but that is not so. They have died and are being treated as they deserve by the One whom they discovered to their terror is no myth-- but the outward, visible church is still afflicted with theologians and pastors and scholars and laity who want to deny the miraculous and destroy what they can’t understand—to do away with what isn’t reasonable and what doesn’t make sense to them when it comes to the Christian faith.
They deny the creation because they say it is an impediment to the faith of the scientifically minded. They demand that the hard teachings of the Bible on sexuality and marriage and gender be removed because we are so much more enlightened today. They denounce the blood atonement as something unworthy of civilized people. They sound so sincere and concerned and well-meaning when it comes to making the Faith accessible to the world-- but what they really are, are destroyers of the Faith.
You see dear friends in Christ, a God who cannot create—a God who will not act within his creation—a God who does not have the highest of expectations for his creatures—a God who did not redeem-- does not become more believable—but less—undeserving of even the name of God—and unrecognizable to the writers and readers of Holy Scripture.
Instead, the people of God have always known and believed that nothing is impossible with God. Adam and Eve knew it as they looked at creation. Noah knew it as he saw the rain begin to fall and fill the earth. Moses knew it as he saw the Israelites leave their slavery in Egypt. And Elizabeth and Mary and Luke knew it with the birth of the Savior. Nothing is impossible with God. May God grant to us today, that through his Word, we might know the same—that nothing is impossible with God.
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
As much we Lutherans look askance at popular Marian devotion in the Roman Catholicism—particularly what we see around us in south Texas, we make another kind of mistake when we fail to recognize what a special person the Virgin Mary was, and how essential she was to God’s salvation in Christ.
For thousands of years, ever since God’s promise to Adam and Eve in the garden that he would send a Savior, the seed of a woman, who would destroy Satan and his works-- every pious, believing woman, beginning with Eve herself, dreamed and hoped and prayed that she would be the One to carry in her womb the Savior of the world. The one that God favored with that incredible blessing was the Virgin Mary.
We Lutherans do not believe that she was sinless, we do not believe that we should pray to her, we do not believe that she is a co-mediator of redemption along with her son—but we do must certainly affirm and believe what the Bible teaches: that Mary was highly favored by God and chosen by God to be the means through which the Savior came into the world. Her obedient faith said yes to God in spite of her fears and confusion—in spite of what seemed impossible--and in this she serves as example for all of us to follow as God calls us to do his will in this time and place—even when it seems impossible.
The choosing of the Virgin Mary ought to inspire hope in us that we can be used by God in mighty, miraculous ways to accomplish his will in this day and time like Mary did in hers. As a young, poor, woman of that day she was the least likely to be used by God in such a mighty way as the vehicle through which he would fulfill his promises to send a Savior and King—and yet that is exactly what God did because nothing is impossible with God—not even a virgin birth.
And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." What was foretold by the prophet Isaiah 700 years before was fulfilled in the womb of the Blessed Virgin—the birth of the Messiah—the Savior and King of the world—true God and true Man.
In Confirmation we spend a good bit of time talking about this biblical teaching that Jesus was true Man—having receiving his flesh from his blessed Mother Mary—and true God by the power of the Holy Spirit—as no other, Son of the Most High.
And when we talk about the two natures of Christ, I always want the kids to know that this is not just a theological construct or a pious statement but nothing other than the foundation of their salvation.
Jesus is the LORD who saves because he is God and Man. That you and I go to heaven through faith Jesus depends upon his true divinity and true humanity and so these biblical teachings are not just lessons for children that can be forgotten when we are confirmed—but are the very heart of our faith and the story of our salvation. So why does it matter that Jesus was true Man.
First of all we have to confess that the command of Almighty God to all people to be holy just as he is holy goes unfulfilled in our lives. Despite all the sinful illusions that we may have that we are better than the next guy or gal, none of us can ever go to heaven because of our own righteousness. We do not do the good that God commands and instead we do the evil that he forbids.
That was not true in Christ’s life. Yes, he was born as a man, under the same righteous law that we are born under—except that he was born without sin through his miraculous birth. Where we have failed in keeping God’s Law —he succeeded—keeping the law perfectly in thought, word and deed-- for us—in our place-- so that now through faith in him, his righteousness and holiness is counted as our own.
And the punishment that God promises to humanity on account of our sins—the punishment in time and eternity according to his holy wrath over our sins that each of us truly deserves—was placed upon Jesus. He suffered on the cross the righteous wrath of his Holy Father-- not for his sins-- but for ours.
Everything that we deserve for our sins, including forsakenness by God—he received on the cross—and not just for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world—for each and every person who has lived or ever will live. His suffered in our place and reconciled the entire world to God—and when we put our trust in his Son we personally and individually receive forgiveness for all our sins.
But of course the holy life he led and obedient death he suffered is not the end of the story at all-- but as God en-fleshed he did what no human could ever do—he forgave the sins of the world—he defeated Satan—and he rose up glorious from the grave—and all the benefits and blessings of life and salvation he came to give the world are ours personally and individually when we believe in his resurrection.
Through the work of the God/Man Jesus Christ a holy God and a sinful humanity are reconciled because nothing is impossible with God. Today he invites to set aside our sinful doubts, enter into his Kingdom, and believe in his promises—just like the Holy Spirit led Mary to believe his promises.
And Mary said to the angel, "How will this be, since I am a virgin?" And the angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy— the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God."
Each week we confess our own personal faith in these words of the angel Gabriel when we confess along with the church in every place and every age that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. She does not doubt, she does not ask how can it be—but how will it be. We wonder too but it ought to be a holy wonder born of a faith that simply trusts in what God has revealed—that it was by the power of the Holy Spirit that the Son of God was conceived within the womb of the Blessed Virgin.
The miracle of the Incarnation is that the One who was in the beginning with God—the One who was God—the One through whom all things were made—became flesh and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth who from his very beginnings in the Virgin’s womb was God.
An ancient title for the Virgin Mary that Lutherans affirm with the Church throughout the ages is that Mary is the Mother of God. That may make us a little nervous but we need to remember what this title really means—what it says about Christ, not Mary--not that Mary comes before God, as a mother comes before her child, but that from the very moment of his conception Jesus was God who in his Incarnation took upon himself our human flesh in Mary’s womb--God and Man in that moment and forever more.
There is no part of our lives—no time in our lives, from conception to death—that Jesus did not come to save and renew and make whole—no part of your life where Jesus is not present with you to strengthen you and lift you up and comfort you and bring you ever closer to himself.
The world around us hates the idea of a God who won’t be made into their image--of a God who is greater than themselves--of a God who has a claim upon their lives as their Maker and Redeemer. Sadly, there are people still like this in the world--even within the outer boundaries of the Church. But for all of us who like Mary and Elizabeth and Luke have come to faith in Jesus by the powerful work of the Holy Spirit, it is the greatest comfort and hope that we have: that nothing is impossible with God. Amen.
And now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.
