God has created you in His Image and Likeness to live by His grace through faith in His incarnate Son, Christ Jesus, conceived and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And as such, your entire life in body and soul, both now and forever, depends entirely on Him, on His Word and Holy Spirit.
By the same token, your sin at its root is a matter of self-idolatry and selfishness, whereby you make a god out of yourself, you rely upon yourself, and you love and serve yourself above all. All of your sinful thoughts, words, and actions flow out of that underlying cesspool of self-worship.
And the consequence is that, the more you try to make a life for yourself and to live for yourself, the more you are actually killing yourself. Your sin is deadly and damnable, not so much because it is “naughty,” but because it turns you away from the only true God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and it cuts you off from Him who is your Life and your Salvation. When you reject and disobey the Word of God, you reject and spurn the Holy Spirit, the Author and Giver of Life. And the more you persist in your sin, the more dead you become, and the further removed from Life.
How, then, shall you be saved and live? How shall you receive and bear the Spirit of God in your fallen and perishing flesh, in your hostile mind and hardened heart? And how shall you not rather be consumed and destroyed by the holy and righteous Breath of God and the Fire of His Spirit?
The answer, now and ever, is the same as it has always been. Everything depends entirely on God. It is not for you to save yourself from sin and death. Indeed, left to yourself, apart from the Word and Spirit of God, you are at the heart of the problem and your own worst enemy. But the Lord who loves you, who created you in love, has taken every initiative to save you and redeem you. He seeks you out and comes to you, heals you from the inside out, and gives you His own Life.
The God and Father of your dear Lord Jesus Christ bestows the Spirit upon you by the preaching of the Gospel. He calls and brings you to repentance by and with His Word, and He breathes the Spirit into your heart, mind, body, and soul by the forgiving of your sins. He thereby recreates you in the Image and Likeness of Christ Jesus, and He raises you up from death to Life in His Body.
Just so, as Christ Himself was crucified, put to death, and buried — and God raised Him from the dead — so that He entered into His Glory on your behalf by way of His Cross and Passion — so are you also put to death and raised to newness of life by the Word and Spirit of His Holy Cross.
It seems so utterly foolish to the world, which does not and cannot understand. The Lord wounds in order to heal. He kills, and He makes alive. He speaks His Law to condemn and accuse you, to expose your sin and pierce your heart and soul unto contrition and repentance; and then He speaks His Gospel to save you, to raise you up and bring you to life by faith in His forgiveness.
By this Word and work of God — by this Word and work of repentance — the Lord turns you away from yourself, away from your self-idolatry, and away from your helpless captivity to sin and death, and He brings you to Himself, to the true worship of faith, and to eternal Life with Jesus.
This Way of repentance, faith, and Life with God has been opened to you and to all in Christ Jesus, your Savior, conceived and born of St. Mary, condemned and crucified under Pontius Pilate, put to death and buried, risen and ascended, now given and poured out for you and for the many.
Make no mistake, the Lord Jesus Christ is not a means to some other end. He is your Life and your Salvation. Not abstractly, not intellectually or emotionally, but tangibly and holistically in His own Body of flesh and blood like your own, by the speaking of His Word and the breathing of His Spirit in the Gospel. It is in Christ Jesus that you know and love His God and Father as your own God and Father, and that you are anointed by the Holy Spirit in your own body, soul, and spirit.
It is to that end that God the Father has given His only-begotten Son; and God the Son has become Flesh of your flesh and Blood of your blood — from the body of His Mother to His own Body on the Cross. It is in His own Flesh and Bones and Blood and Sinews that He has received both your sin and death and the Spirit of God, so that everything is dealt with and reconciled in His Body.
That combat stupendous which you could never hope to survive (far less to win), He has fought, and He has won for you. He bears your sins in His Body to bear them away forever; whereas He bears the Spirit in His Body in order to bestow the Spirit upon you. For He has not been ashamed to become your Brother, in order to save you from your sin and to share His divine Life with you.
Thus, by His Cross and Passion He has atoned for all of your sins and the sins of the whole world. By His death and burial He has redeemed you from death and the grave. And in His Resurrection from the dead, you are reconciled to His God and Father and righteous in His sight. This is the Word of the Gospel that is proclaimed to the ends of the earth and preached to you here and now.
Indeed, by that Gospel He preaches Himself into your ears, into your heart, mind, body, and soul. And with His forgiveness of sins He pours out the Holy Spirit generously upon you; so that you are a Christian, anointed by God the Father with the Spirit of Christ Jesus, unto Life everlasting.
He does it by the Rod of His mouth and the Breath of His lips, which is how God always works, from the beginning, when He spoke and it was so, even to the close of the age. It is that Word which God the Father speaks to you by His Son, who has become Flesh and tabernacles with you.
And that is the very thing we commemorate and celebrate with joy and thanksgiving this evening in the Feast of the Visitation of Our Lord. For He deals with you and His whole Church on earth, to this day and to this place, in much the same way that He dealt with the Blessed Virgin Mary and with St. Elizabeth in this precious Holy Gospel. The Lord Himself comes to visit you here with His Word and Spirit, Flesh and Blood, in order to exalt you by His grace to the glory of His Name.
In fact, there is a beautiful and marvelous parallel between the Visitation of Our Lord and the Feast of Pentecost, such as we will celebrate this coming Sunday. In both cases, the Lord pours out His Spirit upon His Church by and with and for the proclamation of His Word; and so does the Father give the very Flesh and Blood of His Son to the blessed Mother and to all her beloved children.
St. Mary is a living icon of the Lord’s Church, because she hears the Word of God, is anointed by the Spirit of God, and receives the very Son of God in the Flesh, in much the same way that the same Son of God is received within His Holy Church on earth by the same Word and Holy Spirit. And that which was conceived in her womb, whereby she became the Mother of God in the Flesh, is now conceived and born for you and for the many in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, whereby the same Body of the same Lord Jesus Christ is given into your body of flesh and blood.
This is how God works. This is how He comes to you. This is how He visits you with His grace, mercy, and peace — in this humble and hidden way.
You cannot see Him, no more than St. Elizabeth could see Him when St. Mary, barely in her first trimester, came to visit her elderly cousin, who had been called barren but now was great with her own child. But Elizabeth saw Mary and heard her greeting, and by this Word of the servant of God she believed. Indeed, not only Elizabeth, but the babe in her womb believed. She and her unborn son rejoiced in the Gospel and gave thanks to God for Mary and with Mary. And Elizabeth praised God for the Fruit of Mary’s womb, for the Child in her body, whom Elizabeth confessed to be her Lord: “How has it been given to me,” she sang, “that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?”
Do not be jealous of the holy disciples and Apostles, that they got to see Jesus with their own eyes. They were given no better Jesus than you are given. Rejoice with St. Mary and St. Elizabeth, that one and the same Lord Jesus Christ — in the same Flesh and Blood — is also here with you and given to you. He visits you in hiddenness and humbleness within His Holy Church on earth.
Do not be ashamed of the simple Means of Grace by which He visits you. Do not be scandalized that He comes by and with the Cross and the Fruits of His Cross. Do not turn up your nose at His sacred Flesh and Blood. Do not dismiss this Liturgy of the Gospel for its apparent foolishness. But rejoice that the Lord Himself comes to you within His Church to bless you with His Peace.
The Lord comes to you and deals with you in this way, that you should learn to live as a child of God the Father and as a member of the Bride of Christ. Loving human fathers rightly teach and discipline and bring up their sons to become faithful husbands and fathers, that they should each learn how to care for a wife and for children, that they should each become a provider who works hard to love and serve his own family and other neighbors in the world. But God the Father trains you, not only to love and serve and care for others, as you are called and given to do within your own office and station, but He trains you first of all to be and to live as His own dear child, living by grace through faith within His own household and family; and likewise, to be and to live as a member of the Bride of Christ, hearing His Word and receiving the Holy Spirit.
The Lord your God thus catechizes you to live, not by your own works and efforts, as though you were your own god, but by His gracious providence, by the hearing and receiving of His Gifts.
Now, that is not to say that you are not given anything to do. Christian, you are given things to do. But do not serve your place and purpose in life as though God needed anything from you, and do not serve as though you were capable of making and preserving any kind of real Life for yourself. Rather, as you receive the Lord in His meekness and mercy, as He comes to you in such humble and hidden ways within His Church, and as He thus visits you in peace and love, so welcome and receive Him and care for Him in His lowly ones, in the poor, despised, and afflicted, and in your brothers and sisters, who are the brothers and sisters of the same Lord Jesus Christ. Receive Jesus also in their needs, and serve Him in their needs. Provide for Him and love Him by providing for and loving His family, as Mary and Elizabeth loved and served each other and their infant sons.
Do unto others as Jesus does for you. Do so for them, not because they have earned it or deserved it — for they have not, no more than you have. Do it by the grace of God. Do it for Jesus’ sake. And know that, in loving your brother or sister, you are loving the Lord who is your very Life.
And if your whole life is spent in doing so, yet shall you live. You serve in the confidence of that great Salvation which God has already achieved for you and for all people, which He proclaims to you and gives to you by the Ministry of His Gospel in His Church. He shall not send you away empty-handed. He shall not leave you unclothed or naked in the street. He shall not allow you to go hungry forever. If you are despised by the world, you are honored and exalted by God in Christ Jesus, your crucified, risen, and ascended Lord. If you are hated by others, you are loved by God. If others do not forgive you, nevertheless, God has forgiven you all your sins and trespasses at the cost of His own Body and Life upon the Cross. If others take your life, yet, God gives you Life.
This is your confidence, peace, and joy. Receive the Lord Jesus, who is here with you and for you with His Word and Holy Spirit. Indeed, He is here present in and with His very Flesh and Blood like your own, conceived and born of St. Mary, given and poured out for you and for the many, for the forgiveness of all your sins, unto the Life everlasting of your body, soul, and spirit in Him.
In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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