The Remembrance of His Mercy

Here, then, is how the Lord comes to you and deals with you: In grace, mercy, and peace. In humility and meekness.  By His Word and Holy Spirit, He greets you and embraces you in love.  The Father gives to you His own beloved Son, in flesh and blood like yours, for the forgiveness of your sins, for the resurrection of your body, and for the life everlasting of your body and soul.

He sends His messenger to you, to go before His face, to prepare His way by the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  To point to Him who is the Lamb of God, and to give you that Lamb in the flesh.  He preaches Christ into your ears, into your mouth, and into your body.

Believe the Word that He speaks to you and the promises He gives to you.  For all these things are fulfilled for you in Christ.  And they shall be fulfilled and accomplished in you, forever and ever.

In St. Elizabeth and St. Mary you are given beautiful examples of such faith in Christ, the Lord.  They hear His Word, and they trust it.  They rejoice in it gladly, with both humility and confidence, even though it remains hidden under frailty and weakness.

But there is more to these two women than example.  St. Elizabeth is a new Sarah, who conceives a promised son in her barren old age, as the mouth of the Lord has spoken.  Better still, St. Mary is the new and greater Eve, the Mother of all the living, because she conceives and bears the very Son of God in her womb, the Seed of the Woman who crushes Satan under His wounded heel.

St. Mary is a daughter of the first Eve.  So, too, she is a true and twofold daughter of Abraham; for he is the father of all who believe and trust the Lord, and she does.  She is also a faithful daughter of the Patriarch Judah and of King David; and now, in her, all the promises of God the Lord to those men and their children have come to pass.  For as her father David once brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, where the Lord caused His Name and His Glory to dwell among His people, so now has St. Mary herself become a new and better Ark of the New Covenant in the flesh and blood of her Son.  She carries in herself, not signs or types of good things to come, nor simply shadows and promises, but the Reality, the one true God Himself, in His own flesh and blood.

It is in this way — by the means of this dear woman, who is blessed above all others — that the Lord not only comes to you, to visit you in peace, but He has become like you in every way, save only without sin.  Conceived and born of St. Mary, He is the true Man, the new and better Adam.

He comes in this way, in human flesh and blood, in order to save you from your sin, to redeem you from death and from the tyranny of the devil, to reconcile you to God and bring you to Him as a dear child to your dear Father in heaven forever.  Thus, by His Spirit, you pray: “Abba, Father.”

Has Jesus not taught you to pray in precisely this way?  “Our Father, who art in heaven.”  With these words He tenderly invites you to believe that God is your true Father, and you are His true child, so that you may come to Him and pray to Him as a little child asks her dear father on earth.

It is for this purpose that the incarnate Son of God, the blessed Son of St. Mary, Jesus Christ, has taken all your sins upon Himself — indeed, He has taken the sins of the whole world upon Himself — and has borne those sins in His Body to the Cross.  There, by the shedding of His holy, precious Blood, He has made propitiation and atoned for all those sins of the world, including yours.

And having thus atoned for sin, His death is surely not His defeat but His great victory.  So it is that He is raised from the dead.  And in His Resurrection, those who have been burdened and put to death by sin are raised up to newness of life.  For just as He became like you, even to the point of death, so do you become like Him in His Resurrection through His forgiveness of all your sins.

This forgiveness and new life He grants to you, and to His whole Church on earth, by the Ministry of the Gospel.  He does it by the preaching of His messengers — as Gabriel announced the Word of the Lord to St. Mary — and as St. John the Baptist, while yet in the womb, proclaimed the Lord Jesus Christ.  Likewise, by the washing of water with the Word and Spirit of Christ, which is the new birth of Holy Baptism, you are brought to life in the household and family of God.  Indeed, as St. Mary once conceived and gave birth to the Son of God by His grace and power, so does the Church give birth to the sons of God in Christ by the same Word and the same Holy Spirit.

And He gives to you, also — into your body — the same Body and Blood of the same Lord Jesus Christ, which were conceived and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary; which were crucified under Pontius Pilate; which were dead and buried; which are now risen and ascended, alive forevermore.

As He unites His flesh to yours in this Holy Sacrament, so are you bound up with Him and united with Him, both body and soul, in His Cross and Resurrection and in His Life everlasting.

This is most certainly true.  But it is also true that, for now, it is hidden in the dark and secret place, in the womb of the Church, in the theology of the Cross.

Your life and salvation as a beloved and well-pleasing child of God are perceived only by faith in the Word and promises of Christ, in the midst of much hardship and sorrow, gossip and slander, persecution and death.  But you live in the hope of the Resurrection, which is not yet seen.

St. Elizabeth did not see it.  When she greeted her young cousin as the Mother of her Lord, and she praised that same Lord God concealed in the womb of St. Mary, that girl was barely in her first trimester, not even showing.  Nor do we have any indication or reason to believe that St. Elizabeth ever saw the Christ Child, as Simeon and Anna would see Him in the Temple.  She did not live to see her own son, St. John the Baptist, grow up to fulfill his calling as the Forerunner of the Lord. Elizabeth and her husband Zacharias were already well advanced in years when St. John was conceived.  But had she lived, she would have seen her son imprisoned and beheaded by Herod.

St. Mary did live to see her own dear Son, Christ Jesus, crucified under Pontius Pilate.  There, at the foot of His Cross, she saw Him suffer and die, and the great sword of sorrow pierced her soul, as Simeon foretold.  She was a witness of His Resurrection and of His outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost; but so did she also see the Church on earth suffer persecution, as she herself suffered in her life under the Cross.  As she was taken into the home of St. John the Apostle, she would have seen the martyrdom of his elder brother, St. James, who was put to death by Herod.

Already long before, St. Mary had suffered for her faith and because of her great blessedness.  When she returned from visiting St. Elizabeth, she was at first suspected by St. Joseph, who would have divorced her quietly for her presumed unfaithfulness; and though he took her to be his wife by faith in the Word of the Lord, one can well imagine what the rest of Nazareth would have thought and said about her and her condition.  She had to flee the murderous threats and violence of Herod, who would have destroyed her Son from the start.  She had to live in a foreign land, a stranger and alien on earth, although she was highly favored by God and blessed among women.

The great reversal of which St. Mary sings in her Magnificat — the humbling of the proud and the exaltation of the poor and lowly and despised — is accomplished by God through the Cross and Passion of His Son and hers.  And it is fully realized only in the Resurrection of the dead, which you do not yet see.  For now, what you see and experience are persecution, suffering, and death.

For now you live under the Cross.  But of course, it is and remains the very Cross of Christ which saves you.  Live, therefore, in the sure and certain hope of His Resurrection, in the faith and confidence of His mercy.  That hope will not disappoint you, nor will His mercy ever fail you.

Even now, there is the remembrance of His mercy.  Not simply your remembering of His mercy in the past, your remembering of His Word and promises, but His remembrance of you and His promises to you, and His remembrance of His holy Covenant in the flesh and blood of Christ.

Here, indeed, is where and how He remembers you in mercy, not just in His head but in His flesh.  Here is the Body of Christ, born of St. Mary, given to you.  Here is the Blood of Christ, shed for you upon the Cross, now poured out for you and for the many, for the forgiveness of all your sins.

Where there is such forgiveness of sins, there also is life and salvation.  As you hear and believe His Word, and as you receive Him into yourself in faith, it is for you as He has spoken: Your sins are forgiven, and so are you raised up from death to the Life everlasting in your body and soul.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Resurrection and Life in the Body of St. Mary's Son

Let us arise and go to a city of Judah, and enter a priestly house, and rejoice in God our Savior.

And let us do so on this evening in the remembrance of His mercy, with thanksgiving for His maidservant, the Blessed Virgin Mary, by whom He has become one with us, flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood.

She is, with us, a member of His Church; and in a special way she is an icon of that Royal Bride of Christ, that Holy Mother of God’s sons and daughters.  In giving thanks for His grace and mercy upon her, we give thanks for His mercy upon generation after generation of those who fear Him.

Because He is conceived and born of the Woman, this new Eve, St. Mary, He is conceived and born for us, the sons and daughters of the first Adam and the first Eve; that we might receive the new birth of water, Word, and Spirit, and the adoption of sons of His own God and Father.

So has Christ accomplished for all the children of men, first of all by becoming like us in all ways, save only without sin, and then also by His Cross and Resurrection in His own human body of flesh and blood like ours.  Born under the Law, and submitting Himself to the Law on our behalf, He has kept and fulfilled the Law for all of us, in perfect faith and holy love.  Precisely in that same faith and love, He has suffered the entire judgment and full punishment of the Law, the shame and humiliation of our sin and death, and has thereby atoned for our sin, defeated our death, destroyed our enemy, the devil, redeemed us for Himself, and reconciled us to God forever and ever.

All of this He has done, once and for all — for St. Mary and St. Elizabeth; for Father Abraham and all his children; for Adam and Eve and all their children — and therefore, also, for you.  It is an accomplished fact in His own flesh and blood, in His crucified and risen Body, in His own Person, in the Kingdom of His God and Father, and even here and now within His Church on earth.

It is already true.  It has been accomplished, and it is finished, complete, perfected.  It is solid as a rock, never to be undone.  So tightly has the Lord bound Himself to you by His Incarnation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and so tightly are His Cross and Resurrection united in His Body of flesh and blood like yours, that, even though you are so small and weak and poor, lowly and mortal, dying and wasting away a little more each day, yet, by your Baptism in His Name, you are also resurrected and ascended in and with Christ Jesus, the Son of God and St. Mary’s Son.  In Him, indeed, your life is already hidden with God, seated on high in the heavenly places, exalted far above all angels and archangels, above the cherubim and seraphim and the whole heavenly host.

But you surely do not see or feel or experience that heavenly glory and eternal reality for the time being here and now.  It is by faith in the Word of God, which you hear, and not by human sight.  What you see and feel and experience in your life on earth is hunger, want, and need; sickness and death; hardship and pain; ridicule and persecution; disappointment and despair; suffering and sorrow within and without.  You bear the reproach of your neighbor and the world, the assaults and accusations of the devil, the humiliation and shame of your own sin and guilt and faults and errors.

You hear that your sins are freely and fully forgiven, and yet, you still suffer many of their consequences.  Not all of them, but many.

You hear that the Lord is with you, that He loves you, and that His gracious favor is upon you; yet, you often feel lonely and unloved, out of favor, and forgotten.

You hear of the great blessings of Christ Jesus, your Savior; but, as those blessings come to you by and with and through His Cross, they are often difficult to bear.

You hear that God feeds and clothes you and preserves your life, but you still have to manage and juggle your finances, and work for a living, and pay your bills; and day by day you find yourself slowing down, getting tired, and sometimes getting sick, wearing out and wasting away.

Against all of this harsh experience, the Church in heaven and on earth sets the incarnate Son of God, Christ Jesus, crucified, risen, and ascended in our human flesh and blood.  He is the true Man, conceived and born of Mary, who is our sister and our mother; and He, the Lord Jesus, her Son, our Brother, has been tempted in all the ways that you are tempted.  He has suffered in all the ways that you suffer.  He has borne all of your sins in His own body like yours, and He has carried all the sins of those who trespass against you, so that by His stripes and holy wounds you are healed.

He has shed His blood for you, for your redemption and atonement, and He has suffered and died in your place, on your behalf.  He has gone through hell on your account and for your benefit.

And God has raised this same Jesus, the Son of St. Mary, from the dead.  This One who humbled Himself and became obedient even unto death, God has highly exalted far above all heavens, and He has bestowed on Him the Name which is above every name.

That is why, for example, we make the crucifix an exquisite work of art, finally crafted and often of polished metal.  It is why we use the finest vessels we can for the Holy Communion, and adorn the Church in splendor, and reverence the crucified Lord with deliberate ceremonies.  It is why we clothe the newly baptized in white garments, even though they may be crying or screaming or messing themselves as we do so.  It is why we clothe the ministers of Christ with colorful and elaborate vestments, though they are mortal men, poor miserable sinners like anyone else.  It is why we sing sturdy hymns of substance and great confidence, even in the face of sin and death.

And it is why we say of this young girl from Nazareth, that she is rightly called and truly is the Mother of God.  For her dear Son, the blessed Fruit of her sanctified womb, even as a tiny Fetus hidden within her body, is the very Lord, the true and only God in the flesh.

In the case of all these things, with our lips and with our lives, we confess before the world that the Lord has had regard for the humble state of His servants.  We confess that in His great mercy He has done great things for us; that with His mighty arm, with His hands stretched out in death upon the Cross, He has done truly mighty deeds for us.  That He has saved us.

With St. Mary, with St. Elizabeth, and with all the faithful saints of God in heaven and on earth, we exalt the Lord, and our spirits rejoice in God our Savior.  Which is to exalt and rejoice in the Son of Mary, for He is true God, and she is the Mother of our Lord.

In remembering her Dormition on this day — that is, her falling asleep in Jesus, in the sure and certain hope of His Resurrection — the Church rejoices and confesses that St. Mary’s Son is not the God of the dead, but of the living.  And in giving thanks to God for dear St. Mary, we believe, teach, and confess that her Son, Jesus, has fulfilled all that God has spoken and promised.

In considering that she who was humble has been exalted, in counting her blessed among women, we confess the Cross and Resurrection of Christ Jesus, our Lord, and count ourselves also exalted in Him.  So do we give thanks and sing, even in the midst of lowliness and grief, in the midst of darkness, burdened by sin, threatened by death and destruction.

And even in the midst of all that assails us, we do not fear.

We trust and confess that, just as the Son of God was conceived and born of St. Mary by His Word and Holy Spirit, so have you also been conceived and born of His Church, as sons of God by grace through faith in Christ — by the same Word and Spirit that came to the Blessed Virgin.

We trust and confess that, just as the Son of God became flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood, and dwelt within St. Mary’s body, so does the same Son of God with the same flesh and blood come to dwell in your body in the Holy Communion.

As you eat His Body and drink His Blood — and as you have been united with Him, in His Cross and Resurrection, by your Holy Baptism — so are His Resurrection and Ascension truly yours.

And truly they are St. Mary’s, also, who lived and died by faith in the Word that He spoke to her.

For the Lord our God, Christ Jesus, Mary’s Son, our Brother in the flesh and the Savior of us all, He feeds the hungry with good things, in the remembrance of His mercy, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Lord Raises Up the Humble in His Glory

What is to become of you?  What hope do you finally have?  What shall be your life’s end?  And what shall be your life after death?

The answer to all of these questions is most assuredly in Christ Jesus, your Savior and your God.

It is by the grace of God in Christ that He has spoken His Word of the Gospel to you.  Not just as good news or information about some historic fact, but as the very forgiveness of your sins, and as the gift, the bestowal, of divine life in Christ.  And this not only for your soul, or for some kind of disembodied spirit, but for who you really are, as God created you, body and soul, one person of flesh and blood, of heart, mind, and spirit.  It is for all of you that your hope is in Christ Jesus.  For God has called you by name to be His own dear child, a beloved and well-pleasing son.

In Holy Baptism, He has given you the new birth of water and the Spirit.  He has recreated you there in the Image of the heavenly Man, the second Adam, the One who came down from heaven, even unto death, who has risen and ascended to the right hand of the Father.  Who has done all of this for you, in flesh and blood like yours.  It is for His sake that you have been  conceived and born anew of the Church, a new Mother, to be an offspring of the Lord by His grace.

But all of this has been accomplished for you by the way and means of the Cross, by the innocent suffering and death of God in the flesh.  It is by the sacrificial shedding of His holy and precious blood that you have been redeemed, bought back, and saved.

So the life that you have in Christ, both for now and forever — it is by faith and not by sight that you receive it and believe it.  You cannot see it.  You do not feel or experience it in this world.

No, what you see to begin with, is a teenage girl who has gotten pregnant before getting married; whose husband, according to the Law, could rightly stone her to death.  And then what you see is her little baby Boy when He is born, an ordinary baby Boy.  He needs to be diapered.  He needs to be fed.  He needs to be cleaned and taken care of and carried about, like any other little baby boy.  And what you see is that little Baby growing up, like any other little boy, and becoming a grown man — who is hounded by the powers that be in church and state throughout His life, until He is finally executed in shame and humiliation as a criminal, cursed by God and man.

Likewise, what you see and experience and feel in your own body and life, is sin and death, weakness and infirmity, and a wobbly faith that fluctuates from one day to the next, sometimes from one moment to the next.  And what you receive from the world is mockery for your faith, as though you were the greatest fool in all the earth.

Meanwhile, the whole world itself seems to be going crazy, spiraling into chaos and confusion all around you.  Eruptions of violence left and right.  Nay sayers and pessimistic gloom casters.

Where is your hope?  What shall become of you?  Where is your life in the midst of all this death?

The answer doesn’t sound like much or seem too promising.  It might not even seem pertinent.  But the truth of the matter is, that the Blessed Virgin Mary, that young daughter of David in Nazareth, she was chosen by God, the Lord almighty.  Not according to any merit or worthiness in her, but according to His mercy.  For He has remembered His mercy toward her and toward us all.

He has not forgotten His Covenant.  He has not forgotten His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.  He has not forgotten the Oath that He swore to David, that He would set a Son upon His Throne forever and ever.  In His mercy He has remembered.

And, remembering, He has come, and He has chosen to act.  According to His divine Wisdom, though it is foolishness to man, He has chosen to come to this young lady, to this dear St. Mary.  To conceive in her womb, that she would give birth to a Son, the only-begotten Son of God.  And this, not by the will of man, nor by the work of any man, but by the Word of Spirit of God.  By the powerful and gracious overshadowing of the Most High — His Name be praised forevermore.

In this most miraculous of Words, He who is true God — Light from Light, God from God, very God of very God, the almighty and eternal Son of the Living God — He has taken the flesh and blood of St. Mary to be His own flesh and blood, to become true Man.  To begin as an Embryo, a little Fetus, a tiny Human Being.  To live as the smallest of God’s Creatures, and to grow and develop in the womb of His own Mother.  To be given birth from her body in the fullness of time.

He is conceived and born of this Woman, and He is born under the Law, in order to become like you, both in your flesh and in your infirmity.  To bear your sin, to be your Savior.  To redeem you from the Law, from its burden and its bondage, from its accusation and its judgment.  To atone for your sins.  To reconcile you to God the Father.  To establish Peace in place of your warfare and unrest.  To give you the Holy Spirit and the Life everlasting in place of your death and damnation.

He has become like you in every way, save only without any sin of His own, so that you would become like Him: a son of God in Christ Jesus by His gracious adoption.

By His death, He has broken the power of death, and He has set you free from the grave’s dark prison.  In His bodily Resurrection from the dead, He has opened heaven to you, both your body and your soul, so that you shall not perish anymore forever.  So that you not die but live.

Though you are humbled, downtrodden, and brought low, He raises you up, and He exalts you by His Gospel.  He clothes you in the beautiful garments of His righteousness and His everlasting salvation through the full and free forgiveness of all your sins.  Daily and richly, for His own sake.

Though you may hunger and thirst now, and languish in poverty and want for the time being, He feeds you from His own hand with His own Self.  He places into your mortal body, into your hand, into your mouth, into your stomach, into your flesh and blood, His own holy Body and precious Blood.  The same flesh and blood conceived and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, buried, and raised, and ascended to the right hand of His Father in heaven.

Where He is, there you shall be.  You go with Him.  For in giving you Himself, in giving you His Body and Blood, in speaking His Word to you and forgiving your sins, He has bound Himself to you, and you to Him, as one flesh, as one body, of one blood.  You are a member of His holy Bride, and you are all-glorious in your holy wedlock to Him, who is the Lord.

Though your body grow weak and sick and die, though it decay and return to the dust from which it was taken, your body belongs to Him who is your Bridegroom.  You are not your own.  You were bought with a price, the precious blood of Christ, the Son of God.  Redeemed and purchased to be His own, not as a slave, but as a beloved Bride, and as a son of God the Father in Christ.

He shall raise you from the dead at the last, as He raises you now by His Gospel of forgiveness.  And you shall indeed be glorious in Him, immortal and imperishable.  You shall live with Him in His Kingdom, both body and soul, in His everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.