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The of Our Lord to the Mary March 25, 2020

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Hymn – LSB 518, By All Your Saints in Warfare (v. 1, 22, 3)

22 We sing with joy of Mary, Whose heart with awe was stirred When, youthful and astonished, She heard the ’s word. Yet she her voice upraises To magnify God’s name, As once for our salvation Your mother she became.

Opening Verses

Office Hymn – LSB 356, The Angel From Heaven Came

Old Testament Reading – Isaiah 7:10-14 Again spoke to Ahaz: “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.” And he said, “Hear then, O house of ! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

P: O Lord, have mercy on us. C: Thanks be to God.

Epistle Reading – Hebrews 10:4-10 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’” When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ once for all.

P: O Lord, have mercy on us. C: Thanks be to God.

Gospel Reading – :26-38 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of named , 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. 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.”

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 . 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.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

P: O Lord, have mercy on us. C: Thanks be to God.

Responsory ()

Sermon Tonight, we get to hear about and talk about someone who is often ignored and minimized in Protestant churches – Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Because today, March the 25th, is the date of the Annunciation in the church’s calendar, the observance of the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary announcing to her what God would do to save the world with His Son Jesus, and the role she would play in that. We don’t often talk about Mary as Protestants because of the direction that Roman Catholic theology has gone over the centuries – we certainly do not accept a lot of what they say about her, which has no Scriptural basis. She is not the “,” she is not an especially powerful intercessor with God to whom we should pray for an extra chance of being heard. We do not believe that she has appeared to people in visions or apparitions and told them to pray and stuff like that. But by the same token, Protestants have often gone too far the other direction and acted like she’s no one special at all. If we are going to be faithful to Scripture, we can’t do that – she does play a unique role in the history of salvation, and the angel himself tells her that she is favored, that she has found favor with God. She appears several other times throughout the and notably she is one of the few faithful who remain at the foot of the cross during that ordeal. She responds to Gabriel in faith, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” In other words, “I believe and trust God; let His will be done,” even if that will lead to the shame of being perceived (in everyone else’s eyes) as an unwed mother, even if it led to the unimaginable burden of raising and caring for God incarnate, seeing him opposed and suffering and dying. She responds with remarkable faith, and in that she can certainly be a role model. That’s the Lutheran attitude towards saints: we don’t pray to them or anything like that, but it’s good to remember their lives for the good example they can give us for living in faith, and we celebrate what God did for them in His grace and what He gives to us through them. In that, Mary should indeed be one of the most prominent: for the example she provides of a faithful response, and in giving thanks to God for the salvation He brought into the world through her. Traditionally this moment of the Annunciation was reckoned as the beginning of the Incarnation – not and the birth of Jesus, but this visit as the moment of his conception. Notice the date, March 25 – this is exactly nine months before Christmas, December 25. In fact, it’s unclear from the early Church which of these dates came first! It is possible that the Annunciation was first, and the date for Christmas was simply calculated as nine months later. This also has dramatic implications for some hot-button issues today. The Christian Church is and has always been intensely pro-life – when the God we worship once occupied a woman’s womb as an unborn child, as a fetus, how can possibly be otherwise? When the first person to recognize his presence and rejoice at it was his cousin , also still in utrero, how can we be otherwise? This event marks a whole new beginning, the first moment in the new Creation. The victory is complete with the Resurrection and the defeat of the grave, but this is a moment that the world is changed forever, the moment the Creator enters into His Creation. For centuries, March the 25th was marked as the beginning of the for that reason. For those of you who are like me and love the Lord of the Rings, the date of when the Ring is destroyed and the great enemy Sauron is defeated is also March the 25th, which becomes the beginning of the new year in Middle Earth – this is no coincidence, because Tolkien was intensely and devoutly Catholic. The entrance of the Savior into the world is the beginning of the reign of grace. I want to share a devotion partly borrowed from a Lutheran theologian named Johann Gerhard, who lived in the late 1500s and early 1600s. An angel came to a woman long ago. She had faith unspoiled by sin, for this was the first woman, Eve. But the angel that came to her spoke to her a word of death. She listened and believed it, and so sin and death came into her and into the entire human race. We, her children, received the seed of death from the dark angel’s word. We were conceived and born in sin, doomed to the grave because Eve put her faith in a lying word of Satan. He lured her away from God’s truth, away from His Word. The lying serpent offered misleading promises – “You shall not surely die. You shall be as God.” Eve trusted these, and brought the curse upon the earth. But in the fullness of time, an angel of light came to Mary in Nazareth. She was not unspoiled by sin, for she also was a daughter of Eve. Yet she received the gift of faith, faith that clung to the Word of God. The angel of light came to her; Gabriel spoke to her words of truth from the Lord, not lies and deceptions. He gave the promise of the Child to be born. Through the Word that was spoken, life was conceived in Mary. The Son of God took flesh in her womb, to create life and holiness for all who have faith. Eternal salvation comes to all who, like Mary, trust the Word of God. Instead of the curse, Mary received blessing, and is called “blessed one” because of the Child. Instead of a curse for all, the Savior of all comes through the bright angel’s message. All creation will be made new, and the curse reversed. May we be Mary’s children, so to speak. May we hear and trust the Angel Gabriel’s words. What does he say? “Behold, you [Mary] 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… 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.” We must trust these words. For here is the promise of God in His Son. Here is life and salvation in the Child born of the Virgin. So we trust that the Lord accomplished this Virgin birth. We trust that this Man is the King promised to David and to Jacob, the fulfillment of all prophecy, even the first promise given to Adam and Eve that the woman’s seed would crush the serpent’s head. Christ is the King who saves, the Lord who saves from sin and death. But that dark angel is not completely gone. He has a fate waiting for him, the lake that burns forever. But now he still speaks to us, offering us another word. He tries to make us skeptical, to have us question God – did He really fulfill all things for us in Christ, or is Christ just another teacher, just another man? Surely God becoming Man is too much to swallow. So says the devil that spoke through the serpent. But God did not merely inhabit a man, but He became Man. He took flesh to be one of us. This incarnation is the core of who God is. If God is love, and He is, then how could He not share our state and take our burdens and die our death? How could He not be born as one of us, in the form of a servant? He who cannot be compelled by any force compelled Himself by His unstoppable love. The lies of the devil try to turn God’s love into a lie, or try to twist the concept of love into non- judgment. “If God really loves you, He would not judge you for the mistakes you make.” We can hear this word of the serpent on the lips of many. But we have a better Word to trust. God does not ignore the sin. Instead He came to take the burden. He came to die the death. The curse of death was going to destroy us. Christ let the curse take Him instead. The curse is not completely gone. Without faith, we would still be under condemnation. We are either Eve’s children, under the curse; or Mary’s children, blessed through faith. So we must continue to listen to and trust in the Word of the messenger of God, rather than the angel of darkness. It is not be as easy as we think. The devil is not obvious; he subtle and clever. He makes his words seem reasonable, and speaks the right ones at the right time. You will not be able to overcome Satan by your own wisdom and discernment. Instead, how? The answer is to trust in the good Word. The Word is not just information about God; the Word of God carries power and accomplishes things. Through the Word, the Spirit came upon Mary. Through the Word, He conceived in her the Son of God. That is a powerful Word indeed. We have the same Word spoken to us. When we listen to it, the Spirit comes upon us as well. The power is there to create and sustain faith in us sinners, a mighty miracle indeed. But woe to us if we decide that we are strong enough to stand on our own two feet and only need the Word occasionally. Woe to us if we feel that we have faith, so we need never fear falling away. Woe to us if we avoid the Word, because in the quiet that follows, Satan will seize his chance to whisper in our ear. Instead, we should be as Mary. We should humbly listen to the Word. We should meekly say, “Behold the servant of the Lord.” We should cling to the promise of the Word as tightly as she did, with Spirit-given faith. Canticle The , the Song of Mary

Kyrie

Lord’s Prayer Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen

Prayers

Prayer of the Day P: O Lord, as we have known the incarnation of Your Son, Jesus Christ, by the message of the angel to , so by the message of His cross and passion bring us to the glory of His resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. C: Amen.

Additional Prayers of Intercession and Thanksgiving

Prayer for Peace P: O God, from whom come all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works, give to us, Your servants, that peace which the world cannot give, that our hearts may be set to obey Your commandments and also that we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may live in peace and quietness; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. C: Amen.

Benedicamus and Benediction

Closing Hymn – LSB 621, Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence (verses 1-3)

About the Celebration of the Annunciation The Annunciation remembers the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary announcing the Incarnation and coming birth of Christ. Its date of March 25 comes from simple arithmatic: it is nine months from December 25 and the celebration of Christ’s birth. In fact, the date of the Annunciation may precede the date of Christmas, with the calculation running the other way. Both these dates are recorded in multiple early Christian writers going back nearly to 200 AD, and both days were greatly celebrated. It is worth observing that it was the Annunciation, not Christmas, which has always marked the beginning of Christ’s Incarnation and therefore of God’s physical, bodily presence in our world – even as an unborn child in Mary’s womb, he was still true God in the flesh, and when Mary visits Elizabeth, the still-in-utero John the Baptist is the first to leap at Jesus’ presence. Because of this date of conception marking the beginning of the Incarnation, it was also seen as the beginning of the New Creation and the reign of God’s grace on earth. As such, though at first glance Mary may appear to be the main character in this narrative, it has typically been considered primarily a celebration of Christ. For much of the Medieval period, throughout Europe March 25 marked the beginning of the new year, rather than January 1. Many countries changed to January 1 during the 16th century, but in England it was New Years’ Day until 1752.