Sermon for Advent 4

Elizabeth said to Mary, “For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy” (Luke 1:44).

Mary heard some spectacular news when the angel Gabriel came to her from heaven. Gabriel told her she would have a baby, and the Baby is the Son of God. And then to add more believability to it, Gabriel also told Mary, “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. ³⁷ For nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:36-37).

So Mary thought it good to go visit her relative Elizabeth. And as she approached the home of Elizabeth and husband Zechariah, she called out her greeting, and before she could reply her greeting in return, Elizabeth was interrupted by this commotion. The baby in her womb leaped for joy. As depicted on the service folder cover, little baby John, leaped for joy. John heard the greeting. John somehow, with the help of God, knew what was going. John believed. John leaped for joy.  His Savior had come. The Savior of the world was here in the womb of Mary his mother. The promised Lord and Messiah has come down from heaven to earth and was made man, ready to deliver us. John believed this and the fruit of that faith was joy.

Now I know skeptics and critics will scoff and say, “No way.” Babies don’t know anything. They can’t believe anything. They cant feel joy or grief.” And so they disrespect, they despise babies.  

Elizabeth says it right, the movement she felt was Baby John’s joy. Verse 41 says, “And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit”. This was not her imagination, her wishful thinking, her personification of the mass of tissue in her womb. This was her understanding, as she was led by the Holy Spirit, inspired to believe and confess.

The example of Elizabeth and Mary’s babies gives us even more reason to love children, born and unborn. We want them to be baptized, because they can believe. We don’t want them aborted and thrown away. We don’t disrespect and despise them. We love them, honor them and admire them. We grown ups, should have such joy.  We hear that Baby Believer John leaped for joy in the present of his Savior, Baby Jesus, and we should conclude this. We should have such joy.

Now a person might say, “It was easy to have joy then”. They were full of the Holy Spirit, according to Luke. There were these miracles happening all over. Elizabeth’s having a baby in old age. Mary’s having a virgin birth. There’re angels popping up all over. They had lots of reason for joy. But by comparison, life here and now is so ordinary. Plain. Boring.

In her song, the Magnificat, Mary praises God for, as she says, “great things he has done for me.” She admits in the Magnificat that she is a handmaiden, a servant of the Lord. She was plain, simple, ordinary, engaged to plain, simple, boring carpenter from Nazareth, an ordinary, plain, boring town. But then Mary tells what the Lord does. He blesses the plain and simple. He lifts up the humble and brings down the proud in the imagination of their proud hearts. The Lord does not bother with the rich, the famous, the powerful who believe they don’t need The Lord and don’t need his saving. The way the Lord works is he blesses the poor sinner and forgives. He has grace for the weak and the dying and gives eternal life. He has regard for the sorrowful, and he gives them comfort and joy.

So we may not live in such marvelous times as Mary and Elizabeth and John. We might not be famous and fortunate. But we have God’s favor. We can look back at this Magnificat regularly, not just in Advent. We can hear again and again, the comforting words of Mary, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and we can apply them to ourselves. She said, “The Lord has looked on the humble estate of his servant.” Find reason for joy in that.

Consider how it went for John. He heard the voice of the mother of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the book, What to expect when you’re expecting it tells how researchers found that in the third trimester, that’s what baby John was, babies will turn their heads toward an interesting sound coming from outside the womb. John heard. John believed. John leaped for joy.

Well that’s how it is for you too. You’ve heard. You believed. You’ve been given the fruit of such faith, including joy.

You have heard what your Savior says. He says, I am with you. Because of the miracles that were happening to Mary, the miracles that were happening in Mary, Jesus is with us. He took on flesh and blood. So he can say, “I’m with you.” I’m not a God who is far off in the heavens. I am in the flesh, in the world, in your life.” The fullest expression of that word from the Lord is when He says “take, eat, this is my body.” “Take, drink, this my blood.”

You have heard what your Savior says, when in death at the cross he said, “Father forgive them.” Your sins and guilt are erased by his words.

Even until your last hour in this life, you will have the words you’ve heard, to trust in, to be comforted by, to have joy in. He says, You will not perish, but have everlasting life.”