The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The feast known as the Annunciation celebrates the day the angel Gabriel came to Mary to announce that she would be the mother of God, the mother of Jesus Christ. The Feast of the Annunciation is celebrated annually on March 25th, nine months before Christmas Day. On March 25th, 1534, Luther preached a sermon to his family and his closest friends — that “house sermon,” as it’s called. Luther said the following: “We sustained a great hurt through Adam’s fall. Through it, all of us are tainted with sin and subject to death. But greater than the hurt is the blessing we receive through Jesus Christ. He became man Himself in order to redeem us from sin and death. The devil came close to us, but he did not come so close as to assume our nature. For although he fell through pride, and thereupon persuaded man also to fall away from God, he nevertheless did not become man, and did not come so close to us as God’s Son did, who became our flesh and our blood.” End of quote.
You see, the devil hates us. The devil disdains us — would never stoop to becoming one of us. God, on the other hand, loved us so much that He takes on our flesh, our blood, our humanity. He becomes one of us, and sets in motion all of the events of the blessed Christmas season. And so the reading began: “Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth.” Luke wanted his readers to be certain about the historical nature of the events of the upcoming Christmas. There’s no myth or fairy tale here. It’s a historic reality. Luke is precise in stating that it’s the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy that Gabriel visited Mary. Gabriel and Luke also want to make the historical and theological connection between the baby in Elizabeth’s womb and the one now going to occupy the womb of the Virgin Mary. Elizabeth is pregnant with John by virtue of a miracle — she is too advanced in age to have a child. Mary is pregnant with Jesus — a greater miracle: the Virgin conceiving. The child in Elizabeth’s womb has a place in the economy of God’s plan of salvation. The child in Mary’s womb is salvation itself.
Verse 27: Gabriel came “to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming in, he,” Gabriel, “said to her, ‘Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.'” “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.” The greeting, “Hail, favored one,” more literally according to the Greek: “Hail, you favored with grace.” Now, the grammar becomes kind of important here, because an awful lot of church doctrine hangs on that “favored one.” Gabriel used the perfect passive participle of the Greek word for grace, which is charis. The passive voice makes God the agent — that is, God is doing something; Mary is doing nothing. The passive voice makes it clear that Mary is the recipient of God’s grace. She is not the dispenser of grace, as the Roman Catholics teach, and others.
The text also says that Mary was greatly troubled by the greeting. The Greek word that gets translated “troubled” or “perplexed” or “confused” means that in Mary’s mind, a debate was going on. She was trying to reason through why such a greeting, and why such a creature, would come to her of all people. Why such a greeting? She knew her station in life. Why was she favored? What had she done? All of those questions went through her mind. You see, Mary — unlike so many youth today, not to mention adults — knew her place. She knew who she was. She was just an ordinary young Hebrew girl, a teenager. She had no status, she held no office, she had no socioeconomic influence in the world. She’s just an ordinary, faithful Hebrew girl. Mary’s unsettled by the appearance of the angel and the greeting, so Gabriel does what Jesus did repeatedly for His own disciples: he greeted her, “Fear not.” “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” The phrase “for you have found favor with God” again doesn’t mean that Mary discovered or earned any special treatment from the Lord God. He doesn’t favor her because of anything she has said or done in her life. Gabriel is only telling Mary what God has already prophesied so many years before through the prophet Isaiah 7:14 — namely, a virgin will conceive and bear a son, the Son of God. That’s the only thing that’s needed. Divine grace is a gift. It’s never earned. It’s unmerited favor from God, given freely in His plan of salvation.
We have the who of the story: Mary. We have the why of the story: out of God’s sheer grace and unmerited favor. Next, Gabriel will tell her the big news — the what. What does the Lord want of her? What is the Lord going to do to and through her? And thus: “behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus… The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Offspring shall be called the Son of God.” Notice: Mary didn’t make a decision. Mary didn’t ask. She didn’t volunteer. She didn’t do anything to prepare for this moment. God chose her, because Isaiah 7:14 said He would, as He had promised — and He told her what was going to happen to her. The Son of God was going to take on her flesh and her blood. In another sermon in 1538, Luther made this interesting observation about the Incarnation: “Though Mary has been conceived in sin” — so Mary’s a sinner, right? — “the Holy Spirit takes her flesh and blood and purifies them, and then He creates the body of the Son of God. This is why it is said He was conceived by the Holy Ghost. Thus He assumes a genuine body from His mother Mary, but this body was cleansed from sin by the Holy Spirit. If this were not the case, we would not have been saved.” Luther concludes: thus we confess in the Nicene Creed, “who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man.”
Then Gabriel further tells Mary, “nothing is impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, the bondservant of the Lord; be it done to me according to your word.” It can be translated bondservant, servant, or bondslave. The point is: Mary accepts the will of her heavenly Father. Mary’s response is one of complete trust and submission to God’s will, though it’s going to be burdensome and hard on her. And that’s why the church ought to honor Mary. She knows her place. She knows God’s will for her life. She knows that God has what is best in mind for both her and for the whole world. So she submits humbly, without complaint, out of genuine, true faith — and probably some youthful naivety. If only we should trust and submit to God’s will in our lives as quickly as Mary did in hers — how much different would our lives be? For Mary, because the Lord said it, promised it, it would happen. And for Mary, all things work together for the good to them that love the Lord — even though she would endure great hardship over being a pregnant, unwed mother at the time. In Mary’s case, it likely just happened to her. By the time Gabriel departs, Luther and others rightly observe, she has conceived at the very words of God. The Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, had become enfleshed with her flesh and her blood. So the Son of God now resides in the womb of the young virgin, and Mary has become theotokos, the mother of God.
Christians ought to honor Mary as an example of true Christian faith, humility, and service — not as a sinless dispenser of grace. Mary’s a sinner too. She’s in need of her Lord Jesus Christ like everybody else. The first verse of the Magnificat teaches us that: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” The child born of Mary was as much her Savior as He is yours and mine. Where Christ in His Word is found, there is the grace of God. “For the Law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” — John 1:17. And to what end does God extend His unmerited favor and grace toward Mary? God’s grace has manifested itself in the forgiveness of sins. Jesus’ incarnation was the first step toward the cross, and the cross the way of forgiveness of sins. And where there is the forgiveness of sins, Luther rightly observes, there is also life and salvation. The same grace that made Mary into theotokos, the mother of God, is the same grace that made us children of our heavenly Father and brothers and sisters to our brother Jesus Christ. The same grace God applies in the water of Holy Baptism is the same grace embodied in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The same grace is found in Holy Baptism. It’s the same grace found in the words of Absolution: “In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins.” It’s the same grace that’s distributed to the worthy recipients of Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion.
Nine months after the angel announced God’s favor to Mary, the angel would return to earth with an angelic host. They would show up on a hill outside the city of Bethlehem, and would greet poor sinners once again with that phrase: “Do not be afraid. Fear not.” Again, in this case: “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” So I say to you, the congregation, as you gather at the very tail end of the Advent season, what the angel said to Mary: “Hail, you the favored one, the Lord is with you.” Why? For Mary conceived in her womb and bore a son, and His name is Jesus. And He is great, and He is called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord gave Him the throne of His father David, and He reigns over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end. And neither will you. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.