Advent 4

There is nothing quite like the joy and the anticipation of an expectant mother. Mom's to be, sporting their little “baby bump” get stopped in public all the time to be asked questions like “when are you due?” “How are you feeling?” “is it a boy or a girl?” and many other such questions. People love babies. People love it when a young woman is getting ready to be introduced to the joys of motherhood and are eager to share in that joy with her.
We all love children. We love babies. And it's not just because they're cute. Sure their little hands and feet and pudgy little faces are indeed cute, but there's more to it than that. We love them for who they are and we are excited for who they will be. After all, each and every new parent dreams about how their child is going to make a splash and change the world with her athletic prowess or intelligence or grace. When it comes to our children, we all have hopes and dreams about who we want them to grow up to be.
But this joy and this hope and this expectation, it's all about possibility. It is all about who the child will become. Yes, we love our children regardless of their ability, but we hope for earth-shattering achievement from our children. We invest ourselves in them for who we want them to be. We want them to grow, to learn, to mature, and one day to be self sustaining and self functioning adults. Implicit in our hope is an understanding that the child who is born is not the finished product, but is the first step in becoming a finished product.
This being the case (that part of our excitement for our kids is all about who they are going to be) we have to notice just how different this is with Jesus. Yes, Mary was pregnant and she shared in that hope and joy and expectation for the life of her son who she carried in her womb. But there was also a recognition that this boy was not just about possibility, not just about future accomplishments, not just about who he would grow up to be; the growing and developing Child in Mary's womb was her God who made her and who loved her and who was going to save her and the whole world from sin.
Try wrapping your head around that. These days child psychologists have mapped out the brain function of infants even during pregnancy. They can tell you what the child is capable of knowing and understanding even while the child is still in the womb – and it's pretty minimal. They can recognize voices, and sounds but as far as knowing who that voice belongs to and why that voice is important? Not so much. And even when they are born, infants are completely dependent on their parents, on their mothers. They need their mothers for food, they make a mess of themselves and need their clothes to be changed, they can't talk, can't reason, they can barely even see.
But all of that being the case, when Mary with the Christ Child still in her womb went to visit her relative Elizabeth, to help and assist her aged kin during her pregnancy, Elizabeth acknowledged in faith that the baby developing in Mary's womb was her Lord. She said, “Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” The infant, the little developing child was worth excitement and hope and expectation, but not just because of who he would one day become. This baby was even then her Lord. He was God in the flesh, come to earth to save them from sin.
In our text this morning we have two expectant mothers, gathering together and sharing in the joys of their pregnancies. Both moms and moms-to-be love to share that joy with each other. They love to swap stories and be a part of each others' excitement. Moms (and dads) love their babies, their children. But I wonder if we don't, at times, love our children a little too much. I wonder if we don't at times love them with a love that we aught to reserve only for God.
Consider as an example the retail chain Baby's R Us. Expecting moms and dads go in to that store to register for all kinds of baby paraphernalia, much of which is expensive, more than they can afford, really, because they want their child to have what is the best.
If my child is going to have every opportunity, if my child is one day going to have to choose between the full-ride football scholarship to Ohio State or the full ride academic scholarship to Harvard, it's going to start right here with this state of the art diaper disposal system. And so parents pay the money.
Parents spend insane amounts of money on un-necessary baby products because they are convinced that they added expense is all a part of giving their child the best of every opportunity. Whether or not we have a diaper genie, how many of us have overlooked our child's obvious sins because we think of them as “little angels”. We love our children and that is good, but our love for our children often becomes a love that we aught to reserve only for God. This is sin that demands repentance.

But consider these two women discussing their pregnancies together just outside Elizabeth's home on that day. Elizabeth was old, beyond child bearing years. And even when she could have had children her body was incapable of producing a child. She was barren, unable to conceive. The child in her womb was improbable to say the least. More like unthinkable, unimaginable, or impossible! Yet here she was in her old age pregnant and preparing to deliver. Do you think Elizabeth might have been tempted to love her child too much, to hold on to him too tightly after having waited so long?
And then there was Mary. If Elizabeth's pregnancy was unlikely, Mary's was entirely impossible. Women don't just all of a sudden become pregnant. There is biology involved. There is a process that needs to occur. There needs to be a father, a seed, a man to provide the other half of the necessary ingredients. There was none. Mary was a virgin.
And so we had in these two women, life out of death in one, and life out of nothing in the other. Both were miraculous. Both were evidence of the hand of God. God had come in to his creation to do things that don't normally occur because all of this was a part of his great plan for our salvation.
As greatly as these two women would have been tempted to sins of pride and idolatry with their respective pregnancies, here in our text we don't see it. That is not to say that they didn't feel it, that they were innocent of these sins. It is to say that Luke would rather have us focus not on the mothers but on the sons; and among the two baby boys still in their mothers' womb, Luke would have us see and understand that the foremost Child is the Christ child, the baby in the womb of the virgin.
Old Testament Jews would have shown reverence when the Ark of Covenant passed by them. Not because there was anything of great importance in the Ark, itself. It was, after all, only a box. But the box was God's box. It was God's throne and where the Ark was, there God was. Just as the Ark of the Covenant was the vessel that carried the Lord, so also Mary was the vessel that carried the Lord. “Behold,” Mary had said, “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be to me as you have said.” And the Word of the Lord created in Mary exactly what it said, a child was conceived in her, a baby who was Christ the Lord. He had come down from heaven and made his home with Mary.
And so when Mary, the God bearer, came in to the home of Elizabeth, she understood this properly to be the entrance of the Lord, very literally, into her life. God was with her. And so she worshiped.
Our text says that she exclaimed. True enough, but not quite the whole story. An exclamation is little more than excitement. There are lots of reasons why we might be moved to exclaim. Our school children let out an exclamation after they finished their last day before Christmas break on Friday. They teachers also let out an exclamation of their own. Christmas morning might inspire an exclamation or two at your house – hopefully one from you.
Elizabeth, when she made her exclamation was not merely expressing joy or even excitement. Elizabeth was engaged in worship. The text says that Elizabeth anefwnhsen This is a worship term. A term that the Old Testament uses in connection with the liturgical ceremonies having to do with the Ark of the Covenant. Mary was the bearer of God, as God drew near, Elizabeth, being filled with the Holy Spirit began to worship.
And she was not alone. The child in her womb, the miraculously conceived prophet to be, the infant John leaped in his mother's womb; an indication of the relationship that the two of them would share as they came into adulthood. John would preach and make ready the way for Jesus to come.
But Elizabeth and John were not the only ones to worship Jesus. On the night of his birth, all of heaven would be filled with the singing of angel choirs who were celebrating and worshiping this child. They would share their song with shepherds who would run into the town of Bethlehem to see if what they said was true. The shepherds would join their voices with the angels in songs of praise to God. (We have all had songs and melodies stick in our heads so that we hum them without even realizing it – imagine if the melody stuck in your head was first heard on the tongue of an angel...)
But there were others...
At the temple, when Mary and Joseph brought their 8 day old son for circumcision they would be met by Simeon and Anna, both of whom would worship the boy. A few years past and the magi would come with kingly gifts to lay before him as they would bow down to worship him as their God and king.
But even they were not alone. Fishermen would call him Lord and God, those who doubted him would confess him as King. The blind, the lame, the sick, the sinners, the broken and despised, the lepers, the outcasts, the unclean, the demon possessed, all would fall down before him and worship him as their God and king. All would believe him to be who he said he was – the Messiah, the Son of God who came to seek and to save what was lost.
And this God, the baby carried in the womb of a virgin, born in a barn and laid in a manger, worshiped by angels and shepherds and sinners would be your Lord. He would save you from your sin so that you might also rejoice and exclaim and worship. He has come, to die, for you. He has paid for your sins, all of them, so that you might no longer call sin or Satan your lord. Jesus is God, the baby in the womb, in the manger, the man on the cross, is your Lord. Worship Him.