This Advent season we’re going to concentrate our study on the Virgin Mary. Much like we’ve been learning from the life of Abraham, we have much to learn from the woman who gave birth to our Lord Jesus Christ. I’m calling these five Advent sermons Blessing Mary, because the Holy Scriptures encourage us to observe the Advent season by blessing Mary for her involvement in the fulfillment of God's long-awaited promise.

Have you blessed Mary yet?

I assure you, once more, that I and this church are solidly Protestant and not Roman Catholic. We are leery of what we see as a Catholic tendency to worship Mary. Nevertheless, on this matter of how we view Mary the mother of Jesus we might find ourselves on the opposite extreme of not giving to her the honor she is rightfully due.

And so, this Advent season, let us practice blessing Mary in the way the Scriptures encourage us to do so. Today, let us be blessing Mary because of her readiness, willingness, and faithfulness.

Mary Was Ready

First, we see in Mary a readiness for the Lord and his kingdom, and we can bless Mary by being ready for him and his kingdom as well.

Fulfillment of the Promise

As with the other two synoptic Gospels, Luke begins with Christmas. But when does Christmas begin? Retailers let us know: right after Halloween, of course!

Ok, well, we’re talking about the context in which the Christmas story is told. Christians of all people ought to know something about the context which leads us to the birth of Jesus, and in which the birth of Jesus makes sense.

Notice the first four verses of Luke’s Gospel where he introduces us to the Christmas story by giving us some of this context. He speaks of how many have undertaken the task of compiling “a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us.” Clearly, he and his readers share an understanding of what “things” he is speaking about. Something has happened that has gotten their attention. Some kind of news was trending, we might say. And now Luke wants to add his own contribution to the conversation, the conversation that was “in the air” in the first century.

This news, to which Luke wants to give his own report, is about things that have been accomplished, a word that means “fulfilled.” So what Luke wants to report to us is not the start of a project but the end of one. “Once upon a time” is a way of telling a story that usually doesn’t require any context. You just start the story at some ambiguous point in time. But this story is not like that. It is a story that is not meant to stand on its own but requires the reader to have some familiarity with the backstory to which this one is to be seen as the completion.

Since we have been studying the back story for some time now, we should be in a decent position to hear this news in its context. In verse 1 Luke says he is writing about “the things” that have been accomplished. In verse 3 he claims to have been following “all things” closely for a while now. And in verse 4, he says his purpose for writing is to provide certainty about “the things” that have been taught. What “things” is he talking about? He’s talking about the Old Testament promise and expectation that he is convinced Jesus has brought to fulfillment. The great biblical story that has now reached its climax.

How do we know?

Eschatological Expectation

Luke begins his own account with a report about a pregnancy. An aging priest named Zechariah, and his wife, Elizabeth, had no children of their own, but after a mysterious encounter with an angel that left Zechariah speechless, Elizabeth got pregnant.

Now this is a news report that strikes us who have been paying attention to the biblical plotline. We see echoes of the Abrahamic narrative and the birth of a son to aging parents. We suspect something momentous is about to happen. And just have a look at what the angel has to say about this child soon to be born. Not only will the child bring joy and gladness to his parents who waited so long to have a child of their own, but verse 14 says that “many will rejoice at his birth,” and verses 15-17 tell us why.

He will be “great before the Lord.” This does not refer to this child being a really godly person who never gets in trouble or something like that. Again, context. This seems to be an allusion to the figure prophesied in Malachi 3:1, the one who will go before the Lord and prepare the way for his return to set up his kingdom.[1] In the biblical story, this character is the one who will indicate the coming of the Lord to establish his eschatological kingdom, the one that he promised would never end. This child, then, signifies the dawning of a new, eternal age.

His abstinence from alcohol is matched by his intoxication with the Holy Spirit, together signifying not that there is something sinful with alcohol but that this person is not your average Joe. Again, his arrival brings joy to many because he signifies that, at long last, God’s great promise to Abraham is about to reach its climactic moment.

Time to Get Ready

And then, in verses 16-17, we are told that this child—whom we know as John the Baptist—“will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God.” Empowered by God’s Holy Spirit of power, he will turn hearts back to God and God’s wisdom. In short, he will “make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”

Preparation is what is needed when the king is coming. You have to get ready.

It’s the first Sunday of Advent, so you’ve got 3 more Sundays to get ready for Christmas. What do you need to do to be ready?

You may be thinking about the decorations that need to go up and the presents that need to be purchased and wrapped, but the preparations in view here have to do with the people themselves being prepared. In 2 Samuel 7, in the context of the covenant God made with David, God speaks of his people as a nation that he will draw to himself for his own royal purposes.[2]

To be ready for Christmas, then, is about your heart. Don’t forget that as you go about preparing for the traditions by which you celebrate the holiday. It’s far more important that you are ready for Christmas than that you get anything else ready.

Mary Was Willing

Perhaps the first person who was ready for the first Christmas was a virgin named Mary. And we know this because, as Luke introduces her to us in verses 26-38, we find her willing. If you’re willing, then you’re ready. And this is another way we can practice blessing Mary, by being willing ourselves to do whatever God asks of us.

That sounds a bit too cliché, however. So, let’s assess our willingness to do what the King asks of us by asking three questions that are at least implied by Mary’s exchange with the angel in these verses.

Why Choose Me?

The first question is why? “Why does God want me for his purposes?”

This question is implied by Mary’s reaction to the angel who appeared to her saying, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” Notice verse 29. “But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.” Indeed, Christians have been trying to discern this along with her. Why does the angel call her “favored one”?

Another way to translate it is one who is “full of grace.” Why would the angel describe Mary this way? The Roman Catholic Church believes that this indicates that Mary was a recipient of such divine favor that she had been able not to sin her entire life. Now, we Protestants reject that interpretation; if that’s what the angel was saying Mary apparently had trouble believing it herself. This is, however, a long-standing belief, going all the way back to at least St. Augustine in the fourth century. The great Protestant Reformer, Martin Luther, believed it, too.[3]

If calling Mary “favored one” doesn’t imply “sinless one,” what does it imply? When you put this together with the words, “the Lord is with you,” it essentially means someone who has been preferred by God, chosen for a very special divine privilege and calling.

What Do You Want with Me?

What troubles Mary about this? Perhaps it’s because she can’t see any reason why God would pick someone as ordinary as her. But perhaps it is because one might well prefer to be just left alone. The angel had called her a “favored one” and said, “the Lord is with you.” Say something like that to one of us modern people and we might just smile and blush and be pleased with such high praise. “Bring it on!” But not Mary. She is puzzled, and anxious. It sounds great to be privileged or chosen, but it also sounds terrifying. She is left asking a second question, “What does God want with me?”

The answer comes in verses 31-33. Mary has found favor with God and will conceive and bear a son and name him Jesus. Now we are so familiar with this birth announcement we may have difficulty hearing it in the way Mary did. Let’s at least try.

The son she will soon conceive will be great. That’s what was also said of John the Baptist back in verse 15. Why do we have two “great” persons? We might have been satisfied with the idea that the child to be born to Zechariah and Elizabeth would be the long-awaited Christ, a messianic Savior, who would lead his people back to God in preparation for God to return and dwell among them. Later in his adult years, many would indeed wonder if John the Baptist was the Christ, but he would steadfastly deny it. There would be someone else coming after him. Who will this other “great” person be?

This person will be called “the Son of the most High.” When we hear that we immediately think of someone who is divine, but “the Son of God” was an expression used for the Davidic king. That this is what is in view is clear in what follows in verses 32-33. To be given the throne of David, to reign over the house of Jacob—this recalls the covenant God made with David back in 2 Samuel 7.

We need to hear this announcement of Jesus’ birth in light of the earlier story told in the Old Testament. Jesus is the fulfillment or completion of a story that demanded some sort of resolution. In the Davidic covenant, the promise of God is that there would be a biological descendent of David who will “establish the throne” of the kingdom given to David forever (2 Sam 7:13). As long as there was a successor in the line of the Hebrew kings, the covenant seemed to be in force, but ever since the Babylonian exile, nothing like this had been realized. The people had been allowed to return to the Promised Land, but ever since Ezekiel saw the glory of God departing the temple (Ezek 10), God himself had not returned.

So, you see, this angelic announcement to Mary was that finally, at long last, the Davidic kingdom would be established and the king of Israel would return to the throne. And it would be this son born to Mary who would be that king, who would “reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there [would] be no end” (Lk 1:33).

What did God want with Mary? He wanted her to be the one who would give birth to the greatest King the world would ever know.

How Will This Be?

All of this seems to have caught Mary off guard, so the one question she explicitly asks comes in verse 34, “How will this be?”

For Mary, the “how” is about the fact that she was a virgin. Now the angel had not said specifically that this would all happen without the involvement of her soon-to-be husband. But this is Luke’s way of affirming the virginal conception, while at the same time leading us to see the importance of the means by which the kingdom of God would come.[4] The specific answer to Mary’s “how” question is verse 37: “For nothing will be impossible with God.” And that’s that. God wants to do what seems impossible, but he wants to involve us in the process. He wants to do impossible things through us.

“Like what?” you ask. Surely, we can only know when we have the grace to look back with fresh eyes on what God has been up to, why he doesn’t just leave us alone, but chooses to implement his plans through his people. Are you willing to let him do it?

Mary Was Faithful

Mary was ready. She was willing. And lastly, Mary was faithful. And consider how important Mary’s faithfulness is to our own faith.

Mary Believed

Mary’s concluding words to the angelic announcement, in verse 38, give us her expression of belief, her acceptance of what God said he wanted to do with her. What if she hadn’t believed? What if she hadn’t accepted?

We might say that God would just find someone else, and that may be true, but the “someone else” he would find would still have to believe. Here as with so much else in the biblical worldview, God is the main character who gets his job done, but he does his work through human partners. It is this “partnership of human and divine” that “is essential if Jesus is to accomplish his mission.”[5]

It is Mary’s belief that encourages Christians today to bless Mary. In verses 39-45, Mary rushes off to visit her relative Elizabeth, and at the end of this short passage, we hear Elizabeth say, “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord” (v. 45).

So, in another sense we can say that had Mary not believed and kept on believing what God wanted to do with her, there would be no Christianity, there would be no salvation, because there would be no Jesus.

The First Christian

But Mary did believe, and we perhaps could even credit her with being the very first Christian. She is the first to express faith in God by believing in the incarnate Son of God. That’s a bit cheeky, I admit, but I just don’t want us to under-appreciate Mary’s place in the Christian story. No, we don’t worship her, but we really ought to bless her.

Mary is like Abraham who was ready, willing, and faithful, believing the great promise of God. Because of Abraham’s faith, we find ourselves as members of his faith family. Mary also stands at the head of this family in a new way. The way the angel explained how she would be the mother of the promised eternal king, stated in verse 35, brings us back to the beginning of the biblical story. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,” the angel said, “and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” There is nothing sordid about this language, no hint of some kind of sexual union between Mary and God. This is, rather, creational language, as when the Holy Spirit “was hovering over the face of the waters” in Genesis 1 when God began to create.

About a century after Jesus, the church father Irenaeus said that “the knot of Eve’s disobedience was untied by Mary’s obedience.”[6] It may seem to be saying too much to call Mary a second Eve, but there is no question that she stands at the headwaters of the new creation stream that began to flow with the incarnation of the Son of God. Could Mary be in view when Paul speaks of salvation coming “through childbearing” in 1 Timothy 2:15? If so, he would be encouraging us to bless Mary for her role in undoing the mess that Adam and Eve got us into.

The Mother of Our Lord

And so we find ourselves compelled to bless Mary, like Elizabeth does. When Elizabeth

heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Lk 1:41-42)

Notice that the filling of the Holy Spirit was followed by these words of blessing and gratitude and thanks to Mary. When you and I are filled with the Holy Spirit, surely we will be led to say the same thing.

Why? Because Mary is no less than “the mother of [our] Lord,” as Elizabeth says in verse 43. Our Catholic friends refer to her as “Mother of God,” and we must admit that the title has at least some biblical basis, even if it might be easily misunderstood, as is also the Catholic practice of praying to Mary. These things bother our Protestant sensibilities, and for good reason.

So, we might not be able to pray the “Hail Mary” with Catholics, but we can see some truth in that traditional prayer of blessing. And perhaps we can learn to start blessing Mary again with these words from a Welsh Baptist poet:

Forgive us, gentle maiden, if we learnt to give you
Less respect than heaven would have wished;
For we fell in love with the Son of your great love,
So as not to venerate you more than Him.[7]

No, we don’t worship Mary. We worship Jesus. But let us not stop blessing Mary for her consequential faith which gave birth to ours, quite literally, since she gave birth to the One who saves us all.

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[1] Darrell L. Bock, Luke, vol 1: 1:1:1–9:50, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, vol. 3a, ed. Moisés Silva (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1994), 84.

[2] Bock, Luke, 90-91.

[3] See Scot McKnight, The Real Mary: Why Protestant Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2007), 122.

[4] Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, ed. Gordon D. Fee (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997), 90.

[5] Green, The Gospel of Luke, 88.

[6] Cited in McKnight, The Real Mary, 123.

[7] John Gwili Jenkins, cited in McKnight, The Real Mary, 144.