The text this morning is from the Gospel according to Luke, the first chapter:
In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And 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! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.” And Mary remained with her about three months and returned to her home.Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
The history of Israel is steeped in blood. From the conquests to the murders, the blood guilt of the people is great. More than that, the entire body of each Israelite was covered in the blood of all the animals that were required to be sacrificed for their sins. But this is how God wanted it. Not the first part, of course, but the second to cover over, to atone for, the first. This was the primary, the most important, way that they knew God was with them, was for them. God is the one who demanded the sacrifice, and God is the one who promised to honor it.
This isn’t because God is some kind of bloodthirsty monster, but because He used it to point them to His plan from the beginning: the sacrifice of His beloved Son. Every death of an animal, every time its throat was slit, every time the blood was poured out, every time the people’s faces were sprinkled with that warm, sticky blood, it was pointing toward the blood of the Son of God, poured out for them.
Sin demands that blood be shed. It works like this: a sin is a transgression against God. Now, sins can be against people, too, sure, but primarily, they’re against the order that God has put into place. If I sin, it defies God’s structure He’s put in place that I might serve my neighbor. This, maybe, doesn’t sound so bad. A little white lie here and there. A little time wasted. Something forgotten. But every sin is like taking a beautifully painted white wall and coloring on it in Sharpie. It’s not something that can be erased. It can be covered over, atoned for, but there is a price, and that price is high. The price to cover over your sin is your life.
The Scriptures tells us that life is in the blood. This is why the Israelites were forbidden from consuming the blood of animals, because it dishonors the life that God has put in them. Yet, this same blood would be used to cover over their sins. It shows how great a price this is, that, when we sin, the animals we are supposed to be thankful to God for, even as we eat them, actually must give up more than just their flesh but even their life. So, when you sin, you are going into debt with God, and the only thing that can cover it is blood, lifeblood.
But, how can an animal alone cover over all your sins? And how can one animal cover many people? In reality, it can’t. You can never really have all your sins atoned for in this way; surely there’s something you’ve forgotten, something left uncovered. But, this was never supposed to be the fullness of the sacrifice. In fact, God didn’t really want these animals sacrificed to Him as some kind of magic. Rather, again, they pointed to the coming of the Son of God, the One who would cover over all sins and all people by the shedding of His own lifeblood.
You’ve marked up the walls, and they can be covered over, but it requires a whole lot of something. A couple animals aren’t going to cover it. It’s going to require the death of God Himself. Only the death of God would be big enough to atone for all sins of all time for all people in all places. One man couldn’t do it, but God Himself could. But God can’t die. God is Spirit and you can’t kill a spirit. It can’t be done. Spirits are, by their nature, with bodies. And you can’t kill that which doesn’t have a body. It doesn’t matter which person of the Trinity you’re talking about, for almost all of history itself, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, all three were spirit, incorporeal, without flesh, without blood, without a body.
But it wouldn’t always be that way. We find ourselves with Mary, having received an incredible vision from God: an angel of the Lord coming into her very own house and delivering amazing news. She ran quickly into the hill country, to go visit her cousin, Elizabeth, who the angel had told Mary was pregnant even despite Elizabeth’s advanced years. What a wonderful thing. Yet, when Mary got there, it wasn’t about Elizabeth; it was about who it was she was carrying in her own womb. The news the angel brought to Mary was that she would be the mother of God Himself.
How can this be? How can God the Son be sent to Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit and be conceived in her womb, take on human flesh from Mary herself? I’ve no idea. But God said it could and He said He would, and so He did. And Mary then carried the body of God the Son in her own body for nine months. By the very nature of her humanity, by the fact that she is a woman, she nourished the Lord God Himself with her own body, sending Him nutrients into the womb, breathing oxygen for Him, giving Him all that He needed that He might come out from her body, breathe in the air He created, and live. In this moment, this conception, the Son of God gave Himself a human body for eternity, binding Himself to human flesh for all time.
The only reason for this is to die. He put Himself in our flesh, subjected Himself to all kinds of sickness, disease, hatred, anger, malice, forgetfulness, sin… so that He might die. He needed a body that He might die and so He created it in Mary. And she is blessed to do this. She is blessed and we call her blessed even still today. She is the mother of God, she was chosen out of every woman that had ever existed, did exist, is existing, or will exist. She was chosen to be the mother of God, and we honor her for that. We don’t put her forward as sinless or that she’s got any kind of special power in heaven that others don’t. But we honor Mary, we bless her, for she was chosen to bear the Son of God into the world that He might live for us, die for us, be resurrected for us. We honor her because the Lord, in this way, has done great things for her.
I mean, can you imagine this kind of pressure? It’s hard enough to be a mom; it has to be near impossible to realize you’re carrying God in your womb. But this was always God’s own plan, that He would send His Son, Jesus the Christ, to come into the flesh that He might cover over the sins of the people.
We are steeped in blood, just like the Israelites. We have blood on our hands from our own sins. We break each and every commandment. We take the order God has put in place and we strike out at God, demanding our own way. We take out Sharpies and defiantly color the wall while looking Him in the eyes. And for all this, we should die. Our life should be taken from each and every one of us. But, in His love for you, God sent His Son into the flesh for you. He came into a body that He might take His blood and paint over the walls with it instead of your own blood.
And after He’s finished covering over our sin, He covers us as well. He takes our sins away and then gives us a new appearance, a new way of living, of life, that mirrors His own. And He does this by covering us in His blood. He pours it over us, making sure it fills each nook and cranny that we, though our sins have made us red like scarlet, would be yet whiter than snow.
Do you see? By Christ taking on His own body, He covered over our sins, hiding them from the view of God that we might be made right, and then He covers us in the blood of His righteousness in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, inside and out, that we might continue to live righteously.
God never wanted the endless sacrifices of the animals. The bleating cries of the sheep, the loud moans of the bulls, the sharpened tweets of each dove. He created this beasts to give them life, and so they had it. Yet, because of His love for humanity, the life of these animals should be taken to point to something greater: His love for His Son, being given to us, that we might live. We deserve death from God, to have our lives taken away from us, yet we are given something greater even than this life we have now: we are, through the death of Christ, through His sacrifice for us, given life eternal, life which has no end. Through His blood, through His death, through His covering our sins, we are brought into everlasting life with God, that we might experience His love always. We are covered in blood, my friends. Not just with the blood of our guilt, for that has been taken away, but the blood of the babe, the Son of Mary, Jesus, the Son of God. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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