Mount Calvary Church Celebrates The Visitation of Mary
Midweek Divine Service was held on Wednesday, July 2 at Mount Calvary Church in Lititz, PA. The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The bulletin for the service is available here.
An audio recording of this sermon can be listened to below and the sermon text is available here:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” It may seem political, but my intent is not that, only to draw a comparison between the language of Mary’s Magnificat and the language of the present ruling class. You’ll get it by the end, so stick around for a bit.
We all are familiar with the MAGA movement (you’d have to have your head in the sand not to). We recognize that part and parcel of this movement, is our president’s propensity for hyperbolic language, overstating the case and using exaggeration. Not content to do anything normal sized, our present president likes to emphasize everything he does as large, even huge. Even yesterday we were reminded of this as we can’t pass a budget without naming it the One, Big, Beautiful Bill. The MAGA moniker is a clever play on this theme, the phenomenon of this movement in shorthand abbreviation as the word Maga (m-a-g-a) mirrors the Greek prefix m-e- g-a, meaning, and I quote the Strong’s Greek Dictionary, “great, grand, abnormally large, huge.” Today we want to make everything great again, healthcare, the government, and bringing back a better America. Whether or not you are on the Trump train is left for you to decide. Nonetheless we see this evening that Mary is on the MEGA train, a mega of a different sort.
The word appears three times in this section, at the beginning, middle, and into the next section we have these three words.
megaLUNey
megaLEYah
Even in the English you can hear the Greek root word in them, magnify, magnificent, and magnified.
The first word describes what Mary does. She comes in the psalm to magnify God. The second describes what God has done to her, He has done a magnificent thing for me, a good reminder that before Mary magnifies God, God magnified her. The final mega refers to Elizabeth, that when her relatives and the people in her town heard the mercies that God magnified upon her, the rejoiced along with her, God magnified His mercies to her also, in giving her a child in her old age. God was doing something quite big, large things, and Mary’s response in response was to mega-nify the Lord too for all He had done.
These mega words are not all that terribly common in the New Testament, but another use finds it being used in a negative way. In Matthew 23:5 we hear about the religious leaders, “All their deeds are done for men to see. They widen their phylacteries and (MEGALUNO) (lengthen) the decorative hems on their garments.” they make the religious objects on their robes noticeable. As one commentary states, “The same verb used also in this place indicts the
Pharisees for self-promotion. External religion that seeks to magnify the worshiper instead of the Lord stands under Christ’s condemnation.”
Mary doesn’t make herself big, far from that, it is quite the opposite, but she doesn’t make God big either, God is already big, she just shines a spotlight on it so we can see it better, what we might, because our human blindness, not see. A magnifying glass does not enlarge the object, but enlarges or makes big the view of it so that people can see the details clearly and more easily. Mary’s praise helps publish the intricate things that God has done for her. It’s like that first look through the microscope in 7th grade biology class, but can only be viewed one at a time. Mary is the first one to look through a microscope and exclaim what she sees through that glass, making us want to see it also and take a look.
And this is where we see the greatness of God. For the highness of His greatness is seen in His regard for the lowly. Mary’s magnification is a response to God’s magnification of her, God’s magnificent mercy magnified and multiplied on her behalf.
He regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. That word “ to regard” is the word to look. It means “to focus attention on, look with the eyes on, a favored viewing and preferred noticing,
special attention to,” in this case, God saw, viewed with His eyes of all of the people of the world His handmaiden. God saw a girl of Galilee, a nobody as the world would see it, and lifted her up showing her grace and mercy, by making her the mother of His Son.
But even more, and this may get to the reason why Mary’s song has been used in the East as the first song in the liturgy for the morning, and in the West as the sun sets, that each day she intones and leads the song meant for us all. Mary speaks not of God’s particular magnification for her only, but of her specific magnification of her which is a picture of how He will act for all humanity. What He does for Mary is a picture of His regarding us. It is a story of reversals as the
proud and large and great come tumbling down and the lowly are raised up to new heights. “And His mercy is on those who fear Him, from generation to generation.” She tells in a simple way the story of her Son, and what the child of her womb will do. He will be with the sick. He will look at the poor and the lowly. Man’s ways are for prestige power, but God’s mega is in the small, the weak, the servant maiden.
This is the Mary who leads God’s people in praises. But she wasn’t the first to do so. It was her namesake in the Old Testament who lead the people in the praises at the Red Sea. (Exodus 15:20-21) Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. And Miriam sang to them: “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.”
At the Red Sea Miriam proclaims God’s victory. He has done big things for such a small people.
This is God’s greatness, this is His great way. Miriam was one connected with Moses, she was responsible for saving him, for His deliverance. She had a part in that moment at the Red Sea for it was her brother she had rescued from the Nile. She was connected to Moses, yet in this great deliverance also the Law received on Mount Sinai which brought condemnation and death. Yet her greater sister, the New Testament Mary was the one who stood as the bearer of the Christ which would save us from the curse of the Law by the bearing of our iniquities. Moses walked through the Red Sea on dry ground, but Christ by His death walked through the Sea of God’s wrath as all of God’s waves washed over Him. Our enemies of sin, death, and the condemnation of Satan and hell washed over Him that we might walk through on dry ground. Jesus’ death is like a wall of water on the left and right, but we pass through safely as the wave fell on Him. Mary praises God even as her sister Mariam did, for the deliverance that was afforded. He has shown strength with His arm. He has scattered the proud in the imagination of His heart. He has lifted up the lowly.
Mary is praised in this Gospel not because of the breasts that she gave to the Messiah or the womb that she bore it, but because of her response of faith. She is lauded not specifically for her role in salvation history as much as she is credited, like us, for her simple response of faith. Her acceptance of God’s plan is the point, her faith in God. When God asked, Mary said, “Let it be to me according to your word.” “Behold I am God’s servant.” “I am yours God, take me, whatever you do, whether high or low, will be best.” All generations will call her blessed, she is the great one in that she bore God incarnate, Jesus in the flesh, but above all she is credited as being the example of the first faithful disciple, the first faithful Christian, the first believer in
Jesus, the first follower of Him. Her song is meant to lead us and to carry us on not in a worship of what God did for her, but in a holy worship of what God has done for us.
Mary leads our praises. She is the choir director that stands at the Red Sea. She is the one tuning our voices, as we lift our tambourines and dance in victory. She is leading the faithful in praise.
This is Mary’s mega moment as she rejoices in God’s magnificent mercy shown to her, but as we have stated as a picture of His mega magnificent mercy He has magnified to us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
