Advent 4 December 18, 2016
Advent 4
Luke 1:39-56
December 18, 2016
“Make God Bigger”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Mary goes to her cousin Elizabeth’s house. Elizabeth is so happy to see her and tells her how blessed she is. Then Mary said or sang this song which we call the Magnificat. Magnificat—you can hear the word “magnify” in there. It’s a Latin word. Comes from the first words of her song, “My soul magnifies the Lord.”
When we think of magnify we probably will quickly think of a magnifying glass. And that’s perfect. What does a magnifying glass do? It makes something bigger. It magnifies it. So you can take something that might be even really small—and make it to appear very large. Take like maybe a fly in your house. We look at those flies as just a big annoyance. Just something to be squashed. Get the fly swatter. Kill that thing.
But if you were to take a magnifying glass and make that fly bigger…what would you see? A pretty magnificent little insect in its own right, right? Sure, they’re ugly and we don’t like flies. But in its own right a fly is pretty cool. Can you fly around like a fly does? Can you land on a wall or ceiling and just hang out there? I’d like to see any of you do that. Just stand on the wall there without falling down. A fly can do that. And a fly can be a pretty formidable foe, really. I bet you’ve had some flies that have gotten the better of you before, especially when you’re trying to take a nap on a hot day. Those guys are persistent. So we just magnified flies. Instead of just seeing them entirely as worthless tiny, little bugs to be squashed, we made them bigger. A fly is another one of God’s well designed insects.
So Mary does this with God Himself. She magnifies Him. She makes Him bigger. She tells how great He truly is that He has chosen her to be the mother of His own Son and our Messiah. She praises Him and rejoices in His saving grace. She magnifies God into the great and glorious Father that He truly is, who shows mercy to us and fills the hungry with good things. She magnifies Him all the way back to Israel and Abraham and shows how God has kept His big promises all along the way.
Now maybe that all sounds simple. But it’s not. Making God bigger means making yourself smaller. And that’s incredibly hard for us sinners to do. Think about it. Mary could’ve made God smaller. She could’ve said, “God, you have no idea what you’re doing. You’re a cruel God. You’re unfair. I don’t deserve any of this. Why would you give me a baby when I’m this young and I have no husband? Why would you do this to me when my own family and all my neighbors turn against me and call me names and assume that I’ve done something wrong? Why would you be so cruel that I have to leave home and go spend the months of my pregnancy with my cousin Elizabeth way down south? God, why are you doing this to me?”
She could’ve squashed God in that way like we squash a fly. She could’ve assumed, like we often do, that God is incompetent and that we could do things a whole lot better than He does. She could’ve gotten angry, like we often do, that God would be so unfair to us and give us things that we don’t like. In other words, she could’ve made God smaller and made herself bigger. To put it another way we’re more familiar with, she could’ve been arrogant and prideful instead of humble.
Zechariah was a good example of making God smaller. When Gabriel came and visited Zechariah in the temple and told him that he and Elizabeth were going to have a son even though they were both very old—Zechariah didn’t magnify God. He didn’t praise Him and tell how great God was. Instead, he questioned God. He didn’t believe. He made God small and thought, “There’s no way God can do this.” So God made him mute for nine months. He couldn’t talk. Because he needed to learn to magnify God with his words instead of making God smaller.
Another good example of this later on is Peter. Whenever Jesus kept saying that He was going to die on the cross and rise again—Peter kept saying, “No, no, it will never happen.” He was making God smaller. Refusing to believe. Refusing to accept that through a death on a cross God would save the world. Peter had better ideas. He made himself bigger than God. And so one time Jesus flat out says to him, “Get behind me, Satan. You’re setting your mind on the things of man rather than on the things of God.”
Please stop a minute this morning and think about how often we try to make God smaller. We question everything He does as if He doesn’t know what He’s doing. We relegate Him to this small part of our schedule because we think we’ve got so much more important things to do. Instead of magnifying His awesome gifts that He gives in His Word, in Baptism, and in the Lord’s Supper—we make these things small and say, “Oh, they’re not really that big of a deal.”
And every time we worry we’re definitely making God small. Acting like our problems are so great that He can’t even handle them. “Oh, I better take care of this problem myself. This is way too big for God to handle. This is way too big for me to just pray about it.”
So this morning we listen to Mary and we repent. We repent that we, unlike her, often make God small and make ourselves to be great and awesome. We repent and turn to Jesus for forgiveness. And then we learn from Mary what it is to magnify God. To make Him big and great. And what it is—quite simply—is to believe His Word. To believe what He says to us. That’s magnifying the Lord. That’s making Him great. Believing His promises to us.
Mary says, “God, You are so great and awesome that You looked way down from heaven on little ‘ol me—a nobody from nowhere Nazareth—and You made me the mother of Your own Son. God, You are mighty and holy and Your mercy just keeps coming for those who believe in You from generation to generation to generation. God, You keep all Your promises. Even all the way back to the promises You made to Abraham. You are so great and merciful and my soul makes You bigger and bigger and my spirit rejoices in You, my Savior.”
That’s magnifying the Lord. That’s making God bigger.
And you and I say the same today, “God, You are so great and awesome that You have looked down from heaven on us today. On us measly nobodies from nowheresville El Paso, Illinois. You have looked down on us poor, miserable sinners and loved us. And given us Your own Son and made us His brothers and sisters and Your sons and daughters. God, You are so great and Your mercy just keeps coming from generation to generation to generation. To our grandparents. To our parents, To us. To our children. To our grandchildren. And Your promises—they never fail. You are great, God, and our souls today make you bigger and bigger. We magnify You and praise You and our spirits rejoice in You, our Savior.”
That’s singing like Mary. That’s the Magnificat. Magnifying the Lord who is great and holy.
The pastor who I did my vicarage with said something that I have remembered. He said he liked being Lutheran because we gave God all the glory. And that’s the way it should be. Lutherans magnify God. We make Him bigger and ourselves smaller. That’s what Christians do. Give God all the glory for everything.
That’s why the Word and Sacraments are so important to us Christians. When we raise up God’s Word and Sacraments as these super important places where God gives us faith and forgives our sins—then we’re magnifying God. We’re giving Him all the credit and all the glory. We’re not saying, “Oh, it’s all me. It’s all in my heart. I made my decision and I followed Jesus and I accepted Him into my heart and yada, yada, yada.” That’s making ourselves bigger. It’s never about how great our praise is or how great our worship is or how great our hearts are for Jesus. It’s always how great God is. And how great His Word and Sacraments are.
So this gives me then a chance today to talk about infant Baptism. Why we baptize babies. And one of the great things about baptizing babies is that it gives all the glory and praise to God. We can’t say, “Oh, look at that baby and how she has accepted Jesus into her heart and what a public testimony she’s giving today by being baptized.” No, she’s just a baby. An infant. She’s not doing anything. Just receiving God’s great gift. So this way, when we talk about Baptism we’re magnifying God and not ourselves. Infant baptism makes God bigger. We don’t doubt that God can take an infant and give him or her faith. God can do that. Our God is big enough and great enough.
The reason I wanted to talk about this today is because you’ve got little John the Baptist, still inside his mother’s womb, and he’s jumping around in there for joy because he heard Mary’s voice and he knows Mary is the mother of Jesus. Now how did little unborn John the Baptist know that? Because God is great. God can do great things. He can give faith to little babies like John. He can save worthless little flies like us. He can take humble little Mary and make her the mother of His Son. And so, with Mary, we’ll keep making Him bigger and bigger. Because He is great. And He is our Savior. In Jesus’ name. Amen.