Text: Luke 1:39-45 

S. Advent 4.09 “How the Spirit Works” Luke 1:39-45

So this is how the Holy Spirit works, how he does his thing…

He works with the least and the lowly, with a young woman like Mary. She was the descendent of an ancient and mighty king, David. But that was a millennium ago. Few but Mary remember those glory days. Now she and her family are poor people, living in a backwater town of Israel, off the beaten track, out of most people’s sight and everyone’s mind—everyone but God’s that is. No sensible person would expect anything great from this young woman, engaged to a local carpenter of little reputation and worse prospects.

But this is how God does his thing… he sends an angel, Gabriel from heaven to Nazareth where Mary lives and tells her she will be the mother of God, give birth to the Christ who will be the Son of God most high, who will be great and restore the throne of David his father, and then some, indeed make it an everlasting and eternal kingdom of life and peace for all. Mary asks, quite sensibly, how she will be a mother, since she is a virgin, and Gabriel says the Holy Spirit will overshadow her and that Holy One to be born of her will thus be and be called the Son of God, since God alone will be his Father. As Luther put it, she conceives through the ear, the word of God giving birth to the Word of God.

And as if that isn’t enough for her, the angel tells her that her relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son, though she is past childbearing age; for with God nothing will be impossible.

So Mary rushes to the hill country of Judah, outside Jerusalem somewhere, where Elizabeth lives. And as soon as she steps into the house and greets Elizabeth, at the sound of her voice, the babe in Elizabeth’s womb (she’s six months pregnant) leaps for joy at the greeting and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit who shows her the whole story in an instant, grants her to see who this is before her and she exclaims “blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord…”

And that’s how the Holy Spirit works. He works in the least and the lowly, the forgotten and the humble, the ones living on the margins of society, away from the seats of power, out of the public eye. He works by the word of promise, the story of his salvation, so different from all we conceive of as saving and glorious. He works through the ear, and getting in through our ear by his word, he gives birth to something amazing in each of us.

God works with the infants, even the unborn. John was still three months from birth, and the Holy Spirit not only filled him then, by the word of Mary, the promise of the Christ, but started him already in his prophetic calling. The Spirit that filled John overflowed and filled his mother, showing her all that was to come in this child Mary carried, though yet unborn as well. We don’t think infants or the unborn are good for much or capable of much. Most today would deny they are even capable of faith. But God does his best work with and through the little ones who are precious to him. He not only fills them with his Spirit and faith in the Christ, but he prophecies through them to the adults whose faith could stand to be  more childlike and receptive.

This is how the Holy Spirit works: he works through faith, the childlike and receptive faith of the infant. This was Mary’s greatest attribute—she believed. As Elizabeth said, all this great honor and wonder comes to Mary through faith. She is blessed simply through believing the word. She did not deny the power of God’s promise, though she questioned how it all would work, she received the explanation without question or argument. She took it all in by faith alone. And there would be a fulfillment of all that was told her concerning her child.

This is not the way our world works. It is not the way the mighty and powerful work. They work not by humble words to humble folks, but they work through presidents and kings and heads of state and expensive celebrity endorsements. The world works by mighty deeds, huge budget appropriations, massive outlays of capital taken from the taxes they levy on the working folks. They work through big meetings in Copenhagen and treaties hundreds of pages long, written in a cramped, legal language even the experts need experts to explain, to solve problems no one is 100% sure really exist, with remedies whose cost runs into the billions of dollars, and whose final results none can guarantee.

The world works by works, in short. By deeds, not creeds. By force and might, not humility and faith. And what have all the world’s labors gained us? Wars, rumors of wars, massive debts, a crippled economy, lies and dissembling, and worries about the weather that threaten to paralyze us even further. And our answers to our problems are more of the same that got us into this mess in the first place: we still look to the unholy trinity—to lawyers, guns, and money to solve all our problems, as the late Warren Zevon so beautifully expressed it.

The Holy Spirit works differently. I hope you can see in the Gospel this morning how radically and profoundly other he works! Not a lawyer, treaty, gun, troop deployment, tax bill, or Wall Street banker in sight in our text today. Just a couple of humble women; one old, one young, both pregnant, with the word of the Spirit and faith that God will do something amazing through them and their kids.

I will tell you a secret this morning: God still works this way, and he works this way with you and with me. We are the humble and lowly, living on the margins, in the shadows of history, unnoticed by the mighty and the powerful. And God is doing his great and awesome thing through and with us, right now, in the exact same way he worked with Mary and Elizabeth.

This is how the Holy Spirit works: He works under the opposite of all that this world thinks will work. His weapons are not legal, lethal, or lucrative. He works in the humble and lowly who will not fight, but roll with the word of promise, no matter how unlikely and absurd it sometimes seems to us.

He works his way into your heart, gets in through your ear, by the Gospel of Christ Jesus you hear now. By the word of his greeting, by the mention of his Name, he works in you to give birth to something grand and noble and eternal and wonderful. His promise is this: by the forgiveness of all your sin, through Christ Jesus who gets in through your ear to your heart, in communion with him, you have a new life that conquers death, sin, and hell—and all that unholy triumvirate can throw at you.

This is how the Holy Spirit works: through the faith of a child, through faith in the child born in the stable, born to bear our sin, born to die for us, to bring life and immortality to light. Blessed are you who believe, for by such childlike faith in Christ alone, there will be a fulfillment of those things that were told Mary, told you, and Peace—which surpasses all understanding, guarding your heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Pastor Kevin Martin