(Held July 1, 1539.)
Text: "And Mary arose in those days, and went up into the mountains, 1) to the city of Judaea, and came into the house of Zacharias, and greeted Elizabeth: and it came to pass, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost, and cried with a loud voice, saying, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence
1) that is, hurriedly.
Does this come to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? Behold, when I heard the voice of thy greeting, the child leaped with joy in my womb. And blessed art thou that hast believed; for that which is spoken unto thee of the Lord shall be accomplished."
This is a new holiday, instituted by the pope against the Turk, and he has interpreted the gospel that the mountains should be the Turk, and Mary should tread them, that is, dead-
beat. So this feast was instituted and celebrated for this reason, and the pope acted like a fool and forgot our Lord God and put Mary in his place. But we keep this feast because we reverse it, and make a holy custom out of an abuse. For St. John the Baptist is described with great diligence by all the evangelists, but especially by Luke, how he was conceived and born. Therefore, we keep the feast for John's sake, not for his person, but for his ministry. For he was the first to consecrate with his finger and to preach Christ, the Lamb of God. He is the first preacher of the New Testament, whom we may preach as long as we can and as long as we live. For so it is in the world, that Satan abideth in, and is a god of the world, and liveth in the court. The dear, holy gospel goes into a few. The rest remain with their old god, that is, with the devil, who does nothing but devour men. But we are too ungrateful and become more and more angry. Besides the gospel, all kinds of vices, sins, shamefulness, idiocy, avarice, fornication, drunkenness go on beyond measure. But if the devil wants to remain abbot, he remains so. He is a god of this world. Every man may see that he may be saved. One must preach the gospel for the sake of the elect. But that there are others who despise it, what can one do about it?
Therefore, we should be glad that we have a few who sincerely accept the word of God and love others. What would we have to do if things were like in the time of Elijah, when more than ten times a hundred thousand people were despisers of God and His word, and only seven thousand had godly hearts? How many pious people does the Lord Christ find? The Jews crucified him, but few godly women and disciples followed him.
Therefore, we keep this feast to thank the merciful Father in heaven for giving John, that is, for revealing the Holy Gospel. The pope said that he wanted to beat the Turks with this feast. But if we believed in Christ, faith would hurt the Turk more than the Pope's indulgence.
But let others flaunt, be stingy and proud. Nevertheless, one can find quite a few pious peasants and other pious people in other classes. They will pay for it. This contempt against the blessed great treasure of the divine word will harm them one day. But while the word is still preached, there are children of grace. When the children of grace will stop, the gospel will be silent.
In Jerusalem, the Lord Christ had twelve apostles, seventy-two disciples. St. Peter converted three thousand in one sermon at Jerusalem. After that, on the same day, two thousand more were added. And he took the same five thousand, which were the choice grain, threshed out of this people; but when the chaff was threshed out, he cast it into the fire. He has the word shovel in his hand (Matth. 3, 12.).
So it closes. Now our Lord God is also threshing. He gathers his grains from the world, here a bundle and there a bundle, and when he has gathered his own together in this way, then the word will cease, and false teachers will come, and then everything will become chaff and the fire will not remain outside for long.
Therefore, we may well recognize this benefit and be grateful to God that He has given us His word and still keeps it. For the devil is on that side, and among us are those who anger God with contempt, and there are many of them, the more they hear God's word, the angrier they become. They almost force God to take away the word. Truly, the devil prowls about like a roaring lion, and he also devours many (1 Peter 5:8). But the small group must still hold, preach, teach, pray, so that the teaching will be brought to the descendants. For otherwise the devil is abbot and prince in the world, in the monastery, in country and castle. Therefore we may be undaunted when we see that people grow and increase in wickedness. Let us look only to this, that we may keep God's word pure. For if the Word and the sacraments remain pure, there will always be pious people, however few, who live a Christian life. Because the word remains, so
we must count the others as chaff waiting for the fire. This is what happened to Christ and the other prophets.
John is the origin of the New Testament and puts an end to the Old Testament, saying: "I am not Christ" (Joh. 1, 20.), "He is the one who will come after me" (Joh. 1, 27.), "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire" (Matth. 3, 11.). For he is the one who forgives your sin. I cannot give forgiveness of sins, he says, but I show you all who he is that forgives them. So I cannot promise forgiveness of sins out of my power. As the pope has done: If you go to St. James and enter a monastery, you will have forgiveness of sins. This is what he promises from his great head. But this is what St. John and we can do, not that he says, "Go to St. James, but believe in Christ, the Son of God, and be baptized in his name, and you will have forgiveness of sin. This is the first who begins this preaching, and we want to follow him and be in his ministry, having his mouth, finger and voice. Therefore we should be grateful to God that he has left us his finger and voice. For we find God in the preaching of His word, in baptism, absolution and sacraments.
"And Mary arose in those days, and went up into the mountains to the end of the city of Judea."
The angel announced it to her, she should be the mother of the Lord, and John is already conceived and Elizabeth is with him about half, since our Savior Jesus Christ is conceived. John is just half a year older. For the text says that when the angel said this to Mary, it was in the sixth month that John was proclaimed, that is, now that he was half a year old, living in his mother's womb, the Lord Christ is proclaimed in the sixth month. They are not far from each other, Christ and John, not only because of the ministry, but also because of the conception. Since John has begun to feel, Christ is soon present and will be conceived. So it is also with their ministry.
John is conceived naturally, as all other children are conceived, since the feeling or life starts over five or six months. But Christ was truly God and man at the moment when Mary says (Luc. 1, 38.): "Be it done to me as you have said!" And is there flesh and blood not without Godhead, and Godhead not without humanity. For the angel says (Luc. 1, 35.), "The holy one who is born of you will be called the Son of God." This was a miraculous work. Therefore, having been conceived by the Holy Spirit and having heard that Elizabeth was six months pregnant with Johanne, whom she had conceived, she had a devout heart and wanted to go to her, the mother. For this she had heard from the angel (Luc. 1, 36.): "And behold, Elizabeth, your friend, is also with child with a son in her old age, and is now going in the sixth month." Not that she doubted it, but out of great joy to wish her happiness, that she would be delivered from the curse and malediction of barrenness. With Elizabeth there was no hope that she would be a mother, and had to bear this shame and disgrace, that she would be a cursed woman. Mary knew this well, as it is written in 1 Sam. 1, when Hannah also wept that she had no children. For it was a great shame at that time not to bear children. They longed for them senselessly. So she goes, the dear virgin Mary, and wants to visit her mother, and make her happy that she has been delivered from shame, and that God has counseled her in her old age through an especially wonderful work of grace.
"Went up the mountain." Not over the Turk. The land has been very mountainous, except around Nazareth, where Mary dwelt, in Galilee, where Herod was lord. The land was rich in grain and barren. But toward Jerusalem it was mountainous. Galilee was a bad country and had only one mountain, Mount Thabor, which lay in the middle of the country as an ornament and decoration. Out of the same plain land she went to the mountains, which are in Judah and Ephraim, where were many mountains, and cities that were upon the mountains.
"Finally." Whether Joseph had gone along
or not, the evangelist does not say. He wants to bring the two mothers together: the virgin, who is pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and the old barren Elizabeth, who is also pregnant, but miraculously by a special work, but in a natural way. He wants to depict Christ and John, the first preacher of grace, whom God also created miraculously from an old maid and filled with the Holy Spirit. They write about Mary that she did not live for fifteen years, they say that she lived for thirteen years. That is only at that time. Now people are not so strong. At the same time, a virgin of twelve years was stronger than one of eighteen years now. We spoil our nature with eating and drinking, so that it is so weak. As the parents are, so also the children turn out afterwards. Now, in this great populous city, one does not find a hundred old men. How many will live to be seventy years old or eighty years old? One should probably go out five cities, since one would not find two, which become a hundred years old. Man is now weakening his own nature with idleness, wantonness, eating and drinking. Therefore it is no wonder that she was pregnant from thirteen years. Eight hundred years ago, the imperial laws stipulated that a maiden of twelve years should be manly. Now when she is twenty-eight years old, she is nerly 1) manable. This is our fault. The closer the world comes to its end, the weaker people become.
But it is a lot for a maiden of thirteen to travel so far. It has nevertheless been twenty-five German miles. But it happened because of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. After this, she wishes Elizabeth her greeting and salvation, that she has not only come out of misery, misery and shame, but also that she has been graced with such fruit, since the angel has preached much about it.
"Endelich": as a demure, fine, pure maiden, who has not let the hind foot stand. An endelich maid or woman is one who does a thing that is done. Like-
1) nerlich - hardly. Cf. St. Louis edition, vol. XIX, 1302. Buchwald: näherlich.
Therefore, lazy, unending women, chatterboxes, who miss everything at home, sleep and let harm happen, are only gluttons, do only harm. But the evangelist says of Mary that she was sprightly, and did not look for forwardness, that she chattered about this or that, as our virgins and wives are wont to do: when they come together, they rule with their washing and reform the whole city, talk down the people, rule over every house. Now, if a virgin or a woman is at last, she is worthy of all honors. But she is rare to find and a strange bird.
Therefore, the evangelist says that even though she was a maiden, she was still one who waited for her thing, and what she undertook to do, she did swiftly and briskly. So all women should follow the example of this Mary and do as she did. But you know how you women do it. The longer the rattling and rotting work goes on, the more it breaks down. And they are ashamed of everything they hear here about Mary, who would be worthy if angels always spoke to her. She had to have eight days to travel, did not search in inns for this or that. She thought alone how she would get to Elizabeth. Brave women should have neither shelter nor help. For Mary has gone twenty-five miles, but she has been sprightly, merry, and enduring. Go thou also whithersoever thou wilt; only that thou be strong and earnest in thy matters.
"To the city of Jude." It may have been at Bethlehem, or where it was. For the priests could not all dwell at Jerusalem. Therefore they lived scattered in the towns of the country. And I do not know whether Zechariah dwelt at Jerusalem; it may well have been at Bethlehem. Because the text says: "to the city Judä". Because Jerusalem belonged otherwise to the tribe Benjamin, as Moses had divided the country. But Bethlehem is the city of Judea, where David was born and where Christ was born. Or did Mary go to another city of Judea? Bethlehem is barely two miles from Jerusalem.
"And came to the house of Zacharias." Lucas indicates that Elizabeth will not have felt yet; it may have begun to live, but weakly. But now she feels, which she did not feel before all her life. For the little child leaps in her womb. From the future 1) of Mary it has stepped into the new life. And we may see here how highly St. John is held before God; since Elizabeth only hears the greeting and [Mary] 2) says: Peace be with you! and the sound of these words comes to her ears, then John hears it and begins to receive his Lord, not with the mouth, but with the whole body, so that everything in the womb leaps for joy. It was not a bad rain of the child in the womb, but such a rain that not only the child John lived, but the child became full of joy. For the oral word is such that he gives thanks to his Lord and leaps and dances with all joy that the Lord comes to him and visits him.
This is a beautiful story of these two women. The Lord Christ, if it is to be said so, was still very small: for he is not yet a month old, conceived only from the drops of Mary's blood. It is a wonderful history, and St. John must be praised in this way, that his beginning of life began with joy and leaping, and that the Lord Christ came to him. And this is what is said in the Gospel of John in the 3rd chapter (v. 29): "He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom stands and listens to him, and rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. The same my joy is now fulfilled." He is a joyful preacher. He pointed his fingers to Christ and baptized. It is an inexpressible joy, and this joy begins with them both, since they were not yet born. So powerful is the oral word that St. John receives the Holy Spirit from the oral word and leaps and jumps. The original sin did not give him 3) that.
1) d. i. Arrival. (Buchwald.)
2) "Mary" added by us.
3) Buchwald: "them" and "gelernet".
But when the child is born into the world, it cries and weeps, and does not laugh much. But the birth and the life goes on with crying and is begun with misery. Over that he is conceived from Adam in sins, he receives the Holy Spirit, becomes joyful over it, leaps and jumps.
Therefore we want to learn that it is a great thing about the gospel, that Christ is our sweet and lovely Savior, and where he is, there is life and blessedness, and this began in the body of Mary. Zacharias, the name means: a sermon, remembrance of the Lord. He has a name from his ministry, that he should do as the Lord Christ says in the institution of the Lord's Supper (Luc. 22, 19.): "Do this in remembrance of me!" That is: When you go to the sacrament, preach about me. So Zacharias must mean: Preach of the Lord. So John was born of a preacher. Elizabeth means: God's rest or celebration, rest, so God gives. This also belongs to the preaching ministry, that he wants to say: The oral word makes rest and joy in the heart. So Elizabeth has a name for the fruit of the word: God's rest, not that God himself rests, but that we rest, have peace and joy in our hearts, when the restlessness that we otherwise have from sin, death, hell and the devil ceases. Whoever then experiences what a restless heart is in spiritual matters, which is full of sin and an evil conscience, knows what to say about it. But Zacharias has an Elizabeth, that is, where God's word is, there it preaches celebration and rest. Otherwise, without the divine word, there is no peace in the heart, unless Zachariah's, that is, God's word is preached. So also by the name they have meant their work. John means favor or grace. For where John's ministry is, there is only grace, forgiveness of sin, peace and tranquility in the heart, and all favor in the sight of God. This is what the Holy Spirit has presented with 4) the names of the parents and the infant John, so that we may know how great a thing it is for the holy divine word.
4) "with" put by us instead of "and" by Buchwald.
Therefore we should be grateful to the gracious and merciful God that he has given us the oral word and still preserves it. It seems as if it were a small and trivial thing, and the children of the world are hostile to the word of preachers. But it is a great thing about the preaching ministry. Where Zacharias is, there will also be an Elizabeth and a John. If you have an evil conscience and hear that your sins are forgiven you through Christ, there will be an Elizabeth, that is, a rest from God. For you have peace with God, and it is not a workday, but a holiday, for you have a gracious God.
Mary says nothing else to Elizabeth than: "Peace be with you!", that is: God grant that it may go well with you. What is the result of such a strange word? You see it here. Well, they say, what should the word do? The longer, the more annoyed people become. Well, I have said, they are few that hear the word. And if you want to make a church where the devil is not and remains a prince and god of the world, Christ himself cannot forbid him. He is not cast out from the whole world, but from the godly. Mary did not go to Kaipha, Hanna or the high priests, but passes by a small town. If the word for Kaipham is not useful or for you, it must be considered that you are under the dominion and power of the devil. It is enough that St. John jumps, and Elisha
beth and Zacharias are full of the Holy Spirit, when Zacharias' heart becomes full of grace through the preaching of the Gospel, and those who hear it are full of the Sabbath and then have a gracious God. If the devil had been cast out, St. Paul would have lied, since he says that he is a god of this world and is powerful to harden the hearts of unbelievers (2 Cor. 4:4). What wonder is it that there are persecutors of the gospel and wicked citizens? We look at Elizabeth, Zacharias and John. What does Annas and Judas care? Christ does not become a devil because Judas is a traitor. Elizabeth has truly spoken the oral word, she is a woman, not an angel, has the Holy Spirit through the word and goes forth and brings forth the fruit, so that the child jumps for joy in the womb. The Word has brought forth its fruit, that John, full of the Holy Spirit, is a child of grace and redeemed from sins. We still have the same word. Even if it does not bear fruit with you, it will still be of use to those who hear it and jump for joy and thank God that they have a good conscience through Christ by the oral word. So the divine word does not go away empty and without fruit, but one jumps over it with joy in the Holy Spirit, item, one is happy and has a quiet conscience. But if this fruit does not follow, it is the fault of the devil, the prince of the world.