Understanding the Trinity... the Unique Importance of the Holy Spirit...

Mary Goes to Elizabeth...

This story comes up during Advent and illustrates most vividly how the Holy Spirit works in us and why it is important for Christians to understand the unique character of this aspect of God, the Holy Spirit.  A proper understanding of the Holy Spirit is vital to understanding how faith works in us and how we are saved.

The reading for this Sunday's sermon is based on Luke 1:39-45.  In these passages, Mary, having been told by the angel Gabriel that she, a virgin, is to become miraculously pregnant with the Savior of the World, Jesus Christ, is incredulous, distraught and confused at such an overwhelming and pressure-packed turn of events that she makes a two week walking journey to seek the council of the only living person who might understand her great fear and trepidation, her cousin Elizabeth who herself, even though too old and barren to do so, is pregnant to give birth to John the Baptist, Christ's usher, announcer and predecessor.

"One comes after me whose sandals I am not fit to carry".  "Behold, THE Lamb of God".-- John the Baptist

In it's climactic moment, this passage states, as Mary enters the house of 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!' "

The meeting between the women is really a meeting between John (then in Elizabeth's womb and God, in The Holy Spirit, speaking through Elizabeth, who is "filled with the Holy Spirit".  For in coming to Elizabeth for council, Mary actually receives the very council of God in the Holy Spirit, Who is God along with Christ and Holy Spirit.

The conversation goes on when Elizabeth asks, "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 (Mary) who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."  The last sentence uttered by Elizabeth is a proclamation by the Holy Spirit.

The dialog between the women (distinct from that of the Holy Spirit)  is passive in its form.  Elizabeth receives Mary and has the Holy Spirit speak through her.  John leaps from within the womb. Mary believes that the Lord will be born unto her even as she doubts that she believes it, as pronounced by the Holy Spirit through Elizabeth.  These women did not volunteer or decide that they would be mothers of John the Baptist and Jesus the Christ, or that they would even be mothers at all.  God made that choice for them.

A minor point of this scripture, other than describing how Christ and John were to come into the world by miraculous births, is a deeper point about choice and the role choice plays in our Christian faith and in the plan God has for each of us in this life.  None!  Christianity (and this is an anathema to the American spirit of free choice) is not a religion of choice.  Our faith is granted to us all, all of us, by God himself through the Holy Spirit, the third person of our Triune God.

"Decision" based theology, which is popular in America today and prevalent in many "community churches" and Mormonism, denies, at least in part, the Holy Spirit and the vitally important theological precept that our faith is a pure gift from God delivered to us by the Holy Spirit of the Triune God.

Some of our closest brothers and sisters in Christ insist that this understanding of faith by grace alone is a "fine point" of theology and as worthy of discussion as is wondering "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin".  And I will allow that one can be saved without having a proper understanding of faith by God's grace alone.

But lacking the understanding of faith by grace alone endangers that very faith.  Many a poor soul's faith has been lost due to this misconstruction.  We see these lost souls all around us every day.  How often do hear the cliche that Christians are hypocrites because they do not live perfectly in accordance with Christian law?  How often does one worry that his or her faith is not perfect therefore he or she cannot be saved, that if one doubts his own faith that person may well perish in hell rather than live in eternal heavenly bliss?  And, by the way, why should I bother because if God existed and He is good, he would not put His people through such insurmountable hoops to achieve salvation so God must just be an idealistic creation of man and, therefore I reject religion and will just try to be a good person.

I hear these things almost every time I speak to a non-Christian about my faith and even many who call themselves Christians.

The thinking above stems from doubting God's role in our lives and represents such a pervasive cliche that I would argue that it encapsulates the preeminent attitude toward God in America today. Again, this failure to passively accept but rather struggle with our faith stems from the fundamental failure to understand that faith in God is given to us by God through the Holy Spirit, which is God and through the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ, the second person of the triune God.

Liberal Protestants, secular agnostics, Universalist Unitarians, Ecumenicals on the liberal side and Calvinists, "Evangelicals", Mormons, Baptists and Seventh Day Adventists  on the conservative side, along with Roman Catholics and even many Lutherans all imperil their faith by this well meaning failure to understand what God in the Holy Spirit does for us.  If you retain that saving faith in your heart it is given to you as a free gift from God and nobody can take it away except yourself if wholly and consciously reject it.  And fretting over whether or not you are doing enough to retain your faith has caused more well meaning folks to lose faith in God than any other single factor.

19th century Mormon scholar, Oliver Cawdry argued that "salvation through grace alone is the cause of more sin"... than any other theological precept.  Yet, what good is the prevention of sin if the cost is loss of saving faith?

On the right... "you must make a decision to and be re-born" (yet we do not actively participate in our birth so this interpretation of re-birth in Christ is flawed, prima facie.)  And you must work to show God your faith in order to be admitted into heaven.  (Again, unsupported in canonical scripture, yes touted by Catholics, Mormons and Evangelicals).

On the left...  "Christianity is just one of many paths to God.  Just be a good person and if there is a god or something like a god, you will go to heaven, or not.  Who cares.  Just be a "good" person.  Not at all the message of Holy Spirit, sadly, and a happy, heathen damnation.

But the saving message of faith by God's grace alone, delivered by the Holy Spirit, makes no logical sense... that one cannot do anything to gain their own salvation but cannot actively lose it is wholly illogical.  And one who tries to reconcile this concept to logical will either end up in one of the heresies above or in utter despair that they are not worthy of the gift.

It was this very despair that caused Martin Luther to rebel against the contradictory "works righteous" teachings within the Roman Catholic church and finally come to grips with the idea that in faith, not works lies our salvation.

We are moved by God to faith.  The Holy Spirit moves us, via Word and Sacrament, toward Jesus Christ, whose death on the cross satisfied our debt to the Holy Father's for original sin to which we are born.  We are saved, passively, inevitably and completely by the workings of God through the Son and Holy Spirit.

Rejoice!

Once we understand this, we are liberated to enjoy our salvation and inspired to do good works in gratitude for this miraculous salvation which comes to us free of charge.  Enjoy, understand and be free in your faith with the full knowledge that, in your humanity, your faith will not always be perfect but that it will save you in the end.   Your faith may be seem tiny and insignificant at times, but it is powerful and real.  You are saved even by your tiny and imperfect faith.  .

As Jesus intones in Luke 17:6, "If you had faith like a tiny grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'be uprooted and planted in the sea and it would obey you."

Amen