Sermon for Wednesday March 4th

Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely from now on, all generations will call me blessed. For the mighty one has done great things for me and holy is his name.” Holy is HIS name. Isn’t THAT a surprise? Holy is HIS name?

To be holy, means to be set apart. To be distinct from the everyday, worldly things of this earth. To be holy means to be special. And here is Mary, a small-town girl, of humble means, who has just been given an amazing piece of news. She’s pregnant. That’s pretty special. But, there’s more. She was just told she was pregnant by none other than an angel. That’s pretty otherworldly. But there’s more. The angel told her that she was going to have a baby and Mary . . . well, Mary was a virgin . . . having a baby is pretty different and distinct from most any other virgin. But there is even more. This virgin, Mary, is told by an angel that she is pregnant with, get this, God’s baby. GOD’s baby! THAT makes her set apart from, well, anybody else in history.

So, why does Mary say, “Holy is HIS name?” instead of holy is MY name, or something like that? This song of hers doesn’t seem to mention all these odd and interesting facts about how special she is. Instead, she says that, while she has been undeservedly blessed, God is the one who should be honored. The mighty one has done great things for me, she says, and holy is HIS name. Holy is his name.

The disciples asked Jesus, how should we pray, and he told them, pray like this, “Our Father who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name.” Hallowed be thy name. Holy is your name. There is a connection here.

When you pray, what do you pray for? If you are anything like me, your prayer life is often filled with, to put it quite frankly, special favors. Special requests on your behalf or for the sake of others. You don’t want to just be one of the normal people who have things happen to them. You want to be one of the select few who are set apart for greatness. Set apart for healing. Set apart for blessings.

And the thing is, God loves it when you bring to him every little thing you want and need. All the way from praying for a baby to praying for a late start at school to praying for a parking space. Sure, it might be selfish. Sure these requests might be meaningless in the scheme of things, but, as Luther says, we should speak to God just as children speak to their loving father, only this is our heavenly Father. I never refrained from asking my dad to get me toaster strudels at the grocery store and you shouldn’t refrain from asking God for whatever your heart desires either.

But it’s important to remember, right off the bat, who is truly set apart, truly distinct and special, truly holy and it’s not you. It’s God. He is holy. All you are asking, is that he be God for you. To do things for you that he is in the business of doing. You don’t have to ask him to be someone different, or do something different, or even to make you into something different. You call on him to “just be himself” as parents often say. To be holy. And not just holy as an idea, but to be holy for you. To be God for you. Because when God is God for you, wonderful and impossible things happen.

In tonight’s scripture passage, Mary is the one being blessed, but God is the one being honored. Mary is the one being blessed, but God is hallowed. One would think that when God made Mary the mother of God, she would have been the one who was made holy. But no, God is made holy by blessing her. He shows himself to be powerful. He shows himself to be wonderful. He shows himself to be kind and generous and mighty. When we pray , we pray that God increases in his glory, not that we increase in ours. We pray that he is honored by what he does in, through and for us, not that we are honored.

God is always holy even when your prayers aren’t answered the way you want them to be. God is always holy even when your prayers are answered in amazing ways you couldn’t have even dreamed. God is holy when your best friend dies tragically in a car accident and God is holy when your dog miraculously escapes a near brush with death. At the beginning of a prayer, we need to remind ourselves of this. We pray that no matter what we are about to ask, that God stays the same. That God is holy. We want to realize that he is the same today, yesterday and will be that way tomorrow no matter what has happened or will happen. He will not deserve your praise more if he answers your prayer in the affirmative than if you feel the weight of suffering crashing down upon you despite your most faithful prayer. He is holy, distinct, perfect and you are not.

Prayer isn’t about you, it is about the faith you are placing that God can not only hear you, but he loves you and cares for you. Praying doesn’t make you holy. Prayer doesn’t make God better or worse than he began. Prayer helps you realize that God indeed does great things for you, some look better and some look worse, but he is always holy. He deserves glory no matter how things turn out in the next moment. When you pray, pray to your heavenly Father for your blessings, but give God the glory. No matter how mightily he works in your life, holy is HIS name. Always HIS name. Amen