Dr. Kevin DeYoung | The Annunciation

Sunday Morning, December 7, 2025
Given by Dr. Kevin DeYoung | Senior Pastor, Christ Covenant Church

The Annunciation

Luke 1:26-38

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Transcript

Let's pray one more time. 

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning, grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and the comfort of your holy word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit – one God forever and ever. Amen. 

We continue with our Advent series through the Gospel of Luke. Please turn to Luke chapter 1. I’ll be reading verses 26 through 38. Luke chapter 1, beginning at verse 26:

“In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, O favored one. The Lord is with you.’ But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ And Mary said to the angel, ‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’ And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth, in her old age, has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren, for nothing will be impossible with God.’ And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.’ And the angel departed from her.” 

I went to Food Lion late Friday night, because our family goes to the grocery store about 15 times a week. I am not joking. And I was hustling to get a few essential things, probably chips and cheese – my daily bread – when I was interrupted in my thoughts by a voice from the loudspeaker: “Attention Food Lion shoppers.” I thought, what did I win? Hark! What glad tidings are these? But alas, the voice continued, “The store will be closing in 10 minutes. Please make your way to the checkout immediately. Thank you.” So, I should have guessed that. It was 10:50. Not the thrilling announcement I was hoping for. You’ve probably had the same experience. Or sometimes you get that announcement – it's good news. Sometimes it's bad news. If you see breaking news, and almost everything counts for breaking news, it seems, these days – if you get that on your TV, it's rarely something good. Breaking news: married couple stays together. They just don't – they don't broadcast that. It's usually something bad, or you have the words scroll across the bottom of the screen. It means somebody has gone missing, or there's bad weather coming. But maybe you have good news if your son and his girlfriend, or your daughter and her boyfriend of some time, gather around and say, "Well, we want to share something with you. We've gotten engaged." Or you put it out on social media that you're married and having a child. There's lots of news. There is no better news that has been broadcast in the history of the world than this news here in Luke chapter 1. 

I suppose the angel at the empty tomb saying, “He is not here; he has risen, just as he said” would be equal. That's why I said no better news – perhaps equal. This is called, in the history of the church, the annunciation. The holy announcement. In some traditions, it's considered a holy day. Some of the most famous paintings in the world depict this scene. There is no more important announcement, and when I say broadcast, I simply mean “make it known,” because this was not broadcast at this moment in all the world. In fact, it's striking the juxtaposition between the most significant announcement ever to be uttered on planet Earth and the setting in this little almost no-name village in northern Israel to a young woman. We don't know how old she was. We often think of her as a teenager. That's probably what Mary was, receiving this angelic visitation. My outline is simple. I want us to look at who makes the announcement, then to whom the announcement is given, and then what the announcement is about. Or if you want to think of it in simpler terms, you can think of this sermon as moving through the three characters in this narrative: Gabriel, Mary, and Jesus. 

So, let's start with Gabriel, the one who makes the announcement. Gabriel we saw last week making the announcement to Zechariah in the temple. And here we have the angel Gabriel again. By one count, there are 273 references to angels in the Bible. So, not on every single page, in every single chapter, but not bit players in this drama either. 273 references and we know that they play an important role in the Christmas story. What are angels in the Bible? Well, angels are sometimes guardians. You think of the angel in the Garden of Eden or the cherubim on the lid of the ark of the covenant. The angels guard the presence of God. They guard what is holy. Think of angels are a bridge between two different worlds. You think about the visions of angels ascending and descending. Angels are intermediaries. Angels are servants. We can say most fundamentally angels are messengers. That's what the word in Hebrew and the word in Greek means. The word in Greek, you already know it – angelos – so this is the transliteration. “Angels” simply means “a messenger.” There are two named angels in the Bible. Other books not in the canonical scriptures will name a couple of other angels, but there are just two angels who are given names in the Bible. One is Michael. He's called, in Jude 9, an archangel, which suggests that he has authority, under God, over other angels. And in fact, we read in Revelation 12:7 about Michael fighting the devil – Michael and his angels – so, it seems that he has some company of heavenly hosts at his charge. Gabriel is, by tradition, considered the other archangel, though he's not named as such, but he is the other named angel. If Michael is the warrior angel – and that's what we have the picture in Revelation or in Daniel, as he is fighting in the heavenly spiritual realm the kind of battle that we are fighting here against Satan in the earthly realm. If he's the warrior angel, then Gabriel is the communicating angel. 

We have Gabriel mentioned – you may not have realized, or you may have forgotten – two times in the book of Daniel, chapter 8 and Daniel chapter 9, where there he explains the meaning of a vision to Daniel. And here in Luke 1, he is the messenger to Zechariah and now to Mary. Just think about that for a moment, that Gabriel is named in the book of Daniel. So about 500 years apart, which tells us that angelic beings are spiritual beings who live and don't die. So, we have 500 years – you think of all that Gabriel had seen and heard in those 500 years, or Michael with him. And then you think about that word that Peter gives us: “these things into which angels long to look.” Of all the privileges that the angels had, all of the things that they had seen for centuries and for millennia, and yet the one thing that they longed to see. Not that they didn't know the gospel. He's announcing the gospel, but they could not know what it was to be a human being filled with sin, forgiven by God, saved by his Son. Things into which angels long to look. 

This Gabriel we met 500 years ago in Daniel and now shows up and gives a message to Zachariah and to Mary. Notice what it says – where he comes from and where he goes. In the sixth month, verse 26, Gabriel was sent. Now this is quite a trip. Some of you may go on a trip over Christmas. Many of us will travel somewhere by planes, trains, or automobiles, and you will make it there, Lord willing, and make it back, and some will be a great journey, but none as great as this. He starts from God. However we understand that, and we don't quite know what the heavenly realm is – it doesn't have a mailing address that gets you there, except by prayer – but this spiritual realm before the presence of God. He was sent. He's there from God, and he goes to a city of Galilee named Nazareth. You and I have a hard time remembering that this physical world that we inhabit, of material things, of sequence, of time, of history, that there is, at this same moment, a heavenly realm of unseen things. And in God's economy, those things are just as real or in some ways even more real than the hard, physical things we can see and touch. Gabriel comes from this unseen realm, from God to a real place. Remember what Luke says in the very first paragraph of his gospel: “Many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished.” And he talks about eyewitnesses and an orderly account that he has followed all things closely. So, remember, this is not in the realm of make-believe. This is not legend. This is not myth. Luke, at the very beginning, says, I'm a historian, and I'm gathering my sources. I'm talking to people. I'm getting authoritative eyewitnesses. I'm compiling the accounts. I'm laying it all out. I have notes, and I'm writing an orderly account for this Theophilus, who is likely some kind of high-ranking official in the Roman apparatus – maybe a young Christian, maybe an almost-Christian. So Luke is very deliberately telling us fact and history. And he says, "Here's a fact: an angel came from the presence of God down to earth to this little town called Nazareth.” And Gabriel, who had just spoken in the previous narrative to Zechariah in the temple, now speaks to Mary in Nazareth. Two very different settings: from the grandeur of Jerusalem and the temple and the priest carrying out the most significant priestly act of his entire life, that he was chosen by lot to offer at the altar of incense. Gabriel met him there, and now he meets the virgin in Nazareth. Gabriel is, as it were, straddling the two worlds – connected, but different epochs of the Old and the New Testaments. 

And perhaps it's significant that the message to Zechariah happens in the temple, the heart of Israel's worship in the Old Testament. And just as Zechariah departed the temple, we are having a foreshadowing that the religion of God's people will not be focused on an earthly place in the same way. What is the temple? The temple is the symbolic place where the dwelling of God resides. It was there in the tabernacle as they moved through the wilderness. Then when they had a permanent home, it was there in the holy of holies in the temple. The temple is the place. It's the incubator for the presence of God. We have moved from a structural temple to a virgin temple. The presence of God from this man-made temple now finding residence in the womb of this young woman. The divine presence, and not just the divine presence in a cloud or in a symbolic box, but actually in human form, flesh and blood, fully divine, fully human. That's what Gabriel is announcing. What a privilege. I wonder if Gabriel put up his hand or his many wings and, “I'll take that one. Let me go and do that one.” As Michael was fighting, Gabriel said, "Let me go and give the message here." And he did. What a message it was. 

Second, to whom was this announcement made? It was made to Mary. The first announcement was that an older woman would have a baby – Elizabeth, who was thought to be barren, was well past the age of childbearing. And that was a surprising word, but not unheard of. There are instances, a handful of them, throughout the Old Testament, where someone who seemed to be barren had a child – someone like Sarah, who was well past the ability, in an earthly sense, to have a baby had a baby. So that first announcement about Elizabeth – surprising, not unheard of. This second announcement, we've gone from an old woman, Elizabeth, to a young virgin woman, Mary. And this, though Isaiah predicted it in Isaiah 7:14, this has never happened before. It says that she was betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. Betrothal in the ancient world among the Jews was different than engagement in our day. Engagement is a special occasion, and you have a ring, and the man gets down on one knee. It's not a legally binding contract – an engagement – but it was then. That's why it will say that Joseph, being a righteous man, was going to divorce her quietly. You say, "Why did you have to divorce her quietly? You're not married." Well, to be engaged, to be betrothed, was a legally binding contract. It meant that a bride price had been paid. Typically, you would be engaged for about a year, and the wedding would happen a year later. The youngest a woman could be betrothed was at age 12. That's why – it doesn't say how old Mary is, but we piece together the customs of the time and think that she was likely a teenage young woman. The engagement took place in front of witnesses. Deuteronomy 22 tells us that sexual relations with an engaged woman meant death for both the man and the woman. So, this was as good as being married without yet having the ceremony and consummating the wedding. 

And Mary understands – sometimes we think that, well people in the first century were really gullible, weren't they? Oh, Mary knows enough biology to know where babies come from. And she knows that there's no earthly way – she knows herself – that she can be having a baby. Don't think that people in the ancient world just believed whatever you told them. Even within Judaism, they had an anti-supernatural element. You think of the Sadducees. They didn't believe in angels. They didn't believe in the resurrection. So, people in the first century had a hard time believing miracles, believing supernatural occurrences. Not everyone believed them. This was a hard thing that the angel was saying to Mary. You can understand why she was confused. The angel gives a greeting to her. It's translated here in Luke 28, “Greetings!” That's a good translation - chaire. It's the same word used in Matthew and Mark and John. It's a simple greeting. Some translate it as “rejoice,” and it has that as its root, but it is just a simple “greetings.” It's what we would say, “hello.” Now, the King James has the word “hail Mary.” And that word used to simply be another way of saying “hello” or “greetings.” Now I don't think we usually say that: “Hail! Mother is home from the grocery store.” No, we say, “Hail to the chief.” Hail has a certain laudatory, formal, official aspect to it. So it's not that that's a wrong translation, but it's apt to miscommunicate what the angel is saying. He's not saluting. He's simply saying, “Greetings, Mary.” 

And then as the ESV puts it, and almost all contemporary English translations, the next rendering is, "O, favored one." That's a good translation. She's favored because the Lord is with her. Some of you, if you grew up in the Catholic church, are perhaps used to the familiar saying, "Hail Mary, full of grace." Well, she is full of grace. She is going to be literally full of grace incarnate within her. So, it's certainly not wrong to consider Mary full of grace, so long as we understand that it is Mary as the recipient of God's grace. There is nothing in this passage to say that Mary is the dispenser or the conduit of that grace. If you've prayed a rosary at some point in your life, you go around – there are some 80 or more beads, and you say several different prayers or acclamations – and more than 50 times in that Catholic tradition you pray the Hail Mary. Now if you don't have a Catholic background, you just think, what? I thought this was only about football. This is all making – so when you – that's where it gets its name, when the quarterback heaves it from the 50-yard line, because he's throwing up a prayer. So, it was first a Catholic prayer, “Hail Mary,” which is said more than 50 times in the rosary. Now, some of it is just using this biblical language, which is fine, but it also calls upon Mary to pray for us. At the end of the rosary is this prayer: “Hail holy queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this veil of tears. Turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this, our exile, allow us to the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary, pray for us, O holy mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.” There is nothing remotely like that in the gospels or anywhere in the Bible or in Mary's attitude. It would have been shocking to Mary that followers of Jesus, centuries following, would pray to her or call upon her as a holy queen or ask that Mary would make them worthy of the promises of Christ. That's not what we see about Mary in this passage or in the Bible. 

What we do see about Mary is beautiful and exemplary. We don't need that to focus on what the Bible does say, which presents to us Mary as a beautiful example of faith. Almost every mention of Mary in the Bible comes in the Christmas stories of Matthew 1 and 2 and Luke 1 and 2. There is almost nothing about Mary outside of those four chapters. But there are two other mentions that are important. In John 19, she is there at the cross, and Jesus famously says to John, "Behold your mother” and to Mary, “Behold your son,” communicating that – as he is going to die, and he knows he'll be resurrected, and he will ascend – that John, the beloved disciple, will care for Jesus’ mother. And then we read in Acts 1:14, perhaps you've missed this before. It's talking about the disciples gathered in Jerusalem choosing a replacement for Judas, and they're going to wait for the Holy Spirit, and it says, “All these, with one accord, were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.” So why is that significant? It reminds us Mary was not only Jesus’ mother, she would become his disciple. She was a believer in Christ. She is there, gathered with the hundred or so group of disciples, mentioned by name, that Mary understands as well as anyone who Jesus is and has put faith in Christ, just as here she puts astonishing faith in the message that Gabriel gives us. Mary, from the very beginning, is an exemplar of faith. She says there in verse 38, "Let it be to me according to your word." Now you may be tempted to think that the Beatles song, “Let It Be,” Mother Mary comes to me – it was about Paul's mom named Mary. Not the Apostle Paul, but Paul McCartney. So, it's not a Catholic hymn, “Let It Be.” If you've ever sung the words in your car and thought that Paul was giving an homage to Mary, he's not. But there it is. Mary says, "So be it." 

Now, you may have the question in your head, and it's a good question. It's the question that I asked myself as I read through this again on Monday morning and thought, "Now wait a minute. How come Zechariah gets rebuked – he gets dinged – for saying, "What's going on?" and Mary doesn't?” Zechariah – look back up at verse 18: “How shall I know this, for I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years?” And the angel says, "Okay, you say I'm old. Let me tell you who I am. I'm Gabriel." And then he has to be silent. How come Zechariah gets a rebuke for asking the question, and Mary doesn't? What's different in their two attitudes? Well, it seems that there is surely something different in their attitudes. Maybe we can't see it all, but there's a couple of hints. What's different between Zechariah and Mary? Two hints. One, consider the differences in their station in life. Who is Zechariah? He's an old man, and he's a priest. He is carrying out the highest privilege of his life in the temple. Priests were trained. Priests, among their ritual duties, were also to be teachers. He was instructed in the scriptures. So, it's safe to say there was a higher bar for Zechariah as an old man, as a teacher, as a priest, as a leader in Israel. Surely, Zechariah, you should have known – you did know – the stories of Abraham and Sarah, where Mary is a young teenage girl from a nowhere village in northern Galilee. So, they're very different stations in life in what one might expect them to know. So, that's one clue. 

Here's probably a more important clue. Zechariah, though the word sign is not used, seems to be asking for a sign. Verse 18: “How shall I know? Zechariah asked for a sign. Mary asked for an explanation. How shall I know? Okay, give me something, like Gideon with the fleece. Give me something to prove that this is really true, Zechariah says. Mary says, "How will this be? I'm confused." Young teenager – she knew where babies come from, and she knew that this was not possible with her by any human way. She understands. There's no way to set aside this passage, as some liberal scholars would do, and say, "Well, this Greek word, parthenos, translated virgin, simply means a young, single woman." Well, it's true, the word can mean that. And you know what every Jew assumed about a young single woman? That she was a virgin. And Mary, by her question, makes absolutely clear she understands what's being said to her. How can this be, since I have not been with a man? How can this be, since I am a virgin? And she understands that this word from the angel is to be fulfilled immediately. You think she might have just thought, "Oh, so I'm going to have a baby, I guess, when Joseph and I get married." But she understands what the angel is saying, that this is going to happen now. She understands it's going to be fulfilled immediately and that there is no human explanation. So, she doesn't ask for a sign. She asks how. Apparently, no skepticism. No unbelief. This is faith seeking understanding. That will become a common phrase throughout the history of the church, to understand what we do when we approach the scriptures, when we come in prayer, when we do theology – faith seeking understanding. Her posture is one of believing. Help me understand. 

So, we've seen Gabriel, we've seen Mary. Most important – what the announcement is about. That's the third figure – the third person here – Jesus. What can we say about this child? Look at verse 31-33. In the span of three verses, we are told no fewer than eight things about this child. One, he will be Mary's son. Verse 31: “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son.” So, this child will be formed in her womb. The son of God is the son of Mary. Years later in the history of the church, there will be a lot of debate about whether Mary can receive the title theotokos, which means God (theos)-bearer. Sometimes it's translated “mother of God.” A better translation is “God-bearer,” but “mother of God” is apt to be confused. But can we say that Mary is the one who bore God? You might even think I'm not sure we should say that. Well, careful – that that proved to be the side of the heretics, who said that Mary could not have that title. Now, “Mary, the bearer of God,” does not mean “Mary, equal with God” or “Mary, the mediator between man and God,” but it's to defend the union – a single person, human nature and divine in her womb – that she bore out God. God in the flesh. God as he had never appeared before, assuming to himself a human nature. This child – everything that we're about to see about him in these other seven things, remember, is also the son of Mary. 

Number two, his name will be Jesus. Matthew points out that he'll be called Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. That's what the word Jesus means: “Yahweh saves.” Three, he will be great. Four, he will be called son of the Most High. Five, he will be the son of David. Six, he will be given David's throne. Seven, he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And eight, his kingdom will never end. That's what will come from this child. 

We call it the virgin birth. Technically, it's the virginal conception. Because of the virginal conception, we read later in verse 35 that the child to be born will be called holy, the son of God. Now, it's not because, well, sex somehow makes you dirty, and they needed to get sex out of the equation, otherwise the child would be a sinner. No, it's not so much that Mary is a virgin, though that's essential, but it's that she will be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. The Most High will overshadow you. The Holy Spirit will come upon you. So it's not the virgin part that makes Jesus holy, so much as it is the Spirit part. And this is nothing like any of the pagan myths of the Roman Empire. There is nothing here to describe some sort of sexual encounter between God and Mary – a blasphemous thought. Rather, we have the language of Genesis. Think about it. In the beginning was the word. The word was with God, and the word was God. All things were created through the word, John 1 tells us. And we see there in the opening chapters of Genesis, which John is echoing, that the creation of the heavens and the earth take place by word and spirit. Church father Irenaeus said it was like the two hands of God in creation. Where's the word at creation? Well, he spoke, “let there be light,” and there was light. Well, where's the spirit? Well, it tells us right there in the opening verses, “and the spirit of God was hovering over the deep” – brooding over the deep, overshadowing the creation, coming into being through word and spirit. This is Genesis language to tell us that this child is going to be a new Adam, a new creation by divine fiat. Like the spirit hovering over creation, new life will be formed in Mary. This is not a biological explanation. It is a spiritual explanation. Let there be light, there was light. Let there be a child, there's a child. A new humanity has begun. 

Unless you ask yourself, well, could Jesus be fully human without a human mother and a human father? Well, we've had people in the Bible before who had no human mother or human father. You know their names – Adam and Eve – and they were fully human. This is a normal human gestation on one level. Zygote and cells splitting and multiplying and body parts being formed. And at the same time, the God-man, the conception, is wholly a work of the Spirit. It's important to realize when we talk about the incarnation that Jesus is not a man who was divinized. That is to say, it's not that God picked a Jewish man and said, "Okay, let's superpower him up, and let's make this man divine." No, that's not it. Nor should we think of the union of the two natures, human and divine, as if God, you know, opened the nature closet and said, "I'm going to get a divine nature, and ooh, I'm going to get a generic human nature, and let's stitch these things together, and now we have Jesus.” No, though there are two natures in union, we must remember this is the enfleshment of the son of God. It is the logos, the word, made flesh, such that one person now consists of two natures, fully divine and fully human. And you think of what this miracle is and compare the greatness of the titles and what is being created and joined together in Mary – the un-created God with now a human body. You think of all of that and then the humility of this setting. We're not in Jerusalem. We're not in Rome. We're not in the temple. We're not at the Parthenon. We're not at the Acropolis. We're in Nazareth. I mean, Nazareth. I mean, this is lower than Mint Hill. Nazareth. That's where I live. It used to be the Mint Hillbillies out there, but now it's a pretty posh place, you know. Nazareth. And in the belly of a young woman, a young virgin. 

It is an amazing announcement. An orderly account Luke is giving us of this history, having followed all things closely, spoken to eyewitnesses, and if you think about the departure point of Gabriel – Gabriel left the presence of God – his destination, Nazareth. When you think about that, and then you realize where the son of God has made a home now, in the womb of this young woman. What a wonderful, amazing, saving, divine condescension. The angel says to Mary, "Favored one." And she was uniquely favored of all women in the history of the world to bear the Christ child. But do you realize you also are highly favored? You have received an even clearer announcement of glad tidings than the one that Mary received. All of you this morning, and many of you throughout your life, have had the amazing privilege of hearing the greatest news, these glad tidings. You are a favored one that you would know this message when so many millions and billions have yet to hear of it, and you have heard of it, and you have a Bible in a language you can understand, and you have Christmas carols proclaiming this news in the mall, though they know not what they do. You are favored that you would receive these glad tidings. And what glad tidings they are. The whole story. What is the gospel? It is the amazing true story about an empty womb, supernaturally filled, and a filled tomb, supernaturally emptied. That's the story. A womb that was vacant, filled by the Spirit of God, and a tomb that was occupied, risen by the power of God, because death could not hold him. 

And Mary is, for us, one of the greatest examples, not of dispensing grace to us, but of receiving grace through faith. Mary shows each one of us the proper response as favored ones who have the blessing of hearing these glad tidings. The angel told Mary something that was – seemed too good to be true – a virgin birth, the Messiah, God in the flesh through me, and the good news of the gospel proclaims to each one of you tidings that may seem too good to be true. Your sins can be forgiven. God knows you. God sees you. God sent his son to die for sinners like you, and you can have eternal life. So when the angel says, to Mary, verse 37, it's the same word to us: “Nothing will be impossible with God.” No matter what you've done, no matter where you've come from, nothing will be impossible with God. What do you say to that good news? What do you say to those glad tidings? What do you say to the supernatural events in the Bible that seem to us impossibilities? Mary gives us the response. You and I say, “Behold, I am your servant. I receive your word. I believe your word. Do with me as you wish. May it be so.” She is an example of how one receives the grace of God. It starts with God's initiative. It is announced by God's word, and then through faith, humbly received by God's children. Let's pray. 

Gracious heavenly Father, we thank you for this, your holy word, this good news. Give to each of us the supernatural gift of faith. Just as you called light out of darkness, so speak into our hearts. If there are any in this room who do not have faith, speak into that life, that there is faith to believe and to receive the good news of Jesus Christ, the word made flesh, our Savior, our coming King. We thank you for the word that we hear and now for the word that we can receive with trembling hands and trembling lips. Feed us, we pray. In Christ's name. Amen.