Lou Gehrig’s
Statement
On July 4th, 1939, a baseball player for the New York Yankees delivered one of the most famous farewell speeches that has ever been given. His name was Lou Gehrig. And after 17 years in the game of baseball he was diagnosed with a rare disease that would become known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.” It’s a degenerative disease that affects the nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord, inevitably leading to death. And so Lou Gehrig had no choice but to retire from baseball when he was just 35 years old because his body could no longer function properly. A little over two years later he died. But on that one afternoon at Yankee Stadium, when he officially said goodbye to his team and to his fans, he famously said, “Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
But why would
he say something like that? He was going
to die at such a young age! He was a
well-conditioned athlete whose body was mysteriously failing! He was going to leave behind a young wife and
he didn’t any children to carry on his name!
Why would he consider himself the luckiest person on the face of this
earth? Well, in his speech he said that
everyone had been so nice to him, he had enjoyed many years with a lot of great
people, and his family members were “the finest” he knew. That’s why he considered himself the luckiest
person on the face of the earth: He had enjoyed so much for so many years that
he couldn’t complain.
Mary’s
Statement
Many,
many centuries before Lou Gehrig ever gave that speech, a young woman said
something very similar. But it wasn’t
said in front of a large crowd, it was spoken in the privacy of a home. And the occasion wasn’t a life ending, but a
life that had just begun. The young
woman’s name was Mary, her audience was no one else but her older cousin
Elizabeth, and this is what Mary said, “My
soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has
been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me
blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me.” Mary didn’t consider herself to be the
“luckiest” person on the face of this earth because what had happened to her
had nothing to do with luck. But she did
know that she was one of the “most blessed” people ever to live because of the
great things the Mighty One had done for her.
And what had he done? He had
chosen her to be the mother of the Savior!
She was to bear the Messiah whom she and her people had been waiting for
for thousands of years! Out of all the
Christian women ever to live, this young unmarried virgin girl from Galilee had
been picked to give birth to God himself!
No wonder her soul glorified the Lord and rejoiced in God her
Savior! No wonder she felt like the most
blessed person on the face of this earth!
She had been given a responsibility and a privilege that no one else had
ever been given before or ever would after her.
The son that she was now carrying in her womb would be none other than
the Son of God. And that didn’t have
anything to do with luck. It had
everything to do with the love of her Lord.
The Lord Didn’t
Have To
We would
agree with Mary, wouldn’t we? I’m sure
all of us would say that she was one of the most blessed people in this world
because of the incredible role she had been given to carry out in this life. But might I submit that Mary was not the only
one who could consider herself the most blessed person on the face of this
earth. So can we. Because although the Lord chose Mary to be
the mother of Jesus, she was not the only one for whom Jesus was sent. Jesus was sent for us too, wasn’t he? He was sent to this earth as a real human
being for our sakes, for our forgiveness, for our salvation. If that doesn’t make us the most blessed
people on the face of this earth, I don’t know what does! And what’s more: he didn’t have to do
it! Other than keeping the promise he
made to us, he wasn’t obligated to do anything for us. He didn’t owe us in any way. He didn’t have to give us a chance. In fact, he had every right to throw us out.
Think of
the history of humanity in this world: God gave us a perfect place in which to
live forever; but Adam and Eve threw it all away by disobeying his command and
eating from that tree. God then gave
humanity another chance and allowed people to procreate instead of wiping us
out. But over the years we threw it away
again and by the time of Noah there were only eight people left who believed in
the Lord. After the flood God gave us
the entire world to inhabit again, but we threw it away at the tower of
Babel. God gave his chosen Old Testament
people a covenant - they threw it away.
God gave his chosen Old Testament people the Promised Land - they threw
it away. God gave his chosen Old
Testament people priests and prophets and kings - they threw them away.
And God
knew what was going to happen later on too.
He knew that when he would give us his commands in the Bible today that
we would regularly throw them away. He
knew that when he would give us advice and encouragement in the Bible we would
routinely throw that away too. He knew
that when he would show us his love and demonstrate his power and graciously
give us his mercy through his Word, we would throw those things away just like
everything else. It would have made
sense if the Lord had thrown us away. It
would have been entirely appropriate for him if the Lord had given up on us and
moved on. But instead he threw
everything on the table; he threw himself at the problem to fix it; he threw
his own Son into the bowels of hell to save us.
That’s why we are the most blessed people on the face of this earth:
because the Son of God became the Son of man, the Creator became a corpse, and
the One who shouldn’t have died in the first place became alive once
again. And he did it for us. He did it for a world that throws him away on
a regular basis. He did it for a people
who don’t fully appreciate him and never will.
We truly are the most blessed people on the face of this earth because
everything he has given us we don’t deserve.
“I’ve Got An
Awful Lot To Live For”
At the
end of Lou Gehrig’s famous speech he finished with, “I may have had a tough
break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for.”
And that may have been true. He
may have had a lot of good things to look forward to after baseball. Of course, what he had to live for in this
life wasn’t going to last and neither would he much longer. But those same words can resound with a much
more profound meaning when said in a spiritual context. “I’ve got an awful lot to live for!” Isn’t that true? We have everything to live for! We’ve got a spot booked in heaven, a loving
Lord waiting for us there, and a guarantee based on Jesus’ blood that can never
be nullified. We have everything to live
for! And not for just another couple
years. We have everything to look
forward to for the rest of eternity.
And so “From now on, all generations will call me
blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me.” These aren’t just the words of Mary. They are the words of every Christian. We are the most blessed people on this face
of this earth. Because Jesus came here
for us - and by the grace of our God and the power of the Holy Spirit through
his Word, we believe it. And that wasn’t
because of luck, it was because of the love of our Lord. A love so deep that he would send his Son
here. A love so strong that he will one
day take us there.
Amen.
“Blessed is the
nation whose God is the Lord, the people he chose for his inheritance.” - Psalm 33:12
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