Sermon for the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, Aug. 15, 2021
Luke 1:46-55
Last week, I started out by telling you
about little Mary, granddaughter of our staff member Mary Sanders. In the clarity and confidence of childhood, little
Mary wanted to take the next step after her nightly prayers. She wanted to know God up close and
personal. So, after singing “Jesus Loves
Me,” little Mary asked her grandmother, “Can we Facetime with Jesus?”
Childhood is an open window into the human
heart – both when we’re at our best, like little Mary, and … other times. When my sisters were little, my father was
off for the summer working toward his Ph.D.
So my mother, who had a job and two little girls at home, asked one of her
good friends to stay with them through the summer and help out. The story is told that one day, my sister,
Susan, about 3 years old, was standing by the front door late in the afternoon,
with a drum-major’s baton in her hand.
My mother’s friend came in and was greeted by this proclamation from my
sister: “I’m the biggest and the best in
the whole wide world!” – after which, my sister whacked my mother’s friend across
the shins with the baton and ran away.
Here's another childhood example of humanity
at our less than best – and this one closer to home for me. When we were in seminary, and our son Dan was
about 3, Ann and I went out on a date one night; and our friend Faith came over
to watch Dan and Kathryn. Now, Dan never
really liked going to bed, and with the two of us gone, I think he saw his big chance. Faith tried kindness and cajoling; and when
that failed, she had to resort to authority, ordering Dan to go to
bed. The story is told that Dan put his
little hands on his hips, and looked Faith in the eye, and proclaimed, “You’re
not the boss of me!”
Well, today we’re celebrating someone who
offers a contrast example to promoting our own power and authority, a temptation
we all have to fight. Today is the Church’s
feast day of St. Mary the Virgin, mother of Jesus. If we were in a Roman Catholic church, we’d
be celebrating the feast of the Assumption of Mary today. Or, if we were in an Orthodox church, we’d be
celebrating the feast of the Dormition of Mary today. Those terms relate to centuries of teaching
that Mary was received directly into heavenly glory at the end of her earthly
life, rather than taking the journey the rest of us take, resting in peace
before rising in glory. If it was “assumption,”
as the Roman Catholics say, that would mean Mary didn’t die but was assumed
physically into heavenly glory, sort of like Elijah in the Old Testament. If it was “dormition,” as the Orthodox say, that
would mean Mary died without human suffering, like falling asleep, and that she
rose physically into heavenly glory after three days, like her Son.
What does the Episcopal Church say? Well, we really don’t concern ourselves too
much with the question, allowing room for people who want to hang their
spiritual hats on Catholic tradition or Orthodox tradition, as well as those on
the more Protestant side who know Mary from Scripture. And there we go again as Episcopalians, being
that countercultural big tent that doesn’t insist on a single right answer to
theological mystery.
I guess my wiring goes in a more Protestant
direction, because I think it might help us to consider Mary living the life we
live. Whether she’s Queen of Heaven or Co-Redemptrix
or whatever title the Church might give her now, here’s what we know for sure: She
was first a woman living in Galilee 2,000 years ago. A peasant.
A nobody.
So, what does Scripture tell us about her? Where does she show up?1 Well, she shows up several times across the Gospels;
and I think each appearance gives us an example to follow.
She enters the story being betrothed to
Joseph and receiving the angel’s news that God was choosing her, of all
people, to bear the child who would be God’s anointed king. Mary can’t believe it, but probably for
different reasons than we’d imagine. From
her point of view, she may have been miraculously pregnant, as the angel said,
but nobody else was going to buy that. She’d
be cast out and abandoned, without even the meager social status of a married peasant
woman. Her life, as she imagined it, was
over.
But her response to the news is the song
we heard as today’s Gospel reading – that she is God’s instrument, “magnifying”
the Lord’s presence on earth and rejoicing that God has chosen to upend the world’s
categories and expectations (Luke 1:47).
You know – kings are supposed to be born in palaces and lord it over everyone
else. But God chose to redeem the world
through “the least” (Matthew 25:40), being born among them and exalting them, removing
the rich and “powerful from their thrones” (Luke 1:52). To all who grieve that the people at the
bottom seem consigned to stay there forever, Mary shows us that God chooses “the
least” first.
Next, we see Mary and Joseph in the
Temple, offering the appointed sacrifices for their baby’s birth and committing
him, as their firstborn, for God’s special use.
There, she meets two prophets, Simeon and Anna. And Mary is cut to the quick by Simeon’s news
that this baby will be a focus of conflict and opposition, and that “a sword
shall pierce [her] own soul, too” (Luke 2:35).
To all of us who fear the suffering sure to come to the people we love
most, Mary shows us how to be faithful even though we know the cost will be
high.
Next, we see Mary, with Joseph, raising
Jesus. Scripture only gives us one story
about that, when the preteen Savior rebels against his parents and stays in
Jerusalem on his own after a Passover festival.
Sure, he had important work to do, teaching his elders; but to his
parents, he was a 12-year-old being a 12-year-old. I’m sure they were scared to death when they
realized he wasn’t with them on the journey home and then infuriated by his
attitude: “God, Mom and Dad! You should
have known I’d be here in the Temple!
Duh!” To all of us who get
infuriated with the people we love, Mary shows us how to commit ourselves, for
the long haul, to the interests of the people in our care.
Next, we see Mary trying to figure out how
to navigate her relationship with her adult son. That’s hard enough for any parent, as we try
to hold our adult children gently, finding that golden mean of connection where
we stay close without getting in their business. If that’s tough for you and me, imagine that
your kid’s also the Messiah. At the
wedding in Cana, Mary leans on Jesus pretty hard, telling him he’s ready for
his first miracle, as if he were a schoolkid afraid to ride his bike – and telling
the wedding attendants to get the miracle ready, regardless of what her Son
says. Later, Jesus is teaching and
healing, taking on the religious and political authorities. Mary and her other grown kids try to get
Jesus to come in the house, away from the crowds, so they can talk some sense
into him and keep him from getting himself arrested. Jesus basically tells her to buzz off. To all of us who can see that someone we love
is on a collision course with reality but we can’t make them change, Mary shows
us how to hang in there, and keep showing up, even when the person you love doesn’t
what to hear what you’ve got to say.
Next, we see Mary at the foot of the Cross. Turns out, she was right. Jesus kept picking fights with the authorities,
and now the story has gone just as she feared.
To all of us who watch the people we love pay the price for their
decisions, Mary shows us how to show up in the worst times – even how to put ourselves
at risk as we stand alongside them.
Finally in Scripture, we see Mary in the first
chapter of the Acts of the Apostles listed along with the 11 disciples who were
“devoting themselves to prayer” as they awaited the Holy Spirit’s empowerment
on Pentecost (Acts 1:14). Try to imagine
what that time would have been like for Mary – to watch as your son is tortured
and killed, then get to be with him for several weeks after his resurrection,
and then watch him disappear to fulfill God’s purposes. To all of us who take a hit for the greater good,
Mary shows us how to put the needs of the many above our own – even above the
breaking of our hearts.
Here’s the pattern I see: Mary’s life is about everybody but Mary. At every step along her path, she chose what
the Greeks called kenosis, the pattern her Son modeled, too. Just as Jesus “emptied himself, being found
in the form of a slave” and “humbled himself, [becoming] obedient to the point
of death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:7-8), so Mary poured herself out to
help accomplish God’s purposes.
And I think that pattern of Mary’s life
has something to say to us and to our culture 2,000 years later. We are unlikely to come up to someone we know,
crack them across the shins with a baton, and exclaim, “I’m the biggest and the
best in the whole wide world!” But there’s
a part of that 3-year-old’s self-assessment in each of us. And, we are unlikely, when informed of limits
on our freedom, to put our hands on our hips and exclaim, “You’re not the boss
of me!” But there’s a strong strand of
that 3-year-old’s DNA of independence in our culture and in our own
hearts. We seem to like nothing less
these days than being told what we can and cannot do.
Into that culture of independence and rugged individualism, and into our own hearts, what might Mary say? Maybe she’d remind us, as her song this morning says, that “mercy is for those who fear God from generation to generation,” for God has “scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts” (Luke 1:50-51). Maybe she’d remind us of her Son’s command to love God and love neighbor first and then see where that pattern leads us. Maybe she’d encourage us to “[fill] “the hungry with good things” and to “[lift] up the lowly” (Luke 1:52-53). Maybe she’d remind us that we’re called to live “no longer for ourselves alone but for him who died for us and rose again,” as the prayer book puts it (BCP 379). After all, Mary’s life was about everybody but Mary. So, I think she’d put it like this: Given the chance to exercise power, empower somebody else.
1.
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/mary-the-virgin-mother-of-our-lord-jesus-christ-saint/
No comments:
Post a Comment