Sermon for the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, transferred
Luke 1:46-55
Aug. 16, 2026
This morning, as we’re celebrating the
feast of St. Mary the Virgin, which was yesterday, it seems like a good time to
ask: What does Mary have to do with me?
Maybe, if you’re of a certain age, you
might identify with Mary from the Beatles’ classic “Let It Be,” speaking words
of wisdom in times of trouble. For many
Episcopalians, especially with Roman Catholic roots, we might know Mary as our
intercessor, the one who understands our suffering and brings our needs before
the throne of grace.
For the past 2,000 years, the Church has
been trying to figure out how to understand Mary – who she was, what happened
to her when she died, and how to see her now.
In the 400s, early Christian theologians settled on calling her the theotokos,
“the one who gave birth to God”1 – a poetic way to capture the real
point, which is that is that her son, Jesus, is both human and divine. But giving Mary that title of God-bearer led the
theologians to wonder about Mary’s role beyond Jesus’ life. In the Roman Catholic tradition, there’s the
doctrine of the Assumption of Mary, the belief that she didn’t die but was
taken physically into heavenly glory, like Elijah in the Old Testament.2 In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, there’s
the doctrine of the Dormition of Mary, the belief that she did die but
without human suffering, like falling asleep, and that she rose physically into
heavenly glory after three days, like Jesus.3 And in heaven, however she got there, the
Catholic and Orthodox traditions would say Mary is now ruling with her son, the
queen mother of the sovereign Lord Christ.
For us Episcopalians, this morning’s feast
day isn’t named for the Assumption of Mary, or the Dormition of Mary; it’s just
about Mary. We don’t worry so much about
the details of how she got to heaven or what she’s doing there,4
focusing more on her earthly story and what that says about us.
In Luke’s Gospel, we meet Mary as a
teenaged peasant whose life is about to hit the wall. She’s minding her own business in Nazareth
one day when the angel Gabriel appears and says she’s been chosen to bear God’s
Son, the one who will “be great” and rule over Israel, and “of his kingdom
there will be no end” (Luke 1:32-33).
Mary, engaged to a nice older carpenter, has now just lost out on that
engagement for having become pregnant – and she’s lost any hope for her future,
since she’ll be an outcast in a society with no place for single mothers. Yet, from the start, Mary shows herself to be
anything but the meek and mild young woman in the nativity paintings. Instead, she asks Gabriel some pointed
questions about how she’ll come to be pregnant, and then she accepts God’s
assignment: “Here I am,” she says, “the
servant of the Lord. Let it be with me
according to your word.” (Luke 1:38)
Despite the debates across the centuries,
pretty much all Christian theology agrees on what that word theotokos
tries to capture: that Mary gave birth to the One who is both fully God and
fully one of us. So, what does that have
to do with you and me today?
Well, of course, our situation is not at
all the same as Mary’s, but I would say this: We, too, are graced with the chance to bear the
reality of heaven in our own lives.
Because God has a great sense of timing,
on my early-morning walk this week, I was listening to the podcast Turning
to the Mystics, featuring writer and teacher James Finley. He was talking about Teresa of Avila, the 16th-century
Spanish mystic and author of The Interior Castle, among other things. Teresa compares the spiritual journey to moving
from room to room in God’s heavenly mansion. Now, when I say, “heavenly mansion,” many of
us probably imagine it being “up there” somewhere, the Father’s dwelling where
Jesus promises to “prepare a place” for each of us (John 14:3). Of course, we know “up there” is a metaphor when
we talk about heaven, reflecting an ancient cosmology of a three-tiered
universe. Given that we’re on a ball
spinning through space, “up” doesn’t really mean much once you’ve left the
spinning ball. But the point is that we usually
think of heaven as being far removed from us – the distant land to which we
travel, God willing, once this chapter of eternal life is done.
But Teresa of Avila, and probably all the
mystics, and certainly Jim Finley, would encourage us to see heaven differently;
and you hear that in the title of Teresa’s book: The Interior Castle.
The idea flows from Jesus, in the
Gospels, telling his followers that “the kingdom of heaven is within you” (Luke
17:21). The journey toward union with
God is not about going somewhere beyond the world and the self we know; it’s
about imagining our true self, the soul, to be “vast, spacious, and plentiful,”
as Jim Finley puts it.5 The
dwelling place of the divine, the place Jesus is preparing for us – it’s here
and now as well as later, within each one of us in this frame of life, if we
choose to seek it.
That has profound implications for us as
we seek to live in the fullness of God’s love. As Finley says, “We think of ‘heaven’ as a
word we use [for] where God lives,” right? Well, “if heaven is where God lives, and if
God is living inside of your soul, your soul is God’s heaven. So, your soul is heaven in miniature.”5
But wait, Finley says, there’s more. If it’s
true that our souls are heaven in miniature – that our steps toward union with
God take us through our own interior castle – then, Finley says, “this earthly
embodiment of God’s heaven, which is my own soul, is vast, beyond what I can
compare.”5 So, this process
of growing in relationship with the Love that gives us life – it’s a journey we
take now, day by day, seeking always to know just that much more vividly the
heavenly Love that’s never farther from us than our own hearts.
Pretty good stuff, right?
So, what does all that have to do with
Mary, the mother of God? We don’t know
anything about Mary’s spiritual life, neither as a Jewish teenager under Roman
occupation nor as the mother of the One whom God sent to save us. But we do know that, tapped into the Love that
fueled her life, Mary wrote the poem we’re each still learning, the theme song
of the true self that is our soul.
We hear Mary’s song, the Magnificat, in
our Gospel reading today; but first, we need some more backstory. This very young woman has done nothing
special, nothing to earn God’s favor, other than simply being whom God created
her to be. I imagine she must have been a
deeply authentic person, someone who knew herself well enough to stand before
an angel and ask just how this divine pregnancy was going to work, anyway. Her heart must have been open enough to
imagine not just God’s saving love for humans in general but God’s deep love for
her – this particular teenager in this particular backwater of the Roman
Empire.
And that gift of knowing her own
belovedness is too stunning to keep to herself. So, Mary heads out to visit her aging, childless
relative Elizabeth – whom, it turns out, God had also given a unique role in
salvation history, being pregnant with the child who’d become John the Baptist.
Mary greets Elizabeth; and in their
shared wonder and delight that Love has come to dwell in their own bodies, Mary
sings, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” –
not just because God cares for the people of Israel in the abstract but because
God “has looked with favor” on her. God has “done great things for” her,
and “shown strength” through her, and “lifted up the lowly” through her.
This teenaged nobody carries heaven
itself. And, empowered by God’s Love
welling up inside her, she receives a foretaste of how Love lifts all the
lowly, and fills the hungry, and sends the dominating powers packing.
The stunning thing is that God wants to
give us that foretaste of heavenly Love, too. This song of the true self, this song of the
soul, is not just Mary’s but ours to claim, as well. Pregnant with Jesus, Mary literally bears God
within her. But pregnant with Love, so
do we. Go back to the words of the
writer Jim Finley: Your soul is heaven
in miniature, one of the millions of mansions in which God is pleased to dwell.
That’s what we’re made for – not just to
be productive, not even just to be good, but to be vessels of heaven on earth. In Jesus, God’s Love “became flesh and dwelt
among us” (John 1:14); and that pattern continues in you and me. Who am I to host heaven, you might ask? Who am I to bear the Son of God, Mary
definitely asked. And God says, “You are
worthy because I made you. You are
worthy because I love you. You are
worthy because I want nothing so much as for you to love me back. The more you explore heaven within,” God says,
“the more you’ll find my home is yours, as well.”
Incarnation was no one-and-done magic trick. God still comes seeking a dwelling place deep within the beloved. The shock is, that beloved is you. Your soul exists to hold heaven itself. It just might be worth opening the door to that interior castle and spending some time going room to room.
1.
“Theotokos.”
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd edition.
London: Oxford University Press, 1997. 1607.
2.
Armentrout,
Don S., and Robert Boak Slocum, eds. “Assumption of Mary.” An Episcopal
Dictionary of the Church. Available at: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/assumption-of-mary/.
Accessed Aug. 15, 2026.
3.
“Dormition
of the Mother of God.” Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormition_of_the_Mother_of_God.
Accessed Aug. 15, 2026.
4.
Armentrout,
Don S., and Robert Boak Slocum, eds. “Mary the Virgin, Mother of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, Saint.” An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church. Available at: https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/mary-the-virgin-mother-of-our-lord-jesus-christ-saint/.
Accessed Aug. 15, 2026.
5.
Finley,
James, and Kirsten Oates. “Dialogue: The Second Mansion.” Season 2, episode 5
of Turning to the Mystics from the Center for Action and Contemplation.
Available at https://cac.org/podcast/turning-to-the-mystics/.
Accessed Aug. 15, 2026.
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