Sermon: Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary

 Sermon. St Mary’s Little Ilford, 15.08.20

Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary

 

As I was saying…

As I was saying at our Patronal Festival last year…

 

What a ridiculous way to begin a sermon! Your preachers do know that sermons are not remembered (often not even by preachers).

And what a lot has happened since last year.

Even if the laws of time say it cannot be, surely it has been a decade since last year’s patronal.

So much has changed.

 

A lot of it (let’s be clear) hoped-for. The rectory is occupied, its garden available to us (here we are), and we have a new priest, to lead us onwards. And I will say what many of you have said, directly or in so many words: perhaps we then had not dared to hope that we would be led by one with the diligence, and love, and creativity Father Lee has shown. So, thank you, Father, for all that you already mean to us.

 

But the decade that has taken place since last year of course includes Coronavirus, Covid-19, and all the restrictions that have followed on from its arrival. All the adaptations that we get used to, only to have to re-adapt as new law and new guidance come through. And here I will thank you, on behalf of your clergy, for the great care and flexibility and commitment and love you as a community have shown during these difficult months. Truly, you/we are a community that coheres. We are in it together, and we do well at holding it together.

 

All of which said, as I was saying at the Patronal Festival last year…

 

What I was saying then was that  there are good reasons to call Mary, the Mother of Jesus, “the Mother of Gd”. And it’s fair to say, I think, that we as a worshipping community have come to take this title to heart. It is now a fixed and regular part of how we pray. Mary our Patron is the Mother of Gd.

 

To use the title is not without risk of course. If we did not know the structure of the Christian faith, then indeed it would imply that Mary is somehow older than Gd, as the maternal source of God, which is not at all what we mean. The more precise title is that Mary is the “Bearer of Gd”, is “She Who Bore Gd”, who carried and gave birth to Gd the Son. But “Bearer of Gd” or “She Who Bore Gd” sounds clumsy in English. And so we go with the more natural sounding “Mother of Gd”.

 

In the East, this is the principal title of Mary: the Mother of Gd (Bearer of Gd). She is also the All-Holy One, as the holiness she will have needed to be able truly to bear Gd the Son must be of a special order. My Greek dentist told me that, if we went out to play as a child. his mother would call out: "I Panagia mazi sou!", "the All-Holy-Mother-of-Gd be with you!"

In the West, while we hold all those things to be true, we are more likely to call Mary…

“Our Lady”. Mary is “Our Lady”. 

And that brings to light quite a different set of resonances.

 

It makes it that bit more obvious that Mary is for us. She is “ours”, not in the sense that we can tell her what to do, tell her how to pray. We don’t own her. But she is ours, in the sense that she is in our company, one of us, in that sense. As her Son enjoys our company – and that is at the heart of what we say and do here – as her Son enjoys our company, so she enjoys our company in heavenly ways, hidden from us.

 

That homely sense of Mary, Our Lady, runs deep in our culture. Think about it. In many, many places in this country if you were to burst into song (as I am not allowed to do): “When I find myself in times of trouble…” so very many people would respond unbidden: “Mother Mary comes to me”. So many, who have no connections with the Church at all. And, something else: in Cornwall there is another popular title for Mary: she is Auntie Mary. We are as interconnected as that. We are family.

 

I believe this is good, true, and welcome. But it also has its own dangers. It is dangerous if we think of Mother Mary, Our Lady, as being, well, mumsy, as if we can turn to her without any hesitation and without any reflection and demand a cuddle. It is not quite like that. 

It’s from the East that a bigger challenge comes.

Metropolitan Anthony of Blessed and Righteous Memory, one time Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral here in London town, once said that if we are to make friends with Mary (Mary, Mother of Gd, Mary, Our Lady), we need to be honest.

 

The very first thing we’d better say is: “Mother, I have killed your Son.”

 

It is a shock to the system, isn’t it? It is intended to be.

Perhaps you can, though, see why he said this.

If it is our sins that mean that Jesus must not only die but die at the hands of others, then the one we have killed is the child of Mary (Mother of Gd, Our Lady). So if, given this, Mary is one with us, if, in spite of this, Mary enjoys our company, that tells us something real about the Love of Gd - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - which is reflected in her.

 

Now, of course, you’re free to say that that is all nonsense anyway - the idea that our sins killed Jesus. It is a strange thing to say, no doubt about it, and the Church has not always been good at saying what it does and – especially – what it does not mean. But, even if you leave that aside, let us be clear that Mary’s story is one of a difficult, painful vocation.

A difficult birth of her child;

a warning at the outset that a sword would pierce her own soul;

a son who was always on his travels, hard to find, always stirring things up;

and, yes, a son whom she must watch die,

which did indeed pierce her soul.

 

This is motherhood, not in the sense that Mary likes to be “mumsy", but in the sense of one clear-eyed about who her child is, and the pains (with some joys, for sure), the pains she must endure.

 

Let me say it: what a mother!

 

It makes sense (does it not?) to see her as the conquering queenly mother of Revelation, who – very happily for us – is almost paired with the Warrior-Archangel Michael.

It makes sense that she it is who gives us the great victory hymn of the Church, the Magnificat, we hear as our Gospel.

 

Let’s give thanks for her motherly love,

which, more often than not,

took the form of strong womanly determination.

Give thanks for Mary.

Give thanks for the Mother of Gd.

Give thanks for the Bearer of Gd.

Give thanks for Our Lady.

Give thanks for Mother Mary.

Give thanks for Auntie Mary.

 

And let us dare to seek to follow her,

be it only in some tiny, unremarkable and unseen way.

Amen.