St. Mark’s
The Rev. Jamie Parsley
Luke 1.46-55
Let us pray. God
of love,
through your
most Holy Spirit,
Mary the
Jewish girl conceived your Son;
may his
beauty, his humanity,
his
all-transforming grace be born in us,
and may we
never despise the strange and stirring gentleness
of your
almighty power;
in your
mercy, we pray. Amen.
Good morning.
It’s pleasure to be back here again at St. Mark’s. For those who don’t know me,
my name is Father Jamie Parsley. I am a priest in the Episcopal Church and I am
currently serving as an Assistant Priest at Gethsemane Cathedral here in
Today, as you
probably have guessed, we celebrate the feast of Mary the mother of Jesus.
Now this is
one of those feast days that makes a lot of us non-Roman Catholics a little
nervous.
My very
Lutheran grandmother, who, as many of you know, was a member of this church
many years ago, would be somewhat upset I imagine to know that I am in this
pulpit this morning preaching about, of all people, the Virgin Mary.
Let’s face
it, when most of us non-Roman Catholics think of Mary, we think of how the
Catholics honor her.
Visions of
plaster statues in backyards, or on dashboards of cars or on the side altars of
Catholic churches no doubt go through our minds.
After all, as
my grandmother would say, they “worship” Mary.
Most Roman
Catholics I know deny that they worship Mary, though they certainly do not deny
that they honor her greatly and place a quite a bit of importance in her
intercession.
But I think
that stigma of Roman Catholics having the market cornered on the Virgin Mary is
still very much a reality in the Christian church.
The fact is,
all of us who are Christians should honor her and should remember at times how
important she is to our faith in Christ.
It is a good
thing to honor Mary and who she is.
And certainly
it’s nothing new in the church as a whole.
The honor paid to Mary goes
back to the earliest days of the Church.
In fact, it goes back even
further.
In today’s Gospel reading, we
hear Mary say, "From this time forth, all generations shall call me
blessed."
Certainly that prophecy she
made on that very momentous day when the Angel came to her and told her she
would bear the Son of God has come true.
Mary is by the far the most
honored saint in the Christian Church.
But who was Mary?
Well, when we meet Mary, she
is a simple Jewish girl. It’s believed that she was about fourteen when she
became pregnant and bore Jesus, which, at that time and in that place, would
not have been by any means unusual.
Outside of that, not a whole
lot is known about her life.
We know for certain of the
words she spoke to the angel Gabriel, to her kinswoman, Elizabeth, when she
visited her not long before she gave birth. But outside of the words we heard
this morning, there isn’t a whole lot we know she said.
The only other instance in
which her words are recorded are at the wedding feast at Cana, when she
instructs the servants there, regarding Jesus, to do “whatever he says to you.”
But the story of Mary becomes
very interesting in the years following the Gospels. It is here that we see the
fulfilling of her prophecy. It is here that we find that she truly does become
blessed for all generations.
If we don’t believe that,
then let’s take a look at the Creed which we will recite together later this
morning.
Besides Jesus, there are only
two other people mentioned in it.
The first is Pontius Pilate.
The other is Mary. It specifically
says, he was “born of the virgin Mary."
That’s an important phrase.
On one hand, what this phrase
says to us is that Jesus was really a human being. He was born of a woman, just
like all of us were born of a woman.
He did not simply come down
out of heaven like an angel, or like the gods of the Romans or Greeks.
He was born, like any other
human being.
On the other hand, the phrase
tells us that although he was born like us of a woman, unlike us he wasn’t born
in ordinary way. He was born of a virgin. This virgin birth puts a whole new
light on who Jesus was and who he claimed to be.
He was like us. He was a
human being, like us. But he also was not like us, because he was at the same
time God.
So, we can see how important
Mary’s role is in our own views of what we believe.
Without her, Jesus would not
have been able to come to us. She literally bore Jesus to us.
The Greeks call Mary the Theotokos, or God-bearer. And she really
is.
If we believe Jesus was God,
then she did, in a very real sense of the word, bear God.
Through her, God came to us
in the person of Jesus.
She was the Mother of God, as
hard as it might be to wrap our minds around that phrase.
Now most of us here can agree
with those statements.
But what about the role Mary
has in the Roman Catholic Church.
Although she may have only
said a few words in the Gospels, we all hear sorties from time to time about
visions some people have of the Virgin Mary, usually bearing some sort of
message to the world.
Some of you might remember on
old classic movie with Jennifer Jones called The Song of Bernadette, which is
of course based on actual event in
The Virgin Mary who appears
to Bernadatte did not look a lot like the Virgin Mary we heard proclaiming
God’s goodness this morning in the Gospel.
The Virgin who appears to
Bernadette in that film is no poor Jewish girl.
She is a beautiful, glowing
celestial figure who performed, and some say continues to perform, miracles.
Most of us shrug our
shoulders and either choose to believe or disbelieve a story like Bernadette’s.
But the fact remains that
Mary needs to be honored by all of us who call ourselves Christians.
So, what do Lutherans believe
about the Virgin Mary?
Well, here’s what one very
prominent Lutheran said about Mary:
"men
have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her 'Theotokos'. No one
can say anything greater of her or to her, though he had as many tongues as
there are leaves on the trees, or grass in the fields, or stars in the sky, or
sand by the sea. It needs to be pondered in the heart what it means to be the
Mother of God."
Do you know who made that comment?
That’s right. Martin Luther.
I think a lot of good Lutherans would be shocked to know that many of
the early founders of the Lutheran church had a deep affection for Mary.
For example, in Article XXII
of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession,
Lutherans testify that
blessed Mary prays for the church
Now listen to
that.
blessed Mary
prays for the church.
That’s a
present tense verb. She prays. Right now.
Those
Lutherans truly believed that Mary was in heaven at that particular moment
praying for the church.
The Apology goes on to state that Mary
is worthy of the highest honors
and desires
to have her example considered and
followed
So, the
founders of the
They
commended her as example.
Certainly,
Lutherans and Roman Catholics will never agree on everything regarding Mary.
There
will never be statues of Mary in Lutheran churches and I don’t think praying
the Rosary will become a popular pastime among Lutherans in the near future.
But
I think that reclaiming Mary’s role in the life of our salvation will become
more and more of a part of all Christians, not just Roman Catholics.
After all, she is, without a
doubt, a vital person in our Church and in who we are as Christians.
Mary continues to speak to
us, not in supernatural visions, but in her words recorded in scripture.
Remember what Mary said at
the Wedding in
This is the heart of Mary’s
continued role in the church.
She is the example.
Just as Mary said “Yes” to
the angel when he brought her his good news, we too can say yes to God and, in
saying yes, we can bear God within us, as she did.
Like Mary we can be bearers
of God to the world, to those who need God and long for God.
We too can carry Christ into
the world and let him be known through us.
As Jesus found in her his first
earthly dwelling-place so, following Mary’s example, he can continue to dwell
on earth within each and every one of us as well.
Amen.
