12 Pentecost + St. Mary the Virgin

 

August 15, 2021

 Luke 1.46-55 

 + As you all know, I belong to a very strange, very mysterious sub-culture in the Church.

 Or maybe I should call it counter-culture.

 I am a very proud, very unapologetic follower of this strand of belief.

 And although there are some people who instantly look down their noses at it, or quickly stereotype anyone who claims this brand of Christianity, I proclaim it loudly and gladly.

 What I loudly and boldly profess is that yes, I am…Anglo-Catholic

 Actually, it’s not much of a secret.

 I’ve always been VERY open about that.

 And you can tell I’m Anglo-Catholic by the way I celebrate Mass or the things I say or the theology that I preach from this pulpit.

 I consider myself pretty Anglo-Catholic also because of the Virgin Mary.

 Which is why, today, although it is Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, I have chosen to preach about the Blessed Virgin Mary today.

 Because August 15 is also her feast day.

 And also because of the fact that I really love Mary!

 For us, today the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin.

 It is also called the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Feast of the Dormition (or going to sleep) of the Theotokos, the God-bearer.

 This feast day has a long history in the Church, and it is one of my favorites.

 And today, on this feast, I choose to preach about Mary because she has a lot to teach all of us as Christians.

 But first, we do need to acknowledge a few things about Mary.

 One of the big things is the fact that Mary makes a lot of us non-Roman Catholics a little nervous.

 Let’s face it, when most of us non-Roman Catholics think of Mary, we think of how the Roman Catholics honor her.

 Visions of statues in backyards, or on dashboards of cars or on the side altars of churches no doubt go through our minds.

 After all, as my very Lutheran grandmother would say, those Catholic “worship” Mary.

 Every Roman Catholic I know vehemently denies 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 or Eastern Orthodox having the market cornered on the Virgin Mary is still very much a reality in the Christian church as a whole.

 So, what about us Episcopalians?

 Well, for Episcopalians such as myself we see a Church without due reverence for Mary to be a pretty bleak place.

 In many Episcopal churches I’ve visited, there are statues or paintings of Mary.

 As we do here at St. Stephen’s.

 I even know of many Episcopalians even here at St. Stephen’s who pray the Rosary on a regular basis.

 So, I am adamant in my view that we should reclaim Mary’s role in our life as Christians.

 We should not fear her, or let her be pigeon-holed in some dusty corner that we imagine belongs only to Roman Catholics; nor should we “worship” her or hold her any higher than she merits.

 Still, 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 necessarily as she did to St. Bernadette, but in her words recorded in scripture.

 So, as you can see, we Episcopalians do honor Mary greatly and we love her dearly.

 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 very earliest days of the Church.

 In fact, it goes back even further.

 In the Gospel of Luke, 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 Gabriel came to her and told her she would bear the Son of God has come true.

 As you know, each Wednesday at our 6:00 p.m. Mass, we usually commemorate a different saint, mostly those saints that we honor in the Episcopal Church, but sometimes a fun, obscure saint no one has ever heard of.

 Lately we have been honoring powerful women saints in the Church.

 And it has been wonderful.

 Because, let me tell you, there are many, many powerful women in the Church’s history!

 But all of them pale in comparison to Mary.

 Mary is by the far the most honored saint in the Christian Church.

 As she should be.

 By honoring her in such a way, we are helping to fulfill the prophesy of Scripture.

 And we should never forget the fact that she should be so honored.

 But who is Mary really?

 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 (which we have learned in our Wednesday night masses was probably Mary’s Aunt, sister to Mary’s mother Ann), when she visited her not long before she gave birth.

 But outside of the words we hear in the Gospels, 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 ssys to you.”

 Which are pretty important words!

 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 in just a few moments.

 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.

 And he was born of a Jewish woman.

 To be Jewish, one has to have a Jewish mother.

 It is through the mother that one is a Jew.

 So, through Mary, we know and acknowledge the fact that this human Jesus was Jewish, which also is very important.

  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 an 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 the divine Son of God.

 And that’s probably the most important aspect of all of this.

 Mary bore the Son of God, the Messiah, to the world.

 In an ordinary way.

 But in a very important way.   

 So, we can see how important Mary’s role is in our own views of what we believe.

 In a sense, she appears to us as a kind of “hinge” in our understanding of Jesus.

 Without her, Jesus would not have been able to come to us.

 She literally bore Jesus to us.

 And in this way she is the prime example for us.

 It is a good thing to honor Mary, but more importantly, we should imitate Mary.

 That “Yes” that Mary said to God when the Angel offered the opportunity to bear Christ was an important “Yes.”

 It was the most important “yes” for us who follow Jesus.

 Without that “Yes,” where would we be?

 And just as Mary said “Yes” to the angel when Gabriel brought her  good news, we too should be saying “yes” to God.

 And, in saying yes, we too can bear Jesus within us, as she did.

 We too can carry Jesus within us and bear Jesus to this world.

 Like Mary we can bring to those who need Jesus and long for Jesus.

 We too can carry Christ into the world and let him be known through us.

 Just as Jesus found in Mary his first earthly dwelling-place so, following Mary’s example, Jesus can continue to dwell on earth within each and every one of us as well.

 In this way, Mary continues to be so vital and meaningful to us.

 This powerful woman has taught us to be powerful as well, but to do so even in very humble ways.

 See.

 Mary really IS important.

 And we should be grateful for her and for example in our lives.

 So, let us do what Mary did.

 Let us bear Jesus to the world as she did.

 Let us carry him within us where us go.

 Let us say “Yes” again and again to God in this world, and in all that God asks of us, even if doing so is difficult.

 And when we do, we know this fact:

 When we say Yes to God, our Yes will allow God’s Light and presence to be known through us to everyone we encounter and serve.

  Let us pray.

 Holy God, when you call us, make us strong, like Mary, to say “Yes” to all you ask of us. Let our “Yes” by a powerful “Yes” in our lives and in the lives of those we are called to serve. And by saying “Yes,” let us bring Jesus into this world again and again, presenting him to those who long for him and need him; in whose name we pray. Amen.