A
ugust
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…an Anglo-Catholic.
Actually,
it’s not much of a secret.
I’ve always
been VERY open about that.
And you
can tell I’m an Anglo-Catholic by the way I celebrate Mass or the things I say or the theology that I preach from this pulpit.
Though,
to be fair, I am probably a bit unorthodox to many Anglo-Catholics I know.
But
that’s all right.
For some
people, when I say Anglo-Catholic, some negative images might pop up in peoples’
minds.
Thoughts
of spiky, overly-conservative, misogynistic forms of Anglicanism immediately
come to mind.
And there
is a validity to that.
That has
been a part of the tradition.
But, I
quickly have to add that there’s also another very long and just as important progressive
strain of Anglo-Catholicism as well.
Some of
the greatest progressive, social and justice-minded people in the Anglican
Church throughout history were Anglo-Catholics.
It was
the Anglo-Catholics who labored in the slums of East London in the nineteenth
century.
Throughout
history famous Anglo-Catholics have also included none other than people like
poets Christina Rossetti and T.S. Eliot, one of the greatest Archbishops of
Canterbury (in my humble opinion anyway), Michael Ramsey and Frances Perkins,
who was Secretary of Labor under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the
first woman to hold a cabinet position in the U.S., just to name a very few.
And
modern Anglo-Catholics encompass such people as South African Archbishop
Desmond Tutu.
Anglo-Catholics
have a rich liturgical history, as most everyone knows.
We call
the Eucharist “Mass,” we like incense and vestments and all the other “smells
and bells” that go along with so called “High Church liturgy.”
But they
also have a rich spiritual history.
Two areas
of Anglo-Catholicism that I cherish above all others is the centrality of
belief in the Blessed Sacrament—and in the True Presence of Jesus in the Bread
and Wine of Holy Eucharist—and in the honor shown Mary, the mother of Jesus.
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—and every Anglo-Catholic, including myself—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—for Anglo-Catholics—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—including, yes, yours
truly—who pray the Rosary on a regular basis.
I also
pray the Angelus, which honors the Angel Gabriel’s visit to the Virgin Mary to
announce that she will bear Jesus, every single morning when I wake up.
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 says 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.