Today is one of those days in the Church’s calendar that highlights some of the differences that exist between the various denominations of the Church. In the Roman Catholic Church, today is kept as the feast day of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary: it’s the day when Roman Catholics celebrate Mary being taken body and soul, directly to heaven, at the end of her earthly life. In the Eastern Church, today is kept as the Dormition, or falling asleep, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and it’s the day when Orthodox Christians celebrate the death and resurrection of Mary. Now, as I’m sure you’ll all know, we don’t find these things in the Scriptures; they’re traditions of the Church that date back to the late 5th Century, and so, as they’re not found in Scripture, the Church of England simply keeps today as a feast day of the Blessed Virgin Mary and makes no mention of her death and resurrection nor of her assumption.
I suppose none of that would really matter if it wasn’t for the tendency of Christians to argue and fall out about the details of their faith. And, on the whole, it is the details that Christians fall out about. If we think about it, no one who can call themselves a Christian with any integrity, any member of one of the mainstream Churches or Christian denominations, falls out about the fundamentals of their faith, we don’t tend to disagree about the things we find in the Creeds for example; all Christians agree on those things. But we seem to find it very easy to disagree and argue and fall out, and even split the Church, because of the details of what various of us believe.
And unfortunately, that happens quite a lot when it comes to what people believe about Mary, perhaps especially in and between the Roman Catholic and Reformed wings of the Western Church. And that’s very sad, because it takes away from Mary the special place of honour she should have in all the Churches and amongst all Christians.
And Mary should be honoured amongst all Christians because of the unique role she played in the story of our salvation. She should be honoured by all Christians because she is the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ. But, if we see Mary, and especially what various denominations believe and say about Mary, as something to argue and fall out about, how can we honour her as we should? And if we refuse to honour Mary because we think that’s something people of other Churches do, how can we go along with her own words, words that we do find in the Scriptures, and that we heard this morning:
“From now on all generations will call me blessed”?
How can we regard Mary as blessed, as someone favoured by God and worthy of honour, if we regard her as a source of dispute and division in the Church? And if we can’t regard Mary with the honour she’s due, it takes away from us, or at least impedes, our ability to see her as an example and to learn from her example.
The Church, the whole Church that is, very often does talk about Mary as an example to Christians. They speak about her agreement to be the mother of Christ as an example of obedience to God’s will. The Church speaks about Mary’s role in Jesus’ miracle of changing water into wine at the Wedding in Cana as an example of faith. The Church speaks about Mary’s role in following Jesus during his ministry and to the Cross as an example of discipleship in the face of hardship and suffering. And the Church speaks about Mary’s waiting with the disciples in the upper room after Jesus’ Ascension as an example of obedience to Christ and of patient hope and expectation of God to reveal himself in our lives. And Mary is an example of all those things. But Mary is also an example of just what God can do through us if we are obedient and faithful and hopeful and expectant.
If we think about Mary, who was she, in worldly terms? A young girl from a small, insignificant village in Galilee. And Galilee itself was an insignificant backwater of the Roman Empire. It’s value to Rome was as a land route for grain shipments from Egypt and as a buffer state between the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire to the East. A measure of its importance to Rome is that they couldn’t even be bothered to govern it themselves but installed client kings to run the place for them. So, in worldly terms, Mary was a nobody from the middle of nowhere. And yet, because of her obedience and faithfulness to God, 2,000 years later, she’s known to and remembered and honoured by billions of people all over the world.
And it’s very important that we do understand that about Mary. It’s important we realise that, in worldly terms, there was nothing special about Mary, she was just like you and I and everyone else.
I know there is a teaching of the Church that Mary was born without original sin. Even without going into the problems with the doctrine of original sin itself, and Mary’s own profession that God is her Saviour, which we heard this morning, that causes some major problems. First of all, this idea seems to stem from a belief that it would have been impossible for the Son of God to have been born of a sinful human being. But that limits what God can do, and essentially, it limits what God can do to what human beings can understand. But in that case, how could Jesus perform miracles? And, more importantly, how could Jesus have been raised from the dead? So we can’t limit God to our understanding and that’s made perfectly clear in the conversation between the archangel Gabriel and Mary at the Annunciation:
“How can this be, since I am a virgin? The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Another major problem the idea that Mary was born without original sin causes, is that it raises some very difficult questions about Jesus. We believe that Jesus was both fully God, and fully human. His divinity came from his own being as the Son of God, but his humanity came from his human mother, Mary. But if Mary wasn’t like the rest of us, if her humanity was in some way different to ours, then wouldn’t Jesus’ humanity have been different to ours too?
And if Jesus’ humanity wasn’t like ours, that raises some very difficult problems with the whole idea of the Incarnation and with Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of humanity. Because, if Jesus’ humanity wasn’t the same as ours, how can we square that with these words we read in the Scriptures, in the Letter to the Hebrews:
“Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.”
And if it was essential that Jesus was just like us, it must have been essential that Mary was just like us too.
So, whatever the various denominations of the Church believe and say about Mary, it’s important that we realise that Mary was just like us because if she wasn’t, she can’t be an example to us. But if we do understand that she was just like us then Mary doesn’t only become an example of obedience and faithfulness, and hope and expectation, to us, she becomes an example of just what God can do in our lives, whoever we are. Mary’s role in the story of our salvation is unique, there’s no need for Jesus to be born of a human mother again, so God won’t give that blessing and honour to anyone else. But there are many other things that need to be done because God’s work on earth is still on going. And part of Mary’s example to us is that, if God could do such great things with this young girl, a nobody from the middle of nowhere, there’s no reason why he can’t do great things through us too because nothing is impossible with God.
Amen
You will find the Propers for The Blessed Virgin Mary here
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 