I don’t know if any of you have a favourite book of the Bible, one you read more than any other or just like more than any other, but if we were to do a survey of this question, it’d be no surprise whatsoever if the result came back that the favourite book of the Bible amongst you was the Book of Psalms. I do know that a lot of people love the Psalms and turn to them in times of trouble. I also know that the Book of Psalms is the most searched book of the Bible on many Bible websites. So it seems that, overall, the Book of Psalms is the most popular book in the Bible.
Whatever your own favourite book of the Bible is, it’s not really surprising that the Book of Psalms is the most popular. I’ve heard the Psalms described as the Scriptures in miniature because in the Psalms we find all the themes of the Scriptures. We find praise of God and prayer to God; judgement and salvation; prophecy and wisdom; exhortations to godly living and warnings against ungodly living; and we find every human emotion and condition of life described in the Psalms.
One of the things we read about the human condition in the Psalms is this, from Psalm 139:
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Psalm 139 speaks about God’s intimate knowledge of his people, in effect, it says that God knows us better than we know ourselves. But what does it mean to say that we’re ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’?
I’m sure we all know from the Scriptures that fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom and that fear of the Lord has nothing to do with being frightened of God but means to have a deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways. So being made fearfully tells us that respect for God and his words and ways is something that we have within us as human beings.
But to be ‘wonderfully made’ is a little bit harder to understand because the word ‘wonderfully’ doesn’t really convey the meaning of the original Hebrew the Psalms were written in. The Hebrew word ‘pahlah’ which we translate as ‘wonderfully’ actually means ‘to distinguish’, to mark as separate and different.
To say that we’re ‘wonderfully made’ then is to say that we’re set apart, it’s to say that each one of us is made to be different. It implies too that each and every one of us has been set apart by God and given our own unique calling. So to say that we’re ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ is to say that we all have within us a deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways, and that we all have our own unique, God given, vocation in life.
Of course, as we’re all only too well aware, an awful lot of people don’t seem to have or show any respect or reverence for God or his words and ways. But that’s no doubt because they’re never taught or encouraged to. It’s one thing to have a gift or talent, a natural ability perhaps, but if people are never told they have it and are never taught or encouraged to use it, they may never even know they have it. Indeed, in our increasingly secular atheist society, many people are being actively encouraged not to have any respect or reverence for God and his words and ways at all. And because of that, they may never get to fulfil their own unique, God given vocation, the thing God created and called them to do because they don’t even know they have one.
Actually, very few of us know just what our God given vocation is but nevertheless, if we recognise that we are fearfully made, if we do have a deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways, we may fulfil our God given vocation anyway, without even realising it, simply because we live out our lives fearfully. We have that deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways, and we live out our lives accordingly.
The Psalm tells us that we’re all fearfully and wonderfully made but today we give thank for and venerate someone who is a great example to us of just what it means to be fearfully and wonderfully made, and to live accordingly. Someone who did have and show deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways, and fulfilled their God given vocation because of that, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
For many people, the fearful and wonderful making of Mary began with her Immaculate Conception, the teaching of the Church that, in order to be able to carry his Son in her womb, God granted Mary the special grace of being conceived without original sin. Not everyone agrees with this teaching because it’s not in the Scriptures and it also poses some awkward questions about Jesus and his Incarnation. But if we leave that to one side, there’s no doubt that Mary was fearfully and wonderfully made. Just think about her words to the archangel Gabriel when he told her that she’d been chosen to be the mother of God’s Son;
“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
In those words we see that deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways of someone who knew that they were fearfully made, and who acted accordingly. In those words we see someone who knew that they were wonderfully made, someone who knew they’d been called and set apart by God to fulfil a unique vocation. We could say that Mary was at least told what her vocation was, so at least she knew what God had wonderfully made her to do, but it wasn’t an easy thing she’d been called to do, and it was her fear of the Lord, her deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways that allowed her to speak those words and fulfil the vocation she’d been wonderfully made to carry out. And through Mary’s response to being fearfully and wonderfully made, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was fearfully and wonderfully made in human flesh.
Jesus, of course was someone else who knew that he’d been fearfully and wonderfully made. We see that in the story of him being found in the Jerusalem temple when he was just a young boy. We see it in his answer to Mary and Joseph who’d been frantically searching for him for days;
“Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?”
Ultimately, his Father’s business, the thing Jesus had been fearfully and wonderfully made to do, was to bring salvation to the world and open the way to eternal life for us, by giving up his life for the sins of the world.
Whilst the Church of England calls this the Feast day of the Blessed Virgin Mary, according to the Roman Catholic calendar, what we’re celebrating today is the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the bodily raising of Mary into heaven at the end of her earthly life. As with the Immaculate Conception, this isn’t something we find in Scripture; it’s a tradition of the Church that dates back to the 4th Century. And so, as with the Immaculate Conception, this is a teaching of the Church that not everyone can agree with. But, however she was raised there, can we really doubt that Mary is in heaven? Can we really doubt that someone who fulfilled so well what God had fearfully and wonderfully made her for was rewarded with eternal life? Surely not, because if we do, what hope is there for the rest of us who may not fulfil, at least so well, what we were fearfully and wonderfully made for?
Mary is often called an example to Christians, and this is yet one more way that Mary can be an example to us. Like all of us, Mary was fearfully and wonderfully made. Like us Mary was given a deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways. But unlike most people, Mary lived accordingly and so she was ready to accept her unique God given vocation when she knew what it was, and she was prepared to fulfil it, regardless of what that might mean for her personally. As a result, Mary has been raised to eternal life. And so it can be for us. If we can live fearfully, with deep respect and reverence for God and his words and ways, we can fulfil what we were wonderfully made for, our unique God given vocation. Whether we know what that is or not, we can fulfil it, whether we realise we’re doing it or not if only we can live our lives fearfully, as Mary did. If we can do that, can we doubt that, like Mary, we will be raised to eternal life too, through her son and God’s Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?
Amen.
The Propers for the Blessed Virgin Mary (The Assumption) can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 