Among the members of my family is a lady who has a great liking for jewellery. Rings on each finger, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, she wears them all, and all at the same time. At one time she used to wear 3 different necklaces together. Now, you might think there’s nothing so unusual about that but the three necklaces she wore were all religious symbols. There was a six-pointed Star of David, a crucifix, and a cross. These symbols are often seen as having particular meaning. The Star of David is a symbol of Judaism. The crucifix is often seen as a symbol of Catholic Christianity. And the cross is often seen as a symbol of Reformed Christianity, or in common understanding, Protestant Christianity.
I remember one occasion, during a family night out, someone looking at these necklaces, then pointing to them and saying to the lady in question,
“Can’t you make your mind up?”
The lady glanced down at her necklaces, looked at me with one of those ‘Are you going to hit him or shall I’ kind of looks, and then looked the person who’d asked the question with a rather withering look and said in an equally withering tone,
“I’m a Christian, but you can’t have this,” slightly raising the cross,
“without this.” And lifted the crucifix.
“And you can’t have either without this.” And lifted up the Star of David.
“But this is the most important.” And lifted up the crucifix again.
After a few seconds, the other person asked,
“So are you Catholic then?”
To which the lady giving the same looks all round again, answered, in the same tone,
“No, I’m Church of England but this” and lifted up the crucifix again, “is more important than that because the man on it is more important than that.”
That is a true story, and it happened quite a long time ago now, well before I’d even offered myself for ordination, but I’ve always remembered it. I’ve remembered it because of the look on the lady’s face, both the way she looked at me and at the person who’d asked the questions. I’ve remembered it because it was a spontaneous yet brilliant answer, the kind of answer that proves Jesus’ words. That we’re interrogated about our faith,
“…do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”
And I’ve remembered it because it also shows just how mixed-up people can be about faith and religion. How they can miss what’s really important about faith because they don’t look any further into it than what’s in front of them. How they can make assumptions about faith based on their own knowledge and understanding, which is very often only limited knowledge and understanding, and even on their prejudices. And about how people can make damning statements about the faith of others based on their own prejudices and lack of understanding.
When we speak about our faith, we mustn’t ever lose sight of the fact that it is the Christian faith. It’s called the Christian faith, or Christianity, because it’s a faith based on Jesus Christ; the clue is in the name. And so Jesus Christ must be the ground and centre of our faith. Without Jesus there is no such thing as the Christian faith and if we side-line Jesus in any way, if we make other people in the story as important or more important than Jesus, whilst we might still have a faith, it won’t be a truly Christian faith. And this morning’s Gospel shows that centrality of Jesus Christ in our faith.
The Gospel begins by telling us that Jesus’ ministry begins after John had been arrested. Later in the Gospel, Jesus calls his first disciples. And so we see Jesus in the centre of the proclamation of the Good News of the kingdom – first John, who prepared the way for Jesus, then Jesus himself, who proclaimed the kingdom, then the disciples, who followed Jesus and continued to proclaim the kingdom after Jesus had returned to the Father. And whenever we think about our faith, we always have to remember this order. There were those who came before Jesus, those who prepared for the coming of Jesus, and there are those who come after Jesus, his followers, those who carry on Jesus’ work through time. But both those who came before and those who come after, point to Jesus who is the centre of our faith. Or at least that’s what should happen.
It’s a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless, that much of the division in the Church, is caused because people don’t keep Jesus at the centre of our faith. There are those who put too much emphasis on those who came before Jesus, and unfortunately, that’s often centred on the Blessed Virgin Mary. There’s no doubting Mary’s importance in the story of our salvation; she was the one chosen by God to be the mother of his Son, the mother of Jesus, our Lord and Saviour and the ground of our faith. But some people in the Church would like to see Mary much more highly exalted than she is already.
There are those who call her the Mediatrix of all graces and think all Christians should do likewise. This refers to an understanding that Mary mediates divine grace, God’s goodness and gifts to us, from the side of his throne in heaven. The obvious objection to this is that Christ is our mediator and our advocate, but those who hold Mary to be Mediatrix place her between us and Christ, to use a business analogy, Jesus is the supplier of graces, but Mary is the distributor of those graces. Now this is clearly not Scriptural and even Pope Francis, in 2019, said that we should not got lost in such foolishness.
But there are those who, in addition to Mediatrix, would also have Mary as Co-Redemptrix, or Co-Redeemer. By this they don’t mean that Mary is equal to Christ in his role as Redeemer of the world but rather that, through being his mother, her faith and obedience, and as Mother of the Church, she co-operates with Christ in his redemption of the world to a greater extent than all others. But the clear meaning of the prefix ‘co’ implies equality doesn’t it? And so when people begin to go down these avenues, whilst they might not mean to go so far, people will inevitably misunderstand what they mean and go further than the proposers intended. And before we know where we are, in popular thought at least, we end up in a murky world where we’re not really sure who is at the centre, is it Jesus, or is it Mary?
And of course, those who disagree with this exaltation of Mary can go completely the opposite way in response. I met and spoke to a lady just this last week who is vehemently anti-Mary. A lady who said there should be no statues or pictures of Mary anywhere in any churches because, and I quote, “Mary has nothing to do with it.”
When I pointed out that, as Jesus’ mother and so the source of his humanity, Mary has quite a lot to do with it, the reply was,
“That doesn’t matter. SHE has nothing to do with it.”
I wonder what Pope Francis would say about that, because that also is clearly unscriptural and clearly and undeniably, foolishness.
But if attempts to exalt Mary ever more highly have the potential to shift our focus away from Jesus and too much towards those who came before him, what that vehement anti-Mary attitude also clearly and undeniably shows is how we can shift our focus away from Jesus and too much towards those who come after him. In other words, towards the traditions of men that we usually refer to as denominations of the Church.
The clear fact of the matter is, that if those who’ve come after Christ had always kept him at the centre of all things, we wouldn’t have different denominations of the Church; there would be one Church, as Christ intended there to be. Because what is the cause of our divisions other than those who exalt their own teaching and their own ways above the ways of Christ?
I mentioned a few moments ago about the meaning of the prefix ‘co’ and the potential for that to be misunderstood when applied to the proposed Marian title ‘Co-Redemptrix’. But so many arguments and divisions in the Church have been caused by such simple misunderstandings. One person interprets a word in one way, another person interprets it differently. They argue about it and, because they’re both so pig-headed and stubbornly pedantic they fall out and go their separate ways. It’s happened in the Church, and it’s caused divisions in the Church, major divisions that persist to this day. The Great Schism of 1054, the formal split between the Catholic West and the Orthodox East, was caused by arguments about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, as the West argued, or simply from the Father, as the East argued. About whether unleavened bread should be used at the Eucharist, as the West does, or leavened, as the East does. And about who is in charge of the Church, does Rome have universal authority, as the West believed, or does Constantinople have equal authority, as the East believed? And these arguments were made worse because the West spoke and wrote Latin and the East spoke and wrote Greek. Mutual ex-communications, insults and accusations of heresy followed, each side blamed the other, the Church split along Western and Eastern lines and is still split in that way today.
But if we try to look at these things impartially and objectively, isn’t the real root cause nothing more than human pride, a ‘we’re right and you’re wrong mentality’, a refusal to back down or compromise, and anger and hatred because of all that? And yet didn’t Jesus say we shouldn’t ‘Lord it’ over one another, but be humble and loving and forgiving? And, if we look at these things in this way how can we see them other than a shifting of Christ from the centre of our faith and putting our own traditions there in Christ’s place?
Think about in this way, how often have we in the Church’s history and do we still today talk about the Catholic faith, the Orthodox faith and the Protestant faith, as though these were completely different faiths? But aren’t we all supposed to be of the same faith? And isn’t that called the Christian faith?
Amen.
The Propers for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Epiphany 3) can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 