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 5^th 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

How many people suffer from travel sickness? Quite a few I would imagine because it is a common complaint. I’m quite fortunate in that respect because it’s something that’s never troubled me but I do know lots of people who do suffer from it and I’ve met some who it affects so badly that they’re very reluctant to travel long distances because they know how ill they’ll be. In fact, I used to know one man who suffered so badly from travel sickness that, when he stationed on the Shetland Isles during the Second World War, he wouldn’t go on leave if the weather was bad because the boat journey to and from the mainland made him so ill! But, if you’re one of those unfortunate people who do suffer badly from travel sickness, I think you’ll be quite surprised to learn that one man who shares your troubles, is the Apollo 11 astronaut, Michael Collins.

For those who don’t remember the days of the Apollo space programme, or who aren’t particularly interested in that sort of thing, Michael Collins was the member of the Apollo 11 crew who’s often forgotten. People remember or have heard of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin because they were the first men to land and walk on the Moon, but Collins is often forgotten because he was the one who didn’t land on the Moon; he was the one who stayed in orbit around the Moon. As a fighter pilot, test pilot and astronaut, you might have thought that Collins would be amongst the least likely of people to suffer from travel sickness but, in his memoirs, he admitted that, under certain circumstances, he suffered very badly from travel sickness.

What he found was that, whilst he was flying, as long as he looked straight ahead, he could do barrel rolls (that’s when a plane rolls round like the fingers of a clock) with no problem at all, he could do them all day long. But, if he turned his head sideways so that, to him, it felt like that plane was rolling end over end, straight away, on the first roll, he’d be ill with travel sickness.

That tells us something about why people suffer from travel sickness. It tells us that it’s not really the movement of a vehicle that makes people ill, it’s caused by the disorientation people feel when there’s movement coupled with the lack of a reference point for them to focus on. Because, as long as people have some fixed point to focus on, they can cope with the movement. That’s why Michael Collins could do barrel rolls in a plane with no problem as long as he looked straight ahead but, as soon as he turned his head sideways and lost his reference point, he became disorientated, he thought he was rolling end over end, and it made him ill. It’s the same reason why people who suffer from travel sickness as passengers in a car, don’t suffer from it when they’re driving. And we can use that as an analogy for the problems we have at times as Christians.

We know that our reference point, the thing our focus should always be fixed on, is God. And our compass if you like, the thing that keeps us pointed towards God, is Jesus. And as long as we keep our focus on Jesus and the things he taught us to do, we can keep God in our sights and keep our orientation towards God. And, if we can do that, we can cope with whatever problems might be going on around us. But, if we take our eyes off Jesus, especially when we’re having to face and deal with problems and difficult times, we can find ourselves in trouble because, once we take our eyes off Jesus, we can very easily lose sight of God and the problems around us can overwhelm us. In a sense, it’s just like being in a moving vehicle when we can’t see where we’re going, we can become disorientated and start to feel physically sick.

So, if we lose sight of Jesus and God in our lives as Christians, we can become spiritually ill. And we see some examples of that in our readings this morning.

In our Old Testament reading, we heard about Elijah who had to flee for his life form king Ahab and Jezebel. But Elijah doesn’t look to God for a solution to his troubles, in fact, we’re told that Elijah felt so badly that he simply wanted to die. It’s God who finds Elijah. And then, after God has found him and Elijah does go looking for God, God isn’t where Elijah expects to find him. He’s not in the great wind, or the earthquake, or the fire, God is in the gentle breeze, the stillness, the silence. And when Elijah’s focus was taken away from all the commotion going on around him, his own troubles, and the wind and earthquake and fire, and it was back where it should have been all along, on God, what does God say to Elijah in such a quiet gentle way? He tells Elijah to go back and carry on with his God-given task. And that’s something we need to keep in mind at the moment when we’re faced with such troubled times.

Over these past few months, quite a few people have asked me, ‘Where is God in all this?’. Well, God is there, God is always there. But if people are expecting to see God in the act of hurling a bolt of lightning or sending an all-consuming fire from heaven, or in some other unmistakeable, cosmic way to destroy coronavirus, they’re probably not going to find God in all this. So we need to look for God’s presence amongst us at this time in other, less conspicuous ways. And if we look to Jesus, and simply do the things that Jesus taught us to do, we’ll find God.

We also have people, understandably so it must be said, who are frightened at this time: just like Elijah they’re quite literally in fear for their lives. Because of that, some people are reluctant to return to church until ‘things are back to normal’. But the important things, the things that really matter about coming to church are back to normal. Those things have never changed, what did change is that we weren’t allowed to come to church to experience them.

And whilst we might have had to make changes to what we do in church and to the way we use our churches so that we can come back to church, God is still here, his Spirit is still with us, the Lord is still present amongst us in Word and Sacrament, and we are here to worship him. Is that not what we normally do in church and what we normally come to church for?  So we need to keep our focus on Jesus and on God and not allow ourselves to be disorientated by the troubled times we’re living through and the changes we see around us. 

I think, at this time, we can liken ourselves very much to Peter in this morning’s Gospel. We’re in stormy waters but, as long as we keep our eyes fixed firmly on Jesus, we’ll get through them to calmer times. But, if we get so distracted by the storms that are going on around us that we take our eyes off Jesus, there’s a danger that we’ll start to sink beneath the waves, just like Peter did. So let’s keep our focus on Jesus and on doing what he taught us to do, whatever is going on around us at the moment. If we can do that, I’m not saying it’ll be all plain sailing for us, let alone that we’ll be able to walk on these particular waters without even getting our toes wet, I’m sure we’ll have to do a bit of paddling at least, and maybe even some wading at times, but at least we won’t sink and it’ll keep us heading in the right direction, towards God.

Amen.

---

You will find the Propers for the 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 9) here.

When we were last in our churches, on 3^rd Sunday of Lent this year, I don’t suppose any of us thought that it would be another 20 weeks before we’d be able to come together in church again, to worship the Lord. But, as we know, that is what has happened. But even today, as we’re finally able to return to church, we’re still not able to do what we used to do and would like to do in church, and the one-way system, the no-entry signs, the changes we’ve had to make to our services and so on, are very visible signs that things are far from returning to normal just yet. And more than that, in our own area of the country, we’re returning to church under a shadow, the looming threat that a second lockdown will be imposed on us, in which case, our churches will have to be closed again.

Now, if we weren’t happy about our churches closing in March, I’m sure we’d be equally, if not more unhappy, if they had to close again but I think what would make a second closure of our churches even worse than the first, is the reason that it would have to happen.

The first lockdown and closure of our churches was the result of what we might call the random, unconscious action of a virus. But, a second lockdown and closure of our churches would be largely the result of the deliberate and selfish actions of human beings. Because, whilst most people have tried their best to adhere to the advice we’ve been given about social distancing, limiting the number of people we meet, and more recently, wearing masks and so on, a few people have simply ignored that advice and, with no regard to the welfare of others, and not much for their own either if it comes to that, have simply carried on as though coronavirus/Covid-19 doesn’t exist. What these people have said, and some of them have actually said these things on social media and in conversations with their family and friends, I know because I’ve heard and read them, is that they don’t care what anyone says, no one is going to stop them from doing what they want to do. But of course, as what they want to do, and actually have done, has been done without regard to the consequences, what these people have shown is that they don’t really care about anyone or anything apart from their own enjoyment; they’ve certainly shown that they don’t care about their neighbours.

And what a contrast that is with the attitudes shown in this morning’s Gospel. Today’s Gospel reading starts with Jesus hearing about the death of John the Baptist. Now, we know that Jesus and John were related, we think they were possibly cousins, and we know how it feels when one of our relations dies, so we have a good idea of how Jesus felt when he heard the news of John’s death. No doubt, what made it even worse was the way John had died, beheaded for speaking out against the king’s sinfulness: to all intents and purposes, murdered for doing God’s will. And that surely must have given Jesus a sharp reminder of what eventually lay in store for him. And so it’s no surprise that Jesus wanted to spend some time alone to grieve and to think and to pray. But that’s not what the crowds wanted him to do, so they followed him, in fact they actually headed him off because the Gospel tells us that they were waiting for Jesus when he got to where he was going. In the circumstances, it would have been perfectly understandable if Jesus had told them to go away and come back later, or tomorrow, but that’s not what he did. Despite his own situation, Jesus’ compassion for these people took precedence over his own feelings and over what he wanted to do, and so, instead of having the time alone he wanted, he went back to work, healing the sick, caring for others rather than putting his own wishes first.

What happens next is what we usually call the miracle of the Feeding of the Five Thousand but, if we read what the Gospel actually says, we realise that there were more than five thousand people fed. The Gospel says that there were about five thousand men present, but that figure doesn’t include the women and children who were there too. So there were a lot more than five thousand people fed that day.

And all these people were fed because Jesus encouraged his disciples to show that same unselfish attitude in caring for these crowds that he’d shown in caring for them. At first, no doubt thinking in very practical terms, the disciples wanted to send the crowds away to find something to eat, but Jesus said ‘No, you give them something to eat.’ I’m sure the disciples must have looked at each other and wondered just what Jesus expected them to do with five loaves and two fish.

The Gospel doesn’t tell us how many disciples were there that day, we know Jesus had  a lot more than the twelve we often read about, but even if it was just the twelve, five loaves and two fish wouldn’t have been a great feast even for them, so they probably wondered how far Jesus expected that to go amongst such a big crowd of people. But they did what Jesus asked them to do and handed them over to him. And if we think about that, what they did was gave to Jesus everything they had. They didn’t say that they had to think about themselves or put themselves first and keep these few loaves and fish for themselves. They may well have thought ‘Well, now we’re going to go hungry too!’, but they handed them over, for sake of others, anyway. It wasn’t much, but in Jesus hands, their unselfishness and sacrifice were enough to see everyone fed and satisfied.

So in this Gospel story, we find a great contrast between the unselfishness and care for others of a few, Jesus and his disciples, working for the good of a great many others, and the situation we find ourselves in today in our own communities where the selfishness of a few is working to the detriment of a great many others. 

As Christians, we’ve chosen, or have been chosen, to be amongst those who act unselfishly, and when necessary, sacrificially, for the good of others and so it’s up to us to set an example in this present situation. I’m not saying that our example will inspire others to follow suit because I doubt that people who won’t listen to either national or local government, to health professionals or to medical scientists will listen to the Church or individual Christians, but nevertheless, we should set an example because that is part of our calling as disciples of Christ. And that means that we shouldn’t be doing anything that might prolong or worsen the present situation. It means we should do everything we can to protect others, even if that means we still have to wait a while longer yet, to do some of the things we like and want to do. And it means we should do everything we can to look after and protect one another when we come into church too. That’s why we’ve had to make all these changes, so that we can look after and protect each other when we come to church.

I’m sure nobody likes the changes we’ve had to make and it’s not what we wanted to do, but it is what we’ve had to do so that we can come together again in church to worship the Lord. The alternative is that our churches would have to remain closed.

We must all hope that the selfishness of a few people in our communities doesn’t lead to a worsening of the coronavirus outbreak in our area because not only will that lead to our churches having to be closed again, but it will lead to further suffering in our communities. As Christians, those are things we can’t want to see and should be doing all we can to avoid. We might not be able to exert much influence over those who don’t care about these things, but if we do all we can to avoid them, then when this is all over, as it one day will be, at least we’ll know and be we’ll be able to say that we did our best to protect other people and care for them and that, in very difficult circumstances, we did our best to be good disciples of Christ and to follow his example by loving our neighbours as much as we love ourselves.

Amen. 

---

You will find the Propers for the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Trinity 8) here.