First preached as a sermon
at St Michael & All Angels, Croydon, with members of the Cells of the
Society of Our Lady of Walsingham in Croydon (St Alban’s, South Norwood, St
Michael’s, Croydon & Croydon Minster). Readings: Genesis 3.9-15,20; Ephesians
1.3-6,11-12; Luke 1.26-38.
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The
Immaculate Conception of Mary is a great gift to the Church and, indeed, to all
humanity. It is the most optimistic of dogmas, because it says that by God’s grace human beings can be freed
from the grip of sin, through our sharing in the life of the Word Made
Flesh: Jesus Christ - Son of God, Son of Mary - the incarnate, crucified, risen
and ascended Lord. This possibility of God’s grace first moved as Mary was
conceived and knit together in the womb of her mother St Anne.
Our
gospel reading today is St Luke’s account of the Annunciation, which is not to
be confused with the Immaculate Conception of Mary, although it often is: the
Annunciation is about Christ being incarnate within the womb of Mary, the
unborn Saviour, the Word Made Flesh, resting in the immaculate shrine that is
Mary’s body. And you will recall that when the pregnant Mary visited her cousin
Elizabeth, the child in Elizabeth’s womb leapt for joy as the Mother of the
Lord entered into her presence (Luke
1.39-45). That dance of the unborn John the Baptist echoes the unrestrained
dance of David before the Ark of the Covenant in the Second Book of Samuel (2 Samuel 6, esp 6.14). David danced
before the presence of God in the Ark of the Covenant; John dances before the
presence of God, in Christ, in the shrine of Mary’s body.
The
Immaculate Conception of Mary is about preparing the shrine in which the Christ
will gestate and from which he will be born; for which all generations will
call her blessed (Luke 1.48)
For
some the Immaculate Conception makes them queasy. Isn’t it too much about Mary?
Doesn’t it make out that somehow she’s not quite human, just a bit too perfect?
Isn’t all a bit Roman Catholic?
Too much about Mary? On
one level it’s nothing to do with Mary! It’s about God’s grace, of which she is
described as being full of: ‘Hail Mary, full of grace’, the archangel’s
greeting. On another level it is everything to do with Mary; she is the person,
the woman, chosen to be the mother of the Saviour.
The
initiative is with God in choosing
this particular daughter of Zion. That is why Mary is an exemplar of being a
Christian, one who is open to the movements of God’s grace, saying yes, not no.
After all, Eve – the mother of all the living, as her name means (Genesis 3.20) - was created without sin,
placed in the Garden of Eden and yet, with her husband, said ‘no’ to God and
‘yes’ to the serpent. As we see in statues of Mary, the Immaculate Conception,
she tramples down the serpent, reversing the transgression of Eve and bearing
in her womb the New Adam.
Doesn’t it make out that somehow Mary’s
not quite human, just a bit too perfect? There have been aspects of
Marian devotion that have seemed to disconnect Mary from being human. This is often
seen in art, but not in the New Testament or in the dogmas of the Church. Jesus
was ‘born of a woman, born under the Law’ (Galatians
4.4); scripture and dogma insist on the humanity of Mary (otherwise how
would we claim Christ’s humanity as well as his divinity?) Mary was a woman
living in a broken world, but one who was freed by grace to act in a different
way from Eve so that the bitter reality of human sin could be reversed.
What
is more, the Immaculate Conception is not about Mary being conceived in a way
that had no human agency. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is not saying
that the act of physical love is wrong, dirty or deficient. Anne and Joachim,
as husband and wife, conceived their daughter in the way that any one of us is
conceived; they slept together, they procreated, or whatever nice way we want
to put it. Mary was human in her DNA; a woman in her chromosomes; and a child
of God by grace.
Too Roman Catholic? The
understanding that Mary, daughter of Anna and Joachim, was immaculately
conceived is long held in Christianity, drawing from the gospels, of which more
anon, and wider early tradition. Orthodox Christians don’t like defining
things, but they still celebrate Mary’s conception as marking out her unique
vocation to be the Theotokos,
translated literally God-bearer, or Mother of God. Similarly, for Anglicans The
Book of Common Prayer (1662) may not use the word ‘Immaculate’ but it still
marks in the Calendar the observance of the ‘Conception of the BV Mary’ on 8th
December each year, and that predates the Marian Dogma of 1854 in which Pope
Pius IX defined the Immaculate Conception.
So
there is an ecumenical consensus that Mary matters and that she is a pattern
for Grace and Hope in Christ, as the document of that name from the
Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) put it in 2005. That
document shows a remarkable convergence of Marian teaching - perhaps ‘more
honoured in the breach than the observance’ - between Anglicans and Roman
Catholics. We shouldn’t ignore that not all Anglicans would assent to ARCIC,
and, we shouldn’t gloss over differences, but we could all agree, I hope, with
Pope St John XXIII, that ‘the Madonna is not pleased when she is put above her
Son’. ARCIC acknowledges that there are deep and important roots to what we
celebrate, today, in the Immaculate Conception of Mary:
In view of her vocation to be
the mother of the Holy One (Luke 1.35),
we can affirm together that Christ’s redeeming work reached ‘back’ in Mary to
the depths of her being, and to her earliest beginnings. This is not contrary
to scripture, and can only be understood in the light of scripture. Roman
Catholics can recognise this in what is affirmed by the dogma – namely
‘preserved from all stain of original sin’ and ‘from the first moment of her
conception.’ (Mary: Grace and Hope in
Christ: An Agreed Statement. ARCIC. p. 57-8)
So what? So
this teaching is agreed by Anglicans, with Roman Catholics, to be consistent
with scripture and understood in the light of scripture. Perhaps then we should
ask, ‘so what’? What does this dogma of the Immaculate Conception mean for us
today?
The
Immaculate Conception of Mary is about salvation, preparation and the human
body as the dwelling of the Most High. It tells us that the journey of holiness
is precisely to restore in us the image and likeness of Christ.
Mary’s
conception, without sin, points to us the possibility of the redemption of
human flesh as the dwelling place of God. Indeed in the Mass we receive the
Body of Christ into our bodies, such that they become shrines of God’s
presence. We are, as it were, a monstrance, a vessel that carries Christ, reveals
Christ to the world and imparts Christ’s blessing to all creation.
In
this season of Advent may we be prepared to receive Christ afresh in his coming
again in glory, as surely as he came into our midst born of Mary, Mother
immaculate, Mother of the Saviour, Mother of God. Amen.
