Preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on the fourth Sunday of Advent, 2021. Gospel: Luke 1.39-45
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In our gospel today we see a
most beautiful scene. It combines energy and serenity. It is a thumbnail
illustration of some really important aspects of the Christian spiritual life.
Spiritual energy combined with spiritual serenity.
The energy is that of Mary who
sets out with haste from her encounter with the archangel Gabriel to share this
wonderful mystery! It is of John the Baptist, the child in his mother’s womb,
who leaps for joy in the presence of Mary and her child! It is of Elizabeth who
exclaims a loud cry of proclamation, and becomes the first to articulate that
Mary is Mother of the Lord!
And what of the serenity? It
is the serenity of Jesus Christ, the still centre of the presence of the Most
High in a tumultuous world. This is the serenity of Jesus who sleeps in the
storm on the Sea of Galilee, and embodies the peace, the Shalom, of God.
So where do we go with this
gospel scene? What does it speak to us of our lives?
First it has to take us to
Christ. He is the heart of this scene even though no action or utterance of his
is described, merely his presence; that is enough.
The energy of the scene draws
solely from Christ’s presence and serenity. This might help us see the need to
pay attention to Christ, to orientate our lives to notice his presence in our
midst and recognise those who bear his light and life.
That’s what Elizabeth and John
saw. Elizabeth found herself overcome by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit which
inspired her to ‘exclaim with a loud cry’, ‘Blessed are you, Mary, among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb’. These Spirit given words, form the
bedrock of the great and ancient prayer the Hail Mary, which combines the
Archangel’s greeting and Elizabeth’s words: ‘Hail Mary, full of grace the Lord
is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst
women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus’.
It’s Elizabeth, not a Pope or
Church Council, who makes the first dogmatic statement of who Mary is: Mary is
the mother of the Lord.
The unborn, yet totally
spiritually attuned, John makes this recognition too. This clearly isn’t a run
of the mill foetal kick. Elizabeth the pregnant mother knows it is more. She
connects her child’s leap for joy with Mary’s arrival.
And this takes us into rich
and fertile Biblical territory.
In the second book of Samuel
there is an intriguing episode. The ark of the covenant was being taken from a
town called Obed-edom to the city of David, Jerusalem. King David, the shepherd
king (from Bethlehem, remember), offered sacrifices before the Ark and then
‘David danced before the LORD with all his might. And David was wearing a linen
ephod (2 Samuel 6.14).
So what of the Ark and the
linen ephod?
The Ark of the Covenant was
the vessel, the box, effectively, that contained the stone tablets of the
commandments, Aaron’s rod (a miraculous wooden staff) and manna from the
wilderness, the bread shown to the people. For the Israelites the Ark contained
the most holy of things, the presence of the Most High.
The linen ephod is the
vestment, the robe, of the high priest. David was claiming priesthood. By heritage
John the Baptist was a priest as was his father Zechariah.
Yet John knows that all that
is contained in the Ark of the Covenant – Law, the wooden rod that buds, the
Bread – everything in the Ark before which David danced is fulfilled in the
true High Priest, Jesus Christ himself: John knows that Jesus is the New
Covenant; John knows that just as the wood of Aaron’s rod budded into life, so
the wood of the cross becomes the source of life and salvation; John knows that
the Bread of Life is not the manna that goes stale, but Jesus Christ who calls
men and women into abundant life.
Now if that is who Jesus is,
the Holy Presence in the Ark, what, or rather who, is the Ark of the New
Covenant?
The answer is Mary. This is an
answer from the earliest times, for example St. Hippolytus (c. 170 - c. 236),
who writes:
At
that time, the Saviour coming from the Virgin, the Ark, brought forth His own
Body into the world from that Ark, which was gilded with pure gold within by
the Word, and without by the Holy Ghost.
Mary’s body is the bearer of
the fulness of the presence of God. She is rightly the Ark of the New Covenant
because within her body is the fullness of the Divine Presence, the Incarnate
Lord.
Elizabeth knew that and
declared it. John the Baptist knew that and danced before her and her unborn
Son.
Where do we go with all this?
First, to acknowledge Mary as
the Ark of the New Covenant and proclaim her ‘Mother of our Lord and God’
places us with Christians through the millennia, from Elizabeth and John
onwards. What we say of Mary is always in relation to Christ. Devotion to Mary
always takes us to Christ, in moments of salvation: his Incarnation; Christ’s
miracles; his passion on the cross; his Resurrection; his Ascension; the
descent of the Holy Spirit; the promise of heaven.
Secondly, it acknowledges the
human body to be worthy of bearing Christ. Our culture seems intent on
splitting human identity in two: the pure me, my spirit or mind, and the less
than ideal me, my body, my physicality with all its limitations and
distortions. There is a lot of talk today about being ‘body-affirming’: the
Incarnation of Christ which is at the heart of the Christmas proclamation is
body, mind and spirit together-affirming. Christ the redeems the whole person.
That’s why our expression of faith is embodied. We don’t just think our way to
salvation, we speak it, we enact it in acts of devotion and service to God and
neighbour.
Finally, we find Christ to be
at the heart of all things, the serene presence who dwells in Mary’s body. We
place ourselves in his presence now to receive his presence now in the way he
promises to be with us in his Body, in this sacrament. We make Mary’s ‘yes’ her
‘let it be to me according to your word’ our own. We become bearers of Christ,
who give birth to him in the world, having received him and welcomed him into
our lives.
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