The Wedding Feast: Life, joy, belonging

 

A sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany: John 2.1-11

 

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What would the life of the Church look like if we were hosting the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee?

 

It may sound like an odd question, but I think it is one that holds a huge amount of potential when we consider our life and mission at this moment in time.

 

The pandemic has really shaken things down. We have to be honest. For many the pandemic made them reassess what was important.

 

I rejoice, and I hope you do too, that we are here today because we have found that our faith, and sense of belonging to Christ in this place, has sustained us and brought us through.

 

I rejoice, and I hope that you do too, that this morning, as has been the case through the pandemic, people have been drawn to Christ for the first time through what this church offers in worship, prayer and pastoral care. There is new growth in this church!

 

I lament, as I imagine you do to, that some people have fallen away. Perhaps they are out of the habit of coming to church or sadly, perhaps, they didn’t find that the nourishment, hope and life of the Gospel sustained them. It is also true that some have found new places where they connect with God, and we wish them well and bless them in that.

 

After that shaking down, the krisis time, what does today’s gospel give us?

 

It seems to me that some words from our Church Vision Day in June 2019 are powerful today as they were then, before the pandemic, when we said together that we wanted this church to be known as church that is ‘welcoming and open, where people find life and joy and feel they belong’.

 

That sounds a little like the answer to my opening question, ‘what would the life of the Church look like if we were hosting the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee?’ If we were a ‘wedding feast church’ we would be a church that is ‘welcoming and open, where people find life and joy and feel they belong’.

 

Let’s explore that thought through the lens of today’s gospel.

 

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Weddings in the days of Jesus were whole community affairs. They were not just for select friends or close family like now; the whole locality would turn out and be welcomed and feel they belong at the feast.

 

Modern churches have become a bit like modern weddings: the select few are expected; the select few are welcomed. Being a wedding feast church means that we throw open our doors, not just physically but in who we are and how we are, in our DNA, in our bones, in our culture.  

 

A wedding feast church says that what happens here is for everyone and it’s about finding life and joy. It’s where you belong. ‘Fling wide the gates’ as a psalm puts it, to let in Christ, the King of Glory, and those who come seeking him (Psalm 24). We invite, expect and welcome the unexpected guest!

 

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At the wedding feast in Cana they famously ran out of wine and it was the Mother of the Lord, Mary, who noticed this.

 

To be a wedding feast church means that we have to acknowledge when the wine of our own effort and imagination has run out.  That’s when we learn to be the church properly. It’s when we recall that our sure foundation is Christ.

 

At Cana the servants panicked when they realised the wine had run out. We are the servants on whose watch this pandemic has happened, but it is no time to panic or beat ourselves up about it. After all, the wine in Cana ran out because people were drinking it; and that’s good!

 

This church has served good wine, to be sure, for more than a thousand years, wine that is replenished in each new season.

 

A wedding feast church knows that new wine needs serving. A wedding feast church asks Blessed Mary to help us notice the texture and detail of the life of our church. Is the wine flowing? Is the wine souring? Is the wine running out?

 

Mary is the Mother of the Church, and through her prayers, she longs that her children are renewed, encouraged and drink deeply of the wells of salvation.

 

So she surely says to us today - as she said to the servants in Cana – present all this to Jesus and do whatever he tells you.

 

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Now is the time to turn for us to Christ and to be renewed in the life and mission of the church. The good wine is to be served as Christ’s hour comes. A wedding feast church is ready to drink of that wine, for it brings life; it brings joy.

 

The life is the depth of living that the Gospel beings. ‘I came that you may have life and have it abundantly’ says Jesus (John 10.10). St Paul echoes this, ‘take hold of the life that really is life (2 Timothy NN).

 

The joy is the experience of taking hold of life and finding it in every day of our lives. Many things weigh us down in life, but joy awakens us to the fulness of life through our daily existence and the challenges and threats to happiness.

 

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This coming week the priests and licensed lay workers of this church are going to reflect on the aspiration to be a church that is ‘welcoming and open, where people find life and joy and feel they belong’.

 

What will that look like for me and for my colleagues? What will that look like for the members of the church council, the PCC? What will that look like for you?

 

A wedding feast church is a church that is welcoming and open, where people find life and joy and feel they belong.

 

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A wedding feast church has a banquet at its heart: what the Book of Revelation calls the ‘marriage feast of the Lamb’. The marriage feast of the Lamb of God is the fulfilment of all things in heaven, of which we have a foretaste in the Eucharist.

 

In marriage bride and groom meet to become one flesh; in Christ divinity and humanity meet and become one in his flesh.

 

As wine is prepared at the Eucharist water is added and a prayer spoken by the priest which says, ‘by the mystery of this water and this wine may we share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity’. That is an intimate union.

 

At the wedding feast of the Lamb we become one with Christ, in our bodies, minds and spirits. In this mystical way we are welcoming into his open love and we find life and joy and the deepest place of belonging we can find, because we are at home with the Lover of our Souls.

 

Christmas Morning - Getting Our Priorities Right

Preached on Christmas Day at Croydon Minster.  Readings, Isaiah 52.7-10; Psalm 98; Hebrews 1.1-4; John 1.1-14

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I wonder what your greatest priority is today? The turkey, the presents, the Queen’s speech, seeing family?

 

A few days ago the message from the Chief Medical Office was clear: this Christmas decide on your priorities. What a good question at Christmas!

 

So what’s your priority then?

 

Priorities are about what we put first. By being here today what we have put first is to come to worship God in Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh.

 

For Christians the number one priority at Christmas is Christ. We come to worship him now, as many did during the middle of the night too.

 

All other priorities flow from that. For it is God who created the world ‘in the beginning’, who gives us breath and life through his Holy Spirit, and who shows us the way to be the people he made us to be, sons and daughters of the Most High.

 

Our faith tells us that when all is stripped away we discover something deeply precious; this is what we call hope, the bedrock, the priority of our lives.

 

God’s priority at Christmas, is God’s priority every day: his priority is that we, his creatures, make him [God] our priority. The Church Fathers speak of this ‘Royal Exchange’: Christ humbled himself to share in our humanity, that we might share in his divinity.

 

The grandeur and majesty of God is revealed in a totally new way. God is made known in the child of Bethlehem.

 

Mary’s child, God’s child, is born like you and me, born naked into the world, vulnerable and entirely dependent on others; first of all his mother, Mary, and also his guardian, Joseph.

 

For now the naked child is wrapped in swaddling bands, and he starts calling, drawing and wrapping people around himself to become a community of willing response, obedience, love and adoration: his Church.

 

We gather today in the footsteps of shepherds and Magi, of countless men, women and children who have heard the call of the Child of Bethlehem, and made their response to that call their priority in life.

 

What Mary and Joseph gazed on was the fullness of God; the normal, expected trappings of divinity stripped away. They beheld the Word Made Flesh, and saw his glory. His glory would be seen again on the cross when all his garments are stripped away and we see his saving love.

 

Light shines out of darkness, hope and blessing abounds and, however gloomy things get, the darkness will not overcome it. As St Paul reminds again:

 

‘It is the God who said let light shine out of darkness”, who has shone in our hearts to give the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ (2 Corinthians 4.6)

 

As our top priority every day, let us direct our gaze back to the Christchild, the Incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ, for he is known as Emmanuel, meaning ‘God is with us’.

 

Midnight Mass - Christ at the Centre

 Preached at Midnight Mass, Croydon Minster 2021, readings Isaiah 9.2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2.11-14; Luke 2.1-14

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In the birth of Jesus Christ human history has a new trajectory.

 

In the birth of Jesus Christ, the inevitability of human estrangement from God is halted.

 

In the birth of Jesus Christ, and our new birth in baptism, we can now see ourselves, and our fellow men and women, as sons and daughters of the Most High.

 

Without Christ we find ourselves wrapped up in our own ego-dramas, the stories we narrate about ourselves with ‘me’ at the centre.

 

With Christ we are drawn into the Theo-drama, the unfolding mystery and wonder of God – with Christ at the centre - in which we have a precious place and cherished part.

 

If you connect in anyway with the Christmas story of the birth of Jesus Christ, you have joined the Theo-drama, a movement described by Isaiah: ‘the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them light has shined’. (Isaiah 9.2).

 

In embracing our place in the wonder and mystery of Jesus Christ we are walking out of the darkness, into Christ’s marvellous light.

 

That’s the Gospel! Gospel means ‘good news’.

 

It’s the message too of our second reading, from the letter of St Paul to Titus.

 

Paul’s is saying that, because of Christ, it is not inevitable that we get caught up in a self-centred play of the power games and manipulations of the world, and the assumptions that there is no God, no hope, no heaven. Rather, we find ourselves looking beyond ourselves to the source of all that is good and pure and true. It’s the move from darkness to light.

 

We have come here tonight, in the darkness, to rejoice in the light of Christ.

 

‘That’s great’ some might say, ‘but look at the world two thousand years on from the birth of Jesus: will things ever change? There’s lots of darkness’

 

Just look at the gospel reading tonight. There are parallels with our own day:

 

In the diktats of Quirinius, Governor of Syria under Augustus, the Roman Emperor, we see overbearing government regulating the movements and lives of the people: tyrants abound in the world today.

 

In the shepherds we see underpaid labourers, working what we now call ‘zero hours’ contracts, doing anti-social hours in dangerous conditions: oppressive labour systems still exist, not least in the form of modern slavery.

 

In Mary and Joseph unable to find decent shelter, we see a vulnerable family excluded from the warmth, comfort and acceptance of society: in the ‘global village’ today, people are excluded from having a voice and agency and live in grinding poverty.

 

We find that all shocking: now as then.

 

But it is only shocking because of the Good News of Jesus Christ.  

 

It has not always been taken as read in human history that we care for the weak and sick and frail, the unborn and the young, the excluded and isolated. In past times, and in some dark places today, all those groups of people are tossed aside as inconvenient and getting in the way of the ego-dramas of the privileged.

 

When you worship God and see God in Jesus Christ - the very presence of God, the Word Made Flesh, as a tiny vulnerable infant, worshipped by shepherds in a cattle shed - then you get an insight into how the world cannot be the same anymore for creation is renewed.

 

The birth of Jesus, as our gospel reading showed, connects the whole renewed creation: angels representing heaven and what is beyond us; shepherds, representing the poor and the exploited; the animals, representing all God’s creatures; the coming of the Magi, representing those outside God’s first-chosen people - all now gather around the Prince of Peace.

 

Before Christ, ‘peace’ had come to mean something like the imperialist imposed truce of the ‘Pax Romana’ of Caesar Augustus, rather than the shalom of God, that deep well-being of life in God. After Christ we are drawn into the peace of God which passes all understanding.

 

At Christmas we can’t go about our lives in the same old way. We walk now in the light.

 

Mary, the Mother of our Lord and God, pondered all these things in her heart.

 

Tonight, this Christmas, may we ponder just who this child is. May we all continue to walk in the light and rejoice that we now share the divinity of Christ and he humbled himself to share our humanity. For when we ponder Christ, life and the world can never be the same again.

Mother of the Lord: Ark of the New Covenant

 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.

On Being Present: A Candlemas Homily

Preached as sermon at Croydon Minster on the transferred feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.

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The feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, the scene described in today’s gospel, ends the great liturgical cycle of the Incarnation - from Christmas to Candlemas - 40 days of intensive focus on the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of Mary.

 

At the heart of today’s gospel is presentation and reception. Christ is presented by Mary and Joseph; received by Simeon and Anna.

 

That action repeats in the liturgy of the Eucharist: Christ is present in word and sacrament and presents himself to be received by us who present ourselves in the temple to receive him.

 

But being present in the temple these last 10 months is not open to everyone. For very good reason some are present but in a virtual way.

 

The ideal is always to be physically present in church receiving the Body of Christ, being the Body of Christ, just as Jesus Christ was present in the flesh as Emmanuel, God with us.

 

But being present is not only about physical presence.

 

In the world of work and in schools a well-known problem is the opposite of being present and that is absenteeism. If you’re absent you cannot produce, you cannot engage.

 

There is another problem at work, at school, and in church, which is rather different but has the same effect. That is known as presenteeism. That’s when you’re present but not attentive, not engaging, or as they might say, ‘the lights are on but no one’s at home’.

 

In a pandemic being present, physically, emotionally, spiritually is hard.

 

This is desperately hard for us all at the moment. I know it myself some days, and I know others do too. As a spiritual condition it’s known as akedia of which some features are: listlessness; the inability to get motivated or engaged; putting off what could be done today to an indeterminate tomorrow; a vague questioning of God’s presence with us; lack of confidence about what the day will bring and what its point is.

 

There’s so much more to this than ‘Keep calm and carry on’. This is a spiritual issue demanding a spiritual response. It is about looking for moments fulfilled, not just ticking off the days on the calendar or clock watching; it is about seeing each new day as a gift to us and living it as far as we can to the full: you could use the opening words of Morning Prayer each day:

 

As we rejoice in the gift of this new day, so may the light of your presence, O God, set our hearts on fire with love for you, now and forever. Amen.

 

There is so much more to say on this theme, but for today let’s turn back to the Gospel reading to see what is going on. Simeon and Anna - tired, blurry eyed and feeling time was running out on them - are both patient yet eager eyed for God. Their hearts desire. Their hope and expectation is fulfilled. And they are ready to ‘move on’ fully trusting that God is present with them, in living and in dying.

 

May this Candlemas be a time when our spirits and sight are renewed and, knowing Christ to be present in our lives, may we present ourselves to him in faith and hope and love.

 

'Come to the Feast of Love and Transformation'

 First preached as sermon at Croydon Minster on the Third Sunday of Epiphany (Gospel: John 2.1-11)

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The wedding feast at Cana is the setting for a most wonderful miracle of transformation and new possibilities. In a celebration of love, a wedding, Love himself, Jesus Christ the source of love and life, is present as the true Bridegroom coming to be united to us his church.

 

St John calls what happens at Cana a ‘sign’: a sign points to something beyond itself.

 

So where does this sign of the miraculous transformation of water into wine point us today?

 

Water transformed into wine is startling and amazing to us now as much as to the guests at the wedding; it is a sign revealing God’s glory, prompting belief in the disciples.

 

The sign of water and wine points to our life in Christ as his disciples. In the water of baptism we are cleansed and born anew. The wine signifies the wine of the Eucharist, the blood shed for us on the cross for our salvation and transformation, in which we drink – in normal times – the life of Christ.

 

The sign of water and wine points us to the Cross, where we will see Jesus glorified, and water and blood flowing from his loving heart. His Mother, Mary, stood faithfully by that cross, seeing the water and blood – a sword piercing her own heart too.

 

And Mary herself is a sign pointing to her Divine Son. At Cana she spoke four simple words to prompt Jesus’ action: ‘they have no wine’. On one level Mary is simply observing the practical reality that the wine at the feast has run out. She is also speaking more deeply, recognising lives not lived to the full – they have no wine - and pointing to the heavenly feast, the Eucharist, where Christ is present and transforming lives.

 

In Christ lives are transformed. The lives of the saints bear witness to that. And closer to home, as a priest I have been privileged to witness moments of transformation in people’s lives and to walk with them as their lives turn around. Those moments are as miraculous in some ways as water turned to wine, as a person puts the darkness behind them and walks into the light as a servant of Christ.

 

The sign points us to be faithful servants of Jesus Christ. Mary says ‘do whatever he tells you’. That is a call to service. It is the servants, not the principle guests, who first knew what had taken place at the wedding feast. That calls us to remember it is those who serve the purposes of God in their lives in simple ordinary ways of everyday holiness, who first glimpse his glory.

 

So, the sign of water and wine points us beyond the incredible or unlikely into the possibility of transformation. The sign points us to see God’s glory revealed in Jesus Christ whose hour is now coming when he comes as the Bridegroom to woo, us his people, back to his loving, transforming heart. The sign tells us that we are invited to the wedding feast of love and transformation.

A mystery revealed and unfolded: an Epiphany homily

 A sermon preached at Croydon Minster for the feast of the Epiphany.

‘Lift up your eyes and look around…then shall you see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice…’

(cf Isaiah 60.4)

 

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The scene is complete.

 

Shepherds and Magi have been drawn together called by angels, led by a star and now adore.

 

They are safely in our crib, and we place ourselves - with them - before the manger throne of Christ in wonder and adoration, for God is made known in human flesh and we have seen his glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

 

The door of the Bethlehem stable, the door of this tabernacle, has opened to those who were not on the inside before, shepherds and Magi, you and me.

 

The shepherds represent those who not highly regarded but necessary to society all the same. They are part of the people of Israel, but on its fringes. They’re on the outside of the ‘in-crowd’.

 

The Magi represent people from all the nations, they have the allure of wealth and mystique, they are spiritual searchers. They’re on the inside of the outsiders!

 

Both, in their own way, transgress the boundaries of access to the God of Israel, just as God in Christ has taken our humanity so that we can cross into divinity.

 

That is the revelation, the manifestation, this is what the Epiphany is – Christ is made known to all people: Jew and Gentile; insider and outsider; near and far; familiar and stranger.

 

Up until the Epiphany the movement has been inwards, or centripetal, the presence of Christ attracting, drawing, sucking people in towards himself.

 

From now on Christ will be revealed in an outward movement, a centrifugal movement.

 

In his Baptism in the River Jordan, at the hands of John, there will be an epiphany; in the wedding feast at Cana he will be made known in the miraculous revelation of transforming love: an epiphany.

 

Mary, the Virgin Mother, is the thread that connects this inward/outward movement to Christ.

 

The star leads us, and the angels call us, in to adore ‘the child cradled on his mother’s lap’ (cf Matthew 2.11).

 

And then John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary point out to us who Jesus Christ is, out and about. As John puts it, ‘Behold, look, feast your eyes, this is the Lamb of God’. And Mary his Mother says, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’

 

We live this life too.

 

We are drawn in to this holy place with ‘angels and archangels and all the company of heaven’ to see, to taste, Christ the Bread of Life, to worship and adore, to offer ourselves, our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice to him.

 

And we go out to recognise him in the world he created and which he comes to renew, refresh and transform.

 

The mystery is unveiled to us, as it was to St Paul, so that with him we might ‘perceive the mystery of Christ’ (Ephesians 3.4)

 

Epiphany is about God’s initiative to make himself known - within the temple and in his world – and for us to recognise the Mystery and adore, wherever we encounter him, as Isaiah says, ‘lift up your eyes and look around…then shall you see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice…’ (cf Isaiah 60.4)

 

 

 

 

'Perplexity, pondering, presence, power & possibility: Mary & the Angel - a tale for our times

 

First preached as an extempore homily at Croydon Minster and written down afterwards (hence discrepancies in what the congregation may have heard and what I have now written!). The readings were, 2 Samuel 7.1-11, 16 and Luke 1.26-38.

 

‘Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word’.

(Luke 1.38)

 

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The encounter of Mary and the Archangel Gabriel is timeless and enduring. It’s a scene portrayed in art and music.

 

Yet what this young woman is being asked is earth shattering, reputation crushing and terrifying. If social media was around at that time Mary was going to be exposed to trolling and shaming because she has transgressed the norms of society and Law of Moses: unmarried and pregnant.

 

This passage of St Luke’s gospel (1.26-38) is one that could easily be brushed aside with a flippant, ‘yeah, heard this one before’. It’s good carol service fodder.

 

But it repays deep attention for these is so much going on here, as our parish Lectio Divina group discovered last week. Slowly chewing over its words brings out many deep insights.

 

It is clear that this reading speaks on different levels. There is the perplexity and response of Mary which mirrors the response any one of us could make to the call of God, and it maps how we might reflect on the dark times we are currently in. In short it offers hope, Christian hope.

 

There were five things that really struck me in this reading. They all begin with ‘p’ – I like the alliteration! - and can be remembered on the fingers of one hand.

 

1.      perplexity

2.      pondering

3.      power

4.      presence

5.      possibility

 

Perplexity

Mary’s response to the angel is perplexity (1.29a). It’s little wonder. What she is being asked comes out of a ‘clear blue sky’. She is perplexed by it. The call of God is often perplexing.

 

Perplexity is an appropriate word for our times. Everything is perplexing. Why is such and such allowed in this Tier and not that? I have waited since March to see my family and/or friends and now I can’t it is so perplexing for us.

 

Pondering

Mary’s response to perplexity is not panic (another word beginning with ‘p’) but pondering (1.29b). Mary is a great exemplar of pondering in response to major events: ‘she pondered all these things in her heart’ (Luke 2.51). Another word for pondering is prayer.

 

The point of prayer in perplexity is not simply a desperate plea to be lifted out of perplexity, although that is a legitimate prayer, it is also a ‘casting our cares upon God’. It is resting, nestling in the One to of whom we say ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble’ (Psalm 46.1)

 

Out of her pondering Mary trusts the call, perplexing though it is. In prayer we entrust ourselves to God’s care and mercy.

 

Presence

This is the hinge that swings us from our perplexity. God promises presence (not presents!).

 

As he promised in the first reading from the Second Book of Samuel God promises to rest, to nestle amongst his people. This presence is not restricted to a house of cedar but is conceived in Mary’s womb and available to all humanity. That is incarnation. Nestled in her womb God could not be closer to Mary.

 

And, remember too, in another classic reading from a carol service, the (same) angel promises that the child to be born will be named ‘Emmanuel, which means “God is with us”’ (Matthew 1.23).

 

God is with us in adversity. God, in Christ, is with us in these dark, desolate times.

 

Power

Mary is told that the power of the Most High will overshadow her and we see the power of Mary to embrace what God asks of her. She is not a victim of God or of circumstance, she is an empowered woman defying convention to honour God’s call. How impressive!

 

This power, what the gospel calls dunamis, from which we get the word ‘dynamic’, this power is God’s power to change and transform. Mary the simple girl of Nazareth is transformed into the Bearer, the Mother of God.

 

When  God is present power is bestowed such that we can become the person calls us to be. And it is this power that makes all things possible.

 

Possibility

How can this be? This is God’s power. The creative power of God that brought life into being, and you and me into existence, makes all things possible. What is desolate becomes inhabited, what is empty is filled, Mary is told to look at Elizabeth’s life, and we look at Mary’s life.

 

The human body, the body of this woman, receives and gives a home to the full presence of God, the creator, the maker of possibilities.

 

Perplexity then is a feature of human existence: don’t we know that at the moment? We can’t eradicate it, but it can be transformed. After Mary’s example, we begin in pondering and prayer. And the presence of Christ unleashes the power of the Most High to make new possibility of who we are and who we can be.

 

Receiving this presence, power and possibility is open to us daily in the Eucharist, where Christ comes to dwell in our own bodies in bread and wine. That sends us out to proclaim God’s presence in the world and assure all people that we are not alone, because of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, God is with us.