Festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary 2021

 

Festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary 2021

Lectionary readings: Galatians 4:4-7 and Luke 1:46-55

 

Today we hear again Mary’s song declared before us, perhaps declared over us. The words may be familiar, especially if it is your habitual practice to say or to sing Evening Prayer. And yet the words are rooted in a particular time and place in history, quite alien to our own. These are not, primarily, personal words in response to a personal salvation. Nor do they, primarily, reveal a universal principle of God’s nature, siding with the oppressed against the oppressor. Rather, these words, in the mouth of a young Jewish woman living under Roman occupation in first-century Palestine are a prophetic utterance addressed to the people of Israel at a moment when God steps in to act decisively.

This people, the descendants of Abraham, were called to be a priestly people living among the nations, through whom all the other families on earth would be blessed. Yet they had repeatedly turned away from that calling; had chosen to live in such a way that brought the Lord’s name, his reputation among the surrounding nations, into disrepute. Again and again, their God had sent the prophets to them. Again and again, he had handed them over to the consequences of their unfaithfulness, bringing down defeat and exile and foreign occupation upon themselves. Again and again, the Lord had preserved a faithful remnant; had heard the cry of his people in their oppression and moved to rescue them, to restore them. And now, God was about to act once again, in judgement. The corrupt religious and political elite would be thrown down, and a faithful remnant restored, through whom Israel would be restored as a priestly people.

The fulfilment of Mary’s song would look like the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, when Herod’s palace is burned down (the Herodian ruler of the day actually siding with the Romans in besieging the city) and the Temple destroyed, its stone walls thrown down into the valley below. A literal throwing down. And in the aftermath of judgement, the emergence of a remnant, of the Jesus community, that would grow and spread across the Roman empire, holding out such a light that the pagan peoples were drawn to it, drawn to worship this Jewish God, until the entire Roman Empire would bend the knee and bring their tribute before him. What flows from these words is Christendom, nations shaped, however imperfectly, by a philosophy of the human condition under the sovereignty of God conveyed in the story that unfolds in the Bible, now opened to more fully include the Gentiles; a society within which the Church served as priests, invoking God’s blessing.

That is what is going on in Mary’s song. A prophetic word that looks out over the following thousand years. But it is not our song. Oh, we still sing it, and we do so in order to be formed by it, but our moment in history is not hers. There was a crisis, a moment of profound judgement, and a glorious new chapter; but we are living on the far side of all of that. We are living in a post-Christendom Europe, among neo-pagan peoples who, folk religion rituals concerning babies and brides and the burial of the dead aside, do not much call on us to serve them as a priestly people. So, what, if anything, might these words mean to us today?

And then, the lectionary has paired Mary’s song with part of Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia, in which he confronts the desire of the Gentile Christians to adopt the Jewish law. Paul insists that the law has been fulfilled in Jesus, Mary’s son: that is, it has served its purpose, as a guardian over the inheritance of God’s children until they come of age; but now, in and with Jesus, we have come into our inheritance. But, says Paul, that freedom is not an opportunity for self-indulgence or promotion, but rather, we ought to use our freedom to freely take on the role of serving one another, for the whole law is summed up in the command to love your neighbour as yourself. Again, what might these words mean to us today?

Theologian Walter Brueggemann wrote, “The dominant script of both selves and communities in our society, for both liberals and conservatives, is the script of therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarism that permeates every dimension of our common life.” That is, we are shaped to assume that life may be lived without discomfort or inconvenience; that there is no problem, however complex, we cannot fix by our own ingenuity; that the resources of the world are available to us without regard to our neighbour; and that we will protect and maintain this system at all cost. This week has seen the publication of the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which spells out the global crisis facing us, at least some of which is now inevitable; but we aren’t prepared to give up our cheap flights to the Mediterranean, which is burning. This week has seen city after city in Afghanistan fall to the Taliban; but we aren’t prepared to welcome the refugee. No matter how bankrupt the dominant script, we do not want to change it; we believe that we can carry on doing the same things while hoping for a different outcome. Nonetheless, it will fall, and, in the long term, this may prove to be good for the world, but not before suffering for the poor and the hungry as well as the rich and the proud. Mary is no Disney musical princess.

In the light of a Mary-shaped hope, we are called, as God has always called us, to be a faithful remnant. To offer up prayer for our world, for those in power and those whose lives are impacted by those in power. And to act with prophetic voice, in what we say and what we do, in the choices we make for ourselves and as a community, resisting the temptation to believe that nothing we might do makes any difference. As Paul reminds us, to love our neighbour, not fearing the loss of what we might hoard for ourselves but drawing on the resources of heaven to bless others. Not as mighty rulers, but as children of a loving heavenly Father. And as sons and daughters of Mary—sisters and brothers of Jesus. Though not our song, the Magnificat is our mother’s song. May we so hear her words, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may sing a new script in and for our generation, in keeping with hers. Amen.