Isaiah 61:10-11. Psalm 34:1-9
Galatians 4:4-7 Luke 1:46-55
Lectionary Link
The name of our parish is St. Mary's-in-the-Valley, which of course happens to be located in the Santa Maria Valley, so it was an obvious choice for the people who named our parish.
Today, is the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, and so it is appropriate for our parish to let this feast take precedence on the Sunday and feast day of our namesake saint.
I would like to entitle my reflections today as, " The Traditions of Saint Mary the Virgin." In the history of the traditions of Bless Mary, we discover that veneration and devotion to her has been perceived by Christians as being competitive with devotion to her son Jesus. We as inheritors of the traditions from the Western and Eastern Churches as well as from the Protestant and Reform traditions cannot avoid the controversies which have surrounded Blessed Mary in Christian piety.
Much of the disagreement regarding the status of Mary for all Christians and the world, comes from the Protestant Reformers who so venerated the certitude of the collection of New Testament writings, that they did not believe that God could do anything validly outside of what was specifically controlled the meanings of the official New Testament writings. They believed that the Roman Catholic Church was so full of innovations not verified by specific references in the New Testament, that teachings, practices and pieties of the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches had to be rejected full scale, including many of the traditions about Blessed Mary.
What Protestant Reformers easily forgot is that it was church traditions and historical process which led to the actual agreement of what books they thought should be in the official Bible. So, the Bible is a developed church tradition and Christians even disagree about which books and portions of certain books should be considered as venerable for establishing church doctrine and practice.
The Reformation was in some ways a by product of the Enlightenment, when the individual inspired person of Reason was crowned as being superior over group pietistic and community theology.
Until the Enlightenment and the Reformation, theology was regarded to be more about the poetics of piety, or the personal prayer life and the corporate prayer life of the church. Even the Holy Scriptures were regarded as the truth of devotional piety. Theological reasoning before the Enlightenment was an effort to unite matters of the heart and matters of the head, with matters of the heart being primary. With the Enlightenment, it became the habit of the Reformers to try to convert all matters of the heart into pure reason. Fundamentalism based upon preferring literal readings of everything, was an offshoot of this habit.
This feast day of Mary, August 15th, has been set by a controversial Marian event for much of Protestant Christianity, the Assumption of Mary into heaven without a normal death passage into the next world. In this Assumption Tradition, Mary joins Enoch, Elijah and perhaps Moses. Her Assumption is contrasted with the Ascension of Jesus, and in the logic of the piety regarding her Assumption, she did not experience a normal death.
As a preacher faced with so many traditions of Mary, all of which have adherents and deniers, what do I do to sort this out for us and not be divided by Mary but unified by her holy life and special role?
The way that I would suggest for us to appropriate and appreciate the traditions of Mary is to return to truth of the poetics of piety which is grounded in the prayer life of people. We can appreciate the devotional practices of the traditions of piety which have been generated around Mary.
One of the greatest truths about the traditions of Mary, is that she has been made necessarily the most profound correction for the patriarchal control of the Christian church world. Patriarchal paternalism in the church contributed to the widespread subjugation of women in the history of human experience. Even a church controlled by men was confessing the imbalance of masculine and feminine power by their elevation of Mary to the role of being a mediatrix, a special woman intercessor to approach Christ. The piety of Mary from her popularity in lowly people forced the church hierarchy to enshrine her place and value in their doctrine. The devotion of Mary was the triumph of the devotion of the lowly masses, which in turn forced the hierarchy to elevate Mary's role in the church's teaching. The heavenly Mary is like the earthly Mary at the wedding in Cana that ran out of wine. She went to her son Jesus and said, "Son, take care of the wine shortage." And he did. Mary has this tradition as a mediator with Christ. You go to Mary with a problem; she goes to Christ and says, "Take care of this my son." In the famous "Hail Mary" devotional prayer, one can see that the piety of Mary's designated Assumption makes her the intercessor at the threshold of the afterlife. "Prayer for us now and at the hour of our death." Mary says to Jesus at our death, "Jesus, my Son, see my child here. Let my child into your abode."
I hope that historically we can appreciate the rising role of Mary and the saints in their roles of intercession for us. What happened historically? The church became divided between the extraordinary Christians, the clergy and monastics, and lay people. Only the clergy were holy enough to consecrate the bread and wine into the presence of Christ. The consecrated sacrament became reserved as a holy presence. Only special consecrated ordained people could approach this presence. It came about in practice that lay people became relegated to receiving communion once a year. They needed the season of Lent to prepare to receive their once a year communion. The The Ascended Christ and the Communion elements were made too holy and too perfect to be approached by anyone except the priests. The priests mediated for the people before Christ. So what happened? A cosmic psychical reality check; St. Mary and the saints became the "approachable" intercessors for the populace. Mary and the saints became the practical mediators for the masses because the masses believed that Mary and the saints, particularly their local saint whose relics they housed, were accessible to them, in ways in which the masculine church hierarchy was not. They had become like those who guarded the holy presence of Jesus from the masses.
Now comes the Reformation and the Enlightenment, and suddenly the reformers are part of a very democratic revolt. There is no hierarchy; everyone can go straight to God and Jesus; they don't need the detour through Mary and the saints, and they don't need priestly mediation of the church hierarchy. And this can be true, and without suddenly needing to throw away the Communion of Saints and Mary. We confess belief in the Communion of Saints in the Nicene Creed. In a way, the Reformation decanonized Mary and all of the saints, pretending they were no longer necessary in the way that they had served in the devotions and pieties of the people. They treated engagement of the saints as competition with devotion to Jesus. This competition is based upon a silly logic. If I feel fine with asking my saintly departed Grandmother to pray for me and help me, why cannot I do the same with all who are members of the Communion of Saints, and especially Blessed Mary who embodies the church more than anyone?
As an Anglican and Episcopalian, I am part of the Middle Way between Protestant and Catholic traditions. I believe that we can appropriate all of the traditions of Mary in our piety. I believe the controversy comes because opposing people accuse another person's piety as not being true, not being real, as not have empirical verifiability in experience. This is the like silliness of someone saying, "My poetry is science and so it is true." And another person saying, "Your poetry is not science and so it is not true." The traditions of Mary have exposed both Catholic and Protestant malpractice in understanding the poetry of piety and the what we can actually believe because of the meaningful method of science.
The glory of the greatness of Mary is that she has inspired piety, the poetry of the prayers of adoration and imagination in the ceaseless effort to express love for another person with new language. And Mary has inspired new language about her; The Mater Dei, Mother of God, the Theotokos, the God-bearer, the Mediatrix. She has inspired art, the holy icons of the Theotokos which are painted by inspired iconographers who paint to allow a vision of what is divine behind the visible icon.
The tradition of Mary is grounded upon her famous song, the Magnificat. In this song Mary is a hero for the lowly, the despised, the unrecognized, the powerless people of the world against the the powerful people and exploiters of the world.
There is also the tradition in the pieties about those who were assumed into heaven, like Enoch and Elijah, and Moses who had an unwitnessed death. People with Assumptions, could be travelers in and out of visible and invisible space. Moses and Elijah reappeared at the Mount of the Transfiguration. And what person in history is more apparitional than the Virgin Mary? One can find all kinds of alternate reasons for apparitions, even as one cannot deny the sociological evidence of their effects and the interpretation of their meanings by people who experienced them. Fatima, Lourdes, Medajore, Guadalupe; are famous sites of these apparitions. And even if they can be diminished in high holy value, through the commercialism of trinkets and tourism, there is an undeniable sociological piety of the apparitional Mary appearing to poor and lowly people to help, heal and give comfort and significant dignified identity to people who do not have such lucky esteem. In inner heavenly space, the proud are cast down and the lowly are lifted up. And Mary's apparitional appearances are about lifting up the lowly, even if they get commercially exploited.
For me personally, I find that the biblical words about Mary represent the secret of the Christian experience. Mary is the paradigm of each of us who is to be a mystic. The life of Christ is born in us, not of our own doing, but as the original gift of God's image within us being activated and known as the birth of Christ within us. And it happens because we are completely overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, the pervading immanence of God being around us and in us. And we like Mary are those who keep assenting to this birth experience of Christ in us, as we like Mary say, "Let it be according to your word."
In Marian piety, since Jesus was sinless and perfect, it followed that Jesus had to have an immaculately conceived mother to bear a perfect child. But don't get caught up the logic of piety, by making the poetry science. It would seem that for Mary to be a perfect mother, her mother and father would also have to be immaculately conceived and such thinking would be an endless regress. The faith piety point is that just as Mary had to have a purifying act of God to bear Jesus, we ourselves have to be purified by having the Holy Spirit as the clean heart within us to bear the presence of Christ. We have to be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit to have Christ realized within us. St. Paul wrote that Jesus became sin that we might be the righteousness of God. This is the poetry of the immaculate conception of everyone who comes to realize the birth of Christ. All the poetic piety regarding Mary have spiritual meaning in our own journeys of the progressive revealing and living out of the birth of Christ within us.
Can we appreciate how Blessed Mary is the chief paradigm for us who are called to be those who are mystically inhabited by the life Christ?
On this feast day of Mary, I would invite all of us not to be worried about all of the traditions of Mary and don't get caught mistaking empirical reality for poetry or poetic piety reality for science. The traditions of Blessed Mary are there for us to use and identify with if they will help us become more aware of the experience of Christ within us.
Also, let us remember that Mary is the one who intercedes to cast down the proud and lift up the lowly. In our time the social and psychological icon of Mary does not just need to be a corrective for the needed feminine psychic balance in our patriarchal world; the blessing of Mary needs to be activated in women in every sort of calling so that their gifts can be made manifest, affirmed, and blessed, so that world can be blessed. Doctors, presidents, CEOs, nurses, mothers, lawyers, soldiers, priests, bishops, and whenever they have the gift to be able to do something; women can do all of these and more, and Blessed Mary is cheering them on through her intercessions.
Today Blessed Mary calls us to correct the world where women have not been permitted to share their gifts. Today, blessed Mary calls us to promote equal dignity to all who are treated as less and lowly in our world. Today, blessed Mary calls us to be more Christ-like. More than anything, Mary is not a competitor with her son Jesus, she is his most able promoter.
And with Mary's help today, we too will learn to be promoters of the Risen Christ who has been born in us. Amen.
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