Today is our patronal festival, this church being dedicated to Mary, the Mother of Our Lord. There are three possible dates to pick to celebrate a church dedicated to her.

The first comes on 25th March, Lady Day, the Feast of the Annunciation. For centuries that was New Years Day and when I was a curate the church I served my title in had the ancient records which showed the date change on Lady Day. That stopped in the 1750s when the rather arbitrary January 1st was adopted - neither the beginning of a season nor following any particular festival connected with beginnings. The Annunciation often falls in Lent and our celebrations can be dented by Lenten devotions and the traditions of austerity, so it doesn’t always work well as a date to pick for the patronal.

The second day comes in the middle of August on the 15th, the day when we commemorate Mary’s death. That is the usual date to pick to celebrate any saint, but in Mary’s case this is overlaid with various doctrinal baggage making it less attractive. It also falls in the middle of the summer holidays so most people are away which rather dents its festival atmosphere. August 15th reminds us that celebrating Mary attracts controversy and she can be either a badge of a certain identity or a symbol to be overthrown. She is still upsetting the apple cart as she did when as a young girl in Nazareth she caused a stir by becoming pregnant outside of marriage. The gospel she announces and is part of can be scandalous and turns our assumptions on their head. The lowly are exalted and the mighty brought down.

Then we have today, 8th September, the day we commemorate her birth. September has a feeling of new beginnings, yesterday was the beginning of the Jewish New Year, it is a new term and school year. Life has got back to normal after summer lolling around in the sunshine - well when we could catch it - so we celebrate our church’s dedication to her name today. But what does it mean to be dedicated to Mary.

When this church was built in 1185 feudalism was the order of the day. Just like everyone had a feudal overlord, there was a spiritual equivalent. So those who chose Mary as the Patron for this church would have felt they belonged to her and hoped she would offer spiritual protection through her intercessions. Dedications to particular saints followed fashions, but I don’t know the precise reason why Blessed Mary was chosen rather than any other saint. Individual people also had their own affections. Some of these followed popular cults and fashions or local associations.

Eight hundred years later, the question in my mind, with the demise of the feudal system - more or less, is what does this saintly patronage mean today? As we read the lives of the saints they are an inspiration to Christian living and certain ones will speak to some situations better than others. They provide personal stories to hang our own challenges on; literally practical workings out of God’s grace in human lives; worked examples for us to use. I doubt many feel they owe a feudal allegiance to Blessed Mary today, but there is much in her story that can speak to us of the grace of God in Christ. Claiming her as our title is a kind of identity tag. So what kind of identity does Mary set. There is so much to her, one sermon cannot capture it all. So I will take our statue as a picture for some reflections this morning.

The first thing we may notice is that Mary is showing her son to us. Her right hand points to Jesus as she holds him out with her left. An ancient title for Mary is ‘the God-bearer’, literally the one who bore, gave birth, to God among us. She is the one whose ‘yes’ to God - her ‘let it be to me according to your will’ - allowed God to be born. As he was born in her and through her, so he is to be born in us today. We are called to allow the seed of the Spirit to germinate within us, to be fruitful and produce a new life that will transform the world, that will transform us.

Mary points to Jesus, not to herself. She has traditionally been taken as a symbol of the Church. The Church then is to show Jesus. We too are to present him, to make him visible. There is a sense in which God always goes before us, we don’t take him. But we can point to his presence in the world, point to the signs of his presence so that we may recognise him when we see him. Christ is present in the world in more forms that just whatever form he takes in the sacrament of the bread and the wine. Whenever two or three are gathered together there is the unseen guest in the midst of us. Whatever we do for our brothers and sisters, we do for him. God is with us, that is one of the central messages of Matthew’s Gospel. The spark of divinity makes creation tingle with expectation and gives human life the ability to reflect his glory, the glory of the Father in his Son.

We show Jesus as we join with Mary in singing the Magnificat, as we give praise to the Lord. We show God by celebrating salvation, by proclaiming it. Before this just becomes a piece of devotion we need to listen to the words of the Magnificat carefully. The mighty are brought low, the lowest are exalted. The poor have good news brought to them, the rich are sent away with nothing. This is a song that cries for justice, for a restoring of balance, for all humanity to be honoured whether they know the words and customs or not. It is the song that was sung by the scandal of a young mother on whom the eye of suspicion made two and two make five.

So Mary shows us Jesus and the Church is called to take that tag of identity and show Jesus through him being born afresh within us. We are called to the topsy turvy world of the Magnificat.

Then look at the child Mary is showing us. His arms are held out to embrace the world. This child-like exuberance invites us to respond in like manner. Love bids us love. There is desire and our hearts are dared to desire in return. It is almost as if this child is about to leap from his mothers arms and grab us round the neck, just like an affectionate child would do. How hard do our shells have to be to resist this love?

As he is held there, shown to us, it is as if Mary is a launch pad from which the love of God can set fly. The salvation being proclaimed here does not come against us, but asks to work in partnership with us. Creator invites creation to join in the work of grace and the work of salvation.

As a badge for our church’s identity Mary is not a bad one to have. As she shows us Jesus, as she brings him to birth, so we are called to allow our ‘yes’ bring God to birth within us. We too are called to show him to the world in how we live his good news, in how we sing the Magnificat in word and deed. We too are called to respond to the love that beckons us to desire God. As the angel said - ‘Mary hail, the Lord is with you: blessed are you among women’ - so he says to us. Hail, the Lord is with you: you too are blessed.

© Ian Black 2002

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