This church, not surprisingly, has a number of windows depicting Mary, the Mother of Jesus. The church is after all named after her and today we are keeping our patronal festival, our church’s name day. Some of these windows are obvious like the East Window, though you need good long distance eyesight to see it and possibly the ability to see over screens too!

Some are more subtle like the window behind the font. This one doesn’t say it is of Mary, but I think it is of the child Mary and her mother Anne or Anna. The clues for this are the lilies round the edge, the symbol of Mary, and the dedication to one Mary Anne Horsfall, who died in 1855 aged 19. Often memorial windows show the saints in someone’s name. The child also has a more elaborate halo, indicating she is viewed as the more important. If you can’t see it, come and have a look later. It includes a verse drawn from our first reading: An heir of God through Christ (Galatians 4:7).

The window is of a young girl with a devout pose of arms crossed across her chest as if embracing something very close to her heart. Her sandal shows a heart on the strap. The heart perhaps shows love and points us to the love of God which Mary’s subsequent child-bearing makes present and tangible. It shows devotion and dedication.

Next to her is an older woman, probably her mother holding a book and looking as if she is schooling her daughter. The book looks like a primer, a book of prayers, a common feature in one strand of medieval art, and perhaps she is schooling her daughter in her faith. So many have learnt their faith through their mother or grandmother teaching them to pray, reading them stories and generally showing them. I remember my theological college principal asking why the church is so fussed that it is full of women when it is the women who tend to make homes and introduce faith. His point was that in them we have in the pews the key players for nurture and stability! Often before a funeral I hear families talk with thankful hearts simply about their mother’s dedication and that she was always there when they came home from school and was the anchor that stabilised life. The Mothers Union was of course formed to support and nurture this kind of devotion.

But before we are lulled into too cosy a picture of domestic bliss, there is a radical side to this image. The woman is holding a book. This says boldly that it is worth educating girls at a time when that was not taken for granted, be it in medieval art or mid-Victorian art like this. Chances are the historical Mary could not read, so putting a book in the picture starts to push the boundaries of what a girl might do. This image of the Virgin Mary places her in a household that valued knowledge and learning, that opened the scriptures and prayers from the text, the word, not the aural tradition of rote.

Opening the word has of course the deeper allusion. Mary is the one who will bring forth the eternal Word made flesh, the child Jesus. In her the living Word will be born as it is to be born in all of us too.

So we have a mother and daughter, Anne and Mary, inviting us to meditate on how we come to learn faith and in turn mother others in their faith. We have the word being opened and its life breaking out in her and in us.

But let us look a bit deeper at this legend of Mary and Anne. The New Testament tells us nothing about who Mary’s parents were. We are not even given their names and certainly nothing about where they lived or what strata of society they belonged to. It is the Proto-gospel of James that gives us the story. This dates from the middle of the 2nd century and gives them the names of Anne and Joachim. The story is made up as a meditation and seems to be heavily based on the story of Hannah, the mother of Samuel, in the Old Testament. She was childless and promised to dedicate her child to God if she could only become pregnant.

The same happens with Anne in this 2nd century meditation on Mary in the Proto-gospel of James. Anne rejoices at the birth of her child. In the Old Testament rejoicing over the birth of children only tends to happen with boys. Sons are a blessing and girls, well they tend to be less visible. Here we have Anne rejoicing over the gift of a daughter. It is quite remarkable and because we now tend to value boys and girls equally, at least most people do, we can miss how radical this is. Mary turns things upside down from the beginning; the Magnificat is truly her anthem with its turning upside down of the mighty being humbled and the lowly exalted.

We have in the story of Anne and Mary, of mother and daughter, the bringing to the foreground of those who normally inhabit the background. We have in this legend rejoicing over the birth of someone who would normally have elicited a ‘better luck next time’ sort of comment at the birth of a daughter.

Then this image in our window speaks to me of the people who unknowingly play a part in preparing the ground for epoch changing events. It speaks of a plan systematically prepared and with the pieces slotting into place. The gospel of Jesus is the fulfilment of promise longed for. It speaks of an eternal plan to redeem the world worked out from the beginning. The same God who creates, redeems. We therefore have hope and can have confidence in God’s future.

Confidence in God’s future seems to be easily eroded and to be in need of being renewed in the Church today. I think one of the most powerful characteristics we can display as a missionary people is confidence in God’s promises and presence. This is God’s world and that is something we affirm. It is something that is just not believed and being people who have this hope in our hearts is a radical message to the world.

I think it is also a radical message to the Church itself. We seem to be too preoccupied with anxiety about the institution of the Church and therefore loosen our grip on this confidence in God. The story of Anne and Mary is shot through with confidence in God.

This confidence is a powerful message when terrible, even evil things happen, as in the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, this past week. One time honoured response is to rage against the God who makes a world where these things are possible. When we do this we are in good company, even Jesus cried to God as to why he had been forsaken on the cross. It is as we echo Jesus’ words from the cross, from our own cross, that we can begin to reconnect with the confidence of faith. On that cross God takes responsibility for the world he has made and the anguish of a school massacre is brought within the scope of the salvation plan, in which Mary and Anne play major roles.

The more I look at this simple window showing a young girl and her mother the more I find myself being taken to the heart of our faith in God in Christ. It speaks of how we come to faith and are nurtured in that faith, how we nurture others. It speaks of the Word being opened and its life let loose to enliven. The old certainties are turned upside down because we have confidence in God to trust to let go. Redemption comes from the same God who creates and therefore we can rejoice with Mary in God our Saviour.

© Ian Black 2004

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