The Feast of St Mary – 16^th August 2009 – ‘My Soul Magnifies The Lord’

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.”

Today we celebrate The Assumption, one of the more dodgy bits of quasi-church doctrine that marks the point when, at the end of her life, Mary the perpetual virgin was physically taken up to heaven like the ancient prophet Elijah. Some of us have a few problems with that, so for most of the Anglican Communion today is celebrated as the Feast of St Mary, the role model for obedient servants everywhere and example of what all young girls and women should aspire to, to which you may want to respond, “yeah, right.”

You may not have thought too much about Mary in the past, many people haven’t. There’s something a bit too Catholic about her for some, and there’s no question that the Catholics pay a lot of attention to Mary, and for others there are issues with just what sort of role model Mary has been held up to be in the past, and I can certainly understand that.

The Blessed Virgin Mary has stood on a pedestal for many centuries. I was brought up in Waikanae on the Kapiti Coast and just down the road, on the hill above Paraparaumu, was and still is a giant statue of Mary, completely white, draped from head to foot in long flowing robes, and that’s the picture I grew up with. Mary the blessed virgin, Mary the Mother of God, Mary the model of purity and compliant faithfulness – the perfect woman put forward by the Church century after century.

The problem is the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, doesn’t really match up with the Mary we meet in the gospels. There we find Mary the young girl – probably about 13 years old, unmarried, poor and pregnant. As far as the polite society of her day were concerned, Mary was the undesirable, welfare-dependant teenage mother so often looked down on in our newspapers and on talkback today. Her supposed fiancée – who might or might not have been the baby’s father – has to beg for accommodation when they travel to Bethlehem, and the girl herself doesn’t even have the decency to be ashamed of her behaviour. Young, pregnant and homeless – is this the future role model for all women everywhere?

Well, no, not even the gospels actually tell the story that way. In Matthew, Mark and John we find Mary the obedient one. This is the Mary who does as she’s told, never argues or answers back, and sits quietly in the back seat letting someone else do all the driving.

We get all that in just a few scattered verses in three of the gospel accounts, and if that was all we got Mary’s place would probably be clear, but it’s not.

“My soul glorifies the Lord.” It’s in Luke’s gospel that we find the fullest account of Mary’s story and that account paints a very different picture of the young girl with a big future.

Luke actually introduces a number of women into the gospel story, many of whom are stroppy and outspoken. With Mary Luke introduces a woman who is far more than just an obedient servant. Luke’s Mary is a woman with a backbone and substance. IN Luke’s gospel Mary doesn’t just say “yes” in quiet submissive tones, but rather she shouts “YES” in a way that promises action and passion and a real hand in what is to come. This Mary understands the cost of saying yes to God and accepts that with courage and strength. How do we know that? Because Luke has told us so [9.30am: Because so far this morning we’ve been told so twice].

“My soul magnifies the Lord.” The opening words of The Song of Mary [which made up both our opening hymn and Gospel reading] – called the Magnificat from the Greek of that word ‘magnifies’. It’s a beautiful, moving and powerful piece of writing, and contrary to what we might expect from something that is sung regularly by Cathedral choirs and Evensong congregations, the Magnificat is also a truly radical manifesto, once described as “the most revolutionary document in the world.” IKn the Magnificat we hear a description of a new and largely upside down world, where the powerful are brought low while the lowly are lifted up, and the rich are refused more while the hungry are well fed.

This is politics of the kind guarantied to ensure a person is never elected. In these few lines we find described a world that challenges all the traditional powerbases in any community whilst upholding those traditionally ignored. These are indeed words of revolution and the all spring from the lips of that same young, pregnant, obedient girl. If we really want to know Mary, we need to hear her song.

Most of us, I suspect, don’t really want to hear Mary’s song. We like to hear it sung of course – a great choir singing a stirring rendition of the Magnificat is a wonderful experience – but it’s not a song we really want to hear sung on the streets or in our homes, let alone one that we want to sing ourselves, although I guess that depends a bit on which choir you sing with.

Mary’s song has been described as the gospel in brief, that is, in the Magnificat we find the gospel message itself compressed into these few verses, and that message might sound pretty good from one particular side of the street. Hearing Mary sing that the hungry will be filled with good things while the rich are sent away empty might sound great if you’re one of the hungry, if you’re one of the rich though – and let’s face it, relatively speaking most of us are – then this isn’t such a pleasant song at all.

“My soul magnifies the Lord.”

That word magnifies is the key to this I think. I could go into the original Greek and the root meanings of the word, but I don’t want or need to. We all know what it means to magnify – to make bigger, or perhaps more accurately to bring closer. When we look at something through a magnifying glass we don’t really change the size of what we’re looking at we just change the way we see it, we bring it closer. “My soul magnifies the Lord.”

Mary has said ‘yes’ to God – a yes that will take her to places she can’t possibly imagine. A yes that will leave her standing at the foot of a cross upon which her son is dying, a yes that will put her at the centre of the most incredible events in history, a yes that will ultimately make her so famous that two thousand years later a talented and perhaps brilliant preacher in a small town on the opposite side of the world will still be talking about who she was and what she said yes to.

Mary has said yes to God, knowing that to do so means being committed to bringing God and God’s kingdom closer, and as she sing her song for all to hear, she begins to do just that.

To say yes to God is to say yes to God’s worldview. To say yes to God is to say no to ignoring suffering in all its forms. To say yes to God is to say no to any gap between those who have and those who have not. To say yes to God is to say no to anything that pushes further down those already at the bottom of the heap. To say yes to God is to acknowledge that poverty is a problem for the rich as well as the poor. To say yes to God is to say yes to Mary’s song and to join her in singing it loud and strong at all times and in all places.

Today we celebrate the Feast of Mary, a strong woman and role model for us all. A woman who said yes, and in doing so changed the world.

May we be those who go and do likewise. Amen.