Advent 4
Year B 2017

Sunday 24th December

Luke 1:26-38
Mary, Motherhood, and God’s Holy Law

Life in our household is always very full on at this time of year. I try to avoid the word ‘busy’ which can seem puffed full of self importance. ‘Busy’ people are of course ‘ the people who really count!’ However this year we find ourselves more than usually working every hour that the Good God provides for us as we prepare not only for Christmas, but also for a wedding.

Both of course are hugely important, both have their traditions which MUST be observed. So it is for example that tomorrow morning, I will risk early indigestion eating home baked fruit toast with lashings of butter, washed down with orange juice. Weddings too come with ‘observances’ central to which are ‘the vows’. I was somewhat alarmed some years ago when asked ‘in my professional capacity’ ‘why we cannot make up our own vows?’ To which the simplest answer at least back in England was ‘Church law does not allow it’ – here it is a little less clear, so perhaps the more helpful ‘because the morning after you’re married, if asked to write down your vows you’d probably not be able to remember them and might want to change them’

In marriage, the man and the woman make their vows ‘in the sight of Almighty God and the presence of the congregation, and this is made clear in the vows which end ‘According to God’s Holy Law’. So, the other evening I was asked by one about to be married, ’What does that mean? “According to God’s Holy Law”’

Of course we have a tendency in this day and age to think of ‘God’s Holy Law’ in terms of what might often seem like ‘an arbitrary set of rules’, but I do not think that this is either right, nor helpful. Rather God’s Holy Law is a Revelation of God in Jesus, and the shape of form of our existence within the Creation.
To put it another way, God’s Holy Law is the Revelation of ‘The Grain of the Universe’ – in other words when we follow it we reveal something of the Nature of What Is, The Creation, and thereby also the mind of the Creator, the Mind of God.

And so to Mary. Mary it must be said, and may the Good God have mercy upon us, has become a most uncomfortable figure for so many in the modern world. Good Protestants that we are, even if we believe the words of the Creed regarding her Virginity, we tend to think that the veneration of Mary especially within the Catholic Church is overdone!! I know that that was most definitely my own perception and after all, I Knew! I had taught in a working class Catholic High School as a very Correct Protestant, and all the excesses I was so sure were true, behold, there they were . . . there’s none so blind as those who think they can see!
My – mainly Catholic – colleagues, knew of my discomfort and would use every opportunity to tease me, not least when during some building work my immediate superior had an 8 foot high statue of The Queen of Heaven, which had to be temporarily re-sited, temporarily re-sited beside the desk in my office “where our Lady can keep an eye on you, Eric”.

Of course, if I was a Really good Protestant, I might have had more pause for thought in my self righteous judgement of Catholicism with all its nonsense, after all who was it who said “the Veneration of Mary is inscribed deep in the human heart”, but Martin Luther himself.

And well we should venerate Mary. As my spiritual director told me, when I confessed to me a troubling sense of her presence and Significance, ‘Well Eric, She Is the Mother of God’

Holy Mary, Mother of God . . . and of course we may well take a moment to ponder. One of the deepest losses of our ‘busy’ lives is that we skim over the surface of things. That we pay little or no attention to those questions which arise from the deep wells of our Existence. Last week I asked the question ‘Where are you from?’. Like the question ‘How are you?’ – it has become little more than a marker, no more than a seeking after ‘a fact’ – but How Are You? Where are you From? These are questions which take us deep if we will but let them. And there we find buried clues which point us towards The Grain of The Universe, God’s Holy Law, not least that of Motherhood . . .

One thing which every human living has in common from generation to generation, back into the depths of our lives, From The Beginning, What IS a Human, What Makes us Human? ; is that we are all ‘born of Woman’. Adam, facing life outside of the Garden, sees well the necessity of Motherhood, naming his wife Eve ‘for she was the mother of all living’ . . . True Life – eating, breathing, weeping, rejoicing, smiling, burping life even 🙂 being Born into the world of a woman

That life of which Mothers are the source – is more than ‘just’ giving ‘physical’ birth. I lose count of the number of folk who have told me that they learned their faith from their mothers, that their mothers were the ones who would teach them to pray – Motherhood is the source of Life in its Deepest Fullest Sense, From the Beginning . . . and so it is that in human terms the fulness of the Life of God comes into the world through Mary, The ‘woman, clothed with the Sun’ Revelation 12:1 – who “The Holy Spirit will come upon, and the power of the Most High will overshadow” Creating Life in its fulness in Christ Jesus

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Mary says ‘Yes’ to the very deepest wellspring of Existence. Her Yes to God is the vehicle for Revealing of The Light of the World, The Truth of Existence. By her ‘Let it be with me’ Mary reveals to us in her flesh ‘God’s Holy Law’, the very Grain of The Universe by her consent to be the Mother of the One who sustains all things by his powerful word, The Very Creator of the World, born of Woman

As we prepare our hearts, let us not be busy. Let us not be important. Let us be open and Receptive. As Mary Our Mother has taught us, The Very Truth of our Existence is revealed in simple obedience. Our Yes to God is the Wellspring of Life

Let us not be proud but learn from her, our True Mother in Faith. Let is be with me, according to your Word . . . according to God’s Holy Law

Amen