Mary's Magnificat - a daily reminder of God's promises
Sermon at Portsmouth Cathedral: Sunday 15th August 2021 8am and 11am | Canon Jo Spreadbury
The Blessed Virgin Mary:
readings Isaiah 61.10-end; Galatians 4.4-7; Luke 1.46-55
My reading during lockdown – and recently during my time off - has seen me getting through whole series of novels by various authors. Just lately I’ve read P. D. James properly for the first time. So I was very excited in one of her novels to learn of a Stanley Spencer painting which sounded very apt for today’s celebration of the Virgin Mary.
Inspector Adam Dalgleish sees a painting over the mantelpiece in someone’s office and recognises an early example of Stanley Spencer’s distinctive style. The painting is called Assumption at Cookham and it’s wonderfully described as follows:
‘Plump foreshortened varicose thighs in red bloomers floated upwards from a circle of clutching work-worn hands to a reception committee of gaping cherubim…’
So of course I hurried to go online to look up this painting, this Assumption at Cookham, to see for myself those red bloomers, those gaping cherubim, only to find that I think P. D. James has invented that painting entirely. Of course, Spencer’s Resurrection at Cookham series is justly well known and thought-provoking – and the depiction on Mary being lifted up to heaven is interpreted in a convincingly Spencer-esque manner.
Another portrayal, in drama this time, in a series of mystery plays some years ago ended with a marvellous scene of the assumption of Mary. Our Lady, presented as a blunt Yorkshirewoman with curlers and a plastic handbag, was assumed into heaven from her kitchen. Suddenly bathed in golden light and embraced by her Son in glory:
‘Eeh, that’s my lad, that is’, she said, ‘and don’t he look gradely..!’
The earliest New Testament scriptures make it clear: Christ was born of a woman, born under the law, as the passage from Galatians puts it, rooting Christ’s humanity firmly in Mary, his human DNA if you like as something real not imaginary. Son of God, but son of Mary also. The Creeds that we recite – here at the Eucharist and also daily at Evensong – mention only three human individuals: Jesus, Mary and Pontius Pilate. Rowan Williams, in his little book on the creeds Tokens of Trust puts it like this:
‘Jesus, Mary, Pilate: that is Jesus, the one who says “yes” to him and the one who says “no” to him. You could say that those three names map out the territory in which we all live. Throughout our lives, we swing towards one pole of the other, towards a deeper “yes” or a deeper “no”. And in the middle of it all stands the one who makes sense of it all. Jesus – the one into whose life we must all try to grow; who can work with our “yes” and can even overcome our “no”.’
Mary’s Magnificat which we sing daily at Evensong is a wonderful canticle that expresses this ‘yes’ to God. It echoes several passages from the Old Testament, like Hannah’s song at the birth of Samuel and the portion of Isaiah that we heard as our first reading: rejoicing and exulting in God and the wonderful things God makes possible; clothing mortals with garments of salvation and covering them with the robe of righteousness.
Mary gives us a model of how, as creatures, we can hope for resurrection and transformation and the glory of God’s eternal kingdom. We declare, every time we say the Apostle’s Creed, that we believe in ‘the resurrection of the body’ – this way of understanding resurrection is about being shaped and clothed and transformed into what we are meant to be. Like the seed becoming the plant or the foetus being born as the child, we will find ourselves in a new environment, the mortal clothed with immortality. So much of what makes us individual and unique is due to the physical, bodily experiences we have had. The sensations, sights and sounds which shape us - and scar us - still make us who we are. Our uniqueness is precious to God and will be transformed and perfected after death. We will be transformed not into something unrecognisable but into something for which the seed has been sown in this life.
This feast of Mary, recalling the eternal destiny in heaven in which we will share, comes always at the height of the summer, when the harvest is taking place. This is a traditional association of Mary with the harvest of souls, of which she is depicted as being among the first fruits to be gathered in to the glory that awaits us all. In the end, the whole of physical creation, of which our bodies are a part, will be taken up and will have a share in redemption. God is united with our whole humanity, body and soul, and ultimately that whole humanity, including its scars is destined to be with him in glory.
So Mary gives us a model of the glorious hope to which we are called. She also shows how we can live towards that hope in this life. The words of the Magnificat attributed to her present a wonderful example of trust, hope and joy. God’s power and presence can be for each of us a source of song and a reason to rejoice each day.
So daily we are reminded that God can overturn our expectations but can also exceed our longings. Our hunger will be satisfied with good things, but our empty imaginings will dissolve in the reality of God’s mercy. The Magnificat is a daily antidote to pretence and pretension, and a promise in the midst of daily uncertainty and insecurity. God can do the impossible: for us, for others and for the world, the Magnificat reminds us – and goodness knows we need this reminder daily sometimes to support and sustain us in faith.
God promises to fill us with good things, and it is in the Eucharist that we know God’s presence most directly. In the Sacrament that we celebrate together, we receive Christ into our bodies, and like Mary we become God-bearers as we go out from here into the world. We are changed and transformed, body and soul, as God dwells with us; as the seed is sown for the transformation that continues to work in us beyond this life; as we are prepared for the glorious, corporate life of heaven itself – that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.