THE GUIDING ROLE OF MARY

Fourth Sunday in Advent - 18th December 2005

Kingdom Season 8  |  Year A  |  Proper 33 Track 1  |  Ordinary Time Week 38 (Year B)

2 Samuel 7.1-11, 16  |  Romans 16.25-27  |  Luke 1.26-38 : To see the current week's readings, click here

We’re coming towards the end of Advent, and over the four Sundays we’ve been offered a person or a group of people as guides examples and prayer partners in order to explore how Christ can be welcomed into our hearts, our lives and our community.

Today we’re offered Our Lady, the mother of God, Mary. She has been given so many titles, so much veneration, and stands as the ultimate model of discipleship. She said “Yes” to God when she knew - or at least suspected - that this would mean life would never be the same.

REALITY CHECK

Unmarried teenage mother; giving birth far away from home, probably reputation shot to bits... frowned on by friends and neighbours; after the birth she is visited by social outcasts and the elite echelons of the diplomatic corps of a foreign country; she becomes a homeless refugee fleeing for the life of her child to a foreign country from a despotic megalomaniac puppet king; and she’s told by Simeon that a sword will pierce her heart.

Beware, believer! If Mary represents the model disciple, just look at the life she led. God chooses people for a purpose - and blessedness is not always a comfortable calling... “If this is how God treats his friends, no wonder he has so few!”

So stands blessed Mary; God-bearer, called and chosen to take part with God in the salvation of the world by the child she carries. She finds some comfort with her cousin Elizabeth - there have been strange rumours surrounding her pregnancy too - her age, the unexpectedness, Zechariah’s dumbness, his vision of something, Elizabeth’s conviction that this child was something special... So it is a natural place for young Mary to go - to seek counsel with an older wiser woman with similarly unexpected pregnancy...

MARY'S UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION

She ponders all these things in her heart... What can Our Lady teach us about Advent and Christmas? Well in one sense carrying the Word of Life, the Light of the World within her own body for 9 months is an experience we cannot begin to imagine... She can’t hurry the pregnancy. She must learn to live to a different time scale and set of priorities; she bears responsibility - she is suddenly no longer a child; she has a unique role in salvation history - it is she - no one else - who must bring to fruition the dawning of God into the world in a new and incredible way...

So we too must learn to live to God’s timing, with God’s priorities, with God’s time scale; to assume our responsibilities for our own spiritual development - we too must grow up as Mary did; we too have a unique role that God has made us for and calls us to - and it’s not over just because we’re older. Look at the older people involved in the nativity story: of Joseph, Simeon and Anna, of Elizabeth and Zechariah... It aint over till the fat lady sings... who knows what God is asking of us now? If we never ask him, we’ll never find out...

YOUR PERSONAL CHRISTMAS PERSPECTIVE

So our preparations for the coming of the Christ child are almost at an end... what have we learnt from this Advent? Have we seen the nativity story in a new light, from a different angle? has something or somebody’s role struck us in a new way?... What insights will we take into the mad fray of next week, as we’re swamped by TV, family, meals and presents, excitement and disappointment, intimacy and loneliness...? How we will view the baby this year? What will be our thoughts of Emmanuel, God with us?...

Fr Andrew J Perry
Rector, St John the Evangelist, Pevensey Rd, St Leonards on Sea