I ask you to look to her to remind you of our shared and common purpose; to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, all our minds, all our souls and all our body. To love one another as he loved us and just as she did, to proclaim the greatness of our Lord.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
I’ve preached many times about Mary as an example. Mary is somebody who was fully human but figured out how to relate to Jesus as both God and man.
But today I want to preach and teach about Mary as a lead, as an example on unity and consistency.
I think it’s fair to say that over the years, us Christians, always have found ways to fall out. You must do this, you must not do that. Some of things are vital to our salvation or at the very least, we will be called upon to answer for in our final days. And some are more complex and more nuanced.
But as Christians, we seem to fallout over quite silly things. Things, though that seem so very important at the time. We can, if we’re not careful, spend our lives looking for ways to fall out, looking for ways to be offended, looking for ways to find disagreements.
Scripture gives us many examples of this sort of behaviour and nearly all of it doesn’t come from the so called baddies in Scripture, but comes from the disciples. And it’s nearly always in how they relate to Jesus. And when you start to examine those fallings out, when you start to examine those disagreements, what you discover, and this is what we hear in the Magnificent, that piece of Scripture that we just heard from Mary in our Gospel. The besetting sin amongst all of that is pride. Because we are so often concerned with our own position, with our own pride and authority, that we forget to see Jesus amongst us.
This division and this sin is sent by the devil to destroy us. It starts so small, it starts so innocuously. Oh, I see so-and-so has done this job. I could do it better or she’s done it, but she’s not done it as well as Mrs Williams used to do it in 1979.
We know the kinds of things that we say to one another over a cup of coffee, but the thing is, these little things, these seemingly innocuous things, become big things. And if we’re not careful, we find that our community, our family, is torn apart. It’s no longer really about Mrs so-and-so and how she does x, but it’s about how you believe in God. Then it becomes about the how and not the faith. It becomes about the rules and not what is in your heart.
Your actions show your faith. Your adherence to man made rules does not.
And your expectation of others to do the same drives division and that tears churches apart. Now, the disciples, in their disagreement and in their arguments over power and authority and pride, had Jesus with them. They had Jesus right next to them when the devil attacked them in this way. And so Jesus could smile and bring his children to him. And comfort them gently, and sometimes not so gently put them on the right path. But for us, here and now, what do we do when we feel that attack upon us?
When we feel those words coming to our mouth of criticism, of argumentativeness, of division?
We reach for the most powerful tool that we have in any attack from the evil one. And that is pray. We pray for strength to face it, and the protection of the Holy Spirit. We pray in the knowledge that Jesus has hold of us and that we can hear his correction, either gently or perhaps not so gently.
But sometimes we can’t hear that correction or even see that we are being attacked, that we are being used. So what do we do then?
This is the moment that Our Lady appears. She comes to us. She comes to those who have lost their way and she holds their hand and takes us to her son so that we may hear and see what he has to say to us. But more than that, it’s not simply an individual action. She takes the whole community to her son when they are under attack, when division first appears, when those tiny seeds of gossip, of quarrel, of scorn first appear; so too does she. She appears to each one of us in a way that we can see and that we can understand.
And one of my favourite things about Our Lady, when you start to examine her appearances to different people in different places, that she appears to them looking like them, sounding like them, as one of them, because she is.
She is one of us, a human who has had to figure out what it means to walk with Jesus. If you have five minutes later on, I urge you to Google the apparitions of Our Lady. So that when she appears in Japan, she is Japanese. When she appears in Rwanda, she is Rwandan. When she appears here in England, she is English.
She always appears. Always. She has been a constant support of help from the moment that the angel descended and brought her the news that she was to bear a son. She has been a constant source of support from the moment that she went to her cousin Elizabeth with her news.
And in that moment where she could have been so proudful, where she could have set herself above everybody else. Her first thought was to proclaim the greatness of the Lord. She is with us, to bind us together, not in her love, but in her son’s love.
I’ll give you a practical example. Back in the mid to late 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England and the Orthodox Church wanted to open conversations about how we could bring about unity between the different Christian Catholic denominations. How could we do it? And they sat for weeks and tried to come up with one thing that they agreed upon that they could have a conversation about, and they really struggled. And then somebody said. What about Mary? And the room said, yes, Mother of our Lord, do we agree about Mary? Yes, we do. We agree on all of these things about Our Lady.
And so when the church started talking about coming back together, it was Our Lady that provided not just the spiritual encouragement, but the practical ability to start those conversations of how we as Christians could come together.
She brought us together as only a mother can.
So as we celebrate the assumption of Our Lady, I ask you to look to her when you feel division in your heart, to use her statue here in church or perhaps in your home, a prayer card in your purse or wallet, an our lady around your neck perhaps, or the rosary in your pocket. I ask you to look to her to remind you of our shared and common purpose to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, all our minds, all our souls and all our body, to love one another as he loved us and just as she did to proclaim the greatness of our Lord.
Amen.