17 August 2014

Mary and the Dragon

Revd Andrew Bain

Readings:

Revelation 11:19–12:6 – a woman clothed with the sun

Luke 1: 46-55 – My soul magnifies the Lord

Well, there was a choice of readings for today’s festival; but there aren’t many readings that give you a real live dragon, so there really was no contest. Revelation it had to be.

We begin with a scene that could have come from “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark”. The Ark of the Covenant surrounded by flashes of lightning, crashes of thunder, the very earth shaking and the Ark, the symbol of God’s promise, encompassed on every side by signs of terror.

But this scene gives way to an even more extraordinary vision. A woman clothed with the sun, the moon beneath her feet, and crowned with twelve stars representing the twelve tribes of Israel. And from her there comes the cry of all humanity. It’s the absolute vulnerability of bringing any child into the world. One of my sharpest memories of the night my eldest daughter was born was of leaving the Royal Infirmary in the middle of the night, something like four in the morning, and just overwhelmed by the emotion of it all; but also feeling a strange kind of indignation, because this was right in the middle of the Falklands War – and I remember thinking, “How dare anyone be fighting when my little girl’s just been born!”. Like all of that should somehow stop, just for her.

But the point of this fantastic amazing story is to say that from God’s perspective, I wasn’t wrong. At the cry of any mother, at any child’s first cry, the whole world should stop what it’s doing, and, yes, put away its weapons and fall down on its knees and worship.

So Mary stands in that place of vulnerability and hope and trust and joy for all of us. She’s pregnant with the divine life that’s always creating new things.

Now I like this picture of Mary, because her whole life is a great Yes to God. And a Yes to everything parenthood will mean. Not an easy Yes. Not a glib Yes. But Yes anyway, because she’ll be there at the foot of the Cross; there at the Resurrection; there on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit comes. Jesus couldn’t have shaken off this mother even if he’d wanted to.

So this is a real woman, a real mother, a real human being, and when your life is tough and things aren’t working out she’s there to remind us not just of her great love, but much more so the love she knows in God. (She always points away from herself: Whatever he says to you, do it).

This is the love in which she exults when she cries out: My soul doth magnify the Lord. She knows that God is faithful. She knows God does great things in any heart that’s open to him. Along with Joseph, so strong, so faithful, this is the faith they shared with her infant Son: “God is good and you, Jesus, our mysterious little child are beloved beyond all imagining”. This is the message Fiona and Arran will share with Charlotte (who’s being baptized here later this morning). Just as Mary treasured in her heart the growing sense of just how special this miracle child of hers was and would be, so they now find themselves on the holy ground of parenthood, with just so much to treasure.

Charlotte, this starburst of a life to change the lives of her Mum and Dad, and many others, is a word of life spoken into a world with much darkness. When we celebrate her this morning that will include every human child. Baptism is an absolute proclamation of hope. This is a world in which a little child leads. To us a child is given and human history pivots on that. Charlotte’s anointing will show her to us as clothed in royal dignity –because God sets his seal on her for all time and tells us and her that she is and always will be a star, a spark from the divine life itself.

No wonder Mary magnifies the Lord. No wonder dictators have seen the Magnificat as more subversive than Karl Marx. Because the Magnificat and indeed baptism are a charter for human freedom and dignity. Because this is a love that even beats dragons, and the little child triumphs.