The God-Bearer

What are we to say about Mary the mother of Jesus that has not already been said.
In a very real sense the problem is that too much has been said, often in a confused way, not only overstating the role of Mary but also making inappropriate claims

This Sunday 15th August is the Feast of Mary the Mother of Jesus and readings are:Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Luke 1:46-55, Galatians 4:4-7, Luke 2:1-7

There are a number of these exotic claims, (too many to go into in a short homily), and many of them were highlighted and discounted at the time of the Reformation.

She is not for example...the 4th member of the Trinity!

Nor is she the female aspect of the Godhead.

Mary only has a place by virtue of the fact that God chose her to bear the Son.

She is the means by which God connects directly to humanity!

The place where God and Humanity meet.

The Orthodox have traditionally used the expression...Theotokos...God bearer ...

sometimes crudely called by the Westrern Church....Mother of God...which tends to distort our thinking some what.

What is important about Mary is not how she tends to have been deified

but rather that her body is the meeting place of God with humanity.

She is fully human, anything less would make the central Christian truth

that The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us (John 1:14) into a crass fairy story.

Thus we see in Mary not a super-hero, but rather a human hero

who responds to God by saying "Yes, I will do what you ask me to do!"

She is not overwhelmed by God and forced to do something against her will

In words that many Christians make their own every day

Mary's response, rather, is to say to God a big YES!

"Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word" (Luke 1:38).

Also of interest

As we encounter Mary elsewhere in the Gospels we see a series of interesting encounters.

What seems to be interesting about these is their very ordinariness!

As with almost everything in the Bible we sometimes lose sight of the fact about just how ordinary some of the sotories are

The Loss of Jesus

Luke 2:41-52. Mary and Joseph lose Jesus when they take a trip to Jerusalem. Anyone who has lost a child know how awful this can be for all concerned, parents and children!

At a wedding

John:2-10. At a wedding Jesus's mother tries to get him to help her sort out a catering problem!

But who is my mother?

Mark 3:31-35, Mtw 12:46-50 Jesus brings her family to see Jesus and he rather dismisses them. Is she trying to warn him to be more cautious or he'll get his head chopped off

Her station keeping

In John's account of the Passion (and the tradition of the Church) Mary is placed at the Cross. No more awful image is there than Michelangelo's Pieta; the young woman holding her dead son.

It is perhaps the greatest human tragedy, that many parents have shared...having to be present at the funeral of their child

Pentecost Finally we see that Luke places Mary with the disciples and the early community of the believers (Acts 1:14, 2:1-42)

I draw all these to our attention because they show to us a very ordinary Mary and jesus relationship

The incarnation is worked out not in the heavens, but in the midst of life. It is a child getting lost, catering, thoughtless comments, human tragedy which are the groundswell of what God is doing.

Remember what the 'angels' say to the disciples as they stand gazing into the heaven after the Ascension (Acts 1:11)..."Why are you gazing into heaven?" or as they gaze into the empty tomb (Luke 24:5)..."Why do you look for the living among the dead?"

Mary's witness seems to be telling us that God will be worked out

in our human life.

The kingdom of God is amongst us.

This week

• What are we dealing with in our daily life at the moment?
• What might god be drawing out in me through my encounter in my ordinary day to day encounters with other people, with human issues and thereby with God?
• What is God's invitation to me today?
• Can I say "Here am I be it unto me according to your word!"

The icon pictured at the head of this entry is "The Miraculous Icon of Coromandel" it was painted by children of the parish under the guidance of local artist Jenny Poole. It displays the nativity of Jesus and we display it during Advent at St John's Church each year.

Through the magnifying glass

Christmas invites us to look closely at God. Perhaps through a magnifying glass, taking care to note what we often don't see and need to actually deliberately look at.

In this final week of Advent we hear the words of Magnificat...Luke 1:39-55...which Mary is recorded as saying when she came to understand what God was asking of her. This is a particular reflection on those words

Some commentators suggest that

coming as it does at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel

The Magnificat (this name comes about because of the first line..My soul magnifies the glory of the Lord)

it is presented as something of a manifesto

of what Luke believes God is doing

through the saving act of Jesus

My soul magnifies the Lord

We are being invited to look closely

at what God is doing

So often the real problem

is not that people reject God

but that we don’t even care.

It is not so much antipathy/hatred, as APATHY

Or maybe like the wise men we look in the wrong place.

We want God to be in spectacle and power

but he is in the wonder of a child.

When we get this, we realise that maybe we have been looking in the wrong places

If we take care we see that there are many places where we can give thanks

that he has looked with favour on us

If you are like me, my problem is that often the woes of this world

so weigh me down that I lose sight of the fact

that God sustains and upholds me

powerfully and abundantly.

That the problems don’t really disappear

but we see amidst all the mess

that there is grace...the gift of God

Usually in the gift of people,

in unwarranted kindness

in generosity of spirit

In fact John tells us that there is not just grace but grace upon grace

This grace is not about making the successful more successful

or the strong stronger

but the new creation is about

lifting up the lowly

aiding the weak

We are easily seduced by power and fame

but there is something new here

This is God’s promise to us.

St James reminds us that we often don’t

avail ourselves of God’s promise

THIS WEEK

• Can we hear a call to give thanks to God for what is happening day to day?

• Can we find a way to be an agent of caring for those for whom God cares?Not the rich and famous but the weak and downcast

This is not difficult to understand
It is sometimes difficult to implement because we have our own agenda
and we do not hear God’s radical manifesto
and call on our lives
WE are not required to turn the world upside down
But God is acting differently and we choose to be God’s people.

Dear and glorious

Christians keep alive the memory and example of the saints. This Sunday, 18 October, is St Luke's Day.

Readings for Sunday 18th October, St Luke's Day can include Jeremiah 8:22-9:3; Psalm 145:10-18, 2 Tim 4:9-17, Luke 1:1-4, Luke 10:1-9; Luke 24:44-53

We know surprisingly little about most saints, but about St Luke we can glean quite a lot.

He is the writer of both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.

He does not seem to have been a Jew, but became an adherent of Christianity fairly early in the piece.

We don't know whether he actually met Jesus, it seems unlikely

his major association is with St Paul

and we can glean from the Acts of the Apostles

that he actually travelled with Paul

on some significant journeys

we know this partly through the 'we' passages.

They are where we can detect a grammatical change

he stop saying "they" did this and "they" did that

and says "we" did this.

(This may be a 'literary convention' but it seems more likely that Luke was actually present for some of these events at least)

His Gospel is quite well written and structured

and he seems (for example) to have some pretty important themes to explore:

like care for the poor, the role of women, the place of children

and the spread of the Gospel.

We know from the text that he was probably a physician,

and novelist Taylor Caldwell wrote a charming book based on his life

called "Dear and Glorious Physician"

Strangely he does not write much, or specifically, about the actual ministry of healing

even though he is quite naturally associated with that aspect of Christian life.

Most of this is "by way of background"

but I make some observations:

1. We believe in the communion of saints

It is a basic tenet of Christianity that we are a community ...we call ourselves the communion of saints

For us, the saints are not only those who, like Luke, have died

but all those people who are bound to Christ through baptism

the grave does not separate us from God

or from each other,

We pray together, with and for each other and for God's work.

Some might be better at this than others, but it is the duty of us all

to praise God and pray for the coming of the kingdom!

2. We are all called to proclaim the Good News of Jesus

Luke happens to have written his account of the Christian Life

but the evangelists remind us that we are all to tell the story

3. Luke tells us the story from his particular perspective

The casual reader is always struck by the fact that each Gospel...Matthew, Mark, John and Luke

have similarities

but they also differ.

Luke's particular emphases are important for us to consider,

they remind us that the Gospel is a living tradition

and each of us needs to work it through in our own context.

For Luke: the concern of the poor, the spread of the Gospel outside Judaism,

the need for 'labourers in the harvest'

were important emphases....each saint lays the emphasis in differing ways.

What might your emphasis be?

4. The saints encourage each other

One striking feature of Luke's ministry is his encouragement

those plaintive words of St Paul...at a low point in his ministry

Only Luke is with me!

Remind us that solidarity is often the greatest gift that friends and family can give to each other

Do we take out Christian solidarity...support by and for the other saints seriously?

We give thanks for St Luke

Commit ourselves to work out what it means to be Christian in our lives

to the spread of the Gospel

to be a labourer

and to be faithful.

Open to the possibility

Readings for Easter 3, 26th April Acts 3:12-20, 1 John 2:15-17, 3:1-6; Luke 24:36-48

There are perhaps two ways we can approach the resurrection stories:
One extreme is that we see them as symbolical narratives of great spiritual truth,
that way we don’t have to worry about whether the nature of the events is factual
we take them for their symbolical value
The other is that we just take at face value what we have always been told
and again, don’t think much about what we are encountering.
Last week’s Gospel reminds us that we should do more than just park our brains
We have to grapple with inconsistency and doubt.
Luke, though, is at pains to point out
the physical truth of the experience.
This passage we read tells us
This is not a ghost!
This is a fleshly body. you can touch,
which consumes food.
It is the resurrected body of Jesus.
THE MIDDLE WAY

Death inevitably confuses us. This death no less than others has its degree of confusion
We ourselves are invited to steer the middle way and to try to understand
what it is about
We see Peter for example, and the other disciples having to grapple likewise
as they come to understand
that the death of Jesus has fundamentally changed their lives
Death does that.
We are not to look at it only symbolically or to disregard our doubts
but rather to struggle with what it means to believe.
Peter gets to the conclusion
that this resurrection has made the
power of Jesus
available through his disciples
and not just through the body of Jesus.

We are invited in Easter to grapple with the life of Jesus.

How and why is Jesus alive for you and me?
And what are we to do with that.

This week:
Pray for insight and faith to believe aright
Pray for faith to grow in the resurrection
Pray for courage and insight about how to use that power

Lord of Easter,

show me your living presence this and every day.
Grant me grace to know how to live

in the power of your resurrection