Patronal Festival

May I thank Will, who is a dear friend, for the joy and privilege of preaching this morning, on your patronal festival. It is a joy to be with you. 

The question any patronal festival prompts for me, is what difference does a name make?

What is it like being called Mary?  This morning, whether a regular or a visitor like me and the fifty Methodists in the balcony, we are all part this of this church, so what does it mean for us to bear the name of Mary?  

One way or another, we come to inhabit our own personal names.  It’s hard to imagine us having a different name.  We may have chosen a different name because it makes more sense to who we are. The name we have that our friends and family call us by is part of us, is intrinsic to us. There is something about yours and my name that shapes our perspective, and the perspective of those who call us by that name.  There may be variations in our name – your wonderful vicar is Will most of the time. I don’t think he has ever been a Bill, and I wonder in what circumstances he’s a William? 

The fact we might even have those little variations in our names just points out the power of the name by which we are known, and its power to convey who we are and the relationship with the person calling us by name.  Our associations with the name – its origin in our family, or the person after whom we have named, all have an influence in shaping who we are.  

My name is Martin which is after Mars, the god of war, which I hope has had no influence on my demeanour and practice, particularly as a bishop.  I had imagined I had been named after Martin of Tours and I took great inspiration from that, and it wasn’t until I was in my fifties or even early sixties that my father told me he had named me after Martin Luther, which took some adjustment. But I took comfort in the fact that Martin Luther must have been named after Martin of Tours.  

You can see how the particularity of a name and its associations can shape us, they are part of us.

And I believe that is as true for a church and its dedication as it is for each of us as individuals.  And this great church is named after Mary, the mother of our Lord, and so we would expect in some way the shape, demeanour, and outward expression of this church to have resonances with our associations with Mary.  In passing, I note with interest that the university church in Cambridge, where my wife happens to be the vicar, is also dedicated to Mary. And also in passing I wonder what it says about a church’s sense of its identity when it chooses to be known not by its dedication name but by a corporate acronym.

So what is it like to be called Mary?  What does it mean for the life, witness and expression of this church to be Mary?  

This morning’s Gospel reading immediately follows on from the extraordinary account of the young Mary being visited out of the blue by an angel. The angel reassures her, telling her not to be afraid –  we can barely imagine what this experience could have been like for her.  She is to conceive and bear a son, whose name will be Jesus and by whom God will do great things. And the angel tells her that her cousin Elizabeth is also pregnant, and so Mary sets off to visit Elizabeth which is where our Gospel reading picks up the story. 

Think of this young woman. In the utterly deepest way possible, she has come to know the transformational power and presence of God in her own life, in her own body; she is a witness to God’s most intimate presence, to being chosen, being blessed by God. Her world, her life has been turned utterly upside down, in an instant. This is what God has done for her; this suddenly is who God is for her.  

Mary witnesses in her own flesh and blood, the utterly transforming power and presence of God.  

Being called Mary means to me, like Mary, to know in a host of ways the transforming power and presence of God in our lives; to witness, to notice who God is for us as the one who turns our worlds upside down.  No encounter with God leaves us unchanged, and witnessing that, being amazed by that, pondering and wondering about that, as Mary did, is I believe what it means to be called Mary. We are to do that, individually, personally, to notice God’s transforming presence in our lives but also collectively as a church.  Where do we notice, maybe with Mary’s mixture of terror and joy, God’s transforming presence at work in the life of this church?  

When I was a bishop in Suffolk, we introduced a few simple spiritual practices which we used in a variety of gatherings including at the start of meetings.  One of those was a simple form of what some of you will know as the Examen, a practice developed by St Ignatius Loyala.  

We would sit in silence, as a group, and each ponder where we had been aware of God’s presence in our life that past week or fortnight. And then we would share that with a neighbour, or maybe to the whole group – so we not only learned to talk about God’s presence in our lives, but we built up a sense of God’s transforming presence and activity in our lives together – by which we were all being changed.

And then there is a second dimension to Mary’s witness, which we see enacted in this morning’s gospel, the Magnificat. Mary is not just a witness to the transforming power and presence of God in her life and keeps it to herself; she witnesses to that power and presence to Elizabeth. She experiences God and then she tells someone who God is for her.

When we say these words of the Magnificat, as we do in every evening prayer, they are always a challenge to us. Mary has experienced God turning her world upside down, and so, if this is who God is, God will turn the whole world upside down – ordering the world not as we would but as God would, and hence the Magnificat.

We know we live in difficult times, not least because the world’s order is infected with fear. Fear is the cauldron that foments powerful forces that lead to hate towards those different from ourselves. 

Fear is the cauldron where tyrants gain power, claiming they will protect us, generating fear on fear.  We see this in our fearful world; we even see it in fearful parts of the church.   

But that is not the world God has ordered, indeed it is the very opposite of God’s expansive, embracing world – Love, not fear, fills the hungry. By compassion, not hate, Jesus stretches his arms out on the cross.  When our political or Christian dogma trumps compassion, it’s the dogma that must be change.

In God’s ordering of the world, there is no want or fear, there is no place for human pride, and there is no place for the grasping and accumulation of power over others, there is no place for the accumulation of wealth.  There is no need if there is no fear. 

And God’s great gift to us is that this is not about what we have to do, what we have to accomplish.  That would surely make us afraid! But Mary declares this is who God is, what God has already done and is doing, despite appearances in her world and in our world today.  In the mystery of God, this world of the Magnificat, through Mary bearing Jesus,  becomes the present reality, and what we see around us is illusion. God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, God has lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, God has sent the rich away empty.  Bearing the name of Mary, we live into this reality.

Bearing the name of Mary means witnessing, noticing God’s transforming presence in our lives and in the life of this church. Being Mary means witnessing to that to others in word and deed, joining in the world that God has turned upside down.  May we all witness like Mary, and so to the son she bore.  May this church and all of us grow into the name of Mary, witness like Mary, and so witness to her son who has transformed the world.