Sermons from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
The Feast of St. Mary the Virgin (transferred):
August 19, 2007
The Rev. Melissa Skelton
Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."
Some weeks ago I was having lunch at Racha with a couple who were considering coming to St. Paul’s. I liked them and so had to remind myself to watch trying to recruit them too aggressively. And so what I was attempting to do between bites of Pad Thai was to listen to their questions about the parish and, to respond simply and honestly, rather than to pelt them with the ten reasons we should be their parish of choice.
And I was doing pretty well, really, until one of them began talking about the Virgin Mary. “Just so that you know,” she said, “I’m not crazy about all that Virgin Mary stuff.”
My mind raced back to a time when a very astute female theological classmate had said something similar to me but with more specificity and bite: “I can’t abide the idea of the Virgin Mary,” she declared. “It’s all about a patriarchal culture that devalues women and can’t cope with women’s bodies or their sexuality.”
I spoke to that theological classmate then as I wanted to speak to our prospective parishioner now: taking a more appreciative stance on the Virgin Mary. And, of course, that’s what I want to do today on her feast day, the feast day of the one others have called the mystical rose, the tower of David, the seat of wisdom, the queen of the apostles, the morning star. Out of a more appreciative stance, I want to share my take on the “Virgin Mary stuff” at this particular moment of my life.
For better or for worse, I am a recovering extrovert meaning I am a gregarious woman who gets energy from engagement with people and things outside herself but who midway through her life, discovered the power of disengagement from people and from things, as way to access God: the Holy One who is forever surprising, forever fresh and forever new.
I am a recovering extrovert. And so as I look at all the many images we have for the Virgin Mary in our tradition, many of which we’ve been praying aloud in the litanies this week at our Marian Evening Prayer services, and the one that most speaks to me at this time in my life is the Virgin Mary as the enclosed garden, in Latin, Mary as hortus conclusus.
What does this mean? In terms of an image for the spiritual life, the Virgin Mary, the one through whom God becomes flesh, is an enclosed garden: the quiet, walled-off, fertile space where each of us is alone with God, where each of us can experience the particular indwelling of God that, if we say yes to it, has the power to shape and direct our lives. The pregnant virgin, then, is a powerful symbol for us all, men and women, of what can happen when God’s spirit comes to us, is received by us in a singular and clear way.
And so, of course, many of us, myself included, do much to avoid their enclosed gardens: the quiet, walled-off fertile spaces in our lives where we find ourselves alone with God. For in going to these places, we risk an encounter that may upset our normal order of things, an order that in some way works for us, for others and for the world we inhabit, but that somehow falls short of God’s realm, a realm of freedom, dignity, justice and peace, a realm that belongs to that which is least within us and the least among us.
Yes, in the enclosed garden where we are alone with God, vulnerable to God, strange and unpredictable things can happen. Priorities can get shifted, that which we or the world regarded as lowly can find its way to the top, and that which had ruled us from on high can find itself cast down and forsaken in order for us to be filled with good things, as Mary’s declares in the Magnificat, our Gospel lesson for today.
Yes, we better watch out, for like the fourteen-year-old Mary, we may discover that when we allow ourselves to disengage for a moment from all the people and things of our lives, and to be alone with God, that strange and powerful things happen.
And they do.
A man, a father, who has been trying to save his drinking and drugging son from himself through trying to control the situation, takes some time apart in the midst of the storm of his life, to get back in touch with himself. And in doing this he painfully discovers that he too is a child of God and that he must stop taking so much responsibility for his son for the sake of himself, for the sake of his son and for the sake of the health of the entire family.
A woman who has all her life been agonized over money is trying to sort out whether to take a new and higher paying job. After worrying and talking to everyone in her life about it, she draws away from all the conversations in order to be in touch with her own deepest values grounded in God and discovers that while the money is good and may calm her money worries for a time, this particular job is not right for her because it will take her away from what she loves most about her life.
Or a group of women here in Seattle, members of the Women’s Development Council for Episcopal Relief and Development, who, I imagine, each drew apart from the busyness of her life long enough to hear the and respond to God’s call to lift up the lowly in assisting the neediest of women across the world.
In all of these situations, what I believe we struggle with is confidence in the clarity and direction we come to in our enclosed garden experiences with God, confidence that the direction we take as a result will hold together and will be a place of life for us and for others in our lives.
What helps me with this is the other part of the image of the Virgin Mary as the enclosed garden. The garden, is, of course, filled with plants and flowers, but growing at the very center of the garden is the tree of life—our life in God, our life in its fullness—who is Christ, a tree that, once planted, cannot be uprooted for it is anchored to the earth itself, strong and full, able to withstand storms and drought. The lives that we discern and have the courage to live out of our enclosed garden experiences are like this tree: grounded, solid, at peace with who we are as children of God.
During my vacation in San Francisco in July and August, I had the habit of walking each morning to Grace Cathedral where I attended the early morning mass and then went into the Cathedral to light candles in front the many images of the Virgin Mary that the cathedral has accumulated. Far and away the least colorful and flashy image was a stone three dimensional relief panel depicting a substantial seated Mary holding her equally substantial baby on her lap and surrounded by cherubs. I came to call her the “Madonna of Stability” and I spent much time in front of her, lit many candles in front of her. I did not call her the “Madonna of Stability” because she looked static or stuck. No, for me she was the “Madonna of Stability” because she looked at peace with the decision she had made a little over nine months before when she had been startled by an angel who had strange news to tell her.
And furthermore, she in her fleshy and substantial way, firmly holding her fleshy and substantial child, looked capable of the follow through that was needed to continue her path in that decision no matter where it would lead: she, both the image of the enclosed garden and the one whose choice gives us access to the Tree of Life, the Christ.
