INSTALLATION SERMON CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL, NEWCASTLE THE FEAST OF THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY

May I speak in the name of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

There was really no argument that the Feast of the Annunciation – Lady Day, to give it its traditional name, was the right day for this service. For one thing there aren’t many other significant feasts in these closing days of Lent, and those that there are, like Palm Sunday, would have set a high, not to mention unattainable and even downright dangerous expectation of what my ministry here would be like.

But primarily the feast of the Annunciation is the right day because it is a feast that draws our attention to themes that lie at the heart of the work and witness of this Cathedral: themes of mission and reflection, of incarnation and inspiration.

So as we gather here in the mother church of a diocese committed to mission, how do tonight’s readings guide us in our calling to celebrate the presence of God in this city and to share the good news of the gospel? The answer lies in the figure of Our Lady as the great

1 missioner of the church: the model of one who is called to celebrate and proclaim the work of God in Christ.

Mary’s encounter with God’s commission and the warmth of her response to it reminds us all that we too are a people called. And we are like Mary called to respond without constraint, as freely and bountifully as she does. The Psalm this evening touches on that same theme of unrestrained fullness of response: I have declared your righteousness in the great congregation: I have not restrained my lips, O Lord, and that you know. I have not hidden your righteousness in my heart: I have spoken of your faithfulness and of your salvation.

The message announced to Mary in this evening’s gospel also specifically refers to her cousin Elizabeth, and the reading therefore points us forward to the next great Marian feast of the church’s year: the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which we celebrate at the end of May. The significance for us tonight of that visit of a young pregnant woman to her older and also pregnant cousin is that it constitutes the first missionary journey in the history of the church. All our diocesan thinking about mission has its beginning here in the encounter described in this evening’s gospel and has its foundational model in Mary’s journey into the hill country of Galilee. She carries the living Word within her, and when Mary comes into her cousin’s presence, so strong is that Word that the child within Elizabeth’s womb leaps with joy to be in its presence.

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In her response to God’s call Mary became, in the words of an ancient Christian hymn, ‘the gate of Heaven’s High Lord, the door through which the Light has poured.’ That is also what this building was built to be, that is the calling which is being renewed here tonight.

When Jacob in the ancient story in Genesis lay down in a desert place and dreamed of a ladder set between heaven and earth with the angels of God ascending and descending upon it, he woke up exclaiming, ‘this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!’ If this was true of the place of Jacob’s dream, even more is it true of the Mother of the Lord and Christian devotion has not hesitated to speak of Mary as the temple of God, the Ark of the Covenant, and the gate of heaven.

The angel had said to Mary in the moment of annunciation that ‘the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. This same power is manifest for us tonight and whenever we gather; for how else, except through this gift of the Spirit can we ever make Christ present in the life of the church and our world? It is the same gift given those centuries ago in Nazareth that is given in this Cathedral tonight.

For all of Mary’s humble receptivity to the call of God Luke reminds us that she ‘pondered’ the meaning of the message. Mary, the ‘Christ- bearer’ reflected deeply and imaginatively on what the experience of

3 Jesus meant, and so she is an image of the Church, which likewise reflects on, as it lives out, the meaning of the God who so comes among us. A little later in his gospel St Luke tells us at the end of his story of the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem that his mother Mary ‘kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.’ (Luke 2.19) The Greek word which St Luke uses to speak of Mary’s deep and reflective meditation is sumballo, from which we get our word ‘symbol’. Mary both keeps and holds on to the amazing and overwhelming reality of God’s action and presence in and through her motherhood, and imaginatively reflects upon it, going deeper and deeper into the meaning of what this birth and this child, of which she is so intimately a part, is about. She ‘ponders in her heart’, and the heart in the Bible is not primarily the place of feeling, but of willing and of choosing. Her deep reflection is to shape her life, and brings her to the foot of the cross, and to be part of the worshipping and expectant community, as Luke tells us in the Acts of the Apostles, awaiting the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost.

In this Cathedral, which is a symbol of this city we are called to be a reflective community; given to exploring the love of God, finding within it the words with which to reflect on the world in which we live; to allow the light of Christ in us to be discerned in our times of joy and also to shine in the times of darkness – the darkness of human fear, and violence, and the sinful distortions of deception and betrayal.

4 Our special calling as a reflective community is to be such a community in the daily physical life of this city and diocese. We are a community of the incarnate God. "If we do not know the gospel in our bodies, we may not know the gospel at all. When we find bodily life an embarrassment to elevated and spiritualized religion, we lose our capacity for passionate caring and justice. We lose the sense of the holiness of the bodies of the homeless and the dispossessed, of our children, our colleagues, those we pass on the street every day; we lose a sense of the holiness of our city – the comfortable parts and those parts that are crying out for care.

It is a radical thing to which God calls Mary, to carry the Word made flesh, to bear a light in her body, a light that will shine in the darkness, a light which the darkness cannot overwhelm. We in our willing and choosing, our reflection and our sharing of the good news share her work as we also share her conviction that ‘nothing will be impossible with God.’ With that shared belief and faith we can say with her ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’

To the one who calls and is faithful be Glory and Dominion in the Church and in the World, now and forever to the ages of ages, Amen.

Fr James Rigney

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