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Magnificat St. Mary the Virgin 2021 St. Andrew's Kelowna + + + May the Words of My Mouth and the Meditations of All Our Hearts

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Magnificat St. Mary the Virgin 2021 St. Andrew's Kelowna + + + May the Words of My Mouth and the Meditations of All Our Hearts Magnificat St. Mary the Virgin 2021 St. Andrew’s Kelowna + + + May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen. Today we celebrate St. Mary the Virgin. When you hear her name, what image comes to mind for you? Where does your image of Mary come from? Our image of Mary can be influenced by many things from art to music to nativity scenes. The Gospels tell us relatively very little about Mary yet since the first centuries of our faith she has been honoured as Theotokos, the God-bearer, who is the model for us as disciples who seek to say a free and full yes to Christ’s life within us. Her person and story has been influenced by many things throughout history and so will start with a brief look at the history of our Anglican tradition. During the 3rd century an anonymous Greek-speaking Christian wrote the Protoevangelium of James which included tales of Mary’s life before the angel came to her. This work, while fictitious, became deeply loved and theology began to grow around theses “folk-tales of the faithful”1 (to say nothing of the influence of the patriarchal culture on this theology). By the middle ages, eight Marian feast days were added to the Western Church calendar, devotion to Mary blurred the lines between honour and worship which is reserved for God alone, and the idea of Mary’s Immaculate Conception (making Mary incapable of sin) scandalized the Protestant Reformers and bitter arguments ensued. The Church of England removed all Marian Feats from its prayer books of 1549 and 1552. Yet within a decade a supplement was issued that offered two ‘black letter’ days to commemorate Mary which were not obligatory but were there for those for whom they were important to observe. A classic Anglican via media (middle way)! This middle way appears in the well known hymn “Ye Watchers and Ye Holy Ones” which refers to “the bearer of the eternal Word” being higher than all the angels but doesn’t actually say her name. Those two black letter days were included in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer remain in our Anglican Church Calendar today. This history is astutely described by Thomas Merton who wrote: “since God has revealed very little to us about Mary, [people] who know nothing of who and what she was tend to reveal themselves when they try to add something to what God has told us…”2. This morning we receive the magnificat. This is Mary’s response to the very first person who recognized the work of God within her. The very private, holy encounter with the angel has already happened and Mary has made her way to Elizabeth’s house. Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit, the 1 For all the Saints. Page 361. 2 Ibid., 363. child in her womb leaps, and she names Mary as ‘the mother of her Lord’. It’s a marvellous moment of recognition, naming, joy and of the Spirit at work within and between two women. In structure, Mary’s response echoes the song of Hannah, and in scope it is a masterful articulation of how God’s work within her has cosmic consequences. The Magnificat is part of every Anglican evening prayer service so we cannot end the day without speaking the subversive nature of God’s Kingdom, without saying along with Mary “my soul magnifies the Lord” or my soul makes large all that God is doing, my soul becomes open and expansive so my whole being can amplify God’s love so that it becomes alive and real for the world around me. And this love, born in Jesus, will turn the world on its head. “The truth of Mary’s song,” writes Mark Oakley: is that while we have tried to make her a submissive woman we have failed to see that she was a subversive one. She teaches us here that the way to know if God is being born is the messy stable of your life is if God revolutionizes the way you think, the way you act and the way you treat other people. The ego- the rich, the proud and the mighty… must be put down from their seats. The hungry, the poor, the oppressed, the weak – these instead lie in the heart of God’s compassion, and Christian spirituality means to stand with them. These are the exalted.3 Her ability to articulate the revolutionary nature of God’s work and kingdom is stunning and we can learn from Mary how to both praise God and speak the Gospel in our own time and place. Her humility is also striking. We can learn from Mary how to be very strong, incredibly faithful, extraordinarily aware of what God is doing within us and throughout the world while being deeply humble and open. For that humility is what God saw in her and that is what God honoured. And that is what God honours in each one of us as. For it is in the place of deep humility and sacred dependence on Christ that the Spirit cries out “Abba! Father!" revealing each one of us as not only a children of God but as heirs with Christ. The magnificat is our anthem as Christians and one that needs not just to be sung but lived. So I invite you this week to listen to Mary, to listen to the magnificat and then to ask, as Mark Oakley said, how is God revolutionizing how you think, act and treat other people ? I’ve linked some settings of the Magnificat below as well as some of the hymns written for Mary and a variety of images of her, Theotokos. You may have favourites of your own too. Listen to this extraordinary subversive good news and let her song become your own. Amen. 3 By Way of the Heart. “ Submissive or Subversive?” London: Canterbury Press. 2019. Pg 135. Magnificat A few Classical Examples Magnificat, J.S. Bach (1723) Magnificat, Herbert Howells (1946) Magnificat, Andrew Carter (2007) A few Modern Examples The Canticle of Turning, the revolutionary message of the magnificat, Rory Cooney (1990) Magnificat, A modern interpretation for black women, The Jamaican Bible Project (2016) Magnificat, modern lyrics set for male voice by Reawaken (2015) Magnificat, modern lyrics by Sarah Johnson (2019) Songs for Mary Hymn to the Mother of God, Sir John Tavener A Spotless Rose, Herbert Howells At the Beauty (Orthodox chant in English) Ave Maria, T.L de Victoria .
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