The Assumption of Mary Meets the Progressive Emerging Church
SOLEMNITY OF THE
ASSUMPTION – AUGUST 19, 2012
St. Mary’s Episcopal
Church, Phoenix , Arizona
Sermon preached by
David Justin Lynch, Esquire
Magnificat in place of the
Gloria. Collect: 1979 BCP, Page 34. OT: Wisdom 7:21-30; Psalm: 9:9-14; NT: Acts 1:6-12; Gospel: John 19:25-27
+ In the name of God, Creator,
Redeemer and Sanctifier, AMEN.
The traditional
doctrine of the Assumption for Western Christians has Mary, the Mother of
Jesus, rising up into the sky instead of dying. ^ Eastern Christians have Her
falling asleep – they call it Her Dormition. They leave what happened to Mary
next as a mystery. Scripture doesn’t say anything about what finally happened
to Mary, except to say Jesus told the beloved disciple John to take care of
her. I look at that scene in today’s Gospel as Jesus giving Mary to us as His
parting gift to the Church, as he said, “behold, your Mother.”
The Feast of the
Assumption makes us look at two important questions: “Where is Heaven?” and
“What is Heaven?”
Traditionally,
Heaven was somewhere out there beyond the sky. That notion came from the
idea of a universe with earth at its center. Remember, the Church started in a
society without telescopes, and Copernicus, the guy who figured out the earth
revolves around the sun, was still hundreds of years in the future. We now know that earth is a tiny planet in a
huge universe, and we don’t know how far that universe extends into outer
space. So where exactly is
heaven? Where is that place that God took Mary? Perhaps we should focus on what
Jesus said about what the relationship between heaven and earth ought
to be. Jesus believed Heaven was where God’s glory was. In the Lord’s prayer we find, “Your kingdom
come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” From that, it’s very
clear that God wants God’s kingdom not to be just out there,
wherever, but here as well.
As to “What is
heaven”, the traditional concept, is that of an ideal world where people go
after they die. Traditionally, we earn our way into heaven by believing
the right things, and behaving ourselves. I like to think of heaven,
however, as simply God’s Kingdom, and I think God’s Kingdom surrounds us where
we are now. That means that when
God took Mary and raised Her in the glory of the Assumption, Mary became a part
of that kingdom, and that kingdom includes us, here and now.
This morning,
I’d like you to think about the Assumption in a new light, with the
three B’s that Diana Butler Bass talks about in her new book, “Christianity
After Religion. They are: Belonging, Behaving and Believing.
The first thing
about Christianity, is that it’s about belonging to community.
You can’t be a Christian all by
yourself. As we heard in the lesson from
Acts today, Mary was part of the Christian community. Mary was part of
the Apostolic Ministry from day one. As Christians, we at our baptism began our
belonging to a community with other Christians. As the old
prayer book catechism put it, baptism made us “a member of Christ, a child of
God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.” That for me is a very explicit
communitarian statement, as it points what we become beyond
ourselves. But for us Christians, the idea of community encompasses not
only those of us who are alive, but also those who’ve physically died.
They’re still with us in a spiritual
way, the same way Mary is now with us after the Assumption.
Christianity
is also about behavior. The teachings of Jesus give us many examples of behavior
that are associated with the Kingdom
of Heaven . By that, I mean loving and forgiving those
who wrong you, instead of seeking retribution – and I know, that’s very hard to
do, particularly if you’re a lawyer as I am. ^ It means relating to people in a
non-judgmental way, and yes, that’s also pretty hard to do as well, as we all
tend to want to express opinions. It also means healing sick people, and
feeding hungry people. It means parents
gathering children into loving arms instead of punishing them. It is about telling the devil who tempts us
with worldly power and pleasure to get lost. It means accepting
back into your family kids who run away from home. It is about forgiving debts. It is about caring
for suffering people, instead of looking the other way and not wanting to “get
involved.” It means giving people
without a roof over their heads a place to stay. It means sitting down to dinner with
outcasts, like tax collectors and prostitutes. And it means it’s more important
to show compassion for people, than obey rules.
The behaviors
that we’re taught to expect in the Kingdom
of Heaven reflect the values
that characterize what kind of world God wants us to have. We hear many
discussions about values these days, how different people have different
values, and the sources of our values. For Jesus, however, that source
was Mary. Mary was not only the woman God chose to be the Mother of Jesus, but
Mary was also was the person, who like every mother, had the intimacy of a
mother-child relationship with her son, Jesus.
Jesus, who was
fully human as well as fully divine, was no different than all of us. When we all grow up, we all to some
extent absorb the values of our mothers, and behave in ways that our
parents modeled for us. Our values reflect our beliefs, that is, the
underlying principles that guide what we think and what we do. My mother taught me my Anglo-Catholic
faith, and in fact, as a child, the very first prayer my mother taught me was
the Hail Mary. Even now, I say the Hail Mary before I go to sleep at night.
And, I don’t apologize when I say that I learned my philosophical and social
values from my mother, and by that I mean, a concern for the poor, the
oppressed, and the suffering, In those values, I feel the breath of the
power of God. Those values guide my professional life as a California lawyer who represents people injured
at work.
Mary’s
relationship with Jesus made it possible for her to pass on to Jesus the wisdom
of the Kingdom of
Heaven , which he would
teach us during his ministry. Mary’s values reflect Mary’s beliefs about God,
and are eloquently stated in the Magnificat.
Mary believes in a God who looks with favor on the lowly and calls them
“blessed”. Mary believes in a God worthy
of reverence for God’s mighty acts. Mary
believes in a God who shows mercy on those under the shadow of God’s
glory. Mary believes in a God who shows strength by putting down arrogant
people. Mary believes in a God who knocks off powerful people, and lifts up the
least among us. Mary believes in a God
who sends away empty those who already have enough to eat, so truly hungry
people can have basic nourishment. Mary
believes in a God who will keep God’s promises to God’s people, and for
Christians, the fulfillment of that promise, is Jesus.
All of these
values are just as revolutionary today, here and now in America, as they were in
ancient time – all we have to do is listen to a newscast, get on the Internet,
or open a newspaper, to see that, even after nearly 2000 years of Christianity,
we still don’t have a world where the values Mary taught Jesus are a
universal reality. Just this week, I read about a proposed Federal budget from
a man running for vice-president of this country, that disses the poor and
elderly, and favors the powerful.
As we follow the
journey of the Apostles in the Book of Acts, they tried to put into practice what
they learned from Jesus, and not surprisingly, they encountered substantial
resistance, both from the Jewish community of which they were part, and from
the Roman empire that surrounded them. The rabble aroused by the temple leaders stoned St. Stephen to death for his beliefs
about Jesus, and the Roman authorities incarcerated and prosecuted St. Paul the Apostle like
a common criminal.
Resistance from
both the political and religious establishment is still a problem for
Christians who take Mary’s values seriously – one need only look at how Trinity Wall Street
responded to the Occupy movement. Trinity
insisted on the criminal prosecution of Bishop George Packard for
trespassing. He was out there on Trinity’s vacant lot while he was part of
protest demonstration on behalf of the 99%, who are suffering from high rates
of unemployment, lack of health insurance, and foreclosed houses. The deafening silence from the Bishop of New
York, and the Episcopal Church on the national level, shows us the same
arrogant and oppressive behavior the Apostles suffered from the high priests of
the Jerusalem
temple and the Roman authorities in the first century. Here we have a Christian
institution, that passes resolutions at its General Convention that purportedly
favor the poor over the rich, standing and watching, while the government of New York City , mercilessly
prosecutes those engaged in clogging the chariot wheels of the oppressive 1%,
who’ve been causing suffering for so many millions of people both in this
country and abroad. That’s extremely hypocritical. The Episcopal
ecclesiastical establishment should be ashamed of itself, for thinking first of
its property rights, instead of social justice. In many ways, Roman
Empire officials like Pilate, and High Priests like Caiaphas, are
still in charge, and cooperating with one another.
These events in New York City ask us as
Christians to consider the significance of the Assumption of Mary in a new
light about what it means for God to take Mary into heaven and give Her a place of
honor. Mary can, and should, be the
basis of a new community founded on new behavioral expectations
which arise from new beliefs and values about how we run our lives.
Unfortunately, our
conservative evangelical sisters and brothers reject Mary’s values. They
think that sanctity of contracts, property rights, and free-market capitalism,
free of taxes and unfettered by regulations, are somehow part of an ideal
“Christian” world. The practical result of that program, however, has been a
society where wealthy people have become wealthier, and poor people
poorer. That’s not the kind of world that Mary had in mind when
Jesus was in her womb. Just read the Magnificat, phrase by phrase, and look
around and see what’s going on in this country, and you’ll see what happens in
a world without Mary.
So, not
surprisingly, our conservative evangelical sisters and brothers reject
the continued participation of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, in the ongoing
Christian community. I can well
understand why for them Mary becoming part of God’s kingdom, for time
and all eternity, is very threatening. They operate from a
blame-the-victim mentality, which is the very opposite of Mary’s values.
That’s because the humane and beneficent wisdom of Mary, as set out in the Magnificat,
directly opposes focusing
on the short term financial bottom line, and maintaining an arrogant human
power structure, that continues to throw the least among us under the bus. These folks don’t think of belonging
to a community, they think only of themselves as individuals. Their
behavior is completely self-oriented. Their behavior focuses on
dominating other people in a world where survival of the fittest replaces human
compassion. While these folks may win the battle of a near term election, ultimately,
they will lose the war, since against evil, wisdom always prevails,
because God loves those who live with wisdom.
When in the
Assumption God took Mary permanently into God’s Kingdom, God’s intent was to
make the wisdom Mary taught Jesus part of our world. Mary’s wisdom calls
for the human community to depart from evil, so that we might truly
understand what God wants for us. Mary’s wisdom wants us to be part of
bringing God’s kingdom to the world. God’s intent was for Mary’s wisdom to
pervade and penetrate our lives as well as that of Jesus. God’s bottom line is a world where the home
of God is among us, where we will be God’s people, where death
and its mourning and crying will be no more, in a place where all is perfectly
consistent with Mary in her role as mother of mercy and of love, enthroned
above.
The Assumption
of Mary, that is, Mary becoming part of God’s kingdom forever, is part of an over-arching
narrative of the gospels, whose overall theme is God becoming king, to
conquer the evil that flows from the opposite of Mary’s values. Only pure evil
opposes the values of Mary proclaimed in the Magnificat. God’s intent on
bringing Mary into God’s kingdom, was that Mary might be with us eternally, as
part of our community, and that the wisdom Mary taught Jesus, will be part of
the way we live, now and always. AMEN.
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