Written for our learning
Truth is judgement. A central feature of the Advent season is God’s coming in judicio, in judgement. God’s Word coming to us is truth as judgment. How does that Word come to us? By what is spoken and hear, by what is written and read . What does it mean for that Word to be learned? There is teaching but what about learning? The real meaning of learning is captured most profoundly in Mary’s response to the Angel Gabriel at the Annunciation: “be it unto me according to thy word.”
Her word is the resounding and defining mantra of the Christian Faith. God’s Word is “a lantern … and a light” unto our lives as the Psalmist puts it (Ps. 119. 105), but only through its resonance in us. That resonance requires that we be attuned to that Word, as Archbishop Rowan Williams suggests, for in that attunement lies our atonement, our being at one with what is spoken and heard, with what is written and read.
Mary is the outstanding figure of the spiritual landscape of Advent. It is instructive to consider her role in relation to the spiritual emphasis on the parade of Scripture on this day which is sometimes known as ‘Bible Sunday.’ “Whatsoever things were written aforetime” Paul tells us, indicating the purpose of the Scriptures. They “were written for our learning.” This is wonderfully encapsulated in today’s Collect in Cranmer’s rich phrases, “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.” It means paying attention to that word coming in judgement as the Gospel shows: “look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” Mary is the supreme example of what it means to attend and be attuned to God’s Word, to what it means to learn the Scriptures; in short, to be defined by the Word of God in mente and in carne, in mind and in flesh for both are in judicio, in judgement, too.
All teaching seeks the embodiment of what is taught. It is about ideas living in us, taking flesh in our lives, as it were. Mary hears. Mary questions, Mary commits. Her great ‘yes’ to God is essential to the Incarnation of Christ. The Word takes flesh in her and from her to be the Word made flesh, the incarnate Christ. She embodies the highest expression of what it means to be human. We are called to be good Marians, to be like Mary in her active acquiescence to the power and truth of God; in short, to let God’s Word written and proclaimed resound in us.
December 8th commemorates “the conception of Mary” (BCP, p. xii). That is, of course, eclipsed this year by virtue of its falling on a Sunday in Advent. Yet the paradox is too great and too wonderful to be ignored; the paradox of Marian commemorations and the parade of Scriptural revelation.
The conception of Mary is not based on any biblical story exactly; at best it is extrapolated from the Wisdom literature, for “Wisdom hath built herself a house.” Mary is the habitaculum dei, the little house of God, the one in whom the Word was made flesh and, literally, ‘tented among us’, “dwelt among us.” The same is true for her nativity and her death or assumption, all of which are commemorated in our Anglican spiritual tradition. None of these commemorations have any explicit scriptural basis and so cannot be mandated as de fides, required to be believed as essential faith. And yet they belong to a profound reflection upon the essential principles of the Christian faith and to a deeper understanding of Mary’s role in the economy of salvation. She is the Theotokos, the Mother of God, as orthodox Christianity, both East and West, recognises, proclaims, and celebrates in the liturgy and in the Creeds. Christ is “incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary.” God is made man through Mary.
It comes down to the nature of our engagement with God’s Word coming to us. That Word comes to her on angel’s wings: “Hail Mary,” Gabriel says to her, “Thou that art highly favoured.” And that word comes to us literally by being written down. In being written and proclaimed, that Word is taught to us so that it may be learned by us, that we may be like Mary, allowing ourselves to be defined by God’s Word.
The desire is that God’s Word may be conceived in us and come to birth in our lives of faith and service. This requires our active acquiescence to the Word and Will of God, our openness and sacrificial commitment to God in Christ. “Mary,” as Luther wonderfully puts it, “does not want us to come to her but through her to Christ” even as Christ has come to us through her. Luther’s view complements Ignatius of Loyola’s per Mariam ad Jesum, through Mary to Jesus, a maxim of counter-reformation catholicism as well as reformed catholicism.
The Common Prayer tradition retained a number of Marian commemorations including “the conception of Mary” but without the adjective “immaculate.” The point regardless is about Mary as the pure and true source of our Lord’s humanity; achieved by grace in some way or other on which point the Scriptures are silent. The simple but profound point is about God with us and about the resonance of God’s Word in us.
George Herbert, in a wonderful poem on Prayer, provides a wonderful collection of images drawn from Scripture, from nature, from history, and from culture. Among them is the image of prayer as “a kind of tune, which all things hear and fear.” Mary shows us what it means to be in tune with God’s Word, letting it have its resonance in her for our joy and blessedness, for our being at one with God in Jesus Christ.
The Advent/Christmas Services of Lessons and Carols this afternoon and evening are about the coming of God’s Word in the hope and prayer that word will have its resonance in our lives. God’s Word is “written for our learning” in the hope that it will live in us. But only if we are alive to that Word and attuned to it, awakened to truth in judgement. For such is our joy and our hope, our peace and our redemption, as the readings for this day amply reveal. All because of words “written for our learning”
Fr. David Curry
Advent 2, 2019