by CCW | 15 August 2021 08:00
In complete contrast to the Pharisee,” the Publican, standing afar off,” Jesus says in today’s Gospel parable, “would not lift up so much his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.” God has only sinners to send to sinners to proclaim the great good news of human redemption in Christ. Some of you heard me say that though I doubt you remember. Today is the 23rd anniversary of my being among you and that was part of my first sermon here at Christ Church on August 15th, 1998. To be sure, I can hardly remember either! The fact that it is our granddaughter Anna’s birthday is, perhaps, much more memorable.
But that aside, there is a wonderful paradox and contradiction that confronts us in today’s readings and their conjunction with an intriguing and important theological and pastoral commemoration. August 15th marks the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, which in the Prayer Book calendar is referred to as The Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a literal translation of the Greek κοιμνσις and the Latin dormition but which also became known as the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Roman Catholic Church. The doctrine of the Assumption became Roman Catholic dogma as late as 1950. Yet the underlying idea is about the crucial role of Mary and that has strong support among Anglican and Protestant theologians.
The great paradox lies in this. In the Epistle, Paul repeatedly makes reference to things in the life of Christ “according to the Scriptures;” the phrase is used explicitly twice and alluded to at least twice more. It becomes an important doctrinal and creedal point captured in the idea that essential faith depends entirely on that which can only be proved by the received witness of the Scriptures. Yet the dogma of the Assumption of Mary has absolutely no scriptural ground or base whatsoever.
Nonetheless, it belongs to a profound creedal reflection on the role and place of Mary in the working out of human redemption. But because it has no explicit scriptural attestation, it cannot be required to be believed in our Anglican and Protestant understanding.
I want to probe the deeper connection between Mary’s Assumption or Dormition or Falling Asleep, to refer to its various terms, and the nature of our pilgrimage in faith in the Trinity season. Today’s readings provide an interesting complement to the place of Mary in the work of human redemption. The idea is that “where Christ is there shall we be also.” Such is the deep meaning of the “grace which has been bestowed upon [us],” realised most fully in Mary, “full of grace.” Such is the deep truth of her commemoration on this day.
We can only be with Christ through her by whom Christ is with us. Such is the meaning of being what we are “by the grace of God,” as Paul says. Such is Mary and so in turn are we. It cannot mean pretension but only humility, the very humility which Mary’s Magnificat proclaims, and which the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee highlights.
Humility opens us out to the power and grace of God. The Pharisee in the parable is praying with himself – it is all self-referential. God is not really in the picture at all. The Pharisee’s prayer is about self-righteous pretension; ‘I am better than others.’ It has nothing of the depth of the prayer of the despised Publican, technically a tax-collector, a Jew working in cahoots with the Roman government, a sinner in every way imaginable in terms of being an outcast of the society. All he seeks is all that we can seek, namely, the mercy of God. His prayer is real prayer, exactly like Mary’s prayer in the Magnificat. It acknowledges God and it acknowledges our humanity in humility.
The Pharisee is said to have “prayed with himself.” That is not prayer. Real prayer, like the Publican, like the humility of Mary, is captured in Mary’s words: “Be it unto me according to thy word.” “By the grace of God I am what I am,” as Paul says. The radical meaning of that is seen in Mary’s Assumption.
The Scriptures tell us nothing about the death of Mary directly but the logic of this feast derives from what the Scriptures teach us about the role of Mary in the economy of salvation and about our hope. For what is redemption except the taking up of all things into God? “What is not assumed by God cannot be saved by God,” as Athanasius explains with respect to the doctrine of the Incarnation. We cannot be with Christ without Mary through whom Christ is with us, “that where I am, there ye may be also.” We have an end in God. If that is not true of Mary, then what hope can there be for us?
He comes to us through her and so we to him through her. Mary, as Luther and the Jesuits agree, does not want us to come to her but through her to him, ad Jesum per Mariam. Mary is the temple of God, the “habitaculum dei”, the little dwelling place of God where, as John Donne so wonderfully puts it, “immensity [is] cloyster’d in thy dear womb.” She reminds us of the quality of our being with Christ. Christ is the eternal son of God, “that pure one,” as Irenaeus puts it, “opening purely that pure womb which regenerates men unto God and which he himself made pure.” That is Mary.
Our salvation is Jesus Christ, true God and true man. Mary is the pure source of Christ’s true humanity and as such is the bearer of his divinity into the world. At the heart of Anglican Marian devotion is the strong orthodoxy of the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) which gave theological coherence to the scriptural images of Mary in the economy of salvation by calling her Theotokos, the Mother of God. She is the Mother of God not because she is the source of Christ’s divinity, which as creature she cannot be, but because she is the chosen vessel, pure and prepared by the grace of God, by which Christ becomes man without ceasing to be God.
“Some are fallen asleep,” Paul tells us, a euphemism which becomes a powerful metaphor for our life with Christ. ‘Asleep in Jesus’ is a metaphor for death but in Mary’s dormition, in her falling asleep, in her assumption, we see the radical meaning of Christ’s redemptive love for our humanity. In the humanity which he derives from her, he redeems us to God. Through his death, we with Mary have the hope of our life with God. “Where I am there will you be also” has no higher expression than in the figure of Mary, the Theotokos, the God-bearer, the one who bears God into the world of our humanity that we may be born into the life of God. Where Christ is, there is Mary, and that is our hope too.
Such is the meaning of our life in the body of Christ as a faithful community, struggling in our own quiet way to be faithful to what has been given to us in the body of Christ here at Christ Church. It is worth noting that prior to the English Protestant settlements and subsequent influx of the New England Planters and Loyalists, this side of the Avon was known by the Acadiens as La Paroisse de l’Assomption while the Falmouth side was La Paroisse de Sainte-Famille.
That some have fallen asleep is about the reality of death but on this Sunday we are reminded of how that is the condition of our life with Christ. Such is his grace in us. I can only thank all of you for your prayers and support and, no doubt, long-suffering patience with me. But in every way, may God be praised. And may we be like Mary, the handmaids of the Lord, looking to his grace and life in us even when we, too, shall fall asleep in Jesus.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 11, 2021 (The Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary)
August 15th, 2021
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