The Blessed Virgin Mary
My soul magnifies the Lord.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
At the end of the book of Revelation, from which our first reading came, John speaks of the book of life, in which are named all the saints and those destined for the New heaven and earth. I was reminded of this when Daisy and her father came into the office to talk about today’s baptism, and I was able to show Daisy her father’s entry. There is something quite beautiful about being in a register alongside your child, as a genuine measure of time in generations. We could start referring to people by their entry number. Maison would be 254 to Daisy’s 747. It’s probably less common in London but it’s not inconceivable you might find in a church records of multiple generations going back and back. And who knows perhaps Daisy will one day get married and have her children baptised in this church, looking back to pre-historic times when Grandpa Maison was baptised in the 1990s. Similarly, just before Isabel Fresson got married a few weeks ago she showed me her baptism certificate from St Margaret’s. These records have a certain beauty and weight in that they give a proper account of time – not measure in minutes, but generations. And perhaps if we can – for a brief moment – step back and see time in this context we might not be in such a hurry over every last second. I wonder if that line from Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem: ‘if you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run’ truly gives a helpful assessment of what it means to be a man. Sometimes we need the words of Welshman WH Davies:
‘What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.’
Though this, as the poem goes, likens us not to men, but sheep and cows. Thus spake the Welshman. But for all of us who agonise over a wasted 5 minutes, or just never stop, remembering the broader span of time can be helpful.
Today the Church remembers Mary, first of all as the Mother of Jesus, But also as, herself, his first and most faithful disciple, following him from birth to death.
Mary and Jesus are in certain respects inseparable. He, the Word made flesh, is flesh of her flesh. His passion is her passion, as we are told of Mary from the beginning of the Gospel – ‘and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’ So while Jesus speaks to us of the vulnerability of the body; Mary speaks to us of the vulnerability of the heart. The anxiety of love; the pain of looking on, and of grief, that like a dragon appears at the birth of a child, in every threat and worry that accompanies that journey of parenthood.
If you have taken on a child, and to some extent a smaller furrier creature, you will know this. A friend warned me when he had his first child he could no longer watch nature documentaries without floods of tears. Parenthood can bring on a hyper-sensitivity and an empathy that unlocks our compassion. It reminds me of the words of St Paul: ‘our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.’
The novelist Jeanette Winterson writes the most beautiful story of adopting a puppy, and all the difficulty and love that springs from it. Shockingly at the end, they send the puppy back as the ordeal of loving another creature proves overwhelming. Parents will likely remember Rod Campbell’s Dear Zoowhere somewhat irresponsibly a zoo sends a child inappropriate animals for a pet like a lion, a giraffe and a snake, which are too fierce, too big, too scary. Each time the line is “I sent him back”. I did look into this but it turns out that hospitals have a “no returns” policy.
There is no doubt when faced with the enormity of fragility, innocence, and the immense pain and terror in the world, to which we largely have grown accustomed, That the heart suffers. We suddenly know that reality that everyone is someone’s son or daughter. Love changes the way you see the world; This is the vulnerability of love; The anxiety of love; And a lot of those first years of responsibility feel like a gruelling trade-off between love and exhaustion, or which is to say the same thing – Between attention and the limitation of being human.
The passion – of both Jesus and Mary – is the endpoint of this trade off – where the totality of attentive love meets the natural limit of being human; And this point – captured in art in the crucifixion and in the pieta, as the body of Jesus is returned to his mother – This point is the revelation of God’s love – shown both in sacrifice and unspeakable grief. Summarised in the relationship between the two of them: Human and divine.
But the character of love is its openness. Widen your hearts. As my friend now weeps at nature documentaries. Because this attention to, this concern with, vulnerability makes us alive to it everywhere. So Mary in today’s Gospel experiences God raising her up. And her response is to magnify, to praise the Lord. But she understands that in her heart, so, in the blessing she sings, God expresses his preference for the vulnerable in this world: God looks ‘with favour on the lowliness of his servant’ God has ‘lifted up the lowly’ ‘filled the hungry with good things’
Our response to protect, to nurture the vulnerable things of this world is an echo of the divine love, which is proclaimed first by Mary and is incarnate in Jesus. Love’s anxiety, the vulnerability of the heart, is a proper response to the fragility of the world. When it informs our desires it is prayer; When it informs our actions it is mission.
So widen your hearts. Cry at the dulcet tones of David Attenborough. Find within you that vulnerability of heart. And let it fuel your prayer and mission.
As the proud owner of three animals, two of which are mostly human, I must confess I struggle to think generationally. I’m mostly concerned to get to the end of the day with everyone alive and asleep. Five minutes is a golden opportunity to get washing on, fill the dishwasher, put away trains, take Rhiannon’s plates and glasses downstairs. My sermons are mostly written gently bouncing a baby to sleep; And whenever possible I aim to do three things at once – Walk the dog (and the toddler), go and see choo choos, pick up bread (and wine), get the baby to sleep.
Of all people I should know better and find time to stand and stare. To be attentive in love. And to remember that time is measured in generations as well as minutes. It’s God’s gift to us that time slows down as we slow down; Luckily I still have plenty of time with these animals to stand and stare, and watch theme grow. But this morning let us celebrate the love we have in our lives; let’s think not in five minute tasks, but in the passing of generations that leads to eternity. Let’s widen our hearts. Let us magnify the Lord. Amen.