ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

THE NAMING AND CIRCUMCISION OF JESUS - Sunday January 1st, 2012

Sermon preached by the Vicar at High Mass

Readings: Numbers 6.22-en; Psalm 8; Galatians 4.4-7; Luke 2.15-21

"But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart." Luke 2.19

When Luke says that "Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart", he is pointing us once again, as he does in the Annunciation, to her as the first Christian disciple: a model for us all.

In the immediate context of St. Luke's Gospel, she is pondering what the shepherds' reported of what they have heard from the angels; and that against the background of the word addressed directly to her by the angel at the Annunciation and by Elizabeth.

Then Luke moves on to record briefly the mystery which we celebrate today: the circumcision and naming of Jesus. This child "born of a woman, born under the law", is given his communal identity as one of the people of God, and his particular name "Jesus" or "Yeshua", which means "God saves". This name both identifies him as a person and spells out his role. Names in biblical thought often express a person's role. They also communicate something of that person's presence and power, which is why the name of God was always treated with such reverence: something which could not even be pronounced; which had to be substituted by a variety of euphemisms.

There is more to Mary the disciple than someone who sits rapt in the contemplation, with a beatific smile on her face and a far away look in her eye. There is a good deal of Marian piety, just as there is much around Jesus, which seems divorced from reality and from the incarnation: the Word become not flesh but an ideal. Such portraits of Jesus and Mary, floating somewhere between heaven and earth, are no earthly or heavenly use to us.

The history of Christian spirituality demonstrates that such a vision of Jesus can lead to sentimentality: think of all those kitsch catholic Sacred Hearts and those sentimental evangelical worship songs: "Jesus is my boyfriend" music.

There is also a powerful tendency towards the unworldly in religion; even in Christianity which is the most material of all faiths because it centres on "the Word made Flesh". To religious idealists, there is something scandalous about a God born in stable, the child of an insignificant young woman from the back of beyond. Then there is something primitive and off-putting about his circumcision. The spiritually minded are often repelled by this "scandal of particularity", as it is called.

They prefer a religion which is expressed in high-minded idealism: the sophisticated and beautiful; not one surrounded by beasts and illiterate peasants and marked by blood and ritual. That is why they are even less keen on a saviour who has died on a cross. They opt for eternal and ethereal truths; to be found not in the midst of this world's mess and its joys and sorrows, but by escaping from them. Prayer and spiritual disciplines are about transcending this world not being transformed in it and transforming it.

There is a sort of spiritual snobbery about this attitude which is always in search of a better religion, a purer church, a more sophisticated preacher.

Such views have not been without their devotees even within the Christian Church - especially those influenced by Greek philosophy and Eastern religion. Plato sought truth in ideals beyond their material manifestations. The former are true reality, not the latter.

Yet Jesus is "born of a woman, born under the law." He has to be born somewhere, as a particular human being, in a particular tradition which has prepared the way for him, into a family in which he can be brought up to know the one he will call his Father and who is also our Father. Love is not a generalisation: we have to love particular people not humanity in general.

Some Christian spirituality, under the influence of this kind of thinking, has seen our devotion to Christ as merely a stepping stone to higher things. The real believer, the true disciple, reaches a stage when they must leave the earthly Jesus behind.

Now it is true that devotion to Christ, our pondering of the things about him in the Gospels and the New Testament, is so that we can be brought into that relationship with God which we see in him and for which we were created. So we cannot simply stop dead at Christ. Christ points us beyond himself to the life of God which he shares.

But Jesus is not a disposable aid to that communion but an indispensable element in it; for it is his life with the Father which we are called to share in the Holy Spirit.

Where can we find help against both the sentimentalist and the over-spiritual tendencies?

Well, alongside the picture of Mary the disciple we find in St. Luke, we might look at the tradition reflected by St. Mark, whose gospel we will be reading our way through at the Sunday Eucharist this year. There we see something rather different.

Mark gives us no story of the birth or childhood of Jesus. He begins with Jesus' baptism and the inauguration of his ministry. He knows that Jesus' mother was called Mary, though he uses her name only once. He says very little about her, and what he does say fits so awkwardly with the conventional view of Mary that it has the ring of historical truth about it. If fits so badly because Mark shows us not the devoted Mother encouraging and supporting her son in his mission, but suggests instead a tension between them.

The incident is so embarrassing that Matthew and Luke, who usually follow Mark's story, omit it. Jesus has come home to Nazareth and a crowd has gathered in expectation of healing or to hear teaching. At this point, we are told: 'when his family heard of it, they went out to seize him, for people were saying, "He is beside himself."' (Mk.3.19-21). Mary is not named here. But clearly his family fail to understand him.Then a little later, we read:

'And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to them, "Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you". And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" and looking around on those who sat about him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister and mother."' (Mk.3.31-35)

How might this help?

If Mary knew of Jesus' vocation and was in sympathy with it - and by bringing him up in the hopes of Judaism she had encouraged and fostered it, this does not mean there would have been no questioning in her mind. As as a mother, she would instinctively want to protect her son, for the way that he was choosing involved danger. So she had set aside a possessive and protective love, to sacrifice natural affection for the sake of a higher love, a love consisting of letting the other be, in letting and helping the other fulfil the unique role in God's purposes. As Mary and Jesus worked out this every special relation between them, one transcending all ordinary filial relations, there were bound to be some moments of tension. There must have been a process of learning and adjustment as Jesus' vocation and its possible consequences began to unfold. Any one who has been a parent knows that there is a tension between caring for our children, shielding them from harm, and allowing them to grow. Too much control prevents them becoming the people they are meant to be. It is only in letting go that we are able to keep them.

The Gospels tell us that Jesus was himself tempted throughout his ministry, from the temptations in the wilderness at the beginning to the very last hours in Gethsemane. Must there not have been temptations too for Mary: if indeed we can call them "temptations": "testings" would be a better word - the natural desire of a loving mother to protect her son from what might threaten him? This is not a matter of making a clear choice between what is good and bad, but of choosing between something which is good and that which is better. What a hard demand was made on her. We are reminded of the words of aged Simeon :"a sword will pierce your heart also." (Luke 2.35

So, if Mary is the model for us as disciples in pondering the things of Jesus, words about him, words spoken by him, deeds done by him, deeds done to him, we are not talking about some escapist, unreal, unworldly piety, but an engagement with real life which will involved struggle and testing as well as joy and love. It involved a costly engagement with the real Jesus who is demanding and puzzling as well as attractive and compelling.