Blessed Virgin Mary 16th August 2009

Glory! This is my subject this morning and nothing less - glory!
I want to say to you in the words of St Paul in Romans 5v2: let us rejoice in hope of the glory of God!

Glory - this is our subject and the feast days of August make it so.

This month, usually so glorious weather-wise in the English climate, is set apart for two great Feasts of glory, August 6th The Transfiguration of Our Lord and August 15th the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary translated to Sunday, as is allowed for a major Feast.

Today we celebrate the passing into glory of the Mother of the Lord just as 11 days ago we recalled how the glory of God shone from Jesus her Son in the miracle of his Transfiguration.

The message of Christianity is a message of glory.

The Bible says in Romans 8v18 that we are to reckon the sufferings of this present time as nothing to be compared with the glory that is to come.

It says in Colossians 3v4 that when Jesus Christ is revealed at his second coming we too, we Christians, will appear with him in glory.

What is this glory?

Glory means honour in one sense. For example, the trouble with human beings, scripture says, is that they seek their own honour, their own glory, and not that of God.

Yet glory means far more than honour, in the sense the Bible teaches. When Paul for example saw God's glory on the Damascus road he saw a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun.

Light, glorious light, radiance, resplendent beauty - these are the sort of words, all too feeble, we can use, or rather, scripture uses, to describe this glory that is with God and which we are destined to enter with blessed Mary, first of the redeemed, and all God's faithful people.

We come to church 'to be uplifted', for Jesus to lift us up into his loving sacrifice in the Eucharist. Lift up your hearts – we lift them to the Lord.

The final destination of such uplift is beyond this world. To use a Salvation Army term the Christian hope is 'to be promoted to glory'.

Today’s first reading from Revelation 11 hints at the destiny of Mary: A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. This rather isolated text has been used much in Christian tradition and symbolism.

The image has been stripped down to the crown of stars in the emblem of the European Union for example. The stars are no longer twelve because of the expansion of the Union but there remains a Christian significance in the European Union flag linked to the glorification of the Mother of Jesus clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.

Mary’s passing to glory, sometimes called the Assumption, is a matter of debate among Christian denominations. It might never gain a mention in the Salvation Army’s newspaper, War Cry! Yet the obituary column of that Salvation Army newspaper makes the same witness as today's feast when it speaks of the "promotion into glory" of the Christian departed.

If only people knew what we Christians know from one who never lies! We are made for glory!

This glorification isn’t automatic. God seeks our consent as he sought Mary’s. People call Mary Our Lady because, as we heard in the second reading when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman…so that we might receive adoption as children (Galatians 4:4).

Celebrating the feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary – feasts of her Conception, Birth, Annunciation, Visitation, Sorrows and Passing into Glory - always brings to mind and heart more of the deep truths of Jesus.

Such a mother had to be very special. Mary is the culmination of God’s education of His chosen race, the Jews. We honour her today and at every Eucharist not because of her merits but because of who her Son was to be. She is Our Lady because Jesus is Our Lord. As Bishop Ken wrote in what we know as the Mother’s Union hymn shall we not love thee, Mother dear, whom Jesus loved so well?

Like Jesus Mary is marked out by God as one who would instinctively say, as she did when approached by the Angel Gabriel, Behold the servant of the Lord be it unto me according to God’s will.

Whereas you and I are more inclined to say ‘no’ to God, or ‘not just now, Lord, if you don’t mind’ Mary’s sinless tendency, like that of her Son, is to say ‘yes’ to God.

It is such heartfelt obedience that we seek from the Lord, obedience that can carry us to glory.

There’s a link between Mary’s humble obedience and the belief in the eastern and western church that she was given a path to glory that avoided the physical corruption of death like the greatest Old Testament prophet, Elijah who was assumed into heaven.

C.S.Lewis used to reflect on how day by day people are crossing our paths whose final destination will be either promotion to heavenly glory or demotion to eternal darkness in the company of the prince of darkness.

Is Jesus Christ lifting me, promoting me to his glory?

Am I on the move, on the move upwards, welcoming what Paul calls in Philippians the upward call of God in Christ Jesus 3v14?

Am I on the move, welcoming the uplift Jesus gives or am I saying 'leave me alone God!' or worse!? Remember Jesus promises such uplift only to those who will sincerely entrust their lives to him. He said very clearly though in John 17v24 that he desires people to be with him where he is and to behold his glory. We shall see him as he is, John says elsewhere, and we shall be made like him.

Those people we meet day by day. They are on the way up or they are on the way down. As C.S.Lewis said in 100 years time the people we bump into in the shops, at the leisure centre, in our office, these people will be transformed. Either they will be creatures resplendent in beauty shining with Our Lady Mary in the reflected glory of their Lord Jesus Christ - or - they will be pitiable creatures of the darkness.

After death comes judgement and the final destiny of people is determined by their acceptance or rejection of Jesus Christ who is our only one given to open wide the gate of heaven to all believers.

Scripture makes clear the brilliance promised to shine from the sons and daughters of God.
As Jesus says in Matthew 13v43 then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

By his resurrection from the dead Jesus Christ has become the first fruits of a wonderful harvest. He is the first fruits, we, with Mary, are destined to be in that final harvest when death is finally destroyed and everything is put under the feet of Christ the universal king.

In her Magnificat in today's gospel from Luke chapter 1 Our Lady magnifies the Lord but goes on to predicts her own glorification and that of all who humbly trust in the Lord. He has brought own the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.

In keeping this feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary the Church has for 15 centuries marked this day as the fulfilment of the Magnificat. God has indeed promoted the lowly to glory, and will so do to all those who will but admit their neediness. Notice too though the prophecy concerning the lofty and self-sufficient - they are to be pulled down to the pit of darkness.

Glory is our theme this morning. Glory will, pray God, be our eternal end. As Frederick Faber wrote a century ago for this feast:

How wonderful creation is, the work which thou didst bless,
But oh, what then must thou be like, eternal loveliness!
In wonder lost the highest heavens Mary their queen may see;
If Mary is so beautiful, what must her maker be?

And what, I might add, might be your beauty and my beauty, your glory and my glory, as we experience the fulfilment of our desires, to look upon the face of God, no less!

Glory! All we, Paul says, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another.

Let Jesus uplift you this morning as you come to his altar! Let him change you from one degree of glory to another until you see him face to face in heavenly glory in the company of his Mother and all the saints!