Sermon at Parish Mass The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary 2015

Ethiopian migrants pray before an icon of the Blessed Virgin in their tent church at Calais. 

Photo credit: Fr Giles Fraser.

Revelation 11:19-12:6,10

Galatians 4:4-7

Luke 1:46-55

Our readings this morning began with an extract from a book we don’t hear much of at Mass on Sundays, the Book of Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse.

Apocalypse is a Greek word. We might think that it means “disaster”, as that’s the use it has come to have in modern English. But in fact it means “unveiling”; apocalypse in the Bible is about unmasking the real spiritual powers at work in the world. It’s about seeing what is really going on behind the façade of events.

The Book of Revelation begins with the Apostle John, in exile on the Greek prison island of Patmos, where he has been sent by the Roman authorities for preaching Jesus. He has got off lightly, as many of his fellow Christians had been executed for their faith in the first brutal wave of persecution under the emperor Nero.

But John’s vision is opened, and he sees the spiritual realities and powers at work in the events of his day. The Roman Empire is revealed in nightmare-like images as a fearsome beast, demanding that everyone worship its image, as a reeling prostitute drunk on the blood of the saints, and as the terrifying dragon in today’s reading. Its power comes from the Devil, and it seeks to destroy those who are faithful to Jesus.

But John sees a higher and greater reality. A slaughtered Lamb, an image of Jesus, is seen on the throne of God in heaven. The souls of millions who have been murdered for their faith are gathered around him. The holy angels of God make war on the dragon and defeat him. And the sign for their victory is the appearance of the Woman clothed with the sun, whose Son is to replace the dragon as the true ruler of the world.

For Christians in the first century, as for many in the world today, following Jesus is not a soft option. It means a radical choice, taken at the risk of everything, to reject the violence of the world and to follow the Lamb who was slain. It means identifying with Jesus the outcast, the victim, the one whom the world slaughtered. It means faith in Jesus even in the face of death, because he is the Risen One and therefore the world and its violence are not the last word or the final reality. It means faith that the world of sin, which puts the innocent to death, will be redeemed.

This cannot come about by any slight adjustment to the way the world runs, but only by total change. The violent and the rich are in power, but God is on the side of the poor and the peace makers. The world is stood on its head, and needs to be turned the right way up. But unlike every other revolution in human history, this one is God’s doing, not ours.

So when the fullness of time had come, says St Paul in Galatians, “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law”. It is in the coming of Jesus that the great reversal begins. It is through his incarnation, his death and resurrection that the upside-down world is at last being turned the right way up.

And in today’s Gospel reading, Mary, the Woman whose appearing heralds the victory of the Lamb, sings in triumph:

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

   and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

   and sent the rich away empty.

Her spirit rejoices in God her saviour who has done great things for her, and through her, for the world.

Consider for a moment who is singing this triumph song. This is no seasoned warrior or hardened general. This is a young woman, perhaps fourteen years of age. Newly pregnant, she has travelled in haste to her cousin Elizabeth in the wild hill country. Apparently, according to Luke’s Gospel, on her own. Unheard of! But here she is. Her will is God’s will, and no hardship or obstacle will daunt her.

Through Mary’s childbearing God will overturn the order of the world; but as far as the world is concerned she is a marginal figure, of no consequence. She is only from the obscure backwater of Nazareth, after all. She is Mary the migrant, relocated from her home to Bethlehem while heavily pregnant because the bureaucrats in Rome demanded it. She is Mary the refugee, forced to flee with her family from Herod who wanted to kill her son. She is Mary the foreigner, taking refuge in Egypt, dependent on the kindness of strangers. She is Mary the Mother of Sorrows, who will watch at the foot of the cross and receive her dead Son’s body in her arms.

Yet today she sings God’s great reversal, the defeat of the powers that be and the triumph of her Son. She is indeed the Woman clothed with the sun, the great cosmic Sign that the empire of this world does not see, though her appearance spells its doom.

The Apostle John and the Mother of Jesus both today tell us to open our eyes and see what is going on. It is no co-incidence that these were the two who were closest to the cross, the eye witnesses of the death of Jesus. The sign of the Woman clothed with the sun, and Mary’s triumph song, tell us to look behind the façade of events to the spiritual powers at work in the world. We are not to believe the headlines, the propaganda of the world, which tell us that the powerful must stay in power and the marginal must stay on the margins.

Look around us in the world today, and what do we see? We see millions of Christians persecuted for their faith, murdered or fleeing for their lives. We see great powers of violence at work in the world. We see exiles crowding Greek islands. We see migrants, refugees, the desperate and the poor, seeking safety and a new life. This is what the Apostle John saw two millennia ago. But, with him, we need to see the truth, and with Mary we need to proclaim it. God is turning the world the right way up.  God is on the side of the victim, and is bringing the margins into the centre.

As in the Apostle John’s day, this is not what the empire of the world wants us to see. The coverage of the migrant crisis in some parts of the press, and the comments of some of our political leaders, have been disgraceful; all about obscuring the human faces and not hearing the real stories. This is not to say that migration is a simple problem, or has a simple solution, but any consideration of it has to be founded in compassion and a recognition of our common humanity. Anything less is a turning away from the human and therefore a turning away from the will of God for the flourishing of all, and especially for the poor and marginalised.

This evening at 5pm Songs of Praise will include coverage from the migrant camp at Calais, where many of the people seeking refuge are Christians who have fled from persecution. This has been furiously condemned, for example by the Express, whose proprietor made his fortune selling pornography, and by the Mail, which is registered in Bermuda to avoid paying tax in the UK.

So for once, even if it’s not your regular Sunday viewing, may I commend Songs of Praise to you. It will I hope be a useful corrective to the narrative of exclusion that we are being fed all the time, a bit of apocalypse, an unveiling, an unmasking of the powers at work behind the façade of the world, and a singing of God’s praise from the margins, the place of the powerless and the excluded, where Mary sang her song of praise because God was at last turning the world the right way up.