Mary, Theotokos, full of grace? (My homily for the fourth Sunday of Advent)

Let's talk about Mary.

In the many and various Christian traditions of the world, Mary is referred to by many titles:

She is known as the Mother of God, the Mother of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin, Immaculately Conceived, Madonna, Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea, Seat of Wisdom and the Cause of our Joy. She is also called full of grace. Most of these titles come from the Western Church that was once gathered around the Bishop of Rome.

In the Christian East, which includes the Churches of the ancient Byzantium, Greece, Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, India, Egypt, Iran and Ethiopia to name a few she is known by other names. One of my favourites is the one whose womb was wider than the heavens, for from it come forth the infinite God, but mainly she is known as the Theotokos – the God-bearing one.

Mary, Theotokos, full of grace.

What does it mean to bear God into the world?

What does it mean to be full of grace?

Well, what is grace?

As Bill Cliffs succinctly puts it “Grace is when you get what you don’t deserve.”

So why is Mary called full of grace? Did she get far more than she deserved by bringing Jesus into the world? Or is she full of grace because she recognized in Jesus the one who would be her saviour?  

I believe that to be full of grace is more than just a conscious recognition or a realization that we are saved. It is more than just accepting Jesus as our personal saviour. To be full of grace is to let it rule your life, mandate your actions, direct your ways.  To be overwhelmed with gratitude for the abundance of undeserved gifts that God has bestowed on us. To be full of grace is to live in response to the call of God in our lives.

Mary is called to bear God by giving birth to God in this world. God asked Mary to share her human nature with God and to make her body a dwelling place for the implanted Word.  She is asked to put herself in a very vulnerable position – to become an unmarried, pregnant woman in a society that more than frowns on this. It is a position that many people have found too much to bear.

But not only does Mary accept this calling, it becomes the centre of her life. Mary’s answer to the angel, which the choir will sing for us in their anthem today, is more than just an agreement to have a baby. "Dixit Maria ad angelum, 'Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum'" You all speak latin right? Just kidding, she says, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” She doesn’t consider her given task to be accomplished after Jesus is born, but Mary follows Jesus throughout his ministry, not just as a caring mother, but as a faithful and loyal disciple. She follows him to the foot of the cross and mourns his death. She rejoices with the other disciples in the Resurrection of her God and preaches the Gospel along with them.

Mary is the example of one who is filled with grace and she is celebrated for this by saints and angels. Saints like her cousin Elizabeth, who we hear from today in the Gospel, calls her Blessed and Angels like Gabriel who calls her Favoured One. What is this blessing or favour from God of being asked to bear God into the world? This blessing and favour of becoming the God-bearer might have felt or appeared at times more like a burden. But it was grace, “Grace is when you get what you don’t deserve.” Mary is full of grace.

Back to that other title that I mentioned earlier, Theotokos, God-bearing One. In the Eastern Church, Mary is venerated many times in every service. Several of the major feasts of the Church year concern her life even before Jesus is conceived. Her whole life is important. This is because unlike in some Western Churches where Mary is considered the great exception from human depravity, in the East Mary is the great example for what humanity can accomplish with God.  Because the incarnation was not just God’s work, but also the work of humanity, of Mary who accepted to participate in God’s plan. 

Recently I was working with some youth in Ottawa at St John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Shrine where I used to be a youth group leader. We were reflecting together on why God chose Mary to be the God-bearer. Was there something special about her that made her suitable for this job? One of the youth was very clear on his view of this point – it could have been anyone, God could have picked anyone for this task, but it was Mary’s answer, her choice to participate in God’s plan that set her apart. Mary wasn’t chosen to bear God because she was more holy than any of us, she is holy because she chose to bear God into the world. “Grace is when you get what you don’t deserve.” Mary is full of grace.

The life of Mary shows us that if we receive God and accept the call to bring God into the world through our actions, it can be life changing, and that which seems impossible is possible. “God's power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” What seems impossible? “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty” These words are from the Song of Mary, the Magnificat which we sang today in the place of the psalm in the form of the hymn "Tell out my soul!" This vision is expressed a little differently in this hymn "Powers and dominions lay their glory by...the hungry fed, the humble lifted high." In the Canticle of Turning which the choir sang for us a few weeks ago with the help of some of the children and youth the phrase is "...the hungry poor shall weep no more for the food they can never earn." These words are a vision of the Reign of God where worldly favoritism is turned upside down and people are no longer treated or mistreated according to their station in society. “Grace is when you get what you don’t deserve.” Mary is full of grace.

These words that Mary sang, they come from throughout the Hebrew Bible. They are not just her words. They were spoken by other holy people before her – prophets, judges, psalmists – and have been spoken by many holy people in one way or another since. These people accepted to bear God into the world, and were holy because of it. One of these people is Chief Teresa Spence of the Attawapiskat First Nation. She is currently on day 12 of a hunger strike. Her request is simple, a meeting with the Government and the Crown about the conditions in which her people and all First Nations people are living, the way they are treated by the government and the relationship between them and all Canadians. In her hunger strike, she has made her body a dwelling place for this hope for justice. She hopes for the kind of justice that Mary was singing about in the Magnificat – where people are no longer mistreated because of how society views them and the hungry are filled with good things. These holy people like Chief Spence and other saints are just like us in their humanity: some are children like Samuel, some are elderly like Elizabeth. They fight with their families, they commit crimes, they are greedy, they rejoice when things go well, they struggle with God in times of difficulty and resist what God is calling them to do. But nevertheless God called them and eventually they chose to respond and be part of God’s plan. They were full of grace, like Mary. “Grace is when you get what you don’t deserve.”

What about us? We gather around this altar today because of the life that Mary along with the Holy Spirit brought into this world. Jesus Christ Emmanuel, God with us. God with us in a tiny baby born in a stable, in a vibrant youth preaching from a boat or a hilltop, in a body broken for us on the cross and raised up to give new life to all people – new life we could not earn or deserve. God with us in darkness – whether it is the darkness of the womb or the darkness of grief. God with us in bread and wine and the gathered community. This feast is one of God’s many gifts to us – which we receive not because we are holy or special or worthy, but because God is generous and compassionate. It is a sign of God’s grace, and “Grace is when you get what you don’t deserve.” Today, at this feast, we are filled with grace, full of grace. Blessed, favoured by God.

And so, we are called to be like Mary, to make our bodies a dwelling place for God and to bear God into the world.  To be full of grace, overwhelmed by the abundant generosity of God. To magnify God with our souls and our songs and our lives.

Children's Bulletins - Keeping Kids in Worship

As some of you may already know, my main field is not actually youth and children's ministry - it is liturgy and worship. It should come as no surprise then that I have some pretty strong views on the relationship between young people and worship. To be blunt, I think everyone benefits from young people being in worship. People of all ages are full members of the Church and so when we worship without any one group, a significant part of the community is missing. Worship is also important for young people. It offers them a time to pray, to hear from Sacred Scripture, to sing and also to relate to the other members of the Church community of all ages and learn about what is important to them and their faith.

This is not to say that I think we should just throw kids into the way we do worship which is geared almost exclusively to adults. I believe that we need to work in two ways, through education for young people about why we worship the way we do and education for adults in the congregation about how to make worship more accessible to young people. This approach will help people of all ages learn to value things in worship that may not be immediately appealing to them, because they are important to others in the community and it is important to them that these others be included. I think there are many things that we can do to make worship more accessible to children and youth - just like we make worship more accessible to seniors by using audio loop technology and allowing those with less mobility to remain seated during most of the service. One of the ways that we can make worship more accessible for school aged children is to provide them with what are known as 'Children's Bulletins.' 

These bulletins provide a brief explanation of what is special about this particular service, activities to help with the comprehension of one or more of the readings, some opportunity to respond creatively to the readings, information or activities on the different parts of worship and how to participate and questions and prayers to take home and discuss with their parents and families. These bulletins take the form of our worship as it currently is and introduce children to what we are doing and why. This is especially important because most of the time children are not a part of the whole Church service. Church school classes take place during the service and so they rarely experience the whole service from start to finish. On the occasions when there is no Church school - because of major feasts like Christmas or during the summer - these Children's Bulletins allow the children in the congregation to better participate in worship along with the adults in the community.

This is the front the Children's Bulletin for Epiphany

Beyond facilitating their participation, Children's Bulletins send an important message as well. The message is that children belong in the worshiping community. It is a message for parents, for children and also for the congregation as a whole. It is a message of inclusion and welcome for an important group in the community whose ministry and leadership in worship have not always been recognized. The Church needs the ministry of each person, regardless of their age. Children's Bulletins are one tool to help us engage young people in worship and empower them for ministry in the Church.

St Philip's will have Children's Bulletins available at the services without Church school over the holidays including the later services on Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning. I would be eager to receive any feedback on the use of these Children's Bulletins.

Guest Entry - Someone else's thoughts on Sustainable Youth Ministry

As I am sure many of you know by now, I have been leading a book study for the past few weeks on Sustainable Youth Ministry. This week, I have the pleasure of sharing with you, the reflections of one of the participants in this study. She wrote them for our parish newsletter and with her permission I am thrilled to be able to pass these along. I think it is always helpful to hear ideas from different perspectives. Also, it is nice to have a week off from writing my own posts. Next week will be even better as I result, I am sure.

Enjoy!

 As many of you know, in September, Caitlin Reilley Beck joined us as Family and Youth Worker. As we have not had anybody employed to work with youth for a while, we need to set about designing a youth group that meets the needs of our parish. For five Sundays in October and November a group of us met to study a book called Sustainable Youth Ministry by Mark DeVries. In this book DeVries outlines in detail how to build a youth ministry that lasts over time. Not a ministry that starts with a bang and then fizzles out. He also emphasizes the fact that a youth ministry shouldn't be dependent on a specific youth minister. The youth ministry should be designed such that if and when the youth minister moves on, the running of the ministry should be able to continue smoothly.

Over the course of the five weeks we talked a lot about the fact that the youth ministry is the responsibility of the whole congregation. One commonly held opinion is that now that we have a Youth and Family Worker we don't need to worry about our youth any more since they are taken care of. Also, if volunteers are needed the expectation is often that the parents of the youth should be the ones to volunteer. In fact youth ministry is the responsibility of the entire parish – much like outreach, hospitality, stewardship, Godly play etc. Why is this so?  We as parishioners have got a lot out of St Philips and Christianity in general and we want to share that with our youth. Also, they are the future of our church and this is the time in their life when they are most likely to leave the church- "More than half of adolescents who attend church as children leave the church before they reach age 17" (DeVries p. 31). More than simply being the future of the Church, they are part of the Church right now along with children and adults of all stages of life. It is important that some of the volunteers not be parents as teenagers may not be keen for their parents to always be around when they are participating in church activities. Also, interacting with non-parent volunteers will make the youth feel like they are important and special to the whole congregation. If they are asked by their parents to participate in activities such as the Christmas Fayre they might view this as a "chore" whereas they probably won't feel this if asked by another adult. So you can see why the youth ministry needs the help of the whole congregation. The current challenge is to identify a volunteer pool and to recruit volunteers from this pool.

In his book, DeVries talks about the importance of long range-planning including developing a vision, goals and a statement of values- "without a clearly articulated , compelling vision of what their church would like for its youth ministry to accomplish these ministries meander with no higher purpose than simply 'having a youth ministry'" (p.67). In other words we need to work out what it is we want to achieve and give to our youth before we design programmes (instead of setting up programmes and then seeing if they are offering what we want to offer). In order to identify our vision for our youth ministry we at St Philip's are going to have a visioning day sometime in the New Year. All parishioners are invited and we hope to see a good number of them there.