The readings for this Feast Day can be found here
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Hail Mary
In preparation for today, I thought about self sacrifice and what we’ve given up these many months. I thought about our building and what it means to return to the more familiar rhythm of our 10:30 service in person and indoors. I thought about pelicans, really, pelicans because there is one on our font, exemplifying the sacrifice of Christ but also embodying that sacrifice in the female form—albeit a female bird.
But, that all proved to be the chaff. The wheat that remained in my pursuit of a word to share was ultimately born of the Hail Mary I learned in my childhood; the way that prayer has proven a comfort to me; and the pain of the world in the here and the now.
A pain that is not new. A pain that is not irredeemable.
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century an edict was issued and clergy were instructed to “take away, utterly extinct and destroy all shrines, covering of shrines, all tables, candlesticks, trindals, and rolls of wax, pictures, paintings, and all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry, and superstition.”
And, in obedience, many clergy did just that—joining in with the mobs that had desecrated sanctuaries throughout Europe, destroying religious art and iconography in response to the perceived abuses of the Roman Catholic Church. If these saints are so powerful, why then do they not defend themselves? If you are infallible, why then do these icons not rise in vindication of you?
And so, stained glass windows were smashed, statues were mutilated, icons were burned.
This inconoclasty was not unique to the time. And, the destruction of sacred monuments has long been weaponized—humiliating the observant and destroying the souls of nations. The symbolic heft of the taken city. The triumphant shout as statues fall. The salted fields and the burning of forests. We know what desecration looks like and as a community that treasurers art and beauty many of us see this kind of desecration as an attack not just on an object but upon the creative impulse that has been gifted to us by God.
The destruction of art, with all of its cultural, religious, and historical significance, is a sin—marking our separation from the creator God through the rejection of our calling to serve as co-creator and our destruction of the created form.
Co-creator.
This word catches me, because today we are marking the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A young woman whose “yes” to God was an act of courage through which she became a co-creator of the Son of God. Without her ability to carry and birth Jesus, there could be no Christ. And, as I consider this, I consider how rarely in our tradition we are given cause to stop and consider the central role of a woman to the existence of not just Christ, but our entire faith. Without the women, there would be no Christ. Without the women, there would be no good news.
And so part of what compounds the tragedy of 16th century iconoclasty was that it left the churches devoid of women. Images of Mary, the Magdalene, saints of the church desecrated, defaced, destroyed. By mobs of the righteous who saw in the female form the potential for danger. If this body stands, we may fall—for, from their perspective, the female body was inherently dangerous—and the removal of these bodies from religious spaces made them safer for the worshipper.
Which causes me to wonder, who do we cast out so that we can feel “safe” in our religious spaces? What bodies have been destroyed so that our body can feel comfortable?
Hail Mary, full of grace…Haiti.
These questions pain me and I had no intent, today, to cause pain. In fact, I tried to avoid it. But, the news. Oh, my heart. The news.
Holy Mary, Mother of God…Afghanistan.
We need you in the Church. We need to remember that you are present, fully and wholly, within the communion of Saints. We need you to remind us that you would not be silenced and could not be removed.
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death…field hospitals in our Southern cities.
Oh God. Oh beloved saints. Oh my heart.
Mary knew fully the risk of love. She knew all too well the suffering of those left behind. She knew, as a woman, a prophet and a mother, the power we have to create and the power we have to destroy. Mary, whose proclamation is such that it cannot be ignored because it is through her words that we know to hope for what might be. To hope for what has been promised.
She reminds us that the poor will not be forgotten. She confronts us with the truth of our own biases and bigotries. She holds us to account. And no inconoclast has been able to render her irrelevant to our faith. Whether it was the literal “defacing” of statues of the virgin or the military junta of Argentina’s ban on any public display’s of this Gospel passage…she has not been silenced and we do well to listen to her words.
Words written and remembered in spite of us…as The Reverend Doctor Wil Gafney writes, “In spite of the biases of Israel’s story-tellers and scripture-writers, the God of Israel visits and blesses women and children and slaves and foreigners. A peculiarly pregnant girl-child and her post-menopausal cousin with her own pregnancy may be beyond the notice of Rome, but not God. And it is enough.”
God works wonders in this world in spite of us. God welcomes all in spite of us. God loves all in spite of us.
And so, in the midst of what feels like despair. We must, for the hope of the world, trust in what God will do in spite of us. Trust, that God’s promise to the lowly and the vulnerable is a sacred promise that the powers of this world cannot tear down.
And this, this is the hope I find today. That the Magnificat, in its fierce advocacy of God’s promise to the lowly, reminds us that it is not up to us. That no matter the damage we cause, we cannot cast out or tear down the love of God.
Hail Mary, Mother of God,
Amen.
