Sermon for St Edward’s/ BVM transferred 7/9/25
Readings: Luke 1:46-55 / Galatians 4:4-7 / Isaiah 61:10-11
I don’t know about you, but over the years I feel I’ve connected with Mary’s story in different ways.
As some of you know my youth was somewhat ‘misspent’. I found myself pregnant age 21, a long way from home (clearly mine was not from divine intervention!). I was afraid and didn’t know what to do. Thankfully I had a family who supported me.
So sometimes I feel a sense of affinity with the young pregnant Mary, afraid and not sure how people would respond, turning to Elizabeth, her family.
> Mary was a woman who was human in her emotions, she felt fear and love.
Sometimes I find I connect with the Magnificat as we have just heard.
Mary’s song. A piece of writing that has been part of church liturgy for centuries, since the earliest years of the church. It’s a fabulous song of faith, of trust, of power, and of justice. A song about the future of the nations in God’s hands.
German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer says of the Magnificat:
“The song of Mary … is passionate, wild, one might even say the most revolutionary… This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings. . . .”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Sermon 1932
As I’ve shared before, The Magnificat was even banned in some places as it was thought to be too subversive and revolutionary. In Guatemala in the 1980s, and in India under British rule. And Argentine group ‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’ who campaigned to find their missing children, thought to have been taken under military dictatorship used words from the Magnificat on their posters, and it was then banned.
I feel sometimes that I am a voice to speak out, to stand up for those who don’t have a voice, sometimes a bit of a radical, someone who seeks justice. But all done with God at the centre.
> Mary was a woman of strength and courage.
Sometimes I connect with her as a mother. A mother who loves, who feels pain, who knows the letting go. I’ve not had the terrible ache of losing a child as some of you have, as Mary did, but I’ve felt the pain of my children’s anguish and been unable to do anything. She stood at the cross, even if she knew it had to happen, her pain was that of a loving mother watching her own son die.
> She was a woman who knew heartache and loss.
And sometimes I connect with the strength of her faith. In the Magnificat she sings first in worship and thanksgiving
“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour
for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name
and she declares who God is even in her fear and her youth
“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.”
> She was a woman of amazing and inspiring faith.
And she was a woman filled with the Holy Spirit. When she conceived Jesus in her womb, the Holy Spirit filled her. Luke 1:35 reads:
35 The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God…’
As the Holy Spirit came upon her, Mary became a vessel for Christ to grow within her. The Holy Spirit is also called the Spirit of Christ. She nurtured the Spirit with her body.
Women who are pregnant nurture their babies through the placenta; nutrition, DNA, immunity and so on is passed to their baby. But what also happens is that some of the baby’s DNA goes back across and embeds in the mother’s body, so that they will always carry a part of their child with them.
So Mary was the first human to carry the Holy Spirit within her and the first one to have the Spirit remain with her.
John 14:17 tells us that the Spirit will dwell within us too
This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees the Spirit nor knows the Spirit. You do, because the Spirit abides with you, and will be in you.
and as we heard Gal 4:7
God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ 7 So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God
So we follow in the footsteps of Mary, carrying the Spirit within us, and like her the Spirit remains within us, the Spirit is part of us too, as we live out our lives.
> Mary was a woman full of the Spirit of God
I wonder about you. What is it that stands out to you about Mary? What connects you to her part of the story?
Perhaps most important of all is that Mary points us to Jesus. She literally carried him with her and continues to do so.
She reminds us to be people of faith who trust in the Lord. She had such strength in her faith to do what she did.
She reminds us to be people of love rather than fear and that Jesus is with us when we face the difficult times, the heartache and anguish.
Her words call us too, to be people who seek justice and liberation in Jesus’ name.
And she reminds us to be vessels of the Spirit, a place where Christ can grow, within us, not just for us and our own faith, but for those around us who are impacted by the love of Christ being revealed through us.
So this week, maybe we can ask ourselves, what does Mary inspire in us? and how ae we carryng Christ in all that we do?
Amen
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