If I ruled the world, if I was God, I’d be tempted to plump for the extraordinary, the spectacular, every time to achieve my goals. I’d light up the skies, throw thunderbolts, juggle with stars, catapult rainbows around, blow clouds at ridiculous speeds across the skies to make my point. If I was God I’d be tempted to get my message across in bright lights, with armies of angels and cosmic ambulances going round healing everyone. And if I were God and I decided to use people to do my work, I’d be tempted to use the most extraordinary ones I could find: the geniuses, the wits, the sharpest, brightest, most creative, those who had already won a name for themselves, those who had flair, style, and panache.
But I am not God and God is not me. And God in his graciousness bends down and tries to teach me again for the fiftieth time this month that his ways are not my/our ways – that he can use the extraordinary, and of course he does, all the time, but he is not limited to it; he works too, just as well, through the ordinary – and through that his glory is known all the more.
This morning our thoughts turn to Mary on your patronal festival. In using Mary, in choosing Mary to be the human mother to his very own son he blows out of the water, smashes to smithereens all human expectations of what’s important and how God should work and how ‘things’ should be done.
In using Mary:
He has chosen the ordinary over the extraordinary;
He chose youth, when youth was frowned upon;
He chose a young woman when women were barely even second-class citizens;
He chose a virgin, when motherhood was everything;
He chose someone uneducated when the uneducated have always been the ones to get ignored;
He chose an asylum seeker when they were as dismissed by everybody then as they are now:
He chose poverty when it was commonly believed that it was the rich that were blessed by God.
He took the ordinary, in this case, Mary, and from her obedience to him he made something extraordinary. And in doing so he confounded the wisdom of this world. And this was not the first or the last time God has opted for the ordinary.
Remember with me that:
He took a boy born in a wicker basket and made him the one to lead his people to the promised land:
He took a shepherd boy and made him king:
He took a pathetic fisherman and made him the rock on which he built the church:
He took a persecutor of Christians and made him one of the best missionaries ever.
It’s on his CV; it’s what God does, it is indeed intrinsic to his character: he takes the ordinary and he makes it extraordinary. He took one woman and chose through her to bless all peoples.
And who could have known quite how extraordinary Jesus was to be? Who could have known the revolution he was to bring, the redemption he brought, the forgiveness he offered, the love that we will never fathom? The most ordinary gave birth, quite literally, to the most extraordinary.
Was she ordinary? Yes. I think so in many ways. But hang on a second…. Sometimes I don’t like the word ‘ordinary’. I rebel. It’s a pride thing. I’ve got to get over it! But it reeks of plain, boring, mundane, unimaginative things. It’s not exciting, its not sexy…perhaps even it’s a loser’s word.
Is that how Mary was? Was she a loser? Was she this plain, simple, pedestrian sort of naïve doormat passively accepting whatever came her way…? She could have been. But I think not. Her faith is not the faith of a weak person. It is the faith of the strong, the courageous, the risk taker, the one prepared to dabble with their reputation, the one prepared to dance and lose dignity, the one prepared to have her most vulnerable moments shared with the most bizarre and random collection of strangers; the one prepared to make endless rounds of sacrifices, to let Christ be Christ, the one prepared to question and chastise the son of God and be rebuked and almost rejected by her son; the one prepared to watch her son die before her. This is not the action of a weak person.
Look at the Magnificat. Just in the first few lines we find a determination, godliness, joy and humility. This is not for losers.
Notice how the Magnificat does not start by saying: ‘My soul tries to remember to praise you God, that is, when I feel like it, which OK isn’t as much as you’d like, but you know its better than nothing.’ No, Mary sings, shouts out, (the neighbours are probably shouting at her to turn the volume down), My soul magnifies the Lord and my Spirit rejoices in God my Saviour.
She is determined, it is an act of will; it is something she is choosing to do, she is praising God. God is first. She is determined it should be that way. What’s more, she could have said, Wow, I must be great that God has chosen me, … No, she puts God first, this song is about God, not her. She is a determined person. She is a godly person.
Thirdly, she knows her place, she is the servant, she knows that she is ordinary and she doesn’t have a problem with that. ‘God has looked on the lowliness of his servant’ she sings. Sometimes we think we’re extraordinary – what a curse. Mary knew that she was ordinary. That was part of her gift to the world. That was exceptional in itself. She didn’t seek the celebrity status she eventually had thrust upon her. She was humble.
And lastly, she was joyful, happy, ecstatic. Because God was doing what he had always promised to do; promised to her and her parents and her parents’ parents and so on…he was keeping his promise, to liberate his people and he was going to do it through her. She wasn’t going to sit in a corner just contemplating the philosophical and theological implications of her pregnancy (though I bet she did that too) – she knew how to be joyful. It’s a spiritual gift, you know, to be joyful.
Mary has had a rough ride through history. She has either been everything or nothing. To some she has been everything: Queen of Heaven, Holy Madonna. She has inspired everything from cathedrals to universities, from concert halls to funeral homes, from retreat centres and art galleries to animal rescue sanctuaries, all of which bear her name. She is found weeping at Lourdes, she is found at wayside shrines, within the words of an opera, her name is graffitied, chiselled on tombstones the world over. She is everything. Or she is nothing, the one in a blue towel in the school nativity play. A stark contrast and we will never know this side of the grave what she was really like though more than a hundred stories, and more than a thousand statues and portraits aim to give us a clue. But what we do know is that she led the way. She showed what to do when God visits you. Say ‘yes’! She allowed God to work through her – not a passive easy thing but an active, risky thing.
God takes the ordinary and when the ordinary is open to him, when the ordinary is determined, joyful, humble, he transforms it into the extraordinary. Today he continues this pattern…in a multitude of ways. For God is the same yesterday, today and for ever.
In this service today we get the chance to be part of this pattern, to become part of this eternal story. Today we take the ordinary; a bottle of wine, a flask of water, a loaf of bread and God will do something extraordinary with it – it will be food to our souls. That is what we shall be doing shortly. Today we come as an ordinary congregation before God: with our faith and our doubts, with our polished halos and our hidden skeletons. We come with our strengths and our weaknesses, with our pride and our nakedness: and God, if we let him, wishes to do something extraordinary with us.
I don’t know what that is but I’m pretty sure of some of it because it’s what he longs to do with every congregation. He wants to bind you together as a congregation, so that everyone is cared for. He wants to bind you together with the other churches so that your neighbours can see you are one. He wants you to be a beacon in Godmanchester such that everyone whispers: have you seen what is happening in the churches? – this is where the action is. This is the place where life itself takes place, where relationships get healed, where forgiveness dares to show its face…where love is outrageous and grace amazing.
You are an ordinary congregation, just like any other, with whom God longs to do, to continue to do, extraordinary things if only you say ‘yes’. And what’s more, he longs to take ordinary individuals and do extraordinary things there too. He longs to take you and you and you; he longs to take you who have come for the very first time today and you who reckon you’ve been here the longest and you who have never been singled out before and he wants to take your ordinariness and make something extraordinary.
He wants you to be an ambassador for him, to represent the Lord of hosts, wherever you go, wherever you are. He wants you to feel so loved that your deepest insecurities and greatest vulnerabilities melt away. He wants you to be so alive to him that others come flocking to hear the good news you must have.
What will you do, as individuals and as a congregation?
Will you dare to follow the example of Mary
- to risk being misunderstood?
- to risk pain?
- to risk your joy being scoffed at?
- to risk celebrity status?
Will you dare to follow her by having a determined faith, a godly faith, a joyous faith?
Will you dare to follow her and say ‘yes’ to God?
Will you allow God to take your ordinariness and transform it?
Will you say to him: ‘Here I am, the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word…’?
God hopes so. Amen.