mary – Holy Adventures

A guided meditation on John 12

Isaiah 43:16–21 Ps 126 Philippians 3:3–14 John 12:1–8

This is the last of our guided meditations for lent. Next week we return to the familiarity of Palm Sunday and then Holy Week, so for one last time, I invite you to close your eyes. Breathe deeply. Pause and do all you can to still your noisy mind and restless heart.

We enter the house in Bethany; the air is thick with voices, the warm hum of companionship, with the smell of food prepared for a funeral that never happened.

You see Lazarus reclining at the table.

Days ago, he was dead. Wrapped in linen. Sealed in a tomb. His body had begun to decay, and the stench of death hung around. But there he is – alive – eating and drinking. Jesus is here, too, surrounded by those he loves, the weight of what’s to come presses in on him. But for now, for this moment, he is safe. All is a bit strange, but strangely well. And then the mood shifts…

Mary comes in. Do you see her? Sense her? Moving with purpose, carrying an alabaster jar. Her fingers clutch the cool clay, her shoulders move with deep, measured breaths. She walks to Jesus and kneels. Then, without hesitation, she breaks the jar open. The crack of pottery as it splinters against stone silences the room. And then — The smell. Rich, deep, overwhelming.

The scent of pure nard rises, filling every corner, clinging to skin, seeping into cloth.

It overpowers the scent of the meal, the warm sweat of the gathered men, the lingering memory of death.

It is the smell of extravagance, of reckless love, of something poured out completely, with nothing held back.

Mary’s hands move over Jesus’ feet. She pours the perfume freely, anointing him, touching him. And then, in an act as intimate as it is shocking, she loosens her hair, lets it fall freely, and wipes his feet. Her hair darkens; heavy with the oil, fragrant with devotion. The act is servant-like yet regal, humble and anointing. She sees what others do not. She knows who he is. She knows what is coming.

This is the foreshadowing of another night, days away, when Jesus himself will kneel over feet too. Mary, in her love, takes the posture of a servant, just as Jesus will take the posture of a servant-king. But there is more. This is the anointing of one who is to die.

Smell the perfume again. Let it settle into your own skin, into your own memory. This is the scent of preparation, the smell of life pressed against death.

The house is full of expensive perfume. It’s excessive and extravagant, and Judas’ anger cuts through it; “Why was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor?” he snarls.

Three hundred denarii—300 silver pieces—a year’s salary— incidentally, ten times more than Judas will receive in the coming days for handing Jesus over to death.

Pause. How do you feel as you hear his words? Does part of you agree? The wastefulness, the impracticality—does it unsettle you? Or does it rile you. do you also understand something Mary seems to know instinctively?

Jesus defends her. “Leave her alone.”

Mary has anointed him, not as a triumphant king, but as one who will die. The scent of this moment will cling to him, will follow him to the upper room, to Gethsemane, to the trial, to the cross. As he prays in agony in the garden, will the fragrance seep from his pores? As he is stripped and beaten, as whips tear into his flesh, as he stumbles under the weight of the cross, will the scent of Mary’s love rise from his body? And as he hangs on the cross, gasping for breath, will this perfume mingle with the smell of blood and sweat and death?

And there is another mystery in that room: the breaking of the jar, the pouring out of the oil— a sacramental moment. What does it foreshadow?

Bread will soon be broken. Wine will soon be poured out.

“This is my body. This is my blood.”

The scent of Mary’s perfume lingers on. Even here in the present. Let it settle into your soul. Let it remind you that true love costs everything. Love breaks open; pours out; gives everything. The fragrance remains. Love is unending. The scent of death is overcome. The cross awaits. Let us go there with Him.

Amen.

Surrender all?!

1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26 Psalm 148 Colossians 3:12-17 Luke 2:41-52

I’ve been doing a bit of a crash course in motherhood this past month. I am learning that, while there will inevitably be something you forget when you leave the house, you must make sure it isn’t a spare nappy, or the child. I almost always have no idea what I am doing but the little human who has moved into our home and hearts no longer terrifies me 100% of the time and when she raises her peanut butter encrusted hands up for me to give her a cuddle something happens inside me that I can’t explain. So, imagine my delight that this morning’s readings look at parenting too.

In our Gospel reading from Luke, we find twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, astonishing the teachers with His wisdom. His parents are frantic, having searched for Him for three days. THREE DAYS? Imagine?! And when they finally find Him, (imagine that mix of relief, anger, blame, more relief) Jesus responds with, “Did you not know I must be in my Father’s house?” Mary and Joseph must have had all kinds of feelings at that point! The wonder of hindsight shows us Jesus beginning to embrace His true identity, as his divine mission begins to unfold. And then He returns with His parents to Nazareth, continuing to grow in wisdom and favour with God and people.

Our gospel story connects to another story of surrender: the account of Hannah and Samuel from the Old Testament. Hannah, in her desperation for a child, makes a deal with God that if she is granted a son, she will dedicate him to the Lord. When Samuel is born, she fulfils her promise, leaving him in the temple with the priest Eli. She only gets to see him once a year, and her only parenting task is to take him the robe she lovingly makes each year. It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it?? Give me a child God, I beg you; and if you do, I will give him straight back to you, for your service. Wow. What an incredible act of surrender. Hannah didn’t just offer Samuel back to God; she gave up her vision of motherhood to trust God’s plan for her son.

Both stories—Hannah’s and Mary’s—are about surrender. Maybe every parenting story is. For Hannah, it was the surrender of her deep longing for a child and her dream of raising him herself. For Mary, it was the surrender of her son to a divine purpose she couldn’t truly understand. Both women had to let go of their own plans and accept God’s vision, which was greater than anything they could have imagined.

And today we stand on the threshold of another new year. Christmas is being cleared away, to make room for New Year’s resolutions, visioning boards and all that talk of becoming our best selves. New Year’s resolutions often centre on taking control—setting goals, making plans, striving for self-improvement. But we are invited to consider a different approach. Not so much, what can I do for me, but what can I do or be or surrender to God. Today’s readings invite us to choose a surrendering of control. What do we need to release to God? What are we holding too tightly, out of fear or need for certainty? What is God inviting us to entrust to His care?

Surrender doesn’t mean we stop planning or dreaming. It means offering those dreams with open hands, trusting that God’s purposes for us are always greater than our own. Surrender means releasing the illusion of control and allowing God’s story to unfold in ways we may not expect.

Surrender is clear as we explore both Hannah and Mary’s story. It is clear each time we hear the call of Christ to follow Him.

This theme of surrender and parenting and discipleship is beautifully captured in the words of Meister Eckhart, the 13^th century friar, mystic and theologian, who said, “We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.”

Eckhart reminds us that just as Mary gave her body to God for the birth of Jesus, we are also called to make space for God to be born in us—through our actions, our relationships, our choices, and our faith. In a sense, we are all invited to be mothers of God, to be open and receptive to the divine presence within us, and to trust that God is continually birthing something new in the world through us.

Isn’t that beautiful? We are all called – male, female, human, parents, non-parents, adult or child – we are all called to give ourselves fully to God so that, through us, God might bring Jesus to this world; this world that needs him so much.

So we have this amazing invitation to surrender: to make room for God to act in our lives, to step aside and allow His plans to unfold, even when we don’t fully understand what it will look like. In surrendering, we don’t lose ourselves; rather, we discover our truest selves, the ones God always intended us to be. Just as Mary said “yes” to God’s calling, we, too, are invited to say “yes” to the new birth that is being brought into our lives and the world.

So as we enter this new year, might we choose to pray for the courage to surrender our tightly held plans and our fears, to make space for God’s greater purposes. May we be willing to let go, trusting that God is always with us and working in us, to bring life, hope, and transformation. And just as Mary and Hannah gave their children to God’s service, may we offer our lives—our time and resources, our hearts and hopes—into God’s hands.

And may we each, become mothers of God, making room for His presence and His love to be born anew in us, that we might share it with the world.

Amen.

Meditation for Good Friday II

I was there

I had to be there

He was my son. My firstborn, my Lord.

I watched them

I saw them hurt him, thrust a crown of thorns upon his head, hoist up a sign mocking him as ‘The king of Jews’ and dividing his cloak up amongst them.

But didn’t they see, that is who he is; the king, Lord, messiah, Son of the living God.

When he was conceived the angel told me, ‘He will be great and will be called the Son of the most high. The lord God will give him the throne of his Father David and he will reign over Jacobs’ descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.’

Never end. Is this really the end?

I wanted to go to him, help him, hold him, care for him just like I did when he was a child. Memories of his life came flooding back.

Like the time he went missing. Scared the life out of me he did! 3days it was. 3 whole days. We’d gone up to Jerusalem and were travelling back home. As Jesus was twelve at the time he was at the age where he could travel with the men, and so I thought he was with Joseph. But, Joseph still saw him as a child and thought that he would be safe travelling with the women and children, so neither of us knew we had left him behind. When we realised we searched and searched, frantically trying to find him. When we finally did, there he was, sat down in the temple, as if nothing was wrong. Learning, listening, questioning he was, talking to the Rabbi. A learned man of God right from the very beginning.

I was there at his first miracle. He turned the water into wine, at a wedding of a friend of ours. I knew he could help. I told them,

‘Do as he says’. Even then, demonstrating kindness, grace and goodness.

Those precious memories stopped me in my tracks.

Then he looked up and saw me, quietly weeping, as my tears mixed with his pain, like an ugly smudged painting. It was as if he knew my thoughts. ‘Woman, here is your son,’ and to His close friend John, he said, ‘Here is your mother’. Even in his hour of greatest pain and suffering, he thought of me. My son.

My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour….

God’s mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

I always knew he was special. God showed me before he was even conceived . There I was, treasuring these things in my heart. I was there at the very beginning of his life, as he took his first breathe, a tiny baby placed in a feeding trough fit only for animals. Now here I am at the end. Willing him to take his last, to be free from all of that suffering and pain. Watching him Hanging there on a cruel cross, nails piercing his hands and feet.

But he is the messiah. The Son of God.

His Father God, where are you now? Why have you abandoned him?

And then he let out his last breath. The sky turned black, like nature was mourning alongside us. As if God himself had removed all of the colour from this place. And it was over.

Our job here on earth was complete.

I stood still, taking it all in, loving him, listening to the cries of the crowd, watching the soldiers pierce his side just to make sure he was definitely gone.

But….

It didn’t feel like the end.

My spirit filled with hope like a peace descended on me at that moment. It wasn’t just relief that he was free from pain, it was more than that. The only way I can describe it, is it’s like God wasn’t finished just yet.

The Magnificat of 2023

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 The Magnificat Romans 16:25-27 Luke 1: 26-38

Back in July, while I was in England, my dad asked my family ‘if you were a contestant on mastermind, what would your specialist subject be?’. And we thought long and hard about our answer. His was episodes of the dare-I-say dated crime drama Columbo, and the races of one specific horse of the 1970s. But mine would be the life and works of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And, if I can peel your thoughts away from what your mastermind specialist subject would be, let’s consider Jesus’ mum.

In place of our psalm today we read those glorious words of Mary’s song of social justice, the Magnificat. My favourite Magnificat-fact is until as recently as 1986 it was against the law in at least two countries for it to be recited, in public. In Guatemala and India, the government banned this passage because they recognised its power and they feared that if the poor or oppressed heard it, there might be an uprising, a revolution. Mary’s prophetic view of this world is not just a system that is a bit better than the old one. It is a brand-new creation, and it makes the old order unrecognisable.

This wide-eyed girl said a defiant yes to a new world order and agreed to fulfil her part in it and I want to do the same. I want to be that radical, that defiant, that obedient. But do you know what I only just realised this week?

As much as I love Mary, as much as her words are indelibly inked on my skin, as much as her YES has got me into all kinds of holy trouble and led me to this, I’ve often kept her as that teenage mum. Apart from an occasional moment or two, she’s mostly been singing the Magnificat or birthing in the stable. But this week, I read this poem and it has woken something up in me so I wanted to share with you these words from the writer Katie Baker.

I am the Mary of your Christmas cards.

I listen calmly while the angel brings me news that will shake my life beyond all measure.

I accept what has been ordained for me.

I am young and dressed in blue.

I am the Mary of your Christmas cards.

Despite travelling almost 100 miles on a donkey across a desert and giving birth in a stable, I am still immaculately clean and tidy, cradling my infant son, unperturbed by my surroundings.

I am still young and dressed in blue.

I am the Mary of your Christmas cards, welcoming shepherds from the nearby fields and strangers from afar; a person who treats such events as if they happened every day, calmly pondering on them in my heart.

I am still young and dressed in blue

But is this really me?

Do you have any picture of me beyond that of Christmas cards?

Where is your picture of me in the temple, as Simeon tells me how a sword would pierce my soul?

The angel brought greetings and told me not to be afraid, so I am calm on your Christmas cards; but do you never see the terror in my eyes as I hear Simeon’s haunting words and I do fear what is to come?

Maybe you do have a picture of me 12 years later – but have I aged in your eyes?

Am I calm and serene, frantically searching for my son, lost on return from the temple?

He was calm – but not I.

I was frantic.

Do you have a picture of me 30 years after your first picture of me?

Am I still dressed in blue?

Are there lines on my face?

Is my hair now grey?

Do you see me at the wedding feast, recognising deep within that his time was coming and he would soon be no longer mine?

Do you see me hurt by his rejection when he declared that all the world was his mother and his brother and his sister.

I knew that he had a greater purpose – but do not imagine that there was no pain for me in this. How I aged in those three years.

But am I still young in your picture?

Was I not grey-haired as I stood at the foot of the cross?

Do you know what it takes to watch your son being crucified?

Some parents still do.

As they pierced his side, my soul, too, was pierced.

Do you have a picture of me – in tears, distraught at the anguish of my son?

Or am I still the Mary of your Christmas cards?

They laid him in a tomb – it seemed so final – it seemed I had lost him for ever.

Where was the angel now to tell me not to be afraid?

My fellow countrywomen kept vigil; I was not alone in mourning.

But you who know what happened next, do you let me grieve for the end I thought he’d reached?

You know the end – you know the triumph of his resurrection, the Kingdom without end – and knowing this affects your picture of me.

I remain always young and dressed in blue, calm and serene, humble and willing – never allowed to show fear, hurt, anger, pain and grief.

For many I remain the Mary of Christmas cards.

If I am to be called blessed, please remember all I stand for.

As you receive your cards this Christmas, please look at me and remember that this is just the beginning.

Isn’t that wonderful?

The Mary of my knowledge was wild eyed, brave hearted, defiant and rebellious – a real revolutionary – but I had kept her young. By doing that I had denied Blessed Mary of burying her child. She knew that pain. And when he ascended he left again. I denied her of that too. She is so much more than we might have space for in our minds.

So before we dash headlong into Christmas Eve, before we celebrate her in carols and candlelight let’s just pause and consider the lifelong love of this earthly Mother, chosen for great things, and fully human.

And may we be inspired by that wild teen to whisper our own yes to God’s call, for the rest of our lives, not just for this snapshot, or this chapter. May our own yes be as bold as Mary’s and as lifelong. And might it even be as wild. Amen.

How is a baby made?

Isaiah 7: 10-16 Psalm 80: 1-8 Romans 1: 1-7 Matthew 1: 18-end

Virgin births are complicated.

We know how babies are made; it requires a sperm and egg. So, for some, the idea that the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way…without sex but with a divine conception from the Holy Spirit…, this is where their encounter with Christianity ends. This is where they get off. This claim is too audacious, too crazy. It doesn’t make sense. And they’re right. You’re right. It doesn’t make sense. Babies aren’t made that way.

When I was about 3, my mum decided it was time my sister and I should learn these basic facts about life, so she bought an animated story book called ‘how a baby is made’. Not wanting to make too much of it, she casually sequestered it away on our bookcase, waiting for the time we might select *that* book for our bedtime story. So, imagine the scene…grandad comes over and offers to read to the cute little grandchildren sat on his knee. Little Gemma scurries off and selects a book. Ooh, a new book, let’s have this one! And grandad begins to read… ‘mummy and daddy love each other very much’… ‘sometimes, to show their love, they take their clothes off…’ and so it continued, resulting in the most toe curling experience grandad ever had. By age 3, I could tell you exactly how babies are made. And it wasn’t like this.

But, if we allow the unusual conception and remarkable pregnancy and birth to derail our faith journey; if we allow the questions and even the logic to distract us entirely, then we risk failing to encounter this wonderful truth: the son shall be named Emmanuel, which means God is with us.

God is with us.

And that is the beauty of the Christmas story, that is the outrageous claim of our faith – the fundamental truth – that God chose to leave heaven aside, put on flesh and come and be with us; no longer simply above us, but with us, alongside us, intimately connected with, and part of, humanity.

And what could be more intimate, more vulnerable, more ‘with’ than being right inside another human being, growing, moving, being nurtured and nourished, in the act of conception, pregnancy and childbirth. God was ‘with’ Mary. And Mary was with child, and that child was God.

Doesn’t that say something remarkable about the incarnation? That God’s intention was always to be with humanity – not doing things to us but actually being with us, in real intimacy, even depending upon us for God’s very birth.

And God didn’t just come to earth once, in that first nativity. Yes, God’s incarnation was absolutely sufficient for all time and eternity. That once was enough. But God keeps on incarnating, keeps being born, keeps showing up on earth, with all humanity – you’ll see the wonderful Meister Eckhart quote on page 10 in your service book, which explains it just perfectly, ‘we are all to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born’.

And that is the truth.

God is always needing to be born; every moment is a nativity; every moment is the incarnation. And God still relies on humankind for that birth.

Mary’s role was very clear – be a vessel, a carrier of the divine. Be the one to hold and nurture and intimately carry the Christ. And then, when the time came, when the world needed him most, present that Christ to the world – bring him forth and reveal him to others – bring his light to the places of darkness and then set him free, that his goodness might be free to grow and spread and multiply and be passed on exponentially. Mary’s job was to know her encounter with the divine, experience it in her very body and then share it with the world.

And Mary’s job is our job too.

We are also called and created to be vessels and carriers of the divine. We also need to hold and nurture and carry Christ and then take him to the darkest places of this world and share his light and life and love with others. Our role is to encounter the divine; not keep him to ourselves but share his goodness and joy with the world.

And that is why we meet together here, and keep on coming back to this place, over and over. In our gathering we see something of the Christ in one another, we have opportunities to encounter the Christ and know Emmanuel – that God is with us. And in the breaking of the bread; in the eating and the drinking, we get to carry the Christ, literally in our body – just as Mary did – and then we are sent from here to take the Christ into the world.

In that first Christmas, Mary became Theotokos – literally the God-bearer. Growing and carrying the Christ in her body must have assured her, beyond all doubt, that in this event God is with her, with us. In our own journey, and uniquely in this mass, we too become the carrier of the divine and have that same responsibility to make the world a different, better place – a place that is acutely aware that God is – as God always was – with us.

I will end with the beautiful words of a Roman catholic sister – Frances Croake Frank – who wrote the stunning words of the poem ‘Did the Woman Say’. She writes this…

Did the woman say
When she held him for the first time
in the dark dank of a stable,
After the pain and the bleeding and the crying,
“This is my body, this is my blood?”

So, as Mary encountered her Christ in that dark dank stable, may we encounter him here, in the faces and actions of one another and in the body and blood of the eucharist. May we, and in turn the world, be changed by our encounter. And may we always know that God is with us. Amen.