Growing in Wisdom

Fr Richard Healey explores the role of Mary in Christianity, noting the scant references to Jesus in Paul’s writings and the lack of birth details in Mark’s Gospel. The sermon encourages listeners to reflect deeply on God’s word and allow God’s presence to inspire transformation in the coming new year.

(00:00:00) – You know, perhaps I watch a little bit too much science fiction, but I love travels of fancy. And in some ways, imagine, if you will, that you’ve created this time machine or this has given you this, this option. And you go back into the city of Rome, for example, in the mid 60s of the first century. And it’s the time of great persecutions by the Emperor Nero. He’s doing all kinds of terrible and heinous events and activities. But you’re a historian, and so you want to be able to trace the origins of Christianity. And so you go hunting around to find manuscripts, to find copies of what documents do people have access to at this point in the history of the church? And you visit the different communities and you see the flourishing of life despite and perhaps because of the persecutions that people are suffering. Both Peter and Paul have recently been executed, and you’re just, you know, devastated. And you see the depth of that loss on those communities that are there.

(00:01:15) – But you hear of the disciples of Paul, and so you go visiting them and you talk to them. You said, what kinds of things DePaul speak about. I mean, you didn’t actually meet Jesus apart from when he was on the road to Damascus, and he experienced him in a vision, or as many of us are able to do, to encounter him in prayer. What kinds of things did. Did Paul speak about? And of course, the focus of Paul that we get from his writings is about the impact of Jesus on our lives, the truth of what happens when we encounter him in the death and resurrection, what happens when we experience the new birth of the Holy Spirit, the transformation that happens when we begin to be drawn into the new creation, when we’re able to experience that fullness of life, but about the life, and indeed even the direct words and teachings of Jesus in the writings of Paul, you get almost nothing at all. In fact, the text that we have from Galatians today is really the sum total of all that Paul tells us about the person, the history, the biography, if you like, of Jesus.

(00:02:43) – What are we told? When the appointed time came, God sent his son, born of a woman? Not terribly helpful. I think most of us here in the church today are born of a woman, so he puts us in connection with all of humanity, born a subject of the law. So he’s Jewish, he comes under the covenant. He’s he’s brought part of that. And why was he born? To redeem the subjects of the law and to enable us to be adopted as children. But that’s not the end of the story. It’s the end of the biography. It’s the only detail that Paul gives us about Jesus. There’s nothing more about his birth, nothing more. There’s no mention of the virgin birth, no mention really, of Mary and what she has done. But at this point in history, that’s clearly the important thing I saw on Instagram last week. Someone gave a detailed description of the nativity scene that we get in the gospel of Mark. And what was it, a blank canvas.

(00:03:53) – Mark doesn’t tell us anything about the birth of Jesus. He begins directly with the ministry of John the Baptist. That’s the start of his gospel. And so it’s simply white. It’s a blank canvas about the, the, the birth, the stories, the Nativity of Jesus. And so Mark is the first of the gospels to be written, as is probably about this time after the death of of Peter and Paul, after the death of the early apostles. And they’re like, oh heck, we’d better start writing down some of these stories. We better start collecting these, and we better start having these details so that future church for future Christians are able to have something to draw from, from the actual words and and ministry of Jesus. But Mark clearly doesn’t think it’s that significant to tell the story that Luke will write maybe 20 years later, or Matthew, right, maybe ten years later. And yet he’s offering us this insight into what is at the heart of our lives and when we. Gather in the worship of God, and we call that to Mary as our mother.

(00:05:06) – It’s not antithetical to the writings of Paul. It doesn’t stand in contrast to him, but stands in continuation of what Paul had begun to realize were the direct insights. And that Mary is there as our mother because first she’s there as a disciple. She’s first there to to point the way to Jesus. She’s first there to invite us into sharing that same way of life that we intercede through Mary as the Mother of God, because she is the mother of the Divine One, the mother of Jesus. And it’s in that gift and in that privilege that we gather to pray and that we gather to be changed and transformed. That Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart. And that’s the same invitation that we receive, the same gift and the same grace that we share in to be blessed by the Lord as Aaron was instructed. Now opening reading today. So let’s indeed be people over the course of this new year, which over the space of 2024, let’s be people that ponder the Word of God that allow Mary to continue to point the way for us to Jesus.

(00:06:23) – Let’s indeed treasure these gifts in our hearts and become more confused by the spirit that cries out within our hearts. ABBA, father, let’s be people that are caught up in wonder of the God that’s continuing to invite us more deeply, to follow him, and to be changed and transformed by his presence over the course of this year.