“Mary in Pain”
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
December 22, 2024
Reading: Luke 2:22-35
Good morning, friends. Welcome home. Whether today is your first time with us, or if this is your 100th Advent with us, we rejoice to worship together in this house of the living God. This is my third Advent and Christmas season here, and for y’all who are back seasonally with family, I’m getting close to knowing your names. Quiz me next year. To all listening online around the globe now or in the future, here is what Christmas says: God is born among us and so every single creature may rejoice.
There are stories that you love and then there are stories that undo you and make you different. That’s the right way to human: To be unmade, then made new. In relationships, you give yourself to someone trustworthy, and you get yourself back different all over again. That’s what this story, and all good stories, are about. The Christmas story is not just for us Christians—I have met so many Jewish friends and neighbours this year who love our Christmas story. Our Catholic twins in faith, with whom we wrestled like Jacob and Esau for 400 years before realizing, oops, we’re kin, you know what’s better? Embracing. Our Islamic younger cousins in faith. And every single person with a belly button. All of us descend from Eve and Adam and so from the one God. And in Jesus Christ ... God has a belly button. So let there be general revelry and mayhem.
And not just among us humans.
The animals in our narthex on Christmas Eve will also be made new by the child: alpacas and bunnies included. The cherry tree and the apple tree and other trees of Europe that our carols sing about. Sojourning families in Latin America, seeking solace here or anywhere. This story is about a new birth for all creation. And all that is begun in Mary’s child, Joseph’s stepson, firstborn of a new kind of family. In a way, the church is all our first family. The family you’re born into, the one you make with a spouse, the ones your kids or grands make, those are excellent families. But Jesus Christ’s motley group of all critters is our first. So welcome home.
Tell me your story, and I’ll tell you who you are. Stories like Simeon and Anna and Mary and Joseph and the presentation in the temple. Jesus is not just in a nuclear family, however irregular, like not a few of ours. He immediately starts making new kin: aged Simeon, ancient Anna, as his misfit parents present him in the temple to be circumcised like every Jewish male child. The parents make an offering of all they can afford: a few birds. An offering for poor people. Because they can’t afford a lamb.
Or maybe because the true lamb is the one in their arms.
We’ve been in a series here all Advent about Mary at our church. And you’ve heard me and Dayle both say often that when you open up the playbook to Mary, you get all the arts back. At the Reformation in the 1500s we and our Roman Catholic kin had an all-fault divorce. We divvied up the treasures of western Christendom, and I guess our lawyers were asleep because we gave away Mary. Today Mary seems Catholic to us, as in not Protestant. But mama has ways of sneaking back in her own house, cooking up a storm, reminding us of why we love her. So, Protestants started with “Mary Did You Know,” a song that our staff knows I do not hold in high regard. But God used that song to draw one-time evangelicals like me back to Mary’s heart.
Humour works for me: a T-shirt at a Notre Dame football game that said, “God may not care who wins the football game, but his mother does.” On mission trips to Guatemala and Honduras I realized that Roman Catholic women run every village in every country, and they find solace in her. I wrote a cover story on Mary for the Christian Century in 2004. Christianity Today also had a cover story on her called “the blessed evangelical Mary.” And Time magazine ran a cover story about the not-coincidence by David Van Biema, who became a great friend: if the liberals and the evangelicals think Mary is back, well then Mary is back. News flash: she never left. The Holy Spirit is weaving her church back together. In my article I quote John Paul II: if the victory comes, it will be through the virgin. When I was my most evangelical, I’d have said that was heresy. I was wrong. It’s okay, good moms are patient.
Today’s sermon is on Mary in pain. And one thing I noticed when my wife gave birth to our three sons is that there is a sisterhood in pain. Not my finest moment, but I hear Jaylynn having contractions in the other room. And I hear myself say, wait, honey, I’m almost done with this paragraph. I was all IQ and no EQ. Still am some would say. When women tell stories about having their babies, they all lean in, and swap, and man are they incredible. Our firstborn first kicked when Jaylynn was in church, getting ready to preach. Butterfly flutters, amiright? Our second, I was in a free throw shooting contest in Cameron Indoor Stadium, sort of like the Maple Leaf Gardens of Duke basketball only we still play in ours. Won $100 easy. They bring me back to shoot again for $400. My very pregnant wife wants to be there. It’s 2004, Duke and Georgia Tech are both final four bound, so my free ticket is fine, but Jaylynn’s courtside seat costs me $350. Now I’m not that good at math but I’m pretty sure I better win that contest. Don’t worry, I was put on the planet to shoot free throws. I come out ahead. In the second half, Jaylynn is destroying a plate of nachos. And I say, ‘now love, I know we’re not used to seats in the second row, but you gotta keep your head up.’ And just as I finish that sentence the sister beside her catches the ball, and Jaylynn looks at me and says, “the baby kicked.” Do you know that our eldest just won a three-point shooting contest at the University of Iowa, Caitlin Clark’s court, for a $100 gift certificate? She’s coming to Toronto to face the Tempo soon! And while we wait, we have Oakville’s own Kurtis Rourke burning up college football and Toronto’s own Xavion Lee getting buckets for Princeton. As the kids say, that’s fire. Ontario fire.
Where was I. Mary in pain. There are Catholic traditions of the seven sorrows that Mary suffers. There are devotions in the Roman Church about the prophecy of Simeon, our story today. He says, “a sword will pierce your own soul too.” Wait a minute, that’s in the Bible, and so Mary is important not just to give birth, but ongoingly. She doesn’t show up a lot in the New Testament, but when she does, it matters. The flight into Egypt. The loss of her child for three days in Jerusalem. Meeting Jesus on the road to Calvary. The crucifixion. Jesus taken down from the cross and laid in the tomb. You think she doesn’t know pain? And now you know why our mothers gave birth with rosaries wrapped around their wrists: women have done harder things even than this.
Did you know that they excavated some graves in colonial Williamsburg and found rosaries? Do the math: those were illegal in King James’ England in 1619. They had to be buried with those things in secret. That colony also had some of the first black people in North America. A year before the Mayflower. They didn’t come voluntarily, did they?
Now this is where things get interesting. There is a black Roman Catholic tradition all over the US south. Charleston. New Orleans. Durham North Carolina, one of my too many homes. Why, you ask? Because the Catholic orders that started those parishes stood up against Protestant slavers in the Americas. Bartolome de las Casas, born in Sevilla in 1484, is remembered among some aboriginal peoples as a rare bright light among Spanish priests. He recognized the humanity of indigenous peoples in what we think of today as the Caribbean. (It was a low bar—some would say a very low bar). Mary is still in pain.
I’m from North Carolina, and the same Dominicans to whom Las Casas belonged showed me that liturgy can be ballet. A visiting Dominican Father at a Trappist monastery presided so beautifully that if he’d asked me to convert, I might have. I brought more conservative Catholic friends than me back to another monastery. Have you heard of the young fogey phenomenon? If you haven’t, look it up—Martin Marty and Father Andrew Greeley in Chicago were already talking about it in the late 90s. Latin mass, women in veils, as many kids as you can have, the works: more Catholic than the pope. There is nothing new under the sun. I’d been retreating with Trappists, and my convert zealous Catholic friends thought I shouldn’t take communion. Not that the monks had ever invited me to do so, dear bishop, no sir. My old friends thought no, you’re not Christian enough. One of the priests put his arm around me—it’s okay. Do you know one of those convert friends is a Catholic priest now, doing good work. Another left the faith altogether. Beware, the zeal of the convert. Mary is still in pain.
At night, the last prayer before bed, those monks would pray the Salve Regina. And they would sing to the Virgin with such tenderness. The sculpture was a bronze Mary with her child in her lap. I now know it’s called the Seat of Wisdom: she’s the one on whom Wisdom incarnate, Sophia, sits. And these men in what look like dresses intone this song in a way that’ll crack your heart open.
Hail holy queen, mother all merciful, our light our sweetness and our hope we hail you. To you we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to you we send our sighs, while mourning and weeping, in this lowly valley of tears. Turn then your eyes, most gracious advocate, oh turn your eyes, so full of love and tenderness, upon us sinners. And Jesus, the most blessed fruit of your virgin womb, show us, when this earthly exile is ended. Oh clement, oh loving, oh most sweet, virgin Mary.
I figured out my dissertation topic there. I took my wife and kids there. And when he was our littlest, our Will told them he wanted to be a monk. I’m not sure they held him to it. But they were happy about it. Some of those older monks don’t have to open their psalm books. Their abbot had Thomas Merton as novice master. And some of my Jewish friends here in Forest Hill know Father Stan well. Do you think we could get him up here for an event with Holy Blossom? I bet we could.
Later I learned another way into life with Mary, through Anglicans, Anglo-Catholics they’re sometimes called. You know a woman who was influenced by Anglo-Catholicism: one Lady Eaton. She’s why there are kneelers in your pews. She’s why there are angels in many of our spaces. She’s why there’s an Anglo-Catholic space in the heart of Toronto called Timothy Eaton Memorial Church. Now, you may hear some say that we wanted it to be called Timothy Eaton Anglican Church, but some bishops said a church has to be named for a saint. Now, Timothy Eaton himself was a Methodist by conviction—converted on a sawdust trail at a revival soon after he got to Ontario. He had died by the time this building was built. But Lady Eaton wanted a gothic building like the finest cathedrals in England. Her husband Sir Jack said, “yes ma’am.” This fledgling church plant of the Methodist Church in Canada voted to name the new experiment for Jack’s late father, Timothy, the Methodist by conviction. In some cultures, they still know you honour a person by honouring their parents: Jewish culture knows that; west African cultures know that; Korean cultures know that. Our culture, where you are your cv, is starting to look a little, I don’t know, parochial?
In the medieval university, Mary was over all the arts and sciences. Theology in English still speaks of itself as queen of the sciences. Nuh uh. Mary is. God’s own wisdom, Sophia, made flesh. The source of all wisdom. She holds the one, who holds all things together.
Our story for today is called the Nunc Dimittis in Latin, you can even hear it in English: “now you dismiss.” I’ll say it in the version the monks taught me:
Lord, now you let your servant go in peace
Your word has been fulfilled.
My own eyes have seen the salvation
Which you have prepared in the sight of every people.
A light to reveal you to the nations
And the glory of your people Israel.
Simeon and Anna represent Israel. They are Israel. In the new Mary movie on Netflix, Anna is Mary’s mother. Not sure if that’s from the protoevangelium of James or not but the dates might check out. Simeon is one of the twelve patriarchs, the sons of Jacob, but he goes by another name sometimes: Israel. That movie has gotten some heat from folks claiming that Mary is really a Palestinian, and not a Jew. Uh, okay, that would be the oldest of Christian heresies, but never mind. The actor is an Israeli Jew. I didn’t love the movie I’ll confess. Too much running around at the end, and I fall asleep these days even in good movies. But Noa Cohen is astonishing. And old Sir Anthony Hopkins, as mad King Herod shows you what a terrifying time it was to be alive. Did I say was? I mean is. Mary is still in pain. Not just somewhere else. But here in Toronto.
But this is a note of joy, thank God: Simeon takes the young messiah in his arms and praises God: I can go in peace, I have seen salvation, which is for all people. A light for the nations, and glory for all Israel—notice the order. We’re the nations, we gentile Christians, streaming to Zion at the end of the world. And glory for Israel comes last, the place of honour. Anna represents daughter Zion, faithful Israel, welcoming the child after a long, long wait.
I’ll close with a story. There’s always a story. Someone asked me once if all my stories are true. Yes, they are. But sometimes I respond with Tommie Lee Jones’ character in No Country for Old Men: it’s certainly true that it’s a story. There was a man in prison once. Unjust sentence, unfair, likely to make the resistance harder and more violent. He used that time to learn about his enemy. To learn the language. What does the enemy like and not like? What are his dreams and worst fears? He came out of prison ready to lead a freedom struggle. You might know this story from Playing the Enemy, the book on which the movie Invictus was based: Nelson Mandela. Sometimes Mary rejoices.
Mandela used this understanding to embrace rugby and avoid a bloodbath and bring truth and reconciliation. And in South Africa, the TRC had a Jesus component: if you confess your sins, you can be forgiven. In Canada, we couldn’t or wouldn’t do that: too much horror for too long. And who can forgive for the dead? Mary might could. But there is another I know for sure who can. And does. And has. And will.
So which way Canada? Which way Ontario? Which way Timothy Eaton Memorial Church?
Here’s how we serve the broader good from this spot, 230 St. Clair Avenue West: we love the people, and we preach the gospel. We ask for God to raise up more Nelson Mandelas. And we pray for a day when all violence will cease. That day is coming very, very soon. Hail Mary. Bring your Son. He will reign over the cosmos. Amen.