St Mary’s Patronal Festival – September 2013

I am sure that over the years, you have not been short of clergy on Patronal festivals offering opinions about the Blessed Virgin Mary from this pulpit. Today I would like to focus on something slightly different. I would like us to think about why her virgin status is such an important aspect of the Gospel reality.

One of my old lecturers at Leeds University – the prolific New Testament and Patristic scholar Dr Barbara Spensley, would often comment that she could not accept that the New Testament miracles actually occurred. She would contend that modern empirical investigation supported her view and so she saw no alternative but to interpret them as metaphors or analogies of a wider truth. We should start off by recognising, I think, that this is a very common position to take. In fact it is probably the most common one in an age when there is a blatant refusal to believe anything that we can’t fully understand.

Prof Canfield – another notable biblical scholar, believes that to affirm the virgin birth, and all that goes along with it, is riddled with problems and ignoring them shows very bad scholarship. However, he goes on to say that far more common is the reverse tendency to refuse to consider with an open mind the evidence supporting the virgin birth.

In other words, the enculturated prejudices of our age stop us from looking openly at the claims of our great faith. A miracle is anything that is brought about by God and occurs outside of the normal parameters of nature. But one of the reasons why we find it so hard to believe in miracles is that we start from the wrong place – our own experience. Experience is always going to leave us wanting in this regard simply because our experiences are from human origin and miracles are always from the divine. So we need to start from somewhere different if we are to do justice to things that are of divine origin.

All the scientific empirical evidence of the world suggests that when we die everything comes to an end for us; we enter nothingness as the electrical impulses of our neurological systems, our brains, shut down. When we throw away a Banana skin we can see it turning black, going mushy - decomposing. If someone were to dig up my body many years after I die, chances are, it will have done the same. But, we are all here today because we believe and hope in God, heaven, angels, saints, Jesus and resurrection – none of which can be proven in this kind of way. We believe in eternal life – that there has to be something else the other side of death. What is eternal life, if not a miracle?

We also believe in a God who cares so much for his beautiful creation that he is willing to personally intervene to bring that creation back in touch with himself – the source of eternal goodness – because without him it cannot survive. He became man in the person of Jesus so that we may see a route back to him – so that we might be saved. That is what the incarnation is all about, but what is this incarnation, if not a miracle?

If we believe in the incarnation; if we believe that God became man in the person of Jesus – and to be a Christian this is essential – we must also recognise that we believe in a God who personally involves himself in his creation by operating outside of its given norms. He created everything and set the parameters and that means he is not bound by them, but can operate outside of them. It is from this starting point that we then need to assess the miracle accounts of the New Testament.

If we believe that God became man in the person of Jesus, why then do we find it so difficult to accept the virgin birth? It makes sense that in order for God to become a complete human being he would need to enter the world and be born of a women, like any normal human being. But to be conceived by an ordinary man and a women who had previously experienced passion and lust would not do, as that would mean being of substance that was already sinful and thereby a part of the problem. No, Christ needed to be born of a devout woman who had not yet experienced the temptations of bodily lust - a virgin. This in turn meant that the Christ would have to be conceived by the Holy Spirit itself, and not a third party, so that no sin only purity may be found in his being. In Christ, there can be no sin or else he could not be the victor of it. Neither would he be of divine nature- goodness. Once we have allowed ourselves to consider this all with an open mind, we suddenly find that reason itself proves the virgin birth - the greatest of all the biblical miracles. Then along with this, all the other miracles make sense too: the healings, the feeding, the casting out of demons (real or imaginary), the calming of storms – through all these Christ ensures that individuals are more readily able to be reconciled to God. But belief is the key to all of this: belief that anything is possible with God. Belief that God can operate outside of our norms when necessary.

We recently took our Youth Group on a weekend pilgrimage to a monastery. When we got there, I found that they had placed me in one of the more luxurious rooms. Unlike all the other rooms, mine had a Yale Lock and delicately placed on the desk were two keys. After a fabulous weekend, the time came to pack up and get ready for the taxis to take us all to the station. After having gathered the youngsters, I then went upstairs to collect my case from my room. I then discovered that I didn’t have my key. What was worse, in my room were the group’s train tickets: no one could get home!

In blind panic I searched for my key, but to no avail. So I went find a monk, but the monastery was deserted (they had all left to attend a memorial service in the local parish church). Eventually I found a lone Monk left behind to guard the monastery, Fr John. Now Fr John is one of those wonderful individuals who is graced with a huge amount of serenity. He had no idea where a spare key may be found, but helped me search cupboards and desks to try and find one. At this point, I am ashamed to say, I panicked all the more, but he just quietly prayed amongst the turmoil. There seemed to be no answer. I even tried picking the lock like I had seen done on James Bond, but I had no idea of what I was doing and even that didn’t bear fruit.

Meanwhile, the group of youngsters were waiting in the Common Room with the youth leader, Laura, whilst Sarah, my wife, decided to search elsewhere. Then, in complete faith and trust, Laura decided to ask the youngsters to pray earnestly that a key would materialize. Then in the middle of all this prayer, Sarah felt the urge to look in a room where we had never been before: the cleaner’s kitchen. Upon nervously entering, she saw a folder on the side, half open. As Sarah opened this works folder hoping that some information therein may help narrow our search, what should fall out but a Yale key! And not just any Yale key, but the spare Yale key to my room! Prayer had produced something that all my frantic panic never could have. Through all the prayer, God had intervened and we were able to get access to our tickets with a whole minute to spare…

Oh, and my original key? It was sitting on the desk in my room where I had left it all along.

Now, the more sceptical amongst us may well say that all this is just coincidence. That it all just happened by chance. But it is remarkable that we can be more ready to believe in such an outrageously unbelievable concept as chance rather than be willing to concede that God may well choose to intervene in response to our faith and bidding. Once we allow our scepticism and doubt to remove the possibility for us that God can and does intervene by enacting miracles, our lack of faith and belief also removes the possibility of miracles, heaven, angels, saints, eternal life, even Jesus Himself. Let us then reflect upon the privileged place of Mary, the young lady chosen to burden this immense task. Let us give thanks that God decided to enact this by way of the greatest miracle known to mankind – a virgin birth.

Amen 

R.T Parker-McGee 2013