Mary, the Mother of Jesus with Dean Bob Cooper

I want to begin with a confession. When I was a vicar, I invited a nearby curate to come and preach on Advent 4. I did it with a twinkle in me eye. My church was somewhat higher up the candle than his. I asked him, if he might say something about Our Lady, given it was the Fourth Sunday of Advent. He panicked. He had plenty to say about Isaiah. He could wax lyrical about John the Baptist. But Mary? In the end he preached a brilliant sermon in which he reflected on his return to thinking about Mary ended up in him realising that as he was writing about her, and I still remember the word, she was cuddling him.

What he said to me later was that he realised, with some embarrassment, that he had been so anxious about saying the wrong thing that he had almost ended up saying nothing at all. Our Lady had become, in his preaching and prayer, a kind of theological wallpaper—present in the Christmas story, obviously, but fading into the background the moment the Magi departed.

I suspect he was not alone in this. Many of us who love the Church of England, who treasure its reformed and catholic heritage, find ourselves strangely tongue-tied when it comes to the mother of our Lord. We know what we don't believe. We're less certain what we do. And so we say little, and in saying little, we impoverish ourselves.

This morning, I want to invite you to look again at this remarkable woman. Not to import wholesale a devotion that feels foreign to our tradition (though I am entirely at ease with that), but to recover something that is genuinely ours—something the Church of England has always affirmed, even when it has affirmed it quietly. I want to suggest that Mary is not a problem to be solved or an embarrassment to be managed, but a gift to be received. And Advent, of all seasons, is the time to receive her.

Let us begin where everything begins: a small room in an obscure town, and a young woman going about her ordinary day.

Luke tells us that the angel Gabriel was sent to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph. We are so familiar with this story that we can miss its strangeness. God, who spoke the universe into existence, who parted seas and raised mountains, who guided Israel through wilderness and exile—this God now sends a messenger not to the temple, not to the palace, not to the seats of power, but to a girl in Galilee. Her name was Miriam, or as we know her, Mary.

The greeting itself is extraordinary. "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you." Or as some translations have it, "Greetings, favoured one." The Greek word is kecharitomene—a perfect passive participle indicating that Mary has been graced, has been favoured, as a completed action with ongoing effect. She has been prepared. She has been made ready. This is not flattery; it is description. God has been at work in this young woman before Gabriel ever appeared.

And then comes the message that changes everything. She will conceive and bear a son. He will be called Jesus. He will be great, the Son of the Most High, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

Mary's response is often translated as "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" But I think we miss the depth of her question if we hear it merely as biological puzzlement. She is asking, in effect: how can this sacred, this holy, this impossible thing, happen in me? In my body? In my life? How can the eternal enter the temporal, the infinite become contained in finite flesh?

It is, when you think about it, the question at the heart of all Christian faith. How can God be with us? How can grace reach us? How can heaven touch earth?

And Gabriel's answer is not an explanation but a proclamation: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you." The word for overshadow—episkiasei—echoes the same word for the cloud that covered the tent of meeting in Exodus, the presence of God dwelling among his people. What happened in the tabernacle will now happen in Mary. She will become the place where God dwells. The living ark of a new covenant.

But here is the moment on which everything turns. Gabriel has spoken. The message has been delivered. And now there is silence. Heaven waits. The whole of salvation history holds its breath. What will Mary say?

"Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word."

This is not passive resignation. This is not the weary acceptance of someone who has no choice. This is faith. Active, courageous, world-changing faith. Mary says yes to God. She offers her body, her life, her future, to the purposes of divine love. She consents to becoming the mother of the Messiah, with all the joy and all the sorrow that will entail.

Here is something I find endlessly moving. God, who could have accomplished our salvation by decree, who could have simply spoken redemption into being as he once spoke light into darkness, chooses instead to wait for a human yes. He makes himself, in some sense, dependent on Mary's consent. Not because he lacks power, but because love does not coerce. Love invites. Love waits. Love honours the freedom of the beloved.

And Mary, this young woman of no worldly importance, becomes the model for all Christian discipleship. Her fiat—let it be—is the pattern of every genuine response to God. When we say yes to grace, when we offer ourselves to divine purposes we do not fully understand, when we trust that God's word will accomplish what it promises, we are walking the path Mary walked. We are standing where she stood.

This is why the tradition has long called her the Second Eve. Where Eve reached out to grasp what God had not given, Mary opens her hands to receive what God freely offers. Where Eve's no brought death, Mary's yes brings life. The ancient pattern is reversed. The wound is healed. In the obedience of this young woman, the whole human story takes a new direction.

What Mary does next is instructive. She goes "with haste" to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is herself miraculously pregnant with John the Baptist. This is not merely a social call. It is the meeting of the old covenant and the new, the last prophet and the Messiah he will proclaim. And it is two women, talking together, recognising in one another the work of God.

Elizabeth's greeting is the second half of what we know as the Hail Mary: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!" These are not Catholic inventions. They are Scripture. They are on the lips of a woman filled with the Holy Spirit. To say them, to pray them, is simply to echo what the Bible itself proclaims.

And then comes Mary's great song, the Magnificat. My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour. Notice that: Mary calls God her Saviour. She does not claim exemption from the human need for grace. She places herself among those who need redemption, even as she becomes the means by which redemption comes.

But the Magnificat is not merely personal. It is political, prophetic, revolutionary. God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of low degree. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.

This is not gentle religion. This is not comfortable piety. This is a vision of a world turned upside down, where the values of the kingdom overturn the values of empire. And this vision comes to us through Mary. She is not simply a vessel, a container for the divine. She is a prophet in her own right, declaring the justice of God.

Now, I am aware that for many Anglicans, Marian devotion feels uncomfortable. We worry about excess. We have inherited a suspicion of anything that seems to elevate Mary too high, to give her attributes or titles that belong to Christ alone. These concerns are not foolish. They arise from a genuine desire to keep Christ at the centre, to ensure that our worship is properly directed.

But I want to suggest that the cure for excess is not absence. The cure for unhealthy devotion is healthy devotion. And the Church of England, in its formularies and its practice, has always made room for a proper honour given to Mary.

So, what do we believe? We believe, and the Church has consistently taught, that Mary is Theotokos—the God-bearer, the Mother of God. This title, affirmed at the Council of Ephesus in 431, is not primarily about Mary. It is about Christ. It guards the truth that the one born of Mary is not merely a human being inspired by God, or a body temporarily inhabited by divinity, but is truly God incarnate. To call Mary Mother of God is to confess that in Jesus Christ, God and humanity are inseparably united.

We believe that Mary was ever-virgin. This has been the consistent teaching of the Church from the earliest centuries, affirmed by the reformers including Luther and Calvin, and maintained in Anglican tradition. It speaks to the unique character of Mary's calling, her complete dedication to the purposes of God.

We believe that Mary is blessed among women, highly favoured, full of grace. We honour her as the first and greatest of the saints, the one whose yes made possible our salvation. We ask her prayers, as we ask the prayers of any Christian friend, trusting that the communion of saints is real and that those who have died in Christ remain part of the one body.

What we need not believe—and what our tradition has rightly questioned—are certain later developments: the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, as dogmas binding on all Christians. I happen to believe them; but that is me. These may be piously believed; they are not required. We are free to hold them or to set them aside, according to conscience and the guidance of Scripture and reason.

The Anglican way, at its best, offers us this liberty. We are not compelled to minimise Mary, to treat her as merely an incubator for the divine. Nor are we compelled to maximise her in ways that seem to compete with Christ. We are invited to honour her as Scripture honours her, to learn from her as the Church has always learned from her, and to find in her a model for our own discipleship.

And so to Advent. This season of watching and waiting and preparation. What might Mary teach us here?

First, she teaches us that God comes to us in the ordinary. Mary was not in the temple when Gabriel appeared. She was at home, in the midst of daily life. The incarnation does not happen in sacred spaces alone. It happens wherever there is a heart open to receive it. God is not waiting for us to become holy enough to approach him. He approaches us. He comes to us where we are.

Second, Mary teaches us that faith is not certainty. She did not understand everything. She pondered things in her heart. She asked questions. She, like us, had to trust what she could not fully comprehend. The life of faith is not a life without doubt. It is a life in which we bring our doubts to God and trust him anyway.

Third, Mary teaches us that saying yes to God is costly. Her yes led to Bethlehem and the manger. It led to exile in Egypt. It led to the temple where Simeon told her a sword would pierce her own soul. It led to Calvary, where she stood at the foot of the cross and watched her son die. To follow Christ is to take up a cross. Mary knew this before any of us.

And fourth, Mary teaches us hope. She believed the angel's message when there was no earthly reason to believe it. She trusted that God's word would be fulfilled when everything seemed impossible. She waited, through the long months of pregnancy, for the promise to be born. Advent is a season of such waiting. We wait for Christ to come again. We wait for the redemption of all things. We wait, sometimes in darkness, sometimes in doubt, but always in hope.

So how, practically, might we welcome Mary more fully into our devotional lives? Let me offer some suggestions, none of them compulsory, all of them rooted in Scripture and the historic practice of the Church.

We might begin simply by reading the biblical passages that feature Mary—the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the finding of Jesus in the temple, the wedding at Cana, the Crucifixion. Read them slowly. Notice what Mary does and what she does not do. Notice what she says and what she keeps in her heart. Let her be your companion in the Gospel stories.

We might pray the Magnificat, Mary's great song of praise, which has been part of Evening Prayer since the earliest days of the Church. It is one of the finest prayers in Scripture, combining personal devotion with prophetic vision. To pray it is to join our voice with hers, to declare with her that God lifts up the lowly and fills the hungry with good things.

Some of you may find the Angelus meaningful—that ancient prayer that remembers the moment of the Annunciation. Said traditionally at morning, noon, and evening, it centres on the mystery of the Incarnation: "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." It is a way of punctuating the day with the remembrance that God has come among us, and that he came through Mary's consent.

The Hail Mary, despite Protestant nervousness, is largely biblical. "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus." That is Gabriel and Elizabeth. The prayer concludes: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death." This is simply asking for her prayers, as we might ask any friend to pray for us. We do not pray to Mary as we pray to God. We ask her to pray with us and for us, as part of the communion of saints.

The Rosary may feel a step too far for some, but it is worth understanding what it actually is: a meditation on the life of Christ, seen through the eyes of his mother. Each decade focuses on a mystery—the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection. We repeat the prayers not as magic formula but as a kind of rhythm, a breathing, that allows us to sink more deeply into contemplation. It is less about the words themselves than about where the words take us.

You might also consider the practice of asking Mary's intercession in particular circumstances. When facing difficult choices, remember her at the Annunciation, weighing the angel's message. When enduring suffering, remember her at the foot of the cross. When rejoicing, remember her at the wedding feast where she noticed the need and said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you"—which may be the finest advice any Christian can give or receive.

Some churches keep a statue or icon of Our Lady, often with a stand for votive candles. To light a candle there is not an act of worship but a physical prayer, a visible sign of our petition or thanksgiving. It is saying, in wax and flame: I bring this intention to you, Mary, and ask you to bring it to your Son.

Whatever practices you adopt, do so with freedom and joy. Mary does not need our devotion—she is already blessed among women. But we need hers. We need her example of faith, her courage, her pondering heart, her willingness to say yes when everything was uncertain. We need to be reminded that God works through ordinary people in ordinary places, and that the greatest revolution in human history began with a teenage girl in a backwater town saying: Let it be.

I began with a confession. Let me end with an invitation.

This Advent, I invite you to let Mary back into your prayers. Not with anxiety about whether you are doing it right. Not with worry about whether this is too Catholic or not Catholic enough. Simply with gratitude for the woman who made it possible for God to become one of us.

You might pray the Magnificat daily, as the Church has done for centuries. You might light a candle before an image of Our Lady, not as an act of worship, but as an act of remembrance and honour. You might simply pause, in the middle of your Christmas preparations, and give thanks for her yes.

For without that yes, there would be no Christmas. Without that young woman in Nazareth, willing to bear the impossible weight of incarnate love, we would have no Saviour. She is the gate through which our redemption came. She is the one who first held in her arms the hope of the world.

Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.

Blessed indeed. And blessed are we who follow in her way.

Amen.