Our Service this Sunday, often known as Low Sunday, reflected on the story of Mary, mother of Jesus - following Colm Tóibín's fictional yet compelling account in his book, 'The Testament of Mary'.
Although last week was Easter and we didn’t meet together, I have little doubt that all noticed Easter was present – perhaps particiupated in Services elsewhere or online. Easter Services most usually, and understandably, focus on the need for Resurrection. New Beginnings.
However, this Sunday, as we heard in our Second reading, from Tom Owen-Towle, this Sunday, known as Low Sunday, can often be the time we feel we’ve passed beyond the messages of renewal we reflected on last week. Spring, Passover, Easter. All done now, over and away. What’s next.
I’m not so sure it’s that straight-forward. It rarely is.
Taking Easter as our start point, to suggest the event, its effect on all, and its relevance to our lives today, just seven days on, has now finished is of course nonsense. However we interpret the events and meanings of last weekend, we cannot begin to suggest this was a single, one day (or perhaps three-day) event.
However, it remains true of course that life must go on. And it does.
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As I mentioned earlier, I’ve recently been to Barcelona – complete pleasure, not other excuse, and my chosen guide book was a by the Irish novelist, Colm Tóibín. He writes beautifully, with clear inspiration of the spirituality and wonder of the Catalonian people. Faith plays a key role in Tóibín’s works, notably Catholicism. And in Barcalona, on Palm Sunday, the influence of faith tradition, of the Roman Catholic Church, and of Mary, Mother of Jesus, I was reminded of his Tóibín’s novella publish ed around 10 years ago, ‘The Testament of Mary’.
My original copy is in a box under the church, so I’ve had to source a second copy. The book is written in the voice of Mary, mother of Jesus, and is set in the days and months after the crucifixion. Although of course fictional, the book attempts to tell the story of the crucifixion of Jesus from a mother’s perspective, the build up to the event, the story of the days around the crucifixion, and also the story of what comes next.
But by next, I do not mean the Resurrection. Mary is whisked away from Jerusalem immediately after she helps to bury Jesus. She travels to Ephesus – then in Greece, now in modern Turkey – where she attempts to live her life away from those events.
The book is stunning. Only a hundred or so pages, and a harrowing but heartfelt book. Interestingly, whilst Mary is aware of the miracles, and the supposed resurrection, she does not witness them herself. Nor, it appears, does she necessarily believe them.
Throughout the story, which takes place around 20 years after the crucifixion, Mary refers to two men who come to look after her in Ephesus. They are not named, but if you know your Bible stories, it is quite clear these men are supposed to be the Gospel writer John, and the early church leader Paul. In likely historical fact, the chances of these two men ever meeting, let alone being of similar age, is very unlikely. But fiction overrides this.
But these men are determined to know every little detail of the story of Jesus. However, it soon becomes clear that they have already decided the story themselves, and they are simply trying to persuade Mary, willing her really, to tell her own story in a way that will support their own. She is puzzled over their story of the Virgin Birth. She cannot understand why they refer to his father as God. She did not see the Resurrection. She is furious when they suggest there was a reason for Jesus’ death – they claim it was to provide all with eternal life. She cannot quite reconcile this idea. And makes the men admit this story will only be known by all as a result of their writings. Stories they are desperately trying to get Mary to agree to.
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But, according to the author Colm Toibin. Mary is not persuaded that the event of her son’s ending - his death on the Cross – is really of such spiritual importance. Instead, Mary records the humanity of her Son, and the dreadful impact of the event on her life.
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As I say, there are pieces in the book that are quite harrowing. There are others of gentle humour and real grace. You come away with a very powerful, and believable image of Mary, whether fictional or not.
The reflection does not stop at Easter. Nor should it.
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Interestingly, when Mary is talking about her life in Ephesus, there is much about the new beginning she had to make. Stories of how her neighbour, Farina, had from the start begun to leave things – fruit, bread, eggs, for Mary. Farina provided care and support to a stranger. A stranger who was clearly from another country. A stranger who looked scared, exhausted, emotionally bereft.
Slowly, although Mary’s early protectors are wary of these strangers, Mary begins to talk with Farina. They share stories. Farina supports her invalid husband; her sons have left for the city and never return.
Mary and Farina become good friends, and Mary begins to attend the Temple of Artemis with Farina. Seeking solace from religion. Not the Jewish religion of her upbringing and home town. But the Greek religion of the area. Artemis was the Goddess of the hunt, but also of childbirth, of virginity, and was the protector of women. Mary spends some of her own money buying a small statue of Artemis for her house.
Mary is making a new beginning. Some things need to continue – she needs to eat, she needs to sleep, she shops. But there are new friends to make, a new spiritual approach to consider and adapt to.
The death of her son has led to her own new life. Rightly, Mary cannot see it as anything but a cruel, painful and unnecessary act, and is very straight with John and Paul that they are clearly making their own story. So many new beginnings. But for Mary, the recovery of her own life is the crucial part. Her own renewal and, if you like, resurrection is clear.
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Personal renewal. Spring, Passover, Easter. Renewal and new beginning is not for one day or, at best, one week. Renewal is instead a life changing process, one that is continuous and progressive.
This is where religion can always play its part in our lives. It’s a little like the difference between church and religion. We can happily trot along to the Meeting House on a Sunday, and we can have a helpful and heart-strengthening experience in the pews. We can feel refreshed, lightened, filled with the spirit.
Or just revived by coffee and conversation. There are many ways to enjoy this time.
But, if this lasts just an hour or so, and does not go on to filter into our daily lives away from this place, away from the congregation, then it is perhaps only having half the desired effect. Like Mary and her statue of Artemis, it may be that we need to take our religion home with us if it is to have that lasting effect.
Taking religion home, taking our spiritual reflection and being outside of here, is a way of aligning our lives and experiences and hopes.
We don’t have to of course. But if we are to sit here and talk of renewal, to reflect on the importance of updating our spiritual lives, then I hope we might also take that refreshment into our everyday existence.
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Rather than a single Easter Sunday moment, perhaps Easter Everyday would become the opportunity to reflect on the continual process of renewal and change that takes place in our lives.
In our first reading, David Blanchard spoke of those moments of transition and transformation. Those moments we are caught between endings and beginnings. The magic and mystery of these encounters with these real and vital dimensions of life.
We share with others in these moments. We each of us share a new-birth hope with the arrival of a baby. We each of us lose a little at the parting with a loved one. These are profoundly spiritual moments. These are the lifelines that will affect our deepest beings. These are the lifelines on which our souls communicate.
Yet they are not ‘church’ moments. These are instead the everyday moments and times of life. Both inside and outside the congregation and Sunday morning. Yet, in that confusing and impossible to describe way, they are both religious and not religious.
Our spiritual lives are far more complex and long-lasting than an hour on Sunday. Our sense of spiritual renewal should be felt more often than Easter.
One of my favourite quotations, and one I’ve shared before, is from the UU Minister Sarah York. She said:
“We receive fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity, brief moments of insight. Let us gather them up for the precious gifts that they are and, renewed by their grace, move boldly into the unknown.”
We receive fragments of holiness. Let us be renewed by their grace. Let them help us move boldly into the unknown.
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Sounds easy doesn’t it?
Of course it is not. Sometimes these events, these moments of ending are not immediately clear as moments of beginning. They are hard to take in. Hard to accept. And never welcome.
Yet they are the seasons of life as we know them.
Beginnings will always follow endings. And beginnings are as much a part of everyday life as they are of anything of greater significance. In fact, they are far more likely to be part of the everyday.
In our second reading, Tom Owen-Towle remarks that our lives are really mosaics of the everyday. Of dish-washing, of baking, of answering phone calls. It is in these moments that the true impact of effect of endings and beginnings will have their impact.
And it is the way we are prepared for these moments of the everyday that will help us to make them moments of renewal and change.
In between our beginnings and our endings we move through the seasons of life, and step back and forth through memory and imagination. By allowing our deeper spiritual selves to play a part in these steps, by allowing ourselves the chance to reflect on the everyday, we can bring our everyday being into contact with our spiritual depths. With our souls.
As Mary told John and Paul in Colm Toibin’s story, history can never be changed. It is instead how you ensure your souls safe passage in the days that follow history that will truly determine your path and strength ahead.
This is traditionally known as Low Sunday. Yet, as Tom Owen-Towle acknowledges, it is instead more important to extend Easter into our daily lives. And, one week on, Low Sunday is as good a day as any to remember that everyday will witness an end and a beginning in some way.