The Assumption of MaryThursday 15th August, 2024Some Initial ObjectionsThe Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the belief that Mary the mother of Jesus, having completed her earthly life was assumed, body and soul, into heavenly glory to be with her Son.More will be said about that in a moment, but how do we make sense of this belief as Anglicans? The Reformation anxiety about such beliefs is that there is no clear Scriptural foundation for it. Additionally, there is not even a clear tradition of the Assumption for the first four or five centuries of the Christian Church. You would think that, if Mary had not died, but had been taken up into heaven in a similar way to Christ at his Ascension, then somebody would have made a note of it somewhere in the first half Millenium of Christianity.So should we be celebrating the Feast of the Assumption at all? Shouldn’t we rather do as our Church of England would have us and call this day simply the Blessed Virgin Mary?An Anglican Case for the AssumptionPerhaps, although I want to make a case for the Assumption, even if one understands it as a purely symbolic reality. It might be helpful to ask ourselves why the Church ever thought that such a belief was edifying or necessary.I want to say two things about this: firstly, that the Assumption teaches us about the purpose of human life, and, secondly, that the Assumption teaches us about how to fit ourselves for that end.The Purpose of Human Life and the AssumptionTo begin with, theologians have speculated that God’s original intention for his human creatures was that they would progress towards him and be taken up into heaven when their life on this earth was completed. Imagine that Adam and Eve had never sinned and broken fellowship with God. If that had happened, so this view says, then, one day, after a period of joyful fellowship with God and obedience towards him on this earth, they would be taken up, as it were, to a different dimension of heavenly glory to be with him forever.(Anyone familiar with C.S. Lewis science-fiction novel Out of the Silent Planet will see this view embodied in that story.)This view does indeed appear to have biblical precedent: consider, for example, Enoch in Genesis 5:24: ‘Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him’. And a similar thing happened to Elijah in the book of 2 Kings.The Assumption of Mary, therefore, sees Mary in that sort of category: a human person whose life was so intertwined with that of God through Christ that she truly fulfilled the end or telos of humanity: which is to be united with God forever – in a spiritual sense in this life and in heavenly glory thereafter.The Fittingness of the AssumptionBecause Mary fulfilled this human purpose so eminently, therefore, there is a kind of fittingness to her fellowship with Christ not being broken by bodily death. Here I will quote from the Roman teaching document on the subject, Munificentissimus Deus, which says this:‘It seems impossible that she who conceived Christ, bore him, fed him with her milk, held him in her arms and pressed him to her bosom, should after this earthly life be separated from him in either body or soul.’Whatever you think about this, try and consider the point that is being made. The Anglican theologian John MacQuarrie puts it this way: ‘The closeness of Jesus and Mary, it is being asserted, could not be broken by the end of their companionship on earth’. Why is this? Because Mary bore Jesus in her womb, because she fed him of her own body, because she was the first to know him in his Incarnation, because she loved him as her Son and as her Saviour, because she followed him as a disciple, because she accompanied him to his death upon the cross, because she was a witness of his joyful resurrection, because she knew Jesus in the most intimate way it is possible to know another person. Therefore, so the thinking goes, when the time came for her earthly life to finish, she was simply translated into his presence. It is fitting that this was so.A Glorious TransformationHow to apply this to our lives then?Firstly, let’s think about this word “glory” that accompanies the title of this feast sometimes: “The Glorious Assumption”. Again, John MacQuarrie helps us here:‘An assumption could not be anything other than glorious, for it means a taking up from the drabness and ordinariness of earthly life into what we call ‘heaven’, the unimaginable glory of the divine presence in its immediacy; on the other hand, there could be no greater glory manifested in any human person than that he or she should be so taken up.’John MacQuarrie, Mary for All ChristiansLet me be very British and talk about the weather for a moment. We have had the strangest, most unpleasant Spring and Summer that I’ve ever lived through – by far: cloud, rain, coldness, in relentless proportions. The sun emerges briefly and is stifled once again by a blanket of greyness. What is going on?Friends, when our hearts are weighed down by the weather or by any other earthly weight, the Assumption reminds us that we are made for so much more than this. Like fish out of water, we are not really made for this world and we only fit it to some extent at best. We are made for glory: eternal sunshine, endless wonder, heavenly bliss.And here we must speak about Christ. To avoid idolatry, we must always remind ourselves that Mariology is Christology properly understood: meaning that all reflection upon Mary must lead us to reflection upon Christ. We must remind ourselves that Mary was redeemed from sin through Christ as we are redeemed from sin through Christ. We must remind ourselves that Mary was saved from eternal death in the same way that we are saved from eternal death.Consider our New Testament reading this evening:‘For as by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.’1 Corinthians 15:21-221 Corinthians 15 is one of the very mountain peaks of Scripture, giving us a glimpse into the nature of the final resurrection of humanity at the end of time, when those who have died in Christ will be raised with him and given glorious, imperishable, immortal bodies, never to die again:‘Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.’1 Corinthians 15:51-53It is Christ who has transformed the final enemy, death, into a friend which ushers into the glorious presence of Christ. As the collect from Compline says, through resting in the sepulchre, Christ ‘didst thereby sanctify the grave to be a bed of hope to thy people’.A glorious transformation has occurred: death has been turned into life, sin into forgiveness and reconciliation, despair into hope, sorrow into joy. And it has been wrought through Christ’s bursting forth from the tomb in his destruction of sin and death.Fit us for HeavenSuch reflections ennoble us and remind us to fit ourselves for heaven as Mary was fitted for heaven. As the Apostle Paul tells us: ‘If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God’ (Colossians 3:1-3).And here I would like to issue a challenge: the evangelical writer Dallas Willard, in his book Renovation of the Heart, reminds us that every human being on earth is being spiritually formed in some way – for good or bad. The process of spiritual formation is under way in each one of us.My challenge to you this evening is to consider the end or purpose of that process for you: are you becoming the kind of person who is fitted for heaven, such that, were the Lord Jesus to call you this night to be with him, you would be prepared or that, at the least, you are in the process of being prepared for this glorious reality? Is your heart free of attachment to earthly things? Have you truly repented of all the sin that would separate you from God and are you daily putting to death sin in your life so that it does not reemerge? Does your soul thrill at the thought of being with God and in the presence of Christ forever? Do you know him now as a foretaste of that blissful eternity which is to come?And if these things are not the case, then what can you do to make it so? The Lord has given us all time. How will we use it? Do not settle for spiritual mediocrity, but remember that you were created for unimaginable glory. Seek the glory that is above and settle for nothing less. Believe me when I say that there is so much more for every single one of us. The Lord is waiting to pour out the abundance of his blessing upon us, but we are so often unaware of it, indifferent to it, distracted by all the blinking lights and obnoxious noises of this age.We must fight, friends, to be spiritual formed such that we are fitted for heaven.There was a famous evangelical American pastor called Tim Keller who was diagnosed with cancer in 2021 and was 72 when he died last year. When he was diagnosed, he announced it publicly and said: ‘It is endlessly comforting to have a God who is both infinitely more wise and more loving than I am. He has plenty of good reasons for everything He does and allows that I cannot know, and therein is my hope and strength’.In a tweet, his son Michael described his last moments. His wife Kathy kissed him on the forehead and then he took his last breath.His final words were, ‘There is no downside for me leaving, not in the slightest’.He was ready to be with the Lord. He had so prepared his heart that it was fitting for him to leave and he was aware of at least something of what that meant.Friends, may it be so with all of us. May it be said of us that, when our time has come, ot
