Adapted from a sermon preached on the feast of the Assumption, 2009, at St Matthias' parish in Dallas.

“Wine is truly pleasant to drink, and bread to eat. The one rejoices, the other strengthens the heart of man. But what is sweeter than the Mother of my God? She has taken my mind captive, and held my tongue in bondage. I think of her by day and night. She, the Mother of the Word, supplies my words. The fruit of sterility makes sterile minds fruitful. We keep today the feast of her blessed and divine transit from this world. Let us then climb up the mystical mountain, where beyond the reach of worldly things, passing through the obscurity of storm, we stand in the divine light and may give praise to Almighty power.”

These were the words of St John of Damascus on today’s solemnity, written in the 8th century. He gives expression to the thoughts of countless Christians through the ages who have received with joy the story of Mary’s assumption, body and soul, into heaven.

Not everyone, of course, feels this way. Last year I was teaching a class on the rosary, and when we came to the glorious mystery of the assumption I had a couple of people make it very clear that they found this tradition scandalous. I explained how, despite its absence in Scripture, there is nothing against it in Scripture, how Christians in both East and West have almost universally held it true that Our Lady’s body was brought up to heaven after the course of her life had finished, how the only known traditional tomb of Mary is an empty tomb, and how there is no tradition of Marian relics. So the tradition doesn’t just arise out of thin air.

Well, said the woman in my class, surely somebody made it up.

Why is it that so many people today—many of whom would even identify themselves as Catholic Christians—have trouble with the Assumption? I think that in the end the problem is not so much with Mary as it is with Jesus.

Disputes over Mary are usually disputes over Jesus. It has ever been so. The great Council of Ephesus in the early 5th century confirmed that Mary was to be called Theotokos—God-bearer, Mother of God. The fathers of the Council did not do so because they thought that Mary in herself deserved a fancy title—and surely Our Lady herself would never have demanded anything for herself. No, they insisted that Mary is Theotokos because the refusal to call Mary Theotokos was a refusal to call Jesus God.

I think that the Assumption is scandalous to many not because of Mary, but because of Jesus. It is scandalous that Jesus could have risen from the dead. Surely, the world says, somebody must have made it up.

The reason that folks pick on Mary is not because her Assumption is any more miraculous, but because we have so domesticated the Resurrection of Jesus that it seems perfectly normal, the sort of thing that can be brought up over dinner with only moderate amounts of discomfort.

But then we get Mary. And with Mary there is always the reminder that Christ is not simply a wonderful, universal principle that helps us cope with death. Christ is flesh. The great Eucharistic hymn, Ave verum corpus, often makes reference to “Jesus, son of Mary” because if there is no Mary there is no Jesus. Again: no Mary, no Jesus. It’s a fact in the order of redemption, not a cosmic principle about Christ. Ours is a religion of history, not of general principles, and in history God became man through the cooperation of the Virgin Mary. There is no other Jesus but Jesus son of Mary.

***

I wonder if I could use an example from Harry Potter. I’m sure most of you have read the books or seen the movies, but in case you’ve been hiding out somewhere in the last decade I’ll fill you in on how it works. There are folks who can see and use magic, and those who can’t. The ones who can’t are called muggles. The weird thing is that muggles actually do see magic all the time, it’s just that they convince themselves that they don’t. A magic bus zooms past and the muggle mind is so overwhelmed that it blocks it out, acts as if it didn’t happen.

For a lot of people the resurrection of Jesus is one of those things that you see right in front of you and then look the other way. We see it like muggles. We know what happened but we convince ourselves that it couldn’t have been what it was; surely, in some flight of fancy, our minds just made it up.

But sometimes muggles can’t avoid magic. If someone turns you into a rat it’s kind of hard to ignore. And, when the Lord starts assuming people up into heaven, body and soul, it’s kind of hard to avoid that he takes this resurrection business rather seriously.

Here’s what it comes down to: It’s one thing for God to rise from the dead, but what business does this normal woman have doing it? It really calls into question the respectability of the whole enterprise. This is going a bit far. Surely somebody must have made it up.

***

Of course, it may be that you don’t need any convincing that Mary is worthy of our devotion, or that the doctrine of her assumption is true. Yet the scandal that these doctrines present to the world, and even to many of our fellow Anglicans, should, I hope, help us to understand what they mean for us, and why they matter.

Much of that I’ve already hinted at. Mary is always there to remind us that Jesus wasn’t just an idea but a man born of her womb; it is fitting that she continue being there every step of the way as a very insistent reminder: this isn’t just some God thing, this concerns us. Jesus’ resurrection isn’t just about Jesus, it is about his Church. It is about the marriage of heaven and earth, the love of God for his creation. Mary has always been thought of as a type—a representation—of the Church, and so in her glorification we see our own destiny as the people of God.

In other words, the Assumption teaches us the same thing that Mary taught us in the Magnificat: God will keep his promises.

“He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel, as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed forever.”

In the Incarnation God kept his promise to Israel, and in Mary’s “yes” he toppled the powers of the devil: “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek.” Mary, the humble virgin of Nazareth, was exalted in the Incarnation, and likewise she was exalted in her Assumption into heaven. She was the first to glimpse the mystery of redemption; she was also the first to enter into its fullness.

Salvation is real! Our glorious Mother will not let us forget it. This life is but a shadow of the glory to come for the children of God. She is with us in our exile in the wilderness. The dragon continues to deceive and attack us, but the dragon will not prevail. “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek.” Our Lady has been exalted, and so we rejoice because we too will be exalted. We will join her in the praise of heaven. She waits for us with open arms; she prays for us as only a mother can; she so wants us to reach the joys of heaven.

“O my Mother! by thy love for God I beseech thee to be at all times my helper… Cease not thy supplications until thou seest me safe in heaven, there for endless ages to bless thee and, in thy holy company, to worship and adore thy Son, for ever and ever. Amen.”