You can’t, of course, see this cartoon very well from where you are, but it is one of my very favourites – although it is only inadvertently funny.  It was produced, what, ten years ago now by a primary school pupil at a school called ‘St Mary’s’ as part of a class project on ‘the Annunciation’. So this is Mary, over on the right hand side, sitting on what looks for all the world like a church pew; and hovering in the air, over here on the left, is Gabriel, bearing flowers. Between them is a table, laden with steaming hot food. And over on this side is the text. It says: The Annunciation. One day Mary was praying to God, when Gabriel the Angel flew through the window and said, ‘I have good news for you, Mary: you’re going to have a baby. He is going to be called Jesus. He will be the Son of God’. ‘But I am a virgin’, said Mary. ‘Not any more you’re not’, said Gabriel.

I want to come back to that cartoon, or at least to the Annunciation, in a moment. But first a reminder that this morning’s sermon is the final part of a series, which the Dean kicked off on Christ the King Sunday, at the end of November, when he preached on ‘Shared lives, shared , shared ministry’. Since then, we have been exploring together the various roles of a Cathedral Church: so three weeks ago, the Precentor preached on the Cathedral as the custodian of a tradition; two weeks ago, it was the Dean on the Cathedral as a regional icon; and last week, it was the Archdeacon of Lichfield on the Cathedral as a cathedra for the Diocese. This morning we turn our attention finally to the Cathedral as a community, and I want to approach the subject by exploring with you in some detail that brief Gospel reading we heard just a moment ago – because my instinct isthat there are buried in it, if we’re just prepared to excavate a little, three ways in which Mary models for us the kind of community this Cathedral is called to be. You’ll find those three ways printed out on the back of the Newsletter this morning – and you may find it helpful to refer to them. In fact, you might also find it helpful to refer to the text of the Gospel reading, as I shall be sticking quite close to it this morning. But refering to both sides of the newsletter will require a certain amount of dexterity – and so much folding and twisting that you may accidently produce some rather fine oragami during the next ten minutes. I shall be pleased to adjudicate between the finest examples at the end of the service.

1. A Commissioned Community (verses 39-40)

First of all, let me say something about our life as a commissioned community – that’s to say, a community which is constantly seeking to respond to the call of God.

You see, the Gospel reading begins quite abruptly. ‘Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country’. And it begs a couple of questions: when did she? And why? That’s why I wanted to refer to the annunication. You see, this short passage in Luke chapter 1 is sandwiched between two much better known passages: the the annunciation just before it and the magnificat just after. And in the annunciation, after Gabriel has told Mary not to be afraid, and that she is to have a son, to be called Jesus, and after Mary has objected that this cannot be, since she is a virgin, where my cartoon has Gabriel saying, ‘Not any more you’re not’, the biblical text has: ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and the child to be born will be holy.’ And then it says, ‘And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren’. And it’s at that point that Mary so famously responds, ‘Here I am, the servant of the Lord.  Let it be to me according to your word’.

When did Mary set off for the hill country of Judea, to the home of her relative Elizabeth, and why? She set off, after she had received the Word of the Lord and in response to it. She set off in an attempt to come to terms with her calling and to work it out. It is quite striking, isn’t it, that after the Annunciation, Mary didn’t just sit back and wait to see if Gabriel’s word would come true. She did something. She took action. In fact, Gabriel hadn’t given her a direct instruction: go and see you relative Elizabeth. And her ultimately, her calling wasn’t to visit Elizabeth: it was to bear God’s son. But that grand calling will take time to fulfil, and for the moment she doesn’t just sit back and wait. She takes the obvious, practical step. Picking up at the hint Gabriel had dropped, Mary heads off hot foot to the hill country of Judea.

And this is, for me, the first way in which Mary models our life as a community. She’s on the move, taking action, trying to work out her calling, responding to the Word of the Lord by doing what is at hand to do. A Christian community worth the name, and certainly a Cathedral community like this one, will never sit back and wait for God’s to fulfil his promise; it will be rather, a community on the move, seeking to respond to and discover the word of the Lord. You know, I’m sure, that the word ‘disciple’ means learner; a Christian community, a Cathedral community, is therefore a learning community – never satisfied with what has already been achieved or discovered, always seeking new horizons, new ways to respond to the call of God. That’s what I mean by suggesting, first of all, that we are a commissioned community: one seeking to respond, as Mary did, to God’s call.

2. A Caring Community (verses 41-42a)

Secondly, then, we are a caring community. There is something beautiful, to me, about the relationship between Mary and Elizabeth as we glimpse it in these verses. When Mary arrives at her relative’s home, she enters the house and greets Elizabeth, and Elizabeth, filled (Luke says) with the Holy Spirit, cries out to Mary in blessing.

What we’re offered here, I want to suggest, is a model of Christian fellowship. My guess is that Mary needed Elizabeth. In working out her calling, her instinct was to turn to someone who shared enough of her experience to make mutual support possible. It wasn’t just that Elizabeth pregnancy served as a confirmation of Gabriel’s word, although it probably did do that. It’s also that Mary knew that in responding to her calling, she needed support. And that’s what the church is supposed to be: a caring community, a place of mutual help for those who are seeking to live in the way of Christ. There is, you see, no such things as a desert island disc-iple. Sorry, bad pun.

But it also seems to me that Mary and Elizabeth bring the best out of one another. Just imagine yourself into Elizabeth’s shoes for a moment. Childless for years, she has finally cast off the disgrace that her condition carried in that culture – and she’s done so in extraordinary circumstances. The child she is bearing will be a special child. This is her moment, surely. But along comes her younger relative, with an experience even more remarkable than her own – with a pregnancy not just out of time, but out of eternity, and bearing not just a special child, but The Chosen One. Elizabeth might’ve been forgiven for feeling that Mary was raining on her parade. But the community that the Spirit creates between Mary and Elizabeth brings out the best in both women and the older woman responds to the younger with humility, delight and generosity, not threatened, not jealous, not mean-spirited in any way. They become the kind of mutual support that perhaps only two pregnant women can be. But in doing so, they model something powerful.

This is how it is meant to be in the body of Christ. A Cathedral community is called to be a caring community, shaped by the Spirit of Christ, in which we rejoice in one another’s joys, grieve in one another’s sorrows, and respond to one another in humility, delight and generosity, being a means of grace to one another. And if I may say so as a newcomer, looking perhaps with fresh eyes, this seems to me to be one of the real strengths of this Cathedral church. A congregation which chuckles as readily as this one, and yet which approaches its worship with such reverence, is well on the way to being the kind of Spirit-filled, caring community which Mary and Elizabeth model.

3. A Christ-bearing Community (verses 42b-45)

And lastly: what Mary models in these verses is the way a Cathedral is called to be Christ-bearing.

Right at the heart of this morning’s Gospel reading comes the moment when at the sound of Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth’s child (the pre-natal John the Baptist) leaps within her womb. This is of course John the Baptist doing what he was called by God to do: serving as a herald, pointing others to Jesus. But it is also Mary doing what she was called to do, and modelling what we, as a Cathedral community are called to do: offering, proffering Christ to the world. Mary bore Christ, and the church, especially this Cathedral church, dedicated as it is to St Mary as well as St Chad, is called to bear Christ to the world.

Many of you will know that around the Cathedral are many depictions of Mary holding Jesus out. There’s one in the centre of that great West window. There’s one, in the form of a statue, over the Dean’s Door outside the North Transept. There’s one on the triptych behind the high altar. And there are others to be found too, next time you’ve got an idle moment to search.

And it is because Mary bears Christ, that Elizabeth calls her blessed. Pretty much half of this morning’s Gospel reading is taken up by Elizabeth’s joyful acclamation, in the course of which she uses that word ‘blessed’ three times in four verses: ‘Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Blessed is she who has believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord’.

Blessed are you, in other words, because you have accepted your calling to be the bearer of Christ in the world. And blessed are we, too, if we embrace that calling as a Cathedral community. Blessed are we if we are asking ourselves again and again how we can do that most fruitfully in this rapidly changing world in which we live.

Conclusion

I must stop. One last thought: Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months. It says so in Luke 1 verse 56. It’s an appropriate period over which to reflect on a new sense of calling. You could say, Elizabeth and Zechariah provided Mary with a sabbatical.What does it mean for us to be a community here in the Cathedral church? Well, part of the point of our sabbatical in the next three months is to give us an opportunity to take stock of exactly that question. But I dare say we won’t be too wide of the mark if we say, it means being a commissioned community (one in which we are always learning, growing, discovering, responding to God’s call); a caring community (one in which we bring out the best in one another); and a Christ-bearing community (one in which we find blessing by holding out Jesus to the world).