It was my privilege to preach and preside at the Open Table Liverpool Eucharist on 16 August. We kept the Feast of St Mary the Blessed Virgin, and I was delighted to be able to share a little about why I love Our Lady.
Sunday 16 August 2026
Open Table, St Bride’s Liverpool
Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Last time many of you heard me preach, I brought a special guest. It was about a year ago. I’d just arrived in this parish as a newly ordained deacon, and I had the great privilege of preaching at Open Table’s Pride service, held in the Lady Chapel of the cathedral.
My guest, you may recall, was ET, the Extra-Terrestrial.
Alas, he’s decided to stay home today.
I think my guest this year is more impressive, however. But I understand if opinions vary, because we all, surely, have a soft spot for ET—I have loved him since 1982.
My guest this year is Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. She is the guest every time we gather at the altar, because we belong to what the Church calls the communion of saints. All those who have trusted in God throughout the ages are part of this communion, and they surround us—like a ‘great cloud of witnesses,’ the writer of the book of Hebrews tells us—throughout our Christian journey, but never more so, I believe, than when we meet at this table, a thin place that transcends the usual boundaries of time and space. Here heaven and earth come together. Here past, present and future meet in Jesus Christ, the centre of all things.
So there are, if you like, many special guests invisibly present with us today: Those who have loved and known God throughout time or, more importantly, who have been and are now and will forever be loved and known by God. They are with us, and they are cheering us on.
Christian faith is not a solo endeavour. I preached about this here last Sunday, when we thought about the storm on Galilee and the invitation to climb into the boat with Peter and the disciples. We’re not on our own. We’re all in the same boat, so to speak. Climb in, and we’ll rely on one another. When your faith is weak, mine is strong, and when I’m weak, I’ll rely on your strength. This is what the communion of saints is all about: We walk together, lifting one another’s drooping hands, strengthening one another’s feeble knees, clearing a straight path ahead for our friends on the road.
Of all the saints accompanying us on the journey, Mary is one of my favourites, and on this, one of several of her feast days observed by Christians across the world, I’m delighted to be here to tell you why I love her so much, and perhaps it will give you reason to get to know and love her, too.
I love Mary because she was the underdog. A young woman of peasant stock, a Jew living in Roman-occupied Palestine, where freedom depended on the whims of a foreign empire. I love her because even in those circumstances, with all the odds stacked against her, she made a choice to carry Jesus. We often call that choice ‘Mary’s yes.’ Imagine that: She was already disadvantaged, and by assenting to what the angel had said, she risked making herself even more vulnerable—she risked losing all her security, facing public shame and destitution if Joseph were to call off their marriage because of this mysterious pregnancy. But knowing God and trusting that he was faithful and just, her response to the angel was yes. ‘Let it be to me according to your word.’
When we think about Bible characters and obedience, we sometimes—or perhaps it’s just me—think of God as being in the business of simply chiselling his commands in stone and telling people to get on with it or else, but like many biblical characters, Mary talked it through before giving her assent. She pondered what was going on when this angelic vision appeared, and then she asked questions: I have never slept with a man, so how can this be? Abraham did the same, reasoning through things with God; Moses did it, too, asking questions of God, having conversations with God, a back-and-forth, a reasoning. The psalmist has arguments with God. Our relationship with God is a two-way street.
I also love Mary because she knew pain. She is a good companion to have on our Christian journey, because like many of us, she knew heartache. She knew what it was like to suffer loss; to be forced out of her home, first to Bethlehem and then to Egypt, driven out by hatred and violence. One of the many names Christians have given to Mary over the centuries is Mater Dolorosa—Our Lady of Sorrows, or Sorrowful Mother. When Mary presented the boy Jesus in the temple, the prophet Simeon told her he would be a sign of contradiction or opposition to their people; he warned her that her own heart would be pierced; and so it was, more than three decades later, at the foot of the cross, that she experienced the greatest of sorrows, watching her own child die.
St John, in his gospel, relates a beautiful story at the foot of the cross, where Jesus, moments before his death, turns to Mary and John and declares to her: ‘Here is your son,’ and to John, his beloved disciple: ‘Here is your mother.’ And isn’t it wonderful that, before giving us the gift of his very life at the cross, he first gives his friend as a gift to his mother, and his mother as a gift to his friend. In doing so, he gave us and Mary to one another—Mary a gift from Jesus to us, a mother on our journey.
It is a really wonderful thing to have mothers on our journey. Is Cate Jacobs here tonight? Not long after I first met her, during my training in the parish of Speke, I asked if I could call her Mother Cate. Very much like Mary, she pondered it and said yes, and so I have called her Mother Cate to this day. It is as I said: God has placed around us a communion of saints, a cloud of witnesses, here on earth and in heaven, and they are cheering us on; and among them are many mothers.
Some of us here have known rejection by friends and family members. Many of us will have had to create our own families; a network of brothers, sisters, siblings, mothers, fathers, parents. Jesus knows this, and so he gave Mary to be our friend, our mother, our companion.
Thirty long years Mary waited, knowing that one day her own heart would be pierced. What a horrible premonition to live with. She knew that suffering and heartbreak were ahead. What kept her going? How did she endure? Why did she hang on? She knew the faithfulness of God, and she knew that God was a God of ultimate justice; and here’s where we get to the meat of tonight’s gospel reading, the Magnificat: Mary’s song.
Here’s why I love Mary: She knew and trusted in the God of justice. An underdog in every way, but chosen to bring the infant Christ into the world, she was in herself a picture of how God loves to turn the tables; how he loves to reverse the injustices of this world.
He has cast down the powerful from their places of privilege, she proclaims, and lifted up the powerless! He has shown mercy to the very least and left the proud and the arrogant confused! He has given the hungry a feast and left the rich and the self-satisfied to wander away empty and disappointed!
Did you ever do the tour of the Williamson Tunnels underneath the city of Liverpool? No one is quite sure what exactly the eccentric philanthropist Joseph Williamson was trying to achieve when he dug them, but there are many fascinating legends surrounding him. One of my favourites is that he invited all the people of the city to a great banquet, and when the good and the bad, the great and the not-so-great, the rich and the poor, arrived, they found their feast was somewhat less than they were expecting—bread and water, perhaps. And so the wealthy and the ungrateful and the cocksure turned their nose up at such a humble meal and left; only then did he reveal the real banquet, and the poor and the humble that remained ate a great feast to their heart’s content.
I don’t know about you, but I feel I was brought up believing the idea that progress was inevitable. The western world was becoming ever fairer, ever more just; the world was always moving in a positive direction, and it would only become a better place. The last ten or fifteen years has challenged that. After decades of progress in racial equality and LGBT rights, it seems the world is becoming a more hostile place again; things can reverse. But I know that what is impossible for us is possible with God, and this is what Mary knew, too: That even in the midst of oppression and poverty, God’s promise held. He would turn the tables, ‘according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and his children for ever.’
But here’s why I love Mary the most: She carried Jesus, and still the thing she most loves to do in the world today and in our lives is to show us Jesus. Because she knew God’s love and she knew God’s justice; but Jesus—the one to whom she points, is the one in whom God’s love and God’s justice fully and truly lives. In him, all the fulness of the deity lives, St Paul writes. He is the Word of God made flesh, St John tells us. Some of us may have prayed the words of the Salve Regina—Hail Holy Queen. ‘Turn your eyes of mercy towards us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of they womb, Jesus.’ She carried Jesus in the womb; she carried him through his early life; and she still carries Jesus to us today. It is what she most loves to do; and it is one reason I so love her.
A final thought, however. Cast your mind back to the school Nativity, and the excitement of the casting announcement. Drum roll… Dave, you are the innkeeper. I think more often than not I was the innkeeper or a shepherd or a king. Once I think I was a sheep or some other animal. And while I’m not bitter, I think it’s safe to say I was robbed when awards season came around.
How many of you wanted to be Mary? Little cis girls, little trans girls? How many of you crossed your fingers, scrunched up your eyes and desperately wished to be given that role, year after year, and were left disappointed and despondent?
One of Mary’s traditional titles is Theotokos—the God-bearer, or the God-carrier. Tonight we will all get to be Theotokos. We will all get to be Mary. We will all leave here carrying Christ into the world.
We gather around this altar tonight, and we receive Christ into our bodies and into our hearts, and we, like Our Lady, will carry Christ into the world.
He chooses each one of us. He calls us by name. At this table we will be fed to be sent out, and having broken bread with one another, we will break bread with others who are hungry. Carry Jesus into the world as Mary carried him. Do it with courage and with joy, because Mary is with us, cheering us on; you are not on your own; Mary and the saints surround you.