Carried Home: A Homily for the Dormition of the Theotokos

Lessons: Sirach 6:10-11 | Psalm 34 | Galatians 4:4-7 | Luke 1:46-55

There is something striking about the way the Church speaks about death today. We call this feast the Dormition. The falling asleep. We do not call Mary’s death an ending. We do not speak about her as someone swallowed by darkness or erased from the story. We speak of her falling asleep in the Lord. And I think we need that language. Because most of us have lived long enough to know death. We know what an empty chair feels like. We know what happens when the phone stops ringing because the person who used to call is gone. We know the strange experience of reaching for someone and then remembering they are no longer here. Some of us know grief so well we have learned how to carry it without anyone noticing.

The Church does not ask us to pretend death does not hurt. Mary herself knew grief. She stood at the cross. She watched her child suffer. She saw human cruelty do its worst to the one she loved. So this feast does not come from people unfamiliar with death. The Dormition comes from a Church that has buried its people. A Church that has stood beside graves. A Church that has wept. And still the Church says death is not the end. That is where I want us to begin today. Not with speculation about exactly what happened to Mary’s body. Not with arguments between East and West about Dormition or Assumption. Those conversations have their place. But they are not the heart of the feast. The heart of the feast is simpler.

Mary belonged to Christ. And what belongs to Christ is destined for life. Our collect says God received Mary “into the fullness” of the divine presence. That is the promise beneath everything we celebrate today. Mary's story does not end in death because Christ's story did not end in death. And neither does ours. But before Mary falls asleep, the Gospel asks us to listen to her sing. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” The Church gives us the Magnificat on the Dormition for a reason.

Mary tells us who she is by telling us who God is. And her song is not nearly as gentle as we sometimes make it. We have domesticated Mary. We have put her in soft blue robes. We have surrounded her with flowers. We have made her quiet. Harmless. Polite. But the Mary of Scripture sings about thrones coming down. She sings about the lowly being lifted. She sings about hungry people being fed. She sings about the rich discovering their wealth cannot save them. This is a young woman from an occupied people proclaiming that the order of the world is not permanent.

·      God is doing something.

·      God is turning things around.

·      God remembers the forgotten.

·      God sees the poor.

·      God hears the oppressed.

·      God has not surrendered history to those with the most money, the largest armies, the loudest voices, or the highest seats.

Mary sings because she believes God is faithful. And then she spends the rest of her life living inside the song she sang. That matters. Because it is easy to sing the Magnificat. It is much harder to become the Magnificat. Mary does. She says yes to God when she does not know where the yes will lead. She carries Christ. She gives birth under circumstances she did not choose. She protects him. She raises him. She watches him leave home. She watches people misunderstand him. She watches religious authorities condemn him. She stands near his cross when others run. And after resurrection, she remains with the Church. This is why the Church calls her Theotokos. God-bearer.

Yes, the title tells us something essential about Jesus. The child Mary bore was not merely a prophet or teacher. The eternal Word took flesh in her. But the title also gives us a picture of discipleship. Mary bears Christ into the world. And so must we. The Christian vocation is, in a sense, a Marian vocation. Christ is meant to take flesh in us. Not biologically, of course. But visibly. In the way we live. In the way we treat people. In the way we forgive. In the way we tell the truth. In the way we stand beside people the world has decided are disposable. In the way we make room at the table. In the way we refuse to confuse cruelty with righteousness.

If people cannot see something of Christ taking flesh in the Church, then all our theology becomes little more than religious noise. Mary reminds us that faith has to become embodied. The Word became flesh. And Christian faith must become flesh too. This brings me to our first lesson today. Sirach says: “A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter. Whoever finds one has found a treasure.” What an unusual reading for the Dormition. But perhaps not. Because Christianity is not ultimately about escaping humanity. It is about humanity healed and brought into communion. Mary gives herself to relationship. To God. To Joseph. To Elizabeth. To Jesus. To the disciples. To the emerging Church. And finally to us. At the cross Jesus says to the beloved disciple, “Behold your mother.”

The Church has heard those words for centuries as something larger than a household arrangement. Christ gives Mary to the Church. And gives the Church to Mary. This is why we ask the prayers of the Theotokos. Not because she replaces Jesus. She would be horrified by that idea. Everything about Mary points toward him.

Look at the icons. Mary holds Christ. Mary points toward Christ. Mary receives Christ. Mary gives Christ. Mary stands beside Christ. Mary is never the destination. She is the disciple who keeps saying, “Look there. Look at my Son.” And that brings us to Paul. “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman.” Born of a woman. Paul could have spoken only of divine majesty. He could have spoken only about heaven. Instead he reminds us that salvation came through a body. Through pregnancy. Through birth. Through blood. Through milk. Through sleepless nights. Through ordinary human life. God did not save humanity from a distance. God entered it. And Mary is right there in the mystery. The Word becomes flesh through her consent. This is one reason the Dormition matters so deeply. Because Christianity does not teach us to despise the body. Our bodies are not temporary packaging for souls. God created them. Christ assumed one. Christ healed bodies. Christ fed bodies. Christ gave his body. Christ rose bodily from the grave. And Mary’s Dormition becomes another proclamation that human embodiment belongs within God's saving purpose.

This matters in a culture that has a complicated relationship with bodies. We judge bodies. We rank bodies. We shame bodies. We politicize bodies. We decide which bodies belong in certain spaces. We decide which bodies are respectable. Which bodies are desirable. Which bodies deserve protection. Which bodies we are willing to ignore.

The Church must say something different.

·      The body is sacred.

·      The body of the poor is sacred.

·      The body of the migrant is sacred.

·      The body of the prisoner is sacred.

·      The disabled body is sacred.

·      The aging body is sacred.

·      The queer body is sacred.

·      The trans body is sacred.

·      The body carrying scars is sacred.

·      The body that does not fit somebody else's expectation is sacred.

·      The body lying in a hospital bed is sacred.

·      The body we place into the earth at death is sacred.

Because God did not look upon human flesh with disgust. God entered it. And today, as we contemplate Mary at the end of her earthly life, the Church refuses to treat her body as meaningless. God receives the whole person. This is the hope of resurrection. And here is where the Dormition stops being only Mary's feast and starts becoming ours. Because every one of us is dying. I know that is not the usual Sunday encouragement. But it is true. We are finite. Our lives have limits. We spend enormous energy trying not to think about that. We accumulate things. We build reputations. We chase promotions. We fill calendars. We worry about how people perceive us. We rehearse old arguments. We carry grudges for years.  We act as though there will always be another week.

·      Another conversation.

·      Another opportunity to apologize.

·      Another chance to say “I love you.”

·      Another Sunday.

·      Another dinner.

·      Another Christmas.

·      Until there isn't.

The Dormition asks us a hard question. If you know you will one day fall asleep, what deserves your life right now? That is not morbid. That is clarifying. Mary's Magnificat gives us an answer. Love God. Stand with the lowly. Feed the hungry. Trust mercy. Bear Christ. Stay near the suffering. Remain faithful. Do not waste your life trying to sit on thrones God is already overturning. There is freedom in that.

We do not need to be important. We need to be faithful. We do not need everyone to know our name. We need to know the name of the person sitting alone. We do not need to win every argument. We need to learn how to love. We do not need a perfect Church. We need a Church willing to repent. We do not need to preserve every institution. We need to preserve the Gospel. Mary had no ecclesiastical office. No title during her earthly life. No building named after her. No institutional power. And generation after generation calls her blessed. Why? Because she said yes. And kept saying yes. I think there are seasons when the greatest act of faith is not some dramatic heroic gesture.

It is simply another yes.

·      Yes, I will forgive.

·      Yes, I will show up.

·      Yes, I will speak.

·      Yes, I will listen.

·      Yes, I will begin again.

·      Yes, I will let go.

·      Yes, I will stand beside the person everyone else abandoned.

·      Yes, I will trust God even though I do not understand what God is doing.

Mary's life is a long succession of those yeses. And eventually there comes the final yes. The surrender every human being must make. Death. The icons of the Dormition reverse the image of Bethlehem. At Bethlehem, Mary holds Christ. At the Dormition, Christ holds Mary. I love that. The mother who once carried God is now carried by God. The one who held Jesus against her chest is now held by Christ. That is the Gospel in an image. You spend your life learning to carry Christ. And eventually you learn that Christ has been carrying you. Maybe someone here needs to hear that today.

You have been carrying a lot. Family. Work. Grief. Children. Parents. Bills. Ministry. Expectations. Regrets. Fear. Sometimes even the Church. And perhaps somewhere along the way you began believing everything depends on you. It does not. The Dormition says there comes a point where Mary stops carrying and allows herself to be carried. There is grace in that. Some things need our work. Some things need our courage.  Some things need resistance. Some things need repentance. But some things need surrender. We have to know the difference. And Christian surrender is not giving up. It is placing ourselves into the hands of the One who defeated death.

Psalm 34 says: “I will bless the Lord at all times. God's praise shall continually be in my mouth.” At all times. Not only when the diagnosis is good. Not only when the marriage is easy. Not only when the children are doing well. Not only when the Church is thriving. Not only when prayers are answered the way we wanted. At all times. That does not mean we pretend everything is good. Christian praise is not denial. Sometimes praise sounds like Hallelujah. Sometimes praise sounds like crying at the foot of the cross and refusing to leave. Mary knew both. So did the saints. St. Mary Magdalene knew what it meant to stand beside a tomb. St. Oscar Romero knew what faithfulness cost. Mother Maria Skobtsova knew love could lead straight into danger. Dorothy Day knew feeding the hungry and challenging comfortable Christians would not make everyone like her. The saints do not teach us how to avoid suffering. They teach us how not to surrender our humanity inside it. And Mary stands among them as the first disciple. So what do we do with this feast? Three things.

First, make peace with your mortality. You are going to die. So am I. We do not need to fear saying it. Christ has already entered the grave. There is nowhere we will go where Christ has not gone before us. Let death teach you what matters. Make the phone call. Say the apology. Give the blessing. Stop postponing love.

Second, bear Christ into the world. Not an ideology about Christ. Christ. Compassion. Mercy. Truth. Justice. Bread. Welcome. Healing. Forgiveness. If Christianity only makes us more suspicious, angry, tribal, and cruel, something has gone wrong. Mary carried Jesus. The Church must do the same.

Third, learn when to surrender. You do not control everything. You never did. Some of us are exhausted because we are trying to carry things God never asked us to carry forever. There is a holy moment when our prayer becomes the prayer Mary prayed at the beginning of everything: “Let it be with me according to your word.”

And perhaps that is also the prayer at the end. The first yes and the final yes meeting each other. Beloved, this is the Dormition. Mary sleeps. Christ receives her. The apostles grieve. Heaven rejoices. And the Church looks upon the mystery and remembers what we confess every Sunday: “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.” We mean it. This table before us is part of that promise. Here the living Christ feeds us with the life of the age to come. Here heaven and earth meet. Here we gather with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. Here we remember those who have gone before us. And here, in our own Divine Liturgy, we name her: “Our most holy, pure, blessed and glorious Lady, the Theotokos, Mary.” Not because she needs our praise.

Because we need her witness. We need someone to show us what faithful humanity looks like. Someone who says yes. Someone who carries Christ. Someone who stands at the cross. Someone who remains with the Church. Someone who teaches us how to sing while empires tremble. Someone whose death points beyond death. And someone whose story reminds us that the God who asks us to carry Christ through this world will finally carry us home.

So, Holy Wisdom, do not waste your life. Love while there is time. Forgive while there is time. Feed somebody while there is time. Stand beside somebody while there is time. Tell the truth while there is time. Pray while there is time. Bear Christ while there is time. And when the hour finally comes when there is nothing left for you to accomplish, nothing left to prove, nothing left to carry, surrender yourself into the hands that held Mary. Because the hands waiting for us are the hands of Christ. Scarred hands. Resurrected hands. Merciful hands. The hands of the One who has already gone through death and come out the other side.

Most holy Theotokos, Mother of God, pray for us. Teach us your yes. Teach us your courage. Teach us your song. Teach us to bear Christ faithfully. And when our own evening comes, pray that we too may fall asleep in hope and awaken in the presence of the One whom you carried into the world.

To Jesus Christ be glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.