In St. Mary’s church, Long Stratton, there hangs a Sextons wheel. The Sextons wheel is such an important part of the towns identity, a replica of it sits neatly in the town sign and also outside the high school gates. It forms part of the logo of the football clubs and for many years was the logo of the high school, only changing when it was subsumed into a multi academy trust and all must change! The town magazine is even named the Sextons wheel. And yet if you ask almost anyone in the town, what it is, or where the original one, that all the replicas are based on is, almost nobody knows.

To many it was a complete mystery, no one knew why the local magazine had this strange name or this odd wheel, seemed to appear in so many places. The significance had somehow been lost over time.

Indeed the history of why there is a Sextons wheel has been lost through time, and its exact purpose is not completely clear, and the one in Long Stratton has not been in working order for many years. But the general agreement from historians is that in the past, ribbons or such like would have hung from each of the spikes that sit inside the wheel, and when the Sexton spun the wheel the faithful worshipper would grab a ribbon and depending on which spoke the ribbon came from that would be the day they would celebrate the feast of Mary, since there are several to choose from.

It is generally understood, that the Sextons wheel in Long Stratton is one of just 2 remaining examples in the country, the other sitting just over the county border in St Mary’s Church, Yaxley, Suffolk.

In the church of England we have just a modest 4 feast days for Mary, the 25th March for the Annunciation, 31st May, visit of Mary to Elizabeth, the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the 15th August, and the 8th September, the birth of Mary, the particular festival we are marking today.

In the Catholic church, you can also have the 1st January for Mary, the mother of God, 15th January for Mary of the sowing, and the 26th December for the Glorification of the Mother of God.

And the feast on the 15th August which we have for the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the Catholic church is for the Assumption of Mary.

To my cost, I learnt several years ago what the feast of the Assumption was. We arrived in France for a camping holiday late one evening, having driven for many hours, very weary travellers. And having put our tent up, in what looked to be a very peaceful campsite, we settled in for the night.

But within a short while, a party, the magnitude of which I had never heard before or thankfully since began. And continued throughout the night.

When we stumbled into the campsite reception the next morning, just wondering if this was something we might have to endure every night, we were reassured it had simply been part of the Bank holiday celebrations the rest of the week would be and indeed was, much more restful

Not even thinking it was a bank holiday, who has one on the 15th August, we set about googling to find out what exactly it was they were celebrating. And found out it was all part of the festivities for the feast of the assumption, which commemorates the death of Mary and her bodily assumption into heaven before her body could decay. Since November 1st 1950 when Pope Pius XII, exercising papal infallibility declared in an Apostolic constitution known as the Munificentissimus Deus that it is a dogma of the church ‘that the immaculate mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.’ As dogma, the assumption is a required belief of all catholics.

The earliest printed reference to the belief that Mary’s body was assumed into heaven dates from the fourth century in a document entitled, ‘the falling asleep of the Holy mother of God.’ The document is written in the voice of the apostle John, to whom, on the cross, Jesus entrusted the care of his mother, and it recounts the death, laying in the tomb and assumption of the blessed virgin. Tradition variously places Mary’s death at Jerusalem or at Ephesus, where John was living.

Whatever we believe about the assumption. One thing is absolutely clear, Mary is a very important person.

Without the Yes of Mary … where would we be today?

She is key to Gods salvation plan.

When we read those verses before this evenings passage in the middle of Advent. I can’t help but imagine all the heavenly host, with bated breath and on the edge of their seats anxious waiting and desperate to know … what is Mary going to say to the Angel Gabriel who comes to announce to her such astonishing news ‘do not be afraid, you have found favour with God. You will be with child and give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; his kingdom will never end.’

And when Mary eventually says ‘I am the Lord’s Servant, may it be to me as you have said.’ I imagine the huge sigh of relief reverberating around and the joy of the heavenly host.

The wheels are now set in motion.

Mary in full obedience is now part of the salvation plan.

A plan that is going to see Mary go through so much joy and so much bitter pain, in the words of Simeon ‘a sword will pierce your own soul too.’

When we remember Mary, it is her obedience to the will of God that stands out.

And although the circumstances of her life, her role, are unique, that doesn’t mean she’s remote from us. We too are called to follow the path of courageous obedience to God, to be bearers of Christ in a broken world.

With her, we’re called to bring the needs of the world to Christ in prayer, and by our lives to point to him as the one in whom the deepest longings of humanity are met.

In Mary we’re given a foretaste of our destiny. And so to honour her is to affirm our belief in the resurrection, as the way to the Father’s heart opened up by Christ.

May our own lives echo the words of Mary ‘I am the Lord’s servant, may it be to me, as you have said.’

Amen