Reading: Luke 2:19
We are at the start of the wonderful, delicious pause time between Dec 25, when we mark the birth of Jesus into the world, and January 6, the Day of Epiphany when we read about magi – noble guests from afar, showing up at the door of his humble, and the beginning of the progressive unveiling of Jesus as the light of the world and his way as the way of life for all the world.
It’s the twelve days of Christmas. A curious time when not much happens. Not much … other than the end of the old year, and the beginning of the new! The coming of a fresh start for us all. The invitation to begin again, and begin anew.
There are all kinds of great ways to spend this time. Playing with our new toys. Extending the holiday from school and from work. Taking advantage of after-Christmas savings. Relaxing. Maybe recovering from COVID, or the flu or a cold, or surgery or injury. Or reaching out to others in need.
It’s also a time for reflection. For treasuring and pondering the gift of Christmas – the gift of God’s own self that is literally put into our hands, that taps at the door of our hearts to be welcomed.
We do a lot of reading in worship in the lead-up to Christmas – from the Old Testament prophets who help us understand and put into perspective the coming of the Christ, to the two birth narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke filled with angels and surprises and good news to the world, unplanned journeys and unexpected visitors from beyond one’s normal circle.
Our reading this morning is just one verse. Not Christmas left-over, but a Boxing Day treat. From the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verse 19:
“But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”
Meditation
“Mary treasured up all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”
I’ve never given birth – at least not literally and physically to a baby. So who am I to reflect on the story and the image of Mary, the mother of Jesus treasuring up and pondering in her heart all that she saw and heard and felt, and what others were saying about him?
I do remember, though, the first time I saw Aaron – exactly one day old in the hospital where he was born. His mom and I adopted him from birth, and flew to Winnipeg the day his birth-mom went into labour and bore him into the world. The next day we were in the room with his birth-mother and her mother, and while the women talked I got to hold him.
Tightly swaddled, he was laid in the crook of my arm. Bundled, he fit perfectly along my arm from the palm of my hand to the bend of my elbow, securely held against the side of my body as I sat and stared at him for a whole full hour.
I just looked at him. I gazed, beheld, and marvelled at the mystery of him. I gave thanks. I felt afraid and inadequate. I wondered at this turn of events, at this turning of the world. I absolutely fell in love with him.
I could feel my life changing – being changed, being turned inside out and upside down by him, because of him and for him. And all he was doing was just lying there and sleeping, totally at rest and at that moment totally trusting in, and dependent on me.
Is that anything at all like Mary in the moments after the birth of Jesus, and the arrival of the shepherds with their tales of angel good news, treasuring up and pondering all these things in her heart?
And is that we are invited to do, this Christmas and every Christmas along the way, with Jesus?
This is something Mary was already used to doing – something she had to learn to do right from the beginning.
At the very start of her pregnancy – with the first sowing of a seed of new life within her, she needed help to know what this was. To understand, or at least begin to imagine the how and the why and the what and the what-for of this change in her life.
She had help, and she turned to it and accepted it. First, the angel. And then, Elizabeth, her old barren relative now also inexplicably pregnant with some new life for the world.
And it was there, in the company of old Elizabeth that she found herself so caught up in the mystery of what God was doing in and for the world through her, that she burst into song – that beautiful song we call The Magnificat about God making the world over again and in a new way, overturning and reversing the way things are, re-ordering the world so the poor are lifted up and the powerful are brought low, the excluded and the outsiders are invited in to a place at the table and insiders suddenly find their place of privilege brought to an end.
And now this … this scene on the day of Jesus’ actual birth is just more of the same, a continuation and the beginning of the fulfilment of the message and the hope of the song.
Bethlehem was not her choice of place for Jesus to be born. Nor, really, was it Joseph’s.
They were there together by compulsion and orders from above. They were there by the interplay of forces greater than themselves. On one hand, by the Empire, needing to control and put a number on everyone and everything. And on the other hand, by God and the kingdom of God at work in its own way in the world – by the promise of a messiah, a servant-leader who would come to reign in the name of David, the shepherd-king.
It was so fitting – so perfect, that once there – when they arrived in Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph found themselves with no place to go to, without a room of their own, no place to settle in and be cared for, but off to one side in a stable among God’s lowly creatures.
And once the birth was accomplished, and the new life found its way into the world, the first people who came to see her baby boy were also shepherds. And real shepherds at that. Not some idealized, sanitized, super-polite, Disneyfied, Holly-Hobbie-ized, Muppet kind of shepherds. Not children dressed up in bathrobes following the lead of their Sunday school teacher.
But real-life, grown-up, dirty, just-in-from-the-fields, maybe somewhat shiftless, certainly smelly, and often not-wanted-in-polite-company shepherds. Saying they were told by the angels – angels again! messengers of God! – that this little life cradled in Mary’s arms and totally trusting her to fall in love with him, was meant to save them, and to bring new life and new hope to all others like them who were poor, at risk, overlooked, forgotten and not wanted.
And instead of shrinking from them, and closing her heart in fear and anxiety and protecting her baby against them, she let her heart open even more and grow even larger. She treasured up all these things – all she was seeing and all she was hearing, and pondered it in her heart. She let herself be drawn step by willing step, deeper and deeper into the mystery of the world being remade by God with her help into the world she had sung about when she was with Elizabeth – a world of charity, compassion and care for all, instead of success, privilege and well-being just for some at the expense of many others.
A few days ago, a friend – Aaron’s mom, actually, introduced me to a new song sung by The Kings Singers. It’s called “Born on a New Day.”
I’m not going to sing it. Who am I to try that? But I will read you the words:
You
are the new day.
Meekness, love, humility
Come down to us this day:
Christ, your birth has proved to me
You are the new day.
Quiet
in a stall you lie,
Angels watching in the sky
Whisper to you from on high
"You are the new day".
When
our life is darkest night,
Hope has burned away;
Love, your ray of guiding light,
Show us the new day.
Love
of all things great and small
Leaving none, embracing all,
Fold around me where I fall,
Bring in the new day.
This
new day will be
A turning point for everyone.
If we let the Christ-child in, and
Reach for the new day.
Christ
the Way, the Truth, the Life;
Healing sadness, ending strife;
You we welcome, Lord of life,
Born on a new day.
You are the new day.
In these twelve days of Christmas that we have just begun, in addition to however else we might spend some of these days and nights, we also have time to gaze upon, to hold and to behold, and to begin to nurture once again the one who has come to change not only our lives, but the life of the world.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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