Isaiah 62:6-12, 16; Psalm 97; Titus 3:4-7; Luke 2:1-20
“But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”
I would love to hear Mary’s pondering as she watched the shepherds and others in the crowd stare with wondering eyes at her firstborn child. Was she aware of just how unique this child in her arms was? How would he react to the world? How would the world react to him? How would he change the world through his life and example? How would it all end?
I’ve always wondered how much Mary knew about her son Jesus’ future. In Jesus’ day, mothers’ wished practical wishes for their sons. Mothers’ wishes for their sons were simple and direct: finding a less dangerous job that kept starvation away, finding a wife to assist him in his life journey and to provide him with children, and siring children and then grandchildren to carry on his name.
In Jesus’ day, mothers of Jewish sons also wished practical wishes for their offspring: to keep a low profile, and not to attract the attention of their Roman occupiers. No politics, no religious fervor, no job that would bring unwanted attention from Rome or the Jewish leaders of the day. Jewish mothers wanted sons who just put their heads down and focused on the welfare of their wife and kids, keeping them alive and fed. And then bringing parents into their household in their old age to care for them.
The last thing a Jewish mother wanted for her son was to live a life that risked being nailed to a tree by bloodthirsty Roman governors. That was the ultimate nightmare, the ultimate shame, the ultimate bad ending.
But what about Jesus’ Jewish mother Mary? What dreams and nightmares did she hold about her first-born son? Holding her first born in her arms, enjoying that newborn baby smell, trying to ignore the smell of rotting hay and animal droppings, so young yet literally with the weight of the creation on her shoulders.
I wonder what Joseph was pondering in his heart on that most holy of nights? A man of his word. A man of honor. A man who pledged himself to protect and nurture his soon-to-be bride and what he now claimed as his own son.
I wonder what God was thinking, too. He had specifically chosen Jesus’ earthly parents. He had given them both a huge responsibility, a cosmic responsibility. Was he sure they were up to the task? Was he filled with anxiety about how this whole “salvation through sending his own son into creation to save it” plan? Probably not because, well He’s God! But if God really sent his only son into the world with no guardrails, with the same limits of mortality and physicality that every human is born into, with the gift and the curse of free will in a truly human body, if God in Jesus really experienced life in this world as we know it, did it keep him up nights worrying like we human parents do?
In our gospel reading from Luke this evening we see the intermission, as we might call it, in the story of God’s salvation through Jesus, son of Mary and now Joseph as well. We see the liminal state between the tumultuous Annunciation of God’s plan of salvation through his servant Mary, and the assumed finality of the cross thirty-three years later. We get to experience a respite, a calm, the eye of the storm that will be Jesus’ life with us. A time to sit with Mary and Joseph and those gathered as they breathe collective sighs of relief at the passing of the first storm. To sit with them all as they enjoy the wonder of a child who, though so innocent and dependent now, will go on to change the world through the sound of his voice and the touch of his hand, through his life and his sacrifice, a champion of the poor and the downtrodden and the rejected. A singular chance for God and creation to come together and give thanks for the miracle of Love born in that dingy animal stall.
Tonight and tomorrow are that time for us as well. This is a time for us to sit in wonder and awe at the length to which God has gone to prove his love for us, to reveal his faith in us, to teach us what it is to be truly loved and cherished. God literally put his life in our forebears’ hands. That should put us in awe of God’s faith in us and in creation to be loved, to be beloved, to be redeemed, and to be forgiven.
Tonight and tomorrow are a liminal time for us. Now is a time to let go of grievances, to let go of our judgement of each other, to stop letting the sins of prejudice and misogyny and greed and ambivalence rule our lives, to look on one another and see each other as God sees us, all of us. Now is the time to recognize each other as fellow pilgrims on the same journey together. To look into each other’s eyes and see fraternity and solidarity with each other before God.
We are not strangers to each other. We man never have even met, we may feel like enemies through our beliefs and our lifestyles, but at our core we are all the same. We are all in the same boat. We all have our own origin birth stories, our own families that raised us or didn’t, our own fears and and temptations, our own struggles and pain and sufferings and loss, our own spectacular triumphs and dismal failures. We share humanity but also the love of a Trinitarian God who thinks of us constantly and who wishes nothing but the best for us.
And that’s the Good News of the magic of Christmas. It’s that time when we have permission to stop and to take stock of our lives. It’s that time when we have the power to forgive old and new wounds, not relinquishing accountability, but daring to believe in the power of forgiveness to bring new life. Like a reptile we can shed our skin tonight, slough off that old damaged shell so that we can breath deeply once again, not becoming something different but revealing our true selves again.
The Good News today is that tonight and tomorrow we have the power to reset the clock of our lives and the clock of the lives of those around us, to leave behind what was and to begin creating what will be. But that gift is not just for ourselves. That gift of new life is something we need to spread like a blanket of warmth and safety. We need to spread our gift of God’s renewed love to others, especially to those of us who are suffering. The sick and the lonely, those who are imprisoned in mind or body or spirit, those who are working hard to survive but there still is not enough, those who are grieving loss and exclusion, those who are who have been beaten down by an ambivalent world that has or wants to forget them, those who are different in all the ways we can be different from each other, those who cannot care for themselves and those too scared or too proud to ask for help.
The Good News today is that we have the power through God to change lives for the better, our own lives and the lives of everyone around us. As the saying goes, when you look into the eyes of your neighbor don’t assume to see someone who is your adversary, see someone who is at heart like you, fighting their own battles for the very survival of their soul every day. Despite what the world tells us, we are bound by our common humanity, and joined together as brothers and sisters through the love of God and the sacrifice of his Lamb, his only son, our brother Jesus Christ.
On this most magical of nights, may God remind you of his love for and faith in you. May God bless you with all good gifts for you and for those you love, and a very Merry Christmas.