The Birth of the Lord: Christmas Eve – PF (White or Gold)
Sunday, December 24th, 2023
ISAIAH 62:6-12; PSALM 97; TITUS 3:4-7; LUKE 2:8-20
Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart
Mary had already been visited by an angel when the shepherds arrived to tell their story of their own angelic visitation. The archangel Gabriel, no less, was her angelic visitor. And she had already heard, from her angelic visitor, some of what was to come.
“[Y]ou will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus,” says Gabriel. “[Your son] will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
What do you say to that?
And when Mary responds, saying, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”, it’s easy to think that this is about sex. “How can this be, since I have not known a man in that sort of way?”
But the sex part is only one part of Mary’s “How can this be.” “I have not known a man in that sort of way, so I most certainly will not conceive in my womb and bear a son. And if I can’t do that, then most certainly all that other weird stuff you said, Gabriel, about him being Son of the Most High? And that he will be a new King David? That he will reign, forever? The getting pregnant part is one thing, archangel … but the rest? A kingly, conquering, and divine son like that, from a family like mine? Really, how could this be?”
Gabriel’s answer, though, is hardly even about the “how” of divine procreation; Gabriel appears to be just as interested, again, in who this son will be: “the child to be born will be holy; [and] he will be called Son of God.”
Despite the fact that the angels and the archangels like Gabriel show little interest in the question of how this might be, that hasn’t prevented the theologians from asking it again, and again, and again. “Divine and human in one person? How can this be? The earthly and the heavenly, together, in a person? How can this be?”
But let’s not give the theologians too hard a time. Because we have our own ways, too, of missing the point. The one who has come to conquer the nations and put all things under his feet … This king who is to rule the nations, and this time for keeps …This ruler who will sit on the throne of David, and to set all things right … This commander, this superstar, this titan, is a child?
Well I suppose we can sort this one out because children do grow up. And perhaps then, a man could lead an army into battle, and make the victory his; an adult could come in force to settle all the accounts; once he’s grown up a bit, he could set himself up to rule for good. Sorry about this—spoilers—this child grows to be a man, but a man who heads no army, a man who does not come with force, a man who will sit on no castle throne; this child grows to be a man who is hung upon a tree, a man who won’t fight this fate at all, a man who dies with no army at his back, a man who dies alone.
“He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. [And] [h]e will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” And … he will be crucified.
How can this be.
Later on after Mary and Joseph have made their long voyage to Bethlehem, after a difficult birth in less than sanitary conditions, they will be visited by shepherds who themselves have been visited by angels. But the shepherds don’t seem to have much interest in how what all they’ve been told has come to pass.
Instead they just want to see. The angels and the archangels have made their visit to them on that field, and they’ve heard this strange news that a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord, has been born. They hardly seem concerned in how this has come to pass, that this Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord, has not been born in a palace, or in city hall, not even in Toronto or Ottawa or London or Paris or Brussels; but rather in the back room of your neighbours place, or in a garage by the boarding house, or in the room at the hotel/motel where the housekeepers do the laundry.
They aren’t concerned, except to be joyful that this has come to pass, that a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord, has been born. And so they all run off to find Mary and Joseph, and the child in the manger.
And they tell their story. “We saw angels. They were scary. They told us that you would be here, just like this. Then there was more angels. And then they were gone. And now we’re here. And this is him. A Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord. Can I hold him?”
This time Mary doesn’t say, “how can this be.” After all she did have this child, and after all she never did know Joseph, not that way. Perhaps she trusts the word of Gabriel, now. Perhaps she’s decided to just roll with it at this point. Maybe, she’s just worn out from child birth. St. Luke tells us that this time, after hearing the shepherds tell all what they had heard from the angels, St. Luke tells us that this time, “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”
And in one of those delightful ways that language can say more than one thing at once, the word for “pondered” in St. Luke’s greek has a sense not just of pondering or thinking, but of throwing things together. And so Mary in her pondering threw these things together in her heart. “My child is born with nothing, yet he will be a king. He lies in a food trough, but will sit upon a throne. His kingdom will have no end, but he’s crying, and hungry, and I’m going to have to do something about that. He is from heaven, and yet he is here.”
And we know more, yet. We will draw more inferences from Scripture, and we will join Mary in throwing these things together in our hearts. He is fully human and he is fully divine. And we will know more of the story, throwing yet more into our hearts—this king will not reign over the nations, at least not with armies or by shedding the blood of others. He will be taken captive and he will die a cruel death. And yet. And yet, he will live. And because he lives, so do we.
We can leave the how to the theologians. At least the ones concerned with what’s least interesting in all this. Because we know more than how; we know who. We know who it is that reconciles not just us to God, nor just us to one another. This one who forgives is the one who reconciles heaven and earth in his own self; this is the Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord; this is the one that will blaze a trail for all us fleshly creatures into the divine life; and he is found a child, wrapped in bands of cloth, and lying in a manger.
And we look upon him, too, with the wonder of the shepherds, and like Mary, with her heart, we hold all these things together, and more, pondering them in hearts of our own.