Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Did anyone else go
stargazing on Monday night?
Monday marked the winter
solstice, the longest night of the year, and for the first time in nearly 400
years, the planets Saturn and Jupiter could be seen so close together in the
sky that they almost appeared to be one star. At my house, we took binoculars
and caught a glimpse of them before they sank into the horizon. This rare event
is called a “great conjunction” and comparisons were made between it and the
Christmas star that appears in the story of the magi that is in Matthew’s
gospel.
Luke’s telling of the
Nativity story doesn’t include the magi following the Bethlehem star; instead,
we meet the shepherds who first hear about the birth of the Messiah from the
angel of the Lord. They seek out the newborn child wrapped in bands of cloth
and lying in a manger and then tell his mother Mary all that they had heard.
And then Luke says, “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her
heart.”
The Greek translated as
“pondering” is a word that means “thrown together.” All these words that have
been said to Mary are thrown together in her heart:
The angel Gabriel’s proclamation that she had had found favor
with God
The announcement that she would bear the Son of the Most High
who would be called the Son of God
The declaration that her son would reign over the house of
Jacob forever and have a kingdom with no end.
And now, the revelation by
these outsiders that the infant she has born is the Messiah, the Lord of all.
Mary
didn’t dreamily or sigh in wonder. She pondered.
She
took in all these things thrown together at her. Maybe she scratched her
head, trying to puzzle out why she was chosen. Maybe, she ran her fingers
through her hair like I do when I’m trying to understand something new. Maybe
she shed tears at the enormity of it all. Or even argued with God.
And
still, she treasured this Christmas miracle, the birth of the infant Jesus, the
God coming into the world as a helpless infant, fully human and fully divine,
to show us how much God loves us all.
I
think as Christmas comes this year, Mary invites us to ponder all that
has been thrown together in 2020. Let out a frustrated scream, shed a tear or
two, and maybe even argue with God. God is big enough to hear us cry out;
strong enough to wrestle with us; and steadfast enough to wait for us.
The
second part of Mary’s invitation is to treasure the Christmas miracle that God
gives each one of us, the revelation that God is born tonight for us, no
matter what this year has held. Tonight our newborn hope is found in the birth
of our Savior and Lord.
Amen.
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