TREASURING AND PONDERING
Texts: Isaiah 62:4-5, 10-12; Luke 2:8-20

"Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart." This is what Luke would have us do with sacred scripture. Treasure it and ponder it. Treasure these words of life handed down to us across three thousand-plus years. And ponder them, receiving them as bread and wine. Reflecting upon them, asking all the questions we need to ask. Then letting the scriptures ask questions of us. At least these three: Who am I? What is God calling me to do, to be? And who is my neighbor?

Another way to ask the questions: What is the grace of God to me in these words? And where is this grace leading me?

I

The story begins with the annunciation and the "Call of Mary." The poet Denise Levertov forms into poetry what she describes as "the astounding ministry she was offered":

...to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power - -
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.
Then bring to birth,
push out into the air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love - -
but who was God.¹

"Hail, Mary, full of grace" is how Catholic liturgy has transported the words of Gabriel to Mary. "Greetings, O favored one."

Do you know this is also God’s word to you? O you, formed by grace, filled with grace, loved infinitely, completely, immeasurably, unendingly, loved fiercely and tenderly by God.

Do you know that you - male and female, young and old - are offered this same ministry? To bear in your inmost parts the Christ, to let him be formed in you ‘til you are formed in him, then push him out into the air and, holding him in your arms, present him to the world and say, "Look at him, just look at him!"

"‘Til Christ be formed in you" is exactly how Paul put it in his Christ-mysticism: Christ formed in us as a child in a womb, then degree-by-degree we are changed into his kind of glory.

Ireneus spoke of the mystery of the Incarnation, as the new calling of all humanity: "God became human that we might become divine." Not become God - - that would be idolatrous - - but like God, transformed by grace to enflesh the character of God, to be like Christ, "surprise of Mercy, outgoing Gladness, Rescue, Healing and Life."²

This is the mystery of the Incarnation which is not just Mary’s possibility and Jesus’ actuality but also the Spirit’s invitation to us: God inhabiting our flesh, spirit and matter wed, the holy and the human interpenetrating one another.

You may draw back, bad religion and life’s experiences having smothered your spirit. But Gabriel’s words to that young Galilean maiden echoed God’s earlier words to captive Israel in Isaiah 62:

Nevermore shall you be called "Forsaken",
Nor shall your land be called "Desolate".
ut you shall be called "I delight in her"
And your land [called] "Espoused."
[As one given and giving in marriage.]
As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
So will God rejoice over you....
You shall be called "Sought Out"
- - "Desired" - - "A City Not Forsaken."

God loving us for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish, all our days.

The Incarnation proclaims, to use the words of Rowan Williams, that despite appearances to the contrary, God and the world belong together,...that there is no place the love of God cannot go.

II

Then there are the shepherds to treasure and ponder. More migrant worker than rosy-cheeked choir boy, more Merle Haggard than J.S. Bach, more Hank Williams or Alan Jackson than Friedric Handel. They’d more apt to be singing "Help me make through the night" than "Savior like a shepherd lead us." They lived on the fringe of society, like those who subsist on day work. They were the last to be hired, the first to be fired, the last to go to college, the first to go to war. They were of bad reputation, not allowed to be witnesses in courts of law. But the angel appeared to them.

"Be not afraid, fear not!" were the first words of the angel, knowing how close fear lives to our hearts; knowing that to do anything worth doing for ourselves or for the world, we must walk through our fear.

Then the words, "For, behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which shall be to all people." It is to them and it is to all people. "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."

You need to know how these words - - Savior, Lord, Son of God - - church words, Christmas card words to us, were heard in the first-century world. They were names given to Caesar Augustus and to Caesars before and after him, words of the liturgy of the theocracy of the Roman Empire. Augustus was called "savior of the whole world." Of his birthday an inscription reads: "The birthday of the god has marked the beginning of the good news for the world."

Luke is preaching a counter-theology subversive to the politics and religion of the empire. The Savior of the world, Son of God, Lord of all, is not seated on the imperial throne in Rome but is lying in a cow’s feeding trough in a Jewish village named Bethlehem. Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord.

How this birth, as Mary’s song, turns everything upside down! Power is weakness and weakness is power. Jesus is Lord and Caesar is a pretender. We’re not saved by politics; government is not our Redeemer. "Trust not in princes," as the psalmist says. Politics is where we work out the human shape of justice and thus is important. But Jesus isn’t a Democrat and God is not spelled G.O.P.

What I’m speaking of is the de-absolutizing of politics, whether the secular political religion of communism, or the various strains of theocratizing religions which put God’s name on their desire for domination. Holy monotheisms become conquering monotheisms. People in God’s name aim to rule.

We see what was at stake in a document called the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, dated about 180 C.E., from North Africa.

A Christian named Speratus is brought before the Roman governor. The governor says: "Swear by the deified god of the empire."

Speratus replies, "I do not recognize the empire of this world... for I know my Lord, who is emperor of kings and all nations."

He believed in an alternate empire and gave his life for it.

I remember the small courageous "Confessing Church" of Germany as it separated itself from the German Christian majority who had fallen under the thrall of Hitler and Nazism. They issued what they called "The Barmen Declaration," which said, in short: We confess that Jesus Christ alone is Lord of Life. Jesus, not the Fuehrer, is our Lord.

It seems important to be reminded today, two thousand years after the reign of Augustus, in a world that still believes that "Might makes Right," still genuflects before power, still trusts that violence is the only answer to violence: We with millions this day sing our birthday carols not to Augustus but to Jesus, not to Caesar but to Christ.

What amazing news to the shepherds that holy night: For unto you, yes, you, is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

III

Then there’s the birth itself to treasure and ponder, the birth in the shed where people kept their animals.

Ox and ass before him bow
and he is in the manger now.

The manger, a cow’s rough feeding trough, a makeshift crib for a makeshift night.

Even the word "manger" made echoes in the Hebrew mind. Isaiah had used the word in his challenge to God’s people:

The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey the manger of its master,
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.
Isaiah 1:3

Sometimes we lose our way so bad we cannot find our way home. Home has come to us. Sometimes our minds lose their understanding. We get so confused we no longer know who we are, much less who God is. And God shines a light.

"Son of God, love’s pure light."

IV

Then there’s the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths. Literally, the child "is swaddled." Wrapped in bands of cloth. It’s what we do when a baby is born. First, swaddled in our arms, then swaddled in warm blankets.

Babies need to be swaddled. We all need to be swaddled. Our body and skin need it. Our central nervous system needs it. Our soul and psyche need it.

We swaddle one another with affection and touch, with compliments and encouragement, with smiles and hugs, with day-by-day ordinary love. When you go home today ask someone you love, How can I swaddle you?

This may seem to some like infantile regression, but scratch the surface of our made-up lives and there is in all of us a child who needs to be swaddled.

I think that’s what Jesus did when he held children, and forgave cast-out sinners, and befriended tax collectors, and called women and fishermen to be his disciples, and touched lepers, and made Samaritans heroes: He swaddled them.

That’s what You, O God, did for us on this holy night when You came as a child, letting us love You as a child, as a child in our arms, love You, that we might love every person as a God-child, and ourselves be loved.

Christ was born for this,
Christ was born for this.