Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 25, 2007

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We all love Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus, right? Most of us grew up hearing it read, probably in the King James Version, at Christmas time at church and maybe even at home. It is the foundation of our image of Christmas. The crčches that we put up are based mostly on Luke’s story. We may take the wise men out of Matthew’s story and add them to our Lukan display, but basically our crčches are a depiction of Luke’s birth story. It is a truly magnificent story. Every time I read it I am filled with good memories of Christmases past, and I imagine many of you are too. Beyond that, every time I read it I discover new meaning in it. As I reread it recently in preparation for this morning’s service I was struck more powerfully than ever before by how much meaning there is in the story and in every one of its details. I must have come up with a good dozen sermon topics in that story and its details.

One of the story’s details, however, struck me more than the others. It’s a line that has always puzzled me. I’ve never understood its significance. It comes at the end of the story. Before we get to it Jesus has been born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger. Before we get to it the angel of the Lord has appeared to the shepherds in their fields and given them the great Christmas proclamation: “Do not be afraid, for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Luke 2:10-11 NRSV By the time we get to that verse that has puzzled me so much the shepherds have gone to Bethlehem, where they “make known what had been told them about this child.” Luke 2:17 NRSV They were so filled with awe and amazement at what they had experienced that they couldn’t keep it in. They testified to it to everyone they met, amazing everyone who heard it. They’re the extroverts of the story, putting everything that was on their minds out there for the whole world to hear.

Then we come at last to my troublesome verse. After telling us about the talkative shepherds Luke says: “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2:19 NRSV I’ve never understood the significance of that line; but I’ve thought a lot about its meaning over the past couple of days, and I think I may at last have made some sense out of it. Here’s what I’ve come up with. See if it makes sense to you.

Mary, the mother of the Lord, didn’t go around proclaiming her son as Lord and Savior the way the shepherds did. She’s the introvert of the story. She remained quiet, contemplating what it all must mean. She wasn’t ready to proclaim Jesus. She had to think about it. The word “heart” here means her inmost being, her core, her deepest self. That’s what heart used in this sense meant in that ancient world from which this story comes. That Mary pondered the shepherd’s words about Jesus in her heart means that she turned inward, processing things internally, in her mind and in her soul. Even after all she had experienced Mary didn’t jump to conclusions. She had to let it all settle. She had to mull it over. She had to take time and do the inner work of figuring out what it all meant for her and for the world. She had to meditate on it. She had to pray over it. Hers was a contemplative reaction to the news about Jesus, not an expressive one. Hers was an internal reaction, not an external one. Both Mary and the shepherds had seen angels telling them what was happening, but her reaction was very different from theirs. They turned outward with proclamations to the world. She turned inward, with prayer and pondering.

It seems to me that Luke is making an important point in the way he contrasts the shepherds’ reaction and Mary’s reaction. He gives us the proclamation of the shepherds and then says “But.” Luke, the greatest story teller of the New Testament, is intentionally setting up a contrast here. “But.” He is expressly contrasting Mary’s reaction to the shepherds’ reaction. Why? I think it is because he wants to show us two opposite but equally valid and important aspects of the life of faith. The shepherds show us faith as proclamation. They testified to all who would listen about who this baby was. They told the story of what had happened to them. They professed the miraculous thing that God had done. Luke approves, and rightly so. Proclamation is an important part of the life of faith.

Yet Luke knew that there was another side to the life of faith, the inner side, the personal side, the side of discernment and discovery. His story of the birth of Christ would be incomplete if he showed us only one side. So he contrasts Mary’s pondering in her heart to the shepherds’ proclamation to the world. Mary models for us the inner side of faith. She wasn’t as sure as the shepherds were of what it all meant. For her faith wasn’t about proclamation, or at least it wasn’t yet. She had to work through in the depths of her being what it all meant for her before she could proclaim what it meant to the world.

Mary’s internal pondering holds an important lesson for us. Christians are so often so sure that they have the truth that they run around proclaiming what they think is the truth to the world without having done the inner work that Mary did, without taking the time for discernment and discovery. When they do they so often end up simply spouting doctrine that they have learned somewhere, or repeating formulaic statements of the content and meaning of the faith that they they’ve never really thought through and may not really understand. Mary warns us against that kind of quick and easy proclamation. She says: Slow down. This is important stuff, but it is very deep and mysterious stuff, this birth of a baby who is our Savior, who is Christ the Lord. We need to take what has happened deep inside, ponder what it means for us and for God’s creation, and let it do its transformative work deep within our being before we can go around proclaiming it to the rest of the world. We have to do the inner work before we can do the outer work.

So today, as we celebrate the birth of Christ, I invite you to ponder all these words in your hearts. Take the story of the birth of Christ deep within your minds and your souls. Take it into your hearts. Meditate on it. Pray on it. Work it over until you begin to discern what it means for you. Take it deep within, where it can and will work in mysterious and miraculous ways to transform you. Consider what it truly means that in Jesus God has come to us as one of us, that God has sent us a Savior, God’s Anointed One, to be our Lord, the one to whom we owe allegiance and to whom we are called to give our loyalty above all others. Mary was right. This is important stuff, but it is very deep and mysterious stuff. So this Christmas season let us follow Mary’s lead and ponder it all in our hearts. Let’s not assume that we know what it means. Let us ponder. Let us wonder. Let us open the depths of our being to the story’s miraculous power. If we will do that, this will be a blessed Christmastide indeed. Amen.