Scripture: Luke 2:1-20
“But Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” Yeah, I bet Mary did a whole lot of pondering that night that Jesus was born. Besides the obvious tasks of taking care of the new baby, what else was there to do but ponder? Mary knew better than anyone the full, miraculous magnitude of what had just happened. God had just been born into the world, in human flesh. That birth took place to a scared young mother and a scared father who were forced to give birth in a barn because there was no place for them anywhere else. On the fringe. In a little, nowhere town called Bethlehem. In a dirty barn surrounded by animals, and though we hear of angels all Mary saw were shepherds, the lowest of the low. Shepherds and animals were the only ones who even noticed this birth.
This is God’s grand entrance into the world. There are just two scared young parents, some shepherds, some animals, and a baby. A little, helpless baby. God, whom Mary felt entering the world. God, whom Mary holds in her arms. A baby. God, whom Mary ponders.
Why did God chose this kind of an entrance? After all, God could break into the world in any way that God decided. Jesus could have come down with those angels, singing praises. Jesus could have appeared in the middle of the royal temple. Jesus could have been someone powerful, like Emperor Augustus, or governor Quirinius. But Jesus did none of those things and Jesus was none of those powerful people. Jesus was a baby. He was poor. He was helpless. And he was God.
He is God. Jesus, whom Mary holds, is God in the middle of real life, not easy or idealized life. Jesus is God coming among us, and crying to us. By coming to us vulnerable and on the fringes, we hear God’s holy Spirit whispering to us that the lives we’ve carefully created, the world we work so hard to control and manage, this real life—it’s wonderful, and beautiful, and worthy of awe. And it’s also so fragile, and so very vulnerable.
We, too, are fragile and vulnerable. And if God had chosen to come only to or only as someone powerful, someone rich, someone who always got what they want and someone who won every battle—then God wouldn’t have really come for us. God came in poverty and in vulnerability and in fear because each of us has places of poverty, vulnerability, and fear. Jesus lived in and touched all these places because Jesus needed to live them and touch them to touch us, and to save us from the power that they hold over us.
The Jesus whose birth Mary ponders didn’t just come to make those things a little better, either. He came to turn over tables and overthrow the whole system, to free us completely from whatever enslaves us and open to us a whole new existence where we can live out the lives that God intends for us. Jesus’ birth is no less life changing for us than it is for those two young parents, scared and pondering in that stable two thousand years ago.
Pondering, because they don’t fully understand. Throwing these things together in their mind. Reflecting. Turning the pictures around and seeing if they fit together like puzzle pieces. And Luke invites us to do the same. Because try as we might we will never fully understand this whole God in human form thing, and event, and person.
The best we can do is ponder. We can join Mary, and we can seek the answer to what this all means while we throw the pictures, the songs, and the stories together in our minds, and see how they fit. And we can see how they don’t. And we can see that we’re missing pieces to this puzzle, and that’s okay because Jesus never said he came so we would understand everything perfectly. And rather than seeking to know it all, to understand or grasp it all, tonight, we just get to sit and gaze in wonder and awe. We get to join Mary in pondering and treasuring this miraculous little baby in our hearts. He is born. He is. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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