This is the hour, the place, and the time for pondering. What a wonderful word: “ponder.” It means something like “meditate.” But meditate sounds a bit too active. “Ponder” comes from the Latin word pondus, meaning “to consider, to weigh, to hold in balance.” “Mary continued to treasure all these things in her heart and to ponder them.” And oh, what she had to ponder!
Imagine the day that Angel Gabriel came to visit her. She was there, tending the fire, stirring the pot, when suddenly there he was, in front of her. There he was, strong and sure, with a voice that shook the foundations of her tiny house.
The angel said, “Rejoice, O favored one! The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). What a strange greeting this was. The normal greeting was “shalom,” peace be with you. But this was not something ordinary, but something extraordinary, something over which Mary could rejoice.
This greeting was so odd that Mary “was confused by his words and began to wonder about the meaning of [his] greeting” (Luke 1:29). The angel’s greeting echoed God’s command for Daughter Zion to “rejoice” in the Old Testament book of Isaiah (66:10). Was she now to become “Daughter Zion” since the angel commanded her also to rejoice?
But she did not feel like rejoicing; she did not feel highly favored. Unsure, struck with awe, yes–but not favored. Oh, she did not show what stirred within her heart. And Angel Gabriel did not greet her in the normal way that angels greeted frightened people, “Do not be afraid.” But inside, her heart was trembling with awe. Who or what was God asking her to be?
And the angel told her more. It was then that he started to sound like the angels whom the Scriptures describe. Gabriel said: “Do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. Now listen: You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus” (Luke 1:30-31).
Mary shivered again as she remembered. So strong was he. So bright and glorious was he!
The angel sang of her son: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end” (Luke 1:32-33).
She remembered the confusion. How can this be? I have no husband. But she also remembered the announcement stirring within her: “Nothing is impossible for God” (Luke 1:37).
She whispered, “May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). And then nothing, just the fire and the simmering, blackened pot. The angel was gone. And Mary kept these things, pondering them in her heart.
Did she ponder Elizabeth? Old Elizabeth, her kinswoman, with folds under her eyes and chin, crow’s feet adorning her deep brown eyes, and gray hair pulled back tightly away from her face.
When they met, and Mary saw the rounded belly under her coarse robe, she clasped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. When Elizabeth saw this youngest of women stifling her giggles, she also burst into a roar of laughter. The two of them embraced with tears running down their cheeks: A girl barely a woman and a six-month-pregnant senior citizen.
Elizabeth then gasped: “He kicked! Little John kicked!” And then Elizabeth said to Mary, “Blessed are you among women,” my cousin, and “blessed is the fruit of your womb” (Luke 1:42).
Mary was astonished that her older cousin, Elizabeth, could even know of her pregnancy, or the specialness of it. But Elizabeth told her more. “Why do I have this honor, that the mother of my Lord should come and visit me?” (Luke 1:43).
Mary remembered being stunned. Elizabeth knew that she was pregnant and that she had the long-promised Messiah in her womb. And Mary could only glorify God: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46-47).
The days spent with her elderly kinswoman were warm and peaceful as her child, God in the flesh, grew within her. Mary pondered.
Yet, Mary also pondered other memories about Jesus. Her brow furrowed as she remembered the shock, anger, and confusion when she told Joseph her story. Joseph was silent. Now, Joseph was the older, silent type. But now his silence was dark, brooding, and almost dangerous. He left her in angry silence.
But when he returned the next day, it was not with the rabbis. She was not going to be stoned to death for being an adulteress! She then saw Joseph smile. Something had happened. “Nothing is impossible for God,” the angel had said to her.
And Mary pondered the trip they made when she was so close to delivery. She didn’t know why she had to go. It would have been enough for Joseph to have gone–but he insisted. Later, she would understand: It had to be in Bethlehem.
But there was no room in Joseph’s ancestral home. Other relatives who also came to Bethlehem because of Caesar’s-decreed census were already there. The town was crowded and filled with confusion. She was pushed and jostled.
Yet, there was a place for them. It was a cattle stall. She thinks of the smells, the animals, and the manure. She breathes in the sweetness of the hay. She is comforted by the heavy, assuring, smell of Joseph’s body as she slept next to him that night.
Then the contractions began. It was a twinge at first, then heavier, until her body felt as if it would tear in two (Revelation 12:2). Joseph was standing over her, tears dripping off his cheeks into his thick, grizzled beard. “Yes, yes,” he exclaimed. And when it felt as if she could push no more, squeeze no stronger, a brittle cry echoed in the night. And then the child was in her arms.
She sang again, ever so weakly, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” And then she slept.
Indeed, “Mary continued to treasure all these things in her heart and to ponder them.”
She recalled the shepherds. They were rough-hewn, excited men that night. Her mother had warned her about shepherds. “Never speak to a shepherd,” the women had cautioned her. But now, they crowded into the smelly, dirty, birthing room, pushing the cattle aside to glimpse at her little Yeshuah.
They were silent at first, mouths wide open as if they had never seen a baby. But one of them spoke of chanting angels, lighting the shepherds’ field with their presence. They didn’t say much that night. They mostly stared in amazement, their faces glowing with the wonder of it all. They, too, were pondering in their own way until they rose, one by one, bowed lowly, and politely left.
Once outside, Mary heard them hooting and yelping and running throughout the town like drunkards. Mary and Joseph laughed again, the baby safely between them.
Mary pondered. She continued to treasure all these things in her heart and to ponder them.
Will we join her in pondering this night? For that is what God also calls you to do at this hour. There will be time later for planning and applying the lessons, for studying the texts and trying to be rational about Jesus’ birth. Except, this one truth, this essence of Christmas, is not rational.
God doesn’t call his people to try to “figure out” Christmas Eve. Wait until Epiphany–that’s when the Wise Men come. But even they weren’t that rational. They pondered all the way–following that shining star that eventually guided them to Bethlehem.
So tonight, God does not call you to be rational, to make the Faith fit within your little box of reason. He calls you to ponder–and to praise. In hearing this old story that never grows old, may it move you, as it did the mother of our Lord.
Like Mary, may you also be moved to sing sweetly, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” For precious little of that proclaiming and rejoicing takes place in this dark, cold world, where we act as if our sinful musings and self-glorifying schemes can make ourselves into something. We act as if God could not make something better.
What He makes of us, of course, is saints, beloved brothers and sisters of Mary who have the Christ-Child nestled deep within ourselves by water and the Spirit. Ponder, too, what she will later ponder with her gray hair pulled tightly back and wrinkles creasing her peaceful face.
Ponder the day of darkness. That’s when she stood beside, not a manger of wood, but a grotesque cross of wood. She looked up at her baby, whose face was drawn in pain, and who was wrapped, not in swaddling cloths, but in stark nakedness.
Ponder with Mary her Son’s love, so great that it would drain from Him the final breath of life. Ponder that. Know that God loved the world, that He loved you and me, that He gave His one-and-only Son, that whoever ponders and believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.
And then, Mary took her Son, the Firstborn, and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a tomb. But ponder, as well, that He is risen–as you shall also be!
“Mary continued to treasure all these things in her heart and to ponder them.” Sing with her tonight as you go out into a night not nearly as dark as when you entered this place. Indeed, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” And pondering deeply on these mysteries, we quietly say, “Amen.”
