We ponder, we act

by Pastor Sarah Wicks-Potter, chaplain of St. Martha’s Chapel, Montréal, Québec

We made it! It’s Christmas! We’re finally here. The baby king has been born and is safely sleeping in the manger.

It is the Good News, right? This is what our faith is all about. We as Christians have asserted throughout the centuries that God became man and dwelt among us.

We as Christians have asserted throughout the centuries that when you look for the power in the world, you do not look at the kings of this world and their wealth but instead, for real power, you turn towards a newborn asleep on the hay. We as Christians have asserted that God wants to be here, God wants to be here with us and that God will go to any length to make that possible. We as Christians have asserted that tonight, in Bethlehem thousands of years ago, the reign of God commenced. As the angels have sung,

"Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours (Luke 2:14 NRSVA).”

This is indeed a time of great gladness and joy. This is indeed a time for our fear to be swept away. This is indeed a time for us to join Mary and Joseph and sit and watch and wonder.

And there is so much culturally that we will be doing to celebrate, too! As I am sure many of you here tonight have done, [my spouse] Scott and I have bought and wrapped gifts for family members. As I am sure many of you here tonight have done, we’ve also been in the chaos of cooking Christmas dinner and preparing the house for company. Tomorrow, I will sit down to eat with my husband and with my students and we will feast on the abundance of food that Scott has prepared. It will be a time of joy and peace and slight gluttony.

But you know and I know that that’s not the whole story. You know and I know that presents are good and food is good and time off work is good but that’s not the point. The point is Jesus coming to live with us. The point is life abundant in God. The point is salvation and a reign of God where war is over and peace is the status quo. And tonight is not just a night for celebration. It is a night for pondering.

We take our example tonight of pondering from Mary. Mary who said yes to God asking if he could put a baby in her through the Holy Spirit. We take our example tonight from Mary who knew what being pregnant might do to her, who knew that it might ruin her engagement and ruin her standing in society and financial security. Mary who knew what this pregnancy might do to her body and her health for nine months, let alone the birthing process. Mary who knew that when she said yes, she would no longer be alone ever again and would be intimately tied to providing for someone else. We take our example tonight from Mary who – our story tells us – traveled while nine-months pregnant. We take our example from Mary who gave birth far from her home and her community in a place she did not know where she did not even have a proper room. We take our example from Mary who, when the shepherds came right after she had given birth, apparently did not send them away. We take our example from Mary who “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart (Luke 2:19).”

Mary pondered. But she also acted. Sometimes in ways that we would consider impulsive. But she knew that God coming to dwell fully in the world needed more than just her desire. For God to dwell fully in the world, he needed Mary to act. He needed Mary to act in ways that were not seen as normal, culturally. God needed Mary to be strange and do things that did not always make sense to her neighbours.

Like Mary, we need to ponder but we also need to act.

Luther Seminary’s Karoline Lewis draws out the significance of Mary’s pondering and the action that God requires of her as well as us. She urges us all to "treasure these words and think about them, ponder on them, ponder about them, and what they’re going to mean for you not just today, not just tomorrow, but what they’re going to mean in the weeks and months, years to come.”

Because, beloved, this is not just a story that we’re reading today. This is not just a story that we get to put back with our Christmas tree ornaments and dust off next year. This is a story which matters to us as Christians every minute, every hour of every day and it will always matter, even when the Lord Jesus has come back again to rule the earth. So, we need to think about it. We need to ponder it. We need to treasure it. We need to take it out on days when we are at our best and we need to take it out on days when we are at our worst and we need to take it out in the middle of life – which is most of life – where we’re tired and bored and we don’t want to do the dishes. This is a story of meaning and significance and we cannot say that it is enough to come to church on Christmas Eve and hear it because it is not enough.

And what is the Christmas story, you ask? The Christmas story is God pitching his tent with us. The Christmas story is God coming into the world. The Christmas story is all the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible coming together in the birth of Jesus. The Christmas story is God refusing to let us destroy ourselves. The Christmas story is God seeing the sin and death and destruction in the world and saying “No.” He is saying, “This is not the way it ends. I am the Lord of all Creation and I will save my people.” The Christmas story is this: we are not alone.

We are not alone in the human experience. We only have to step into the barn this evening to see what the Lord of all Creation is willing to do to be near us. Step into the barn and see what the Lord of all Creation is willing to do to be near you, tonight. It is an invitation not only to the shepherds but to us as well. Come and see. Come and see how much you are loved.

But we can’t stop at being loved. We have to go further. We have stepped into the scene and we know how treasured we are. And it is our job to continue to spread that love to every person. Poet Howard Thurman writes that “when the song of the angels is stilled / when the star in the sky is gone / when the kings and princes are home / when the shepherds are back with their flock / the work of Christmas begins.”

And what is the work of Christmas you might ask? The work of Christmas as Thurman tells us is “to find the lost / to heal the broken / to feed the hungry / to release the prisoner / to rebuild the nations / to bring peace among others / to make music in the heart.”

What is the work of Christmas, Briarwood, if not to spread God’s infinite, life-giving, extravagant love?

When you were a kid and you got a really good gift, what did you do? You showed it to everyone. God’s gift to us is the incarnation and we need to share it with everyone in big and small ways. That is our work.

And we can’t do that work, beloved, if we leave Bethelehm tonight. We need to stay rooted in this moment, rooted in the moment where a baby is born and where tired and hungry and scared parents are sitting in animal dung. We need to stay rooted in this moment where the angels rejoice and where the shepherds travel. We need to stay rooted in this moment as we treasure and ponder all of these things in our hearts. We need to stay rooted in this moment where God came down to dwell with us. And we need to ask ourselves, “What does this mean? What does God want from me while I am here? What is the work of Christmas that I have to do every day?”

We are here. We can go no further now. The journey for tonight has ended. And unlike Mary and Joseph and Jesus, there is room for us here. So let us shelter together tonight and all nights in the newness and rawness of birth as we ponder the work we as Christians have, the work of Christmas. Let us stay here.

Let’s ask Jesus if we can curl up under His manger, because we need to lie down under the majesty of God tonight.

Pastor Sarah Wicks-Potter is a commissioned minister discerning ordination in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Canada. She studied psychology and theology at McGill University and is now director of St. Martha's Chapel, a shared Anglican/United/Disciples student ministry. This sermon was shared at Briarwood Presbyterian Church.