(Year B: First Sunday of Christmas 27th
December 2020)
TV soaps and story-telling
I have sometimes wondered why the ‘TV soaps’
attract such a large and dedicated audience. It seems to me that the attraction
is related to people’s own lives, hopes, worries and dreams. True, the ‘soaps’
tend to dramatise and exaggerate everyday real-life sagas. Even still, we are fascinated about other
people’s stories. It would be much
easier to explain points of theological doctrine (or theories of political
economy) if we were to use examples, stories and what the Bible calls
‘parables’. This is why reading novels or fictional TV dramas can be a form of
truth-discovery. They embody important truths and insights that are particular
and, at the same time, universal in application. Whether it is Fair City, the
Riordans in a former age or Coronation Street, we see a little bit of our story
in there and more besides.
In the story of the birth of Jesus and the
events following this we see something very personal, very human and very
this-worldy. A baby is born in difficult circumstances, mysterious events and
words are pondered by a mother and a baby is named ‘The-One-Who-Saves’ or Jeshua
according to the Jewish ritual of circumcision for new-born boys.
Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus and
the events surrounding it are unique to this Gospel. This is not to suggest
that the story is fiction. This detail and that detail may been added or
nuanced in the course of 40 years of story-telling and eventual write-up following
the life, death and resurrection of Jesus in what became the Gospel of Luke.
Who was caught up in the birth of Jesus
What is clear is that many were involved
and touched by the birth of Jesus. These
were:
In the first place, his parents Mary and
Joseph;
In the second place, a group of ordinary 1st
century peasants minding their sheep on the hills;
In the third place, a collection of
foreigners searching for goodness, beauty and truth; and
In the fourth place others we do not know
about from the stories told by Luke and by Matthew.
Stories began to circulate. There was a
group of shepherds tending to their sheep on the hills somewhere in an obscure
corner of Palestine. They experienced something amazing and powerful just like
a group of Irish peasants saw and witnessed something extraordinary in an
obscure place in the West of Ireland in 1879. However the happenings in Knock
village, County Mayo may be interpreted, we must acknowledge that God is
revealed in completely unexpected ways to completely unexpected people in
unexpected places even if, as 21st century rational Christians
heavily influenced by Enlightenment thinking as well as TV soaps we take some
of the detail with a pinch of salt.
How did these stories and, in particular,
the story of the shepherds recounted in Luke
2:8-14 come about? In verse Luke 2:19,
we read that ‘Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart’.
Did Mary, herself, recount this to Luke? I
would not be surprised if she did. There is a feminine touch to Luke’s gospel.
Going a further speculative step, is there a possibility that Mary helped Luke
to write some of the Gospel? We will
never know in this life. It is clear that Mary, the mother of Jesus the Son of
God, had a story to tell and one that transformed her life in the depths of her
heart.
A woman’s heart
‘A
woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets’ as Old Rose said in the film
‘Titanic’. And we can assume that Mary, the mother of Jesus, continued to
treasure and ponder all these words in her heart for many years after she,
along with Joseph, was visited by the shepherds.
Four questions arise, here:
What was it, exactly, that Mary treasured
and why?
What do we treasure and why?
What does ‘pondering’ mean in the context
of this story?
What implications does the phrase have for
me now?
That which Mary pondered
Turning to the first question – Mary
treasured the words conveyed by the Shepherd. They told her seven things and
these where that:
1.
An angel of the Lord had stood
before them (just as Gabriel had with Mary some nine months previously).
2.
Something extraordinary, beautiful
and terrifying happened to them - there
was no doubt but the glory of the Lord had shone around them that night just as
it did for Mary months previously. (The Gloria is
derived, in part, from the lines of scripture found in Luke 1:14).
3.
The angel of the Lord had urged
them to not be afraid (just as Gabriel had said to Mary).
4.
‘Good news of great joy for all the
people’ is announced.
5.
A baby would be born for the world
in the ‘city of David’ or Bethlehem (meaning, literally, the House of Bread)
and this baby would be a Saviour, a Messiah and Lord.
6.
And in case there was any doubt the
baby, according to the angel, would be wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a
manger in the House of Bread.
7.
And that is not all but the Angels
gave them a powerful rendering of ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and
on earth peace among those whom he favours’ as if they were listening to a
chorus from Handel’s Messiah in Dublin in 1742 !
And probably more besides than is recorded in the Gospel of
Luke…..
So what?
But, what does any of this mean for us today? What do we keep and
treasure in our hearts and ponder day by day from waking to rising to retiring
and resting? What tunes, so to speak, form the background to our daily rhythms? Do we seek refuge in times and places of
quiet to ponder and savour the written and spoken Word of God mediated to us
through scripture? Can we take our cue
from Mary who is open to great mysteries and – for now – unanswered questions?
And to ponder – what does that mean? To ponder is not quite the
same as analysing or in breaking something down into a logical set of things
and putting them back together again as you would in a legal text or a
mathematical equation. Rather, pondering is about resting on something with the
gentleness of a leaf or feather brushing against the surface. It is about
letting the words stay in our hearts – the very inner part of our being – and
to let ourselves be animated by them. The closest example is in listening to
music.
In listening to music, we do not have to do anything. Music lights
up (or does not as the case may be) some part of our brain or our spirit. If we dance to music it is because something
in us as been sparked enabling us to join in our give expression to an inner
feeling. Pondering, meditating and contemplating are closely related and these
happen as much in the ‘heart’ as in the ‘mind’ though the distinction is not to
be taken too strictly.
Curiously, there is more than one mention of Mary’s heart or inner
most being in the gospels and they all occur in Luke:
Luke 2:35 when Simeon tells Mary that a sword will pierce her
heart as it would on Calvary.
Luke 2:51 when Mary ‘treasured all these things in her heart’
after the losing and finding of Jesus in the temple when he was twelve years of
age.
Are we for real?
What implications does the phrase
‘pondering in her heart’ have for you and me now? I suggest it means a careful,
daily, disciplined attention to the Word of God early and late. It means
linking the Word to the everyday hum of our ordinary lives. It means living out
of the Word in our attitudes, words and actions. Let others assess if we are
for real disciples of Jesus living out of the Word sown in our hearts. If we
are, we can write a new story by the way we live and in that way we can touch
the lives of others around us and those not yet born.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.