Treasure

Luke 2:1-20

Are you feeling the wonder?

The awe and marvel of a sky full of angels?

The ordinary but overwhelming wonder of a tiny newborn, a perfect little human, with big eyes and amazing little curled fingers?

 

Or – if the story we just read isn’t sparking it for you – maybe you find, or have found, wonder and delight in the candles or music or memories or traditions swirling around us?

It is a time for wonder – for awe and miracle and love and hope.

Christmas is a call to immerse ourselves in all of that – to step outside the ordinary and revel in this moment of wonder.

 

Or maybe that’s not where you are right now. Maybe there’s a burden, a grief, an irritant, an anxiety – even boredom or indifference – that you’re feeling today, or often feel when the world or the church is demanding your wonder and awe. 

We don’t get the perfect Christmas moment automatically. 

But I suspect that many of us who aren’t soaking in the wonder of this moment kind of wish we were, or could be. That we want that holy Christmas space of love and wonder and peace even when we can’t get ourselves there. 

 

And it’s okay – maybe necessary – to let the wonder and love just wash around us when we aren’t feeling it ourselves. 

 

I suspect – I hope! – that Mary, and Joseph, had that wonder washing all around them so long ago in Bethlehem, as they looked at the tiny perfect human, so miraculously (and probably exhaustingly) part of their lives. I don’t know how much they felt the wonder, how real or distant the awe felt to them as they cared for the infant Jesus, or as they listened to the shepherds, but I know it washed around them.

 

In my imagination, as I read Luke’s story, I can feel a brisk gust of wonder sweeping into the room as the shepherds tumble in:
It’s real! Is it real? There! The child the angels sang! 

 

They share their story – the awe of their angel-infested fields; the marvel of having the angel’s words confirmed by the swaddling wraps and manger bed of the infant Jesus – and then sweep right out on their wave of wonder, shouting God’s praise and glory to anyone and everyone.

 

Leaving Mary, who “treasured all this news, and pondered it in her heart”.

 

When the angels’ wonder goes gusting off with the shepherds, while her child sleeps or eats or needs a change or fusses or snuggles – and grows past that miraculous moment of perfect infancy! – Mary is holding, keeping, treasuring the wonder. 

 

Not just for a few hours or days, I suspect, but month after month. Maybe year after year she treasures and considers, holds the wonder and reconnects with it in the midst of life going on.

 

Before ever Ebeneezer Scrooge promised to “keep Christmas in his heart all the year” – before there ever was a Christmas, even – Mary kept the wonder, the miracle, the awe, the love and hope, as treasure for the ordinary days when the infant isn’t small and perfect, when no angels appear, when no candles are lit; no carols or stories are shared.

 

And today, as you and I drop in to these moments of wonder, this story of awe and miracle, this hour or day of memory and marvel, peace and hope and love, we too have the opportunity to take up this treasure, to keep and ponder it in our hearts.

To keep it all the year. 

 

What part of this story from Bethlehem tugs at your heart today? 

A sky full of angels? A census? A joyful shepherd? A mother? A manger?

 

Or what moment, image, word or action from the celebrations of Christmas (in the church, in your home, or in the world) sparks wonder, joy, love, awe, or hope?

The face of someone you love? The lights on a tree? A gift you’ve received or given? A family ritual; the making of a special food?

 

That treasure that speaks to you today – or the wonder you most long for when you’re not feeling it among all the Christmas things – will you try, like Mary, to hold that in your heart all the year?

To bring it out, revisit and ponder it, in the middle of the busyness or drudgery or boredom or anxiety of the everyday?

 

When the trees and the lights come down from our homes; when the angels and the shepherds disappear from the stories and carols of the church, when the world’s news moves on from reindeer noses and giving research (thank you, NPR last week), to the woes of wars and the practicalities of daily life, we may really need a symbol, a tradition, a word or an action that can spark again the wonder or awe or love or joy we came looking for today.

 

I need – I suspect many of you also need – signs and habits that encourage me, us, to believe – to trust that God really does live with us all the year. That encourage me (us!) to embrace wonder, and miracle, and awe, and hope when the rest of the world isn’t singing carols and giving gifts.  

 

What if the same encouragement to live in the wonder that we find here today were part of our ordinary Mondays, our every afternoon, our February or August chores or challenges or rest?

 

Three years ago, a friend of mine held on to her Christmas tree, keeping it in the living room as the ordinary year went on. Pondering those lights and ornaments of hope and wonder in the midst of sun and heat and rain, on days of anger and weariness, of contentment or uncertainty or boredom. Through taxes and doctors’ appointments and work successes and daily frustrations, through roiling world news and politics, through pet care and family responsibilities. Keeping Christmas in her heart (and in her house) all the year.

 

New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine, reflecting on what Mary ponders in her heart, notes that the meaning of events and experiences often unfolds in a gradual way, as the memory of them interacts with what we learn and do and become over the years. 

I’ve noticed that in my own experience of the traditional Christmas cookies of my family.

As a child, I treasured the sugar rush, the specialness of once-a-year treats.
As a young adult, opening a package sent to my little apartment, the treasure of those cookies became the physical evidence of love and shared history.
Now – as the generations that brought me those cookies pass away – my own attempts to bake them are a treasure of memory, a sacrament of connection to people I “love, but see no longer”

(And through all of that, the cookies have stayed delicious. Little bites of wonder and joy in this moment.) 

 

Many of the images of the Christmas story, many of the carols and prayers and traditions we share, have changed and grown for me, too, connecting me in new ways to the wonder and awe of God among us. And maybe that’s been true for you, too. Maybe there’s a marvel you’ve treasured for many a year that grows with you.

And maybe there’s a new treasure you’ve found this Christmas. 

 

But if there’s not yet – do choose one. 

Or many.

And give it a try:

Choose a word or tradition, an experience or action, that tugs at your heart with wonder and awe and love and hope, that you can revisit week after week in the spring and the summer and the fall; in the office (the classroom), the kitchen or tollway or doctor’s office.

 

It probably won’t be perfect wonder all year through. It never is. (After all, it’s not always perfect on Christmas Day!)
I’d be surprised if it was even perfect for Mary. 

 

But when you, when I, choose to treasure these things, to keep a moment, an image, to ponder on those days when we need wonder the most – then the wonder, awe, love, or peace of this story, this day, our own personal Christmas marvels, can unfold again as your life grows around it, over weeks or years.

 

So let us treasure, and ponder, and hold on to wonder. Keep one marvel or miracle or love to store in your heart today, so that Christmas can keep your heart all the year.