The Eve of the Nativity
December 24, 2007
The Rev.Steve Smith

“But Mary treasured all these words, and pondered them in her heart.”

This Christmas season, I did something I never thought I’d ever do. For an hour, I stood vigil on Main Street in Hyannis, ringing the bell for donations for the Salvation Army. Believe me, a whole new world appears when you ask people for money on the street. They become remarkably transparent. It’s almost as if you can see into their hearts. For a flickering moment, you see what really matters to them, what really holds sway at the center of their lives.

For that brief hour, I saw hearts full of pain and regret, and hearts full of joy. I saw hard hearts, stingy hearts, and I saw hearts full of generosity. I saw hearts calcified by greed, and hearts broken by grief; hearts on fire, and hearts cold with indifference.

And then, out of nowhere, she appeared in the blinding snow. She came up so quickly, I almost missed her. A young woman, a Brazilian I thought. She was noticeably pregnant, and I could see she was on her way to her job. She wore the outfit of one of those house-cleaning companies that are ubiquitous around the Cape.

She dropped a few one dollar bills into the kettle, and turned away, and I barely got the chance to say thank you. And it made me wonder. What about this woman’s heart? What she was pondering as she took and gave up her hard earned money, before she went back to scrubbing our toilets and floors? I wondered how many such souls, because they are on the periphery of my life, I miss completely, and so they never stir my own heart.

I wondered, too, about that other maiden, the one from Nazareth, who on this night gave birth on the farthest periphery of time and space. For Mary was poor, a nobody, relegated to the great company of the forgotten. She was unmarried and homeless, an outcast among outcasts. She was a Jew, an oppressed minority in an empire that showed no mercy to her kind. She and her betrothed, Joseph, found herself on a forced march to Bethlehem, days from her home, because Rome needed its taxes to keep its vaunted imperial hegemony. She found herself on a dung heap in a stable in the throes of childbirth. Among barnyard beasts, she brought her firstborn, Jesus, into the world.

So why on earth do we remember her? Why is Mary, with her son, arguably the greatest historical figures the world has ever know? Why is this peripheral nobody the Queen of Heaven, the Theotokos, the God-Bearer, the Mother of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords?

Friends, here’s what I think: it is because of her heart that Mary is who she is. It is because she treasured what God had given her, despite the fact that it was contrary to all reason, despite the fact that it makes no sense at all. For the timeless truth is exactly as French philosopher, Blaise Pascal wrote three centuries ago: “The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.”

There is no internal logic in Christmas, there is no rational explanation to satisfy the mind. God become man? Born this night, a Savior who is Christ the Lord? Christmas has always defied reason, and it will always defy reason. And if we are here this evening for a reasonable explanation, we will be sadly disappointed.

For Christmas was born in the human heart, and it is there that it will always belong. And what about my heart this night, what about your heart? What is it saying to you? Does your heart still speak to you? Are you listening? Does it have room, a stable, a manger, for the birth of the Christ child? Do we have the heart of Mary this Christmas eve?

There is a poem by Ranier Rilke that warns us against inviting angels into our homes, into our hearts, because they will turn the whole place upside down and seek out all the hidden corners and mold us into new shapes.

For as it was for Mary of Nazareth, this is the way God comes to us. To disrupt everything that is familiar, to change us into light and glory, to take possession of our hearts, so that we can never be the same again.

And God is not far away this night. God is closer to each of us than we are to our selves. God is and has always been at the heart of everything. God is and has always been in our own hearts. So, as Archbishop Rowan Williams writes: “It is not that we have a long journey to undertake in order to get to God…the long journey is to our own hearts, the furthest place from our minds. Our pilgrimage is always a traveling to where we are.”

So here we are, tonight, friend, you and me. And with Mary, there is so much to treasure, so much to ponder this night, isn’t there? On this night, Love incarnate descends to earth. A child is born. Hope and joy and peace reign supreme. All of it, all of it, comes to us in and through our beating, broken, trembling, awe-struck, hungry, anxious, overflowing hearts.