Now the birth
of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been
engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with
child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and
unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But
just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a
dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your
wife, for the child conceived in her is from
the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he
will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfill what had
been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive
and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with
us.’ When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded
him; he took her as his wife.
When we wait in our present moments and
watch for the coming of the Lord, we probably have this image of Jesus
traveling from somewhere else in order to arrive in our lives and our
circumstances. This image isn’t an easy one to dispel when our waiting and
watching seems to be fruitless in the moment and when there is no sense of his
presence at all. The natural conclusion is that he is not here yet; he is
coming. He has not yet arrived on the scene to display his blessing and his
love. We wait like anxious lovers in a train station watching the arrival of
every train, hoping that the next train will be the one that the Beloved
arrives on.
Mary shows us a different way of
waiting. She, too, had to wait for the coming of the Savior but she wasn’t
watching the far horizons and mountains as she waited for the voice of her
beloved. She knew the Savior was within her but she still had to wait for his
appearance. As soon as the angel announced to Mary that the Holy Spirit would
overshadow her and she would conceive a son, Mary entered into the mystical and
contemplative journey of fully believing the Lord was with her in the present
moment while she waited and watched for his coming.
Scripture says, “Mary held all these
things in her heart and pondered them.” For her, the appearance of Jesus in all
his fullness was the journey of a lifetime where she was called to let go of
her natural expectations in order to allow the coming of the Savior to be
manifested within God’s timing and in the way God had chosen. From the moment
of conception Jesus was completely present with Mary, yet she still had to wait
and watch for signs of that presence. A pregnant woman is not completely aware
of every infinitesimal stage of development of the child within the womb,
especially at the beginning. She pays attention, waits and watches. She watches
for clues and indications of the presence within. She waits in anticipation for arrival, yet
the child is always there.
This is our waiting and watching. He is
not coming from afar. He is here within. We cannot totally depend on our senses
and limited understanding to tell us that. We can only wait in joyful hope for
the coming of our Savior. Joseph was also called to enter into the
contemplative journey of trusting in the Word of God and believing that it was
'God With Us' who was indeed developing in Mary’s womb. Our journeys are very
parallel to the journeys of Mary and Joseph as they trusted that God was
indeed with them and as they waited for his coming.
The psalm this week gives a great
picture of the kind of waiting we enter into:
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is
in it, the world and those who live in it;
You
are the earth. Everything within you is God’s. You pray all the time for God’s
kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven just as
Mary prayed, “Be it done to me according to your will,” and “All the ends of
the earth (and my earth) have seen the salvation of God.”
Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?
And who shall stand in his holy place?
The hill of the Lord and his holy place
is within each of us. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” It
is not in some faraway place or time. It is as near to you as the womb was to
Mary.
Those who have clean hands and pure
hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false,
It’s not hard to bring to mind
definitions of clean hands and pure hearts or the false things we all lift our
souls to but please include in that definition the way we lift our eyes and
souls to what we fear will happen in the future and the things we regret or are
angry about from the past. To remain in the present moment is to enter very
much into a purity of heart – a letting go of all that has gone before and that
which is yet to come. Focusing on and obsessing about past injuries and future
problems is truly lifting the soul to what is false. It is a beautiful
spiritual exercise of the heart to lift it up to what is true: Emmanuel or God
With Us right now.
They will receive blessing from the
Lord, and vindication from the God of their salvation.
After waiting and watching, a child
will be born to you. It’s easy to miss if you are waiting for blaring trumpets,
earth shaking mightiness and huge changes. The birth of an infant is wondrous
indeed but after the miracle of birth you are called to be very present to care
for the child, the small blossom in the desert. That child is your vindication
but you must be very present to him from the beginning and willing to nurture
and protect the small beginnings of new life just as Mary and Joseph did.
Such is the company of those who seek
him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.
We are a company of seekers, watchers
and waiters struggling with the tension of a God who is indeed present and who
is yet to come. He dwells within yet we constantly seek the face of the God
of Jacob, Jacob the seeker who wrestled through the night in the desert and who
struggled like a woman in labor to bring forth the Blessing and the
Vindication.
We are all called to be Mary. We are
all Christopher, which means ‘Christ Bearer’. We are all Joseph, who trusted in
the face of a situation that was a messy enigma to him. If the watching and
waiting becomes wearying or you feel like you’re losing your way, ask Mary to
comfort and mentor you on this journey that she knows everything about. Ask
Joseph to uphold you through the doubt for he, too, had much to fear from the
future and resent from misunderstandings of the past. Yet, he walked daily in
trust that the dream was true: God With Us was present and was to come.
The entrance antiphon for this Sunday says,
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| Photo: J.Allen |
May the blessings of the Just One within
you bring you and your families to the rain of wonder-full appearance.
May your
hearts exult and cry out with joy, “He is here! Emmanuel is here! He is with us
and always was!”
May profound Christmas Peace be upon
you all.
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