Behold!

Christmas 2022

Merry Christmas! If you are with us on Sunday morning, know that our holy day actually began on Saturday evening—following the customs of our Jewish forebears—including Jesus himself.

One of the many things I love about our Episcopal Church is the richness of our liturgy—that is, our rituals of worship—which we share with Jews and Christians of many flavors. For example, we share the practice of sacramental confession with our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers. So if you are feeling burdened, you could come see me anytime and I would reassure you that you are forgiven. The God who would risk coming to us as a vulnerable baby is not going to withhold mercy from any of us, I assure you.

But for now, bear with me while I make a confession of my own. Wait for it… I don’t totally get the Virgin Mary. Yes, that Mary, the mother of Jesus. That’s not to say that I don’t get her role in our Christmas story. I’m a mother myself, and I had my children at home in a third world country where my husband and I were doing missionary work.. So it’s not that I don’t get the pain and the joy and the risk of birthing. It’s a breathtaking—literally breathtaking—way to bring new humans into the world. What I have more trouble understanding is the singular devotion to the Virgin Mary. For that, I ask that you of Catholic inclination and background forgive me. I come from the more Protestant side of Episcopal church, so I didn’t learn prayers specifically to and for the Mother of God until I got here.

Of course at Trinity Cathedral, we can’t escape the Mary: her images are everywhere, thanks especially to our Spanish-speaking community. And this beautiful season of Advent and Christmas fills our imagination with stories about her, and prayers that mention Mary, and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe falls during December every year. So I confess that—ever since I got here three years ago—I’ve felt like the mother of Jesus is gently calling me to come home and pay attention.

Pay attention to what is homely and the ordinary. To the everyday miracle of human birth: and to birth in a backwater town like Bethlehem, no less. That’s the lesson of this holiday, no? It can get lost in the sparking lights and the soaring music, but know this for sure: God shows up in the unglamorous times and places. The Christmas story teaches us that God dignifies our ordinary towns and our human bodies, and yes, even goes so far as to choose the body of brave teenage girl in which to gestate eternal life.

One of my theologically-inclined friends, listening to my confession about Mary, pointed out that all devotion and prayers to Mary are really acts of devotion to the Incarnation. That is, to God’s radical choice to become one with Gods creation. We don’t get human life without the labor and love of human mothers. Normally not without human fathers, too, but in this story Joseph plays a different role. He is the partner and helpmate to a wife whose calling is unique in history. You might call him the trailing spouse in God’s plan for salvation.

Despite everything Joseph thought he knew about human reproduction, he went along with Mary’s unlikely pregnancy. He married her, supported her on the uncomfortable journey to Bethlehem, and suffered the indignity of seeing his firstborn son laid to rest in a manger. That is, in the place where domestic animals come to feed. Later on, he safely led his family of political refugees into Egypt, and he provided for Jesus’ training as a carpenter.

But that’s a story for later. Come back to church to hear it! Before all that, remember that—as we heard just now—“there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid.’” Do those words sound familiar?

That’s what angels are always saying when they show up in the Bible. Which is, of course, a certain promise that they’re about to deliver a truly scary message. The angel of the Lord has already done so three times in the various stories we hear leading up to Christmas. He told the priest Zechariah that his elderly wife Elizabeth would become pregnant with John the Baptist, he announced to Mary that she had been chosen to bear Jesus the Christ, and he told Joseph not to be afraid. Do you remember that? “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.”

So we shouldn’t be at all surprised that the angel of the Lord had to reassure the shepherds, as well. “Do not be afraid,” he said to them. But then something else happened. The angel gave another command, which was simply “see.” “See, I am bringing you good news of great joy,” tonight’s reading told us. The older King James Bible translation puts it like this “behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.” So we know that angels—messengers of God—have to tell people not to fear, but they also tell us to behold. Which is another way of saying “pay attention.” Pay attention to something that might look very ordinary. Suddenly, pondering Mary and her baby wrapped in bands of cloth that the shepherds were sent to see, I realized that there is good news is in the act of beholding itself.

In this cathedral, in our daily lives, it matters what we choose to behold. That’s why we have images of Mary, of Jesus, and of all the holy men and woman of our faith. Beholding them, we learn from them and indeed we become like them. Which is exactly the point. I don’t honor Mary because she’s a woman or a virgin or a Mexican national icon, but because she’s someone I’m called behold and thereby to become like. You are too. Called to embody her, quite literally, in our own time and place. Or, as the mystic Meister Eckert observed in the 13^th century—

“We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us.”

Christmas, then—our great feast of God becoming human—is about the God who would be so vulnerable as to be beheld by us. Knowing that we will, as humans do, surely misunderstand and distort his image. But nevertheless love him: and through that love, become like him. St. Augustine, anticipating Meister Eckert’s wisdom almost a millennia earlier, had this to say about the  liturgy of the Eucharist—the Lord’s Supper—that we are about to take part in. It being, of course, the great gift of a God who so blesses our material world that he comes as a human baby, and also as bread for hungry human beings.  “Behold what you are,” the great saint said, “and then become what you receive.”