Dear one,
Without question, because of the present Season, I am drawn to wonder, and I have no greater example of genuine wonderment than that of Mary. For some decades now, particularly within Protestant circles, I have encouraged our acknowledging: Mary was truly a remarkable woman. Perhaps hers is not the postion to which Catholic tradition has elevated her, but she surely is many rungs higher than some Protestant traditions allow. As evident within the Gospel Accounts, especially Luke’s retelling, Mary shines—or as Elizabeth exclaimed, “Blessed are you among women!”
But apart from her servant’s heart: “Be it unto me according to your word”, repeatedly I have been drawn to and encouraged by her responses both to the shepherds and to Jesus, for Mary’s was a “thoughtful faith.” That is, given that the shepherds had broadcast their excitement (Luke 2:18), and likewise, given Jesus’ experience in the Temple at age twelve, Luke characterized Mary as one who “was treasuring all these words, pondering [them] in her heart” (cf. Luke 2:19, 51).
By faith, Mary did not rush to judgment; rather, she mulled over the words of the angel: “Today, in the city of David, a Savior was born … the Messiah … the Lord”; and so too, she treasured, as in a safe, Jesus’ confirmation: “It is necessary for me to be in my Father’s house” (Luke 2:49). However, I dare only guess what she thought, when she heard: your newborn will cause a sword to rend your soul (Luke 2:34); or what she felt, as she watched her firstborn hang upon that stained, Roman cross.
Recently I was asked: “This Christmas, Stan, what would encourage your sense of wonder?” With thought, I then stated: “On Christmas Eve, at night, I should stand outside and gaze upon the heavens, knowing that the stars I behold are few, when compared to the billions upon billions upon billions of stars filling space trillions upon trillions upon trillions of lightyears away. With that perspective, I should then wonder that ours has been ‘the visited planet.’” And yet, it has been, even as Dietrich Bonhoeffer affirmed:
“[At Christmas, what] a mistake to think that it is the task of theology to unravel God’s mystery, to bring it down to the flat, ordinary human wisdom of experience and reason! It is the task of theology solely to preserve God’s wonder as wonder, to understand, to defend, to glorify God’s mystery as mystery.”[1]
Gazing,
Stan
[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Testament to Freedom, Kelly and Barton (eds.), (San Francisco: Harper-San Francisco, 1995), p.448.