“Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.”
“This thing which is come to pass” is, literally, the saying or the word that has happened, what John memorably identifies as “the Word made flesh.” The birth of Christ sets the shepherds upon a journey, literally leaving their flocks by night, it seems, and hastening to Bethlehem to “see this thing which is come to pass.”
A journey to Bethlehem and yet Bethlehem is more than a destination. It marks another beginning, the beginning of a journey of the understanding. The shepherds go and are changed by what they hear and see. They “returned, glorifying and praising God for the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.” Ideas are communicated to us and they have the power to change us, to change our outlook and our ways.
What we behold in Bethlehem has precisely that kind of power. It is the power of the truth of God with us that so captivates the understanding that we are changed. We embark upon a new journey, not necessarily to a new place but certainly with a new understanding about ourselves, our humanity and God. Such is the radical meaning of the Christ’s holy birth. It changes how we see one another and how we see ourselves. Why? Because Christ’s holy birth bestows an unsurpassable dignity upon our humanity. Jesus Christ is God made man. In Christ our humanity is made adequate to the life of God; even more, our humanity finds its completion and truth in union with God in Christ. He comes to dwell with us so that we may have our abiding in him. How? By paying attention to all the things that are “heard and seen,” as the Shepherds say.
They are doing nothing more than what Mary does here too. All those that heard about the saying that was told to them by the Shepherds concerning the child “wondered at those things.” But Mary, we are told, “kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” It seems that there are those who hear and see and merely pass on, unchanged by what they hear and see. Not Mary and not the Shepherds. They challenge us. Will we wonder in a passing moment about the things which are heard and seen about Jesus Christ and then shrug it off and pass along to all our ordinary ways? Or will we ponder the wonder?
To ponder means to give serious attention to the matters at hand; to weigh the significance of the words and to enter into their deeper meaning and purpose. Without that Christmas is but a passing fad, a trial, perhaps, to be endured of feasting and partying, death by chocolate and turkey, a season from which we are only too glad to have escaped. But such is not the Christmas of the Christian Faith. What we hear and see in the twelve days of Christmas is meant to be pondered and weighed all the days of our lives. It is about nothing more than Christ with us and that is meant to change us not simply for a day or twelve days but all the days of our lives.
We may return to our former places, to our ordinary and dreary routines, but the point of Christmas is that we are to be changed in our understanding and in our very being in how we act and think. Such are the blessings of the Child Christ.
Tonight is the Eve of Epiphany. We are reminded of the even larger dimensions of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem. It is not an event hidden in a corner of the world but an event which concerns the whole world, the whole of our humanity. It is true that the Shepherds, the lowly and little ones are the first to come to the humble scene in ancient Bethlehem as directed and guided by the Angels. Epiphany marks the coming of the magi-kings to worship and adore, acknowledging the significance of the one whose star has led them to his place of birth. They honour him with “sacred gifts of mystic meaning”: gold, frankincense and myrrh; gifts which capture the truth of Christ as King, God and Sacrifice.
They make their long and arduous journey or so we may surmise, our imagination shaped by T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Journey of the Magi. “’A cold coming we had of it,” he writes, quoting actually a Christmas sermon by Launcelot Andrews, “Just the worst time of the year/ For a journey, and such a long journey: the ways deep and the weather sharp,/ The very dead of winter.’” It might seem he was commenting on our weather this Christmastide! “The ways deep and the weather sharp, the very dead of winter.” You have been brave souls to brave the weather. We have managed to keep all the days of Christmas, snowstorms notwithstanding. But the magi-kings, like the Shepherds, are changed, too, by what they hear and see. “Being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.” Again, Eliot captures something of the change in them. “We returned to our places, these kingdoms,/ But no longer at ease.” A potent and suggestive phrase, it speaks to our own uncertainties, perhaps.
The Shepherds returned to their fields full of rejoicing “for all the things that they had heard and seen;” Mary “ke[eps] all these things and ponder[s] them in her heart;” the magi-kings “depart into their own country another way” but, perhaps, “no longer at ease.” These are all the challenges for us in our response to what we have heard and seen this Christmas. There is rejoicing; there is quiet and contemplative reflection; there is the deeper realization that Christ’s birth does change everything. God has not despaired of his world or of our humanity; he has not despaired of us though, perhaps, we have despaired of him. Therein lies our challenge. To be awakened again to the wonder of God with us. We will, I think, be “no longer at ease” because we there is the beginning again of another journey, a journey of the understanding which challenges all our complacencies and all our fears and anxieties. Perhaps we not uneasy enough about our world and day and about ourselves. If so, then perhaps we need to do as the Shepherds did so long ago and “now go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass.” There we shall find the wonder we need to ponder and be changed in heart and soul, at once “glorifying and praising God” and “no longer at ease.”
“Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.”
Fr. David Curry
The Second Sunday after Christmas
January 5th, 2014