Creekside Church Sermon of December 24, 1999 Christmas Eve "Ponder This" Luke 2:1-20	Rev. David Bibbee
Send this sermon to a friend

It's the same with scripture. There are passages we have read many times. We know the characters, the quotes, and what it means. Then we spot something we haven't seen before. A single word or a verse that has been there all along jumps off the page and you hear it as for the very first time.

Few scriptures are more familiar than the Christmas story, and precisely because we know it so well, we miss what it continues to teach us. Reading Luke's account of Jesus' birth, I stopped at a word I had paid little attention to in previous readings. It's the word "ponder"... "but Mary kept these things, PONDERING them in her heart." Ponder appears only once in the entire New Testament in Mary's response to Jesus' birth.

When lowly shepherds ran to Bethlehem and told all they had seen and heard, Luke says that all who heard, "wondered" at what was said. Mary pondered. Others scratched their heads. Mary kept these things. Others thought out loud. Mary was quiet, pondering things in her heart. Unlike the shepherds who returned to their flocks and fields praising God, Mary held her baby close, pondering what lay ahead.

To ponder is to consider, consult, converse, to go over repeatedly, deeply and quietly. It is wondering at a deep level. Given all that happened the past nine months, Lord knows Mary had lots to ponder. An angel said she would have God's baby. Joseph repeated questions, and complained about taxes. She gave birth in a cold cattle stall. Strange visits from shepherds and astrologers. Being the topic of town gossip. No one to tell her how to raise a savior. All this was stored in the treasure trove of her heart where she would muse over all that happened and all that was yet to happen, all because she said yes.

Before you leave tonight, I am going to give you an assignment. I want you to ponder...not about all you must do between now and the morning; not about whether you can get one last gift before Wal-Mart closes; not whether the packages will get wrapped or the turkey will thaw, or whether your Uncle Zeke will create a scene like he did last Christmas. Set it all aside and just ponder what it means to say that in Jesus, God became flesh and blood and lived as man. Ponder God making a baby ball of himself, coming as a helpless child, dependent upon people like us for love and protection.

In Martin Luther's Christmas book he wrote, "There are three miracles in Jesus' birth-God became flesh, a virgin conceived, and Mary believed." In taking God at his word and giving birth to Jesus, Mary became the first disciple. Though a sword would one day pierce her soul, she believed. Mary kept all these things pondering them in her heart.

Christmas is ponder time. To do it, we put the brakes on our pressurized pace in order to see what we in a hurry have missed, and there's no point in pondering if we won't slow down.

An older gentleman started a canoe livery in Colorado on a beautiful stretch of tributary to the Colorado River. He built a beautiful inn. Visitors from the city loved the place and the canoes. But there was a problem. They didn't know how to enjoy the river. They jumped into the canoes, and paddled like they drove on the expressways. For a trip that took him four hours, they would rip it off in 90 minutes. They beached the canoes, jumped out and asked, "Okay, what do we do now?" The proprietor decided to give special printed T-shirts to each canoeist...bright yellow with bold black letters that read: "Sitting still is essential to the journey."

One way to preserve our sanity and spiritual sensitivity is to take ponder time-be still and know God's greatest gift of the savior time. Pondering is essential in our journey. Mary was the most prepared of all who had a part in the nativity. From the second she said, "Let it be unto me according to your word," Mary pondered what lay ahead. Though what she knew was outweighed by what she didn't, she trusted God and trusted that the life growing within her was of God's doing.

The faster we go and the more frantic we are at Christmas, the more likely we will miss the One who is Christmas. Christmas comes to the quiet. Christmas comes to those who take time out for time in, listening for Christ and pondering the deeper dimensions of Christmas.

Mary Bird was different. She was born with a cleft palate. When she started second grade, her classmates stared at her. She had a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech. When asked what happened to her lip, she said she fell and cut it on a piece of glass. An accident was more acceptable than being born different. Mary was certain no one outside her family could love her, much less like her. Mrs. Leonard was Mary's teacher. Everyone loved her, but none more than Mary.

It was time for the annual hearing test. Mary could barely hear in one ear, and wasn't about to reveal another flaw, so she cheated. For the "whisper test", each child went to the classroom door, turned sideways, closed one ear with a finger, and listened as the teacher whispered something from her desk, which the child repeated. Then the same for the other ear. No one checked how tightly the untested ear was covered, so Mary pretended to block it.

As usual, Mary was last. She wondered what words she would have to repeat. Mrs. Leonard whispered things like, "The sky is blue." Or "Do you have new shoes?" When Mary's turn came, she turned the bad ear, and barely plugged the other. She waited, and then came words which she said surely God put in her teacher's mouth-words that changed her life forever. Mrs. Leonard said, "I wish you were my little girl."

What is the message of the last Christmas of the millenium? It's the same that was proclaimed at the start of the first...good news of great joy. To you is born in the city of David and the city of Goshen, a savior who is Christ the Lord. We need not pretend to hear the message whispered to us tonight. We need not search with the same feverish intensity of our shopping and partying.

Instead, let's slow down, sit down, center in and ponder this...Christ came to us so we can come to him. He came to love us, he came to save us, and he came to give us a future. Let's ponder anew what the Almighty can do, so that by his birth, neither we nor the world, will be quite the same again.

All of the sermons that have appeared in text form on our Web Site since August 1996 are available here in the On-Line version. Use the search engine below to find the sermon you want. You may search by date, sermon title, or content. The sermons are full-text searchable.

Sermon Search:



Exact phrase    All words (AND)    Any word (OR)