Being Mary, treasure these memories in your heart, you’ll need them later.
Being Mary, treasure these memories in your heart, you’ll need them later.
The Rev. Matthew Cowden, Saint Michael & All Angels, South Bend
4 PM pageant service Christmas Eve
December 24, 2016
(Homily just after the children and youth pageant.)
I am so grateful to our pageant leaders, organizers and readers, to our wise men and Mary, donkey bearers and star carrier. Our pageant has evolved through the years but one primary part of the experience is the same: our memories of this event linger for longer than any of us may imagine. What are you going to remember most about this pageant?
(interacting with youth and children, then adults about memories…what will you/do you remember?)
Many of us have memories of a Christmas Pageant from years ago, one we were in or ones we saw our kids in. Our memories stay with us through phrases from Isaiah like, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light…” or the beginning of Luke’s telling we hear on this night, “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered…For some of us it’s the image of Mary and Joseph sitting in this central spot in the church. For some of us it’s just the memory of having finally made it to the Christmas Eve pageant and a meal and good rest await us.
For our youth, it may be about remembering these words when we are much older. They change meaning as we age and we ponder what we meant when we once said them so well and so well rehearsed on church on a snowy night years earlier. This is where I want to linger briefly. Ponder these strange things in your heart, treasure them and remember them.
Mary, we are told in Luke’s gospel, treasured all these things in her heart, recalling them years later. We can imagine that Luke, who was careful to read, research and interview any and all he could for his Gospel, spoke to someone who knew Mary in her older years, or even to Mary herself. The memories of poor shepherds, the unwashed day laborers showing up at her animal stall behind the real living quarters in Bethlehem, who told her they were sent by singing angels.
This is why Luke’s gospel is so good for a pageant, it’s got all the elements of a Broadway show. Mark’s gospel is the dark, black box, artsy theater version with the actors in dark turtle necks, with fear lingering through the end. Luke has characters bursting out into song complete with grand sets and angels descending with lights and a great chorus. Perhaps someone needs re-write this gospel telling in rap and make a million dollars doing it like Hamilton:
Mary, Mary, quite to the contrary
that sweet babe you’ve got is just a little scary
the wise men come and wise men go
but don’t get used to their frankincense show
cuz the plan God’s got you maybe wanna know
he’s gonna turn the world round and turn it round right
til you see how he came from the beginning in light
and this little babe in your arms so tight
is just the beginning of the end of the night.
Yeah that probably wouldn’t work on Broadway. But rap like good poetry stays with you, and when the message is important, and it’s paired with great art, in lingers longer, is able to be treasured and pondered more deeply.
That’s what we want our pageant to be, a long lingering telling of the birth of the one who came among us, of God who came to be With us and remind us that he is For us. But it is a little scary. Growing up beyond pageant years has grown up fears and concerns. Christmas is not always the same Christmas it was when we were growing up. When our memories come floating back after years, what place do they have? When we recall Christmas pageants or hearings of this proclamation again, have the concerns of the world clouded our memories? Do we think of them as a child’s tale? What did Mary do with these memories? She, after all, witnessed the crucifixion that we will pray about in the Creed and Eucharistic prayer in a short while. What color do memories take on then?
In thirty three short years Mary will hold her child in her lap one last time. We might sing “What child is this” with a different even bitter understanding yet it is with our well pondered memories we can still proclaim, in the worst moments, “this, this is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing.”
Treasure these memories like Mary. Hold them in your heart. Later on, as you need them, do not unpack them for nostalgia making but for perspective making. For framing our understanding of what God with us and for us looks like, especially with what’s to come, for Jesus the grown up, and for us as grown ups. It’s important to make these pageants as much fun, as costume and Broadway as possible. When the images and songs are strong in our hearts, they serve us better as we grow up. They will lose their innocent qualities, but their innocence of incarnation should always be a beacon of hope for us for years to come.
