December 9, 2002  

MARY'S "LITTLE BABY THING"

"They all were looking for a king
To slay their foes and lift them high:
Thou cam'st a little baby thing
That made a woman cry."
(George MacDonald)

Christmas makes us think about Mary's special calling: her virginity, her conversation with an angel, her relationship with her trusting husband-to-be, her shocking teen-age pregnancy. We tend not, however, to think much about those early years in which she and the Baby Jesus were in that wonderful world of their own we may refer to as "maternal bonding."

How many hours did Mary spend in one-on-one company with her newborn? What were her feelings as she nursed him in the middle of the night? And when they made eye-contact, what did she see in his gaze? Were her thoughts similar to those of other mothers, or did the angel's words keep going through her mind: "The child to the born of you will be called Son of God" ? "Son of God! But he is my baby. What does this mean?"

Mary had spent many hours thinking such motherly thoughts before her ceremonial visit to the Temple when her baby was eight days old. She had "pondered" it all over and over again. Now she listened as a righteous old man, Simeon, took her child, lifted him God-ward and prayed, "Master, my eyes have now seen your salvation." Then he turned to her and made the sober prediction, "A sword will pierce your own soul too." How could the happiness she felt with her child bring tears? Strangely, that was the mix of emotions she had already felt when she looked into the Baby's eyes. Tears would often surface with no apparent cause.

Mary listened to every word. Throughout the quiet years of his childhood, she "treasured all these things in her heart." Someday she would need to bring them back to her consciousness so that she could put things in some sort of context. At the height of his ministry of teaching, reassuring, healing and delivering, angry people would plot against him, attack him, arrest him, lie about him, and finally execute him as a criminal. The tears that flowed then would remind her of the mother-tears that came while she was nursing her Baby. A "sword pierced her soul" as she saw him hang on the cross in agony. He was thirty-three, but she still wanted to rush over to him and comfort him with her mother-love.

He became Mary's Savior, just as he became the Savior of all who believed in him. Yet, on one level she would always see him as her "little baby thing" that needed her protection.

And so it was that God's Son entered the world, helpless, the Savior of the world, "saved" by the protective love of a teenage mother.

–Pastor George Van Alstine