Sermon for CATM and for Retirement Suites by the Lake –December 22 and 23, 2007
Advent IV – Joseph Made a Home for Jesus – Matthew 2:18-25
Advent: Love
A Salvation Army woman was informed by a policeman that a local ordinance would prevent her from ringing her bells to invite contributions. She was contrite and apologetic that she had “broken” the law. But the next day she was back in front of the store… doing a brisker business than ever… as she waved one sign and then another in the air. One sign said "ding" and the other said "dong."
Christmas is one of those times of the year that we may have very mixed feelings about.. We may love it because of good memories and the happy situation we find ourselves in now. We may hate it because of bad memories and the unhappy situation we find ourselves in now.
Perhaps for some it is a time when we remember someone important to us who has passed away. For my family, this will be our first Christmas ever without my brother Craig, [Eleanor and Lewis’ firstborn son,] who passed away from cancer nearly eleven months ago.
Christmas for some may be meaningful because we are attuned to the value of good beginnings. And indeed, as people of the New Covenant we know that the birth of Jesus was a good beginning.
Not because it happened in a vile stable, a very messy place. Not because Immanuel was born in a royal palace, but because the Christ was born with the purpose and potential to save us and transform out lives.
So in this room today we have a great many responses to Christmas, and its important that we be sensitive to the fact that we each bring our own experiences and histories to worship today. Each of them valid in there own way, and yet how do we proceed forward from where we are today.
The mystery of Christmas can be summed up in three words found in our text today: “God with Us”. And in order to explore this, let’s look in some depth at our reading today. The reading is Luke’s record of the birth of Christ.
READER:
Matthew 2: 18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.
At one level I have to admit that I find it remarkable that any human language is able to convey even a smidgen of the profound thing that this passage speaks about.
We’re talking about holy mysteries here. We’re talking about something truly marvellous…
The Creator becoming a human. He who is without limit to His power of his glory willingly takes on the limitations of being like us.
He who created everything including this planet comes to reside on this planet.
It’s very like an artist literally joining himself to the characters on his canvas and interacting with them like one of them. That may be the dream of every artist, but here we have an account of this actually occurring.
I need to say that because we speak here today of holy mysteries that in one way are far beyond the capacity of language to speak of them. And yet these holy things, as we see from this passage, somehow happen in ordinary ways, in very human ways.
READER:
19 Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
The first thing we may notice here is that there is scandal in the way Christ came to earth. From the very beginning, in choosing to come to earth born of a virgin, God knew that controversy would surround Christ.
Of course there was no other way to enter the human family than through a human birth, but there is a clear sense in which Mary, the mother of Jesus not only agrees to allow the Christ child to be born through her, but she willingly embraces what can only come to her…disgrace, questions, doubt about her honour, scandal about the birth of her son.
Joseph, being as the Scripture says a righteous man who doesn’t want her to suffer the slings and arrows of public judgment, plans to divorce her without making a spectacle of her.
od apparently not only chose Mary to be the mother of the Saviour. He chose Joseph who perhaps uncommonly for his time was willing to suffer this loss privately. To absorb something which could only have been very painful for him, and to do it personally.
READER:
20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
So after making up his mind to not humiliate Mary because of this apparent scandal, Joseph has a visitation while dreaming.
Now this visitation does on the one hand alleviates some of Joseph’s anxiety, because it relieves him of the burden of thinking that Mary had been unfaithful to him.
Rather, what is growing in Mary is from God. It is thus a holy thing, not something shrouded in shame, nor an object of regret, or a thoughtless indiscretion. So on the one hand Joseph may feel some relief as I’ve said.
On the other hand, Joseph has had a visitation from an angel, and no matter what is said by that angel, this is really quite alarming. Not just in that such visits are rare, but that the message to Joseph is that Mary is bearing a child conceived by the Holy Spirit.
We can imagine Joseph asking himself: “What must this mean? What must this mean for our future together”? Joseph is one of the first, perhaps, who along with Mary to begin to grasp that God is about to pitch His tent, so to speak, with us. God is coming.
READER:
21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."
So Joseph discovers that Mary is to have a son. He may at this point be realizing that he is to be a step-father to this Son who is to be born. He for sure knows the child’s name is to be Jesus, which means “God saves”. Joseph is told something else about Jesus.
Jesus will, somehow, “save his people from their sins”. Now what might that mean? If, as Joseph discovers, sin is something that people need to be saved from…as perhaps one is saved from a shipwreck or a storm or some cataclysm, then at the very least it suggests that sin is somehow a threat to people.
It is a problem and an alarming one at that.
More alarming to this step-dad to be is that he is told that his step-son is to be the one who actually rescues people from their sins. His role is to be that of an emancipator.
That would of course have been mind-blowing to Joseph, because he was not yet accustomed to even seeing Jesus as a helpless infant, let alone Someone on whom such an onerous task would fall.
READER:
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" --which means, "God with us."
Here the old connects with the new. The OLD was the quote from Isaiah [that you see first on the front page of today’s bulletin]. It was a well-known and well-read verse from the ancient book of Isaiah, written 700 years before Jesus and read along with other passages in synagogue each Sabbath.
The NEW is this fresh word to Joseph that allays his fears about marrying Mary; that reveals the shocking news that God was birthing something absolutely phenomenal in Mary’s womb. Verse 22 adds the most alarming thing of all to what must have been a completely overwhelming experience to Joseph. It adds the definition of the word Immanuel, which is…what? God with us.
So, picture this…we need to have some compassion and understanding for Joseph who we are watching really being waylaid here in this passage. Joseph is told that his step-son will be God with us. Jesus, yet to be born is the manifested glory and fullness of God Almighty.
We read this in Colossians 2:9: “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily”. That the old English version. A newer version says: “all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form”. An even newer versions says this: “Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly”.
For those of us who wonder what all the ruckus is about Christmas, and who wonder what people who complain about the crass commercialism of Christmas are up to…
It becomes clear to us, perhaps, as it becomes clear to Joseph, that what is being anticipated in our text today, the celebration that occurs this time every year is the anniversary of the day that the Creator comes to earth. The Artist literally joins himself to his art, His creation, which is, of course, you…and me.
READER:
24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
When I wake up from a weird dream I’m always relieved that it was just a dream and within a few seconds I’m able to dismiss it as just that. Weird. Maybe unpleasant. But just a dream.
Joseph also woke up from his dream. But he knew that something profound had happened, and he chose to do what the angel of the Lord told him to do. Instead of divorcing her as had been his plan, he took Mary and made a home. And so his wife Mary gave birth to a son. The son we know as Jesus.
So I guess the question for us is, what are we to do with this news of Immanuel? On the one hand the news is scandalous…there’s all kinds of reasons for eyebrows to be raised and scorn or derision to be shown. There is, I notice, plenty of opportunity to exercise…to exercise either doubt, or faith.
Joseph, we learn, chose to exercise faith. There’s actually not a lot more that we hear from Joseph in the gospel records. His purpose, it would seem, was to be one of the first to say: “Yes!” to Jesus.
In doing so he was a herald of sorts and a forerunner to a great multitude who have search their own hearts in response to the story of Jesus and have also said: “Yes!” to His coming. Yes to His Lordship. Yes to His Kingship.
Yes to the salvation that comes through the great occurrence at the other end of his life: His death on the cross. That’s where the promise spoken to Joseph would come to life. Jesus would save His people from their sins.
I close with a simple Christmas Creed that frames the faith of the church in the light of the Christmas event, the Incarnation of God:
I believe in Jesus Christ and in the beauty of the gospel begun in Bethlehem. I believe in the one whose spirit glorified a little town; and whose spirit still brings music to persons all over the world, in towns both large and small.
I believe in the one for whom the crowded inn could find no room, and I confess that my heart still sometimes wants to exclude Christ from my life today.
I believe in the one who the rulers of the earth ignored and the proud could never understand; whose life was among common people, whose welcome came from persons of hungry hearts.
I believe in the one who proclaimed the love of God to be invincible:
I believe in the one whose cradle was a mother’s arms, whose modest home in Nazareth had love for its only wealth, who looked at persons and made them see what God’s love saw in them, who by love brought sinners back to purity, and lifted human weakness up to meet the strength of God.
I confess my ever-lasting need of God: The need of forgiveness for our selfishness and greed, the need of new life for empty souls, the need of love for hearts grown cold.
I believe in God who gives us the best of himself. I believe in Jesus, the son of the living God, born in Bethlehem for me and for the world.
Let’s pray. Lord Jesus Christ, in You we see love birthed among us. In you we see the glory of God revealed. This Christmas may we search our own hearts and find there a new response to the story of Jesus that we celebrate this season. May faith be birthed in us today. May the Christ child find in us a place of welcome and a home, forever. Amen
