My son-in-law was looking for Advent candles in a Christian bookstore. They use the Advent candles for family worship during this season so their hearts will be tuned to the true spirit and meaning of Christmas. As he brought the package of candles to the counter he asked the sales clerk if they had a Christ candle. There were three purple candles and a pink one, but no white one – the Christ candle, which they light on Christmas morning, after Scripture reading and prayer, before they open gifts. The clerk at the Christian bookstore gave him a look like she really didn’t understand the question, and said they did not have a Christ candle. He jokingly said to her, “Well, I guess I’ll have to go to Walmart to get Jesus.” She was not amused. And he did go to Walmart and got a white candle for the Christ candle. Sometimes you find Jesus in some unexpected places.
Mary and Joseph found Jesus in a place that they did not expect. It was an unusual experience to say the least. We are used to the tinsel, the beautiful decorations, colorful packages. Once again we hear the magical story of the birth of the Christ-child. Our Christmas cards will show angels visiting the earth, wise men following an bright star in the sky, a beautiful mother and proud father (both with spotless clothes and often halos), clean sheep, and a sweet smelling stable. A lovely picture. But that is a side of Christmas that is unrealistic. It’s the fairytale side of what really happened.
In spite of the fact that it was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened on earth, there were times when it didn’t seem that way, especially for a young 16-year-old girl who was now mysteriously pregnant. And things did not seem wonderful to a young man who was beginning to wonder about the girl he was about to marry. He wanted to do the right thing, even though custom would have permitted him to have her stoned to death. So he decides to divorce her (Matthew 1:19).
One of the things that we learn from the Christmas story is that God does not always conform to human expectations. God often reveals himself in unexpected ways. And one of our problems is that the Christmas story has become so familiar that we have lost the impact of what really happened. For Mary and Joseph it was wonderful, and yet it was also disastrous. There must have been many times when they asked the question: “Why couldn’t we have had normal lives, and normal children, like everyone else? Why didn’t God choose somebody else?”
It begins wonderfully. Mary has a special visit from the angel Gabriel to give her the glad news of what was about to happen to her. He told her that she was a person favored by God, and blessed among women. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.... The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:30-35). It sounded wonderful, but she was still confused and frightened. It helped to go to her relative Elizabeth’s home in another town for awhile. Elizabeth was also expecting, and they were a comfort to each other. The only trouble was that after staying at Elizabeth’s for an extended period of time, she had to return to her own home, and it was now very obvious that she was pregnant.
How the tongues must have wagged when she returned to her town. It was great that God sent an angel to her to explain how and why she was pregnant, but no one else in town got the message. You can almost feel with Mary the looks out of the side of people’s eyes; the whispers as she walked past a small group of people. You can feel with Joseph as his friends smirked, or sympathized with him in order to get more information about what had happened. He knew nothing about what had really happened with Mary. You can feel his hurt as he knew what people were saying about the girl he loved and was planning to marry. You can feel his confusion and anger. Finally, God spoke to him in a dream. The angel of the Lord 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. 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” (Matthew 1:20,21). He had been thinking of breaking the engagement, of quietly setting Mary aside — to divorce her, to put it plainly — but now the dream had convinced him otherwise. It had not convinced anyone else, but it had convinced him. If you have ever been gossiped about you can imagine what this couple went through.
Here was this great plan that God had for life of Mary and Joseph. They were the most privileged couple who had ever lived, and this is what they had to go through. Imagine how Mary felt as she knew not only what other people were saying, and how they felt, but what her emotions must have been as she realized what Joseph felt and what he was thinking. There was no way she could have explained so that people would have understood. She was innocent and yet thought of as cheap. It is bad enough when what everyone is saying about you is true, but it is much worse when they are wrong. This wonderful plan of God had disgraced her. It almost ruined her chance for marriage. It did take away any chance for a normal life. Imagine the kind of woman she must have been to go through it as well as she did. What kind of faith she must have had to withstand everything and not be bitter toward people and angry at what God was putting her through. It took a very special person.
Every woman must have dreams of having her first child, and she wants that child to be born in the best of circumstances. But something happened to shatter those dreams for Mary. Caesar declared a census. They had to take a long trip to the place from where Joseph’s ancestors came so they could be taxed. When you have a full-term pregnancy it is bad enough to take a trip to the hospital with a nervous husband, let alone take a journey of over seventy rugged miles. It is no wonder her labor started. No woman in her right mind would want to undergo a trip like that near the time she was to deliver. But, circumstances being what they were, that is exactly what Mary had to do.
And she did not go into a clean hospital with a comfortable bed and sterile delivery room with professional medical personnel at her side. Of all the dirty places in the world, she delivered right next to the cows, the sheep, the donkeys and whatever else may have been there. There were no pain killers. Her cries were muffled only by the noise of the animals. What must have been going through her mind as she was in labor, laying in the straw amid the stench of the animals and the dung? God’s will must have seemed mysterious indeed.
Of course, the presence of the newborn child must have helped her forget some of the pain. The story the shepherds told of what had happened to them must have increased her excitement and brought back memories of the time she was visited by an angel. And later on, the presence of the royal wise men must have been wonderfully mysterious. But the wonder of the moment was shattered all too soon when she and Joseph learned about Herod’s awful orders to kill all of the newborn children in the area. The panic they must have felt as they realized that, if they did not flee, a soldier would come and run a sword through their child’s young body. They had to run to a far away country. How long did they live in fear. . . always wondering. . . always waiting? What was it like to be away from family and friends, exiled in a foreign land?
Remember that Mary and Joseph had to return to their home town of Nazareth and live there as a family. In that small town, where people remembered and questioned longer than they should, there must have been times when they realized that their Son was extraordinary in the plan of God, and yet they also longed for him to be just a normal boy. Certainly, the people of the town did not think that Jesus was anything special. We know that, because when Jesus was a grown man and began his ministry, he returned to his home town, and the people did not exactly welcome him with excitement. They said, “Isn’t this just Joseph and Mary’s son. You remember the story about him. He was a little early... premature you might say.” The Bible has this to say about his limited ministry in Nazareth: “Jesus... went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. ‘Where did this man get these things?’ they asked. ‘What’s this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at him. Jesus said to them, ‘Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.’ He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith” (Mark 6:1-6). Luke tells of another time in the synagogue of Nazareth when Jesus read from the prophets and claimed that their words were fulfilled in him: “All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff” (Luke 4:28,29).
The pressure from neighbors must have been tremendous, for even Mary begins to bend. The Bible tells us that one time she came with her other children and tried to convince her Son to come home and stop what he was doing. In fact, the Bible says that she and the rest of the family were afraid that he was out of his mind (Mark 3:21). They began to believe what everyone was saying. Before the resurrection, even his own brothers did not believe in him (John 7:5). Perhaps their doubts were founded on jealousy and envy. We have to remember that Mary had other children with whom she had to cope. She had to protect their feelings when their brother got more attention than they did. Jesus’ presence created many problems for the family.
We don’t hear much about Joseph. He is mysteriously absent later in the Scriptures. It is possible that he left Mary a widow at a relatively young age. And God’s wonderful plan ended for Mary by watching her Son tortured and dying, slowly bleeding and suffocating to death in the cruelest and most painful form of humiliating death the Romans could devise.
Mary is a tremendous example of faith. She bears up under one of the heaviest loads that God has ever asked a woman to endure. Bearing God’s Son was the greatest thing that ever happened to any woman, and yet, there must have been times when it did not seem great at all. It must, in fact, have seemed like a nightmare. In the beginning, there was an angel to reassure her and explain what was going to happen, but there were no more angels after that. There must have been times of great shame and desperate loneliness; times when God seemed all too silent. There were times of quiet wondering about God’s will, for his will seemed to be very difficult. And indeed it was.
Too often as we think about what it means to be a Christian, and to follow God’s will, we think in fairytale terms, as we do with the Christmas story. We think about living happily ever after. We think all of our problems will be over. And then, when the reality that God’s will is not always easy sets in, we are unprepared. We have more problems, not fewer. It comes as unexpected. The greatest thing that ever happened to two people happened to Mary and Joseph, but there were times when his plan for them seemed difficult — very, very difficult. Times when they must have wondered why God allowed things to happen as they did. Two thousand years later we can see how wonderful it was — we understand God’s plan — but at the time it was hard for them to see.
Two thousand years from now the difficulties you face will be understood completely in the light of God’s will for you. It will be easy then to see how wonderful it was, but now is the important time to be strong and not to lose faith, to believe in God’s plan for your life, difficult life that it may be. Peter wrote these important words to us: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:12).
What began as a holiday voyage in the Caribbean a few years ago turned into a living nightmare for longtime friends Fared Suraleigh and Herbert Clarity. The men were anticipating a relaxing sailing outing, but their plans were violently altered by swirling 70-knot winds, 40-foot waves, relentless rain and an overturned sail boat. The two managed to climb onto a six-foot raft, but were forced to sit waist-deep in freezing water pumping air into their rapidly deflating dinghy, which had a hole in one of its tubes. Clinging to the rubber raft with water seeping in and air leaking out for 12 harrowing hours, the men were finally rescued by a Japanese merchant ship.
What the men didn’t know was that during their ordeal, the pilot of a Coast Guard jet had kept an eye on them. He identified their exact location for the Japanese freighter that rescued them. The men, both in good condition, flew home the next week with a story that would shiver the timbers of the most hardened seafarer. But there were other eyes upon them besides those of the coast guard, and the eyes of God are on you, during your storm, as well. He sees. He knows. He cares. He is there.
Andrew Murray, a great Christian of another generation, wrote these words which have been a great help to me personally:
IN TIME OF TROUBLE SAY:
First —
He brought me here. It is by his will I am in this strait place; in that will I rest.
Next —
He will keep me in his love and give me grace in this trial to behave as his child.
Then —
He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me the lessons he means me to learn, and working in me the grace he intends for me.
Last —
In his good time he can bring me out again, how and when he knows.
Say, I am here —
1. By God’s appointment.
2. In God’s keeping
3. Under his training.
4. For his time.
God’s will for your life is wonderful, but that does not mean it will be easy. Sometimes God’s blessings are disguised as very difficult circumstances, but that’s the way it was two thousand years ago, and that’s still the way it is today.
Rodney J. Buchanan
December 11, 2011
Amity United Methodist Church
rodbuchanan2000@yahoo.com
