In this morning’s gospel, Matthew tells us the birth story of Jesus, but he doesn’t include the shepherds, the manger or even Bethlehem. In fact, we don’t get any of the familiar details that are in the Lukan narrative we’ll hear on Christmas Eve or we might remember from Christmas pageants and plays. Instead Matthew just gives us the barest of facts:
Some two thousand years ago, there was a girl engaged or contracted to be married to a man.There was a plan and then God broke in and everything changed.
And then the man learned that the girl was pregnant — a revelation that could bring shame upon him and could even cost the girl her life.
And then an angel appears to the man and tells him, “Do not be afraid.”
And the man follows the Lord’s instructions; he marries the girl and when the child is born, the man names him Jesus.
But this in-breaking and changing didn’t happen without some chaos and upheaval first as Joseph wrestled with how he would respond, and as he listened for the Lord to speak and show him how to move forward.
Marrying her, Joseph saves Mary from disgrace, likely poverty and possible death, but Matthew doesn’t tell us
how Mary responded or what they weathered from the time they were married until Jesus was born.
Often our images of Mary and the baby Jesus show a serene and peaceful mother gazing at a quiet, content, cherubic infant, but this year on social media there’s been another image, one that shows Mary stretched out, sleeping, behind Joseph who holds the sleeping baby Jesus with arms flung up above his head. Perhaps this image better reflects the sleepless and exhausting reality of the early days of parenthood. It is a precious time, but it’s rarely peaceful and it’s often unpredictable.
And yet, while we cannot know what the Holy Family experienced, what we hear from Matthew is that God was there in the midst of their uncertainty and turmoil. There, God spoke the words, “Do not be afraid” and they listened. And the child was born and he was named Jesus and everything changed.
The gospel shows us that the people God uses here on earth are not perfect, even for something as important as bearing God’s Son into the world.
We don’t have to have everything together and our lives don’t have to always go according to our plans. Those aren’t pre-requisites for God to act or speak through us. In Joseph and Mary we see that God works through ordinary people, like you and me, who are living our everyday lives with our ups and downs and with our fears, questions and uncertainties.
I wonder though, when God breaks in, how do we respond?
Do we even recognize God is at work in those moments?
Joseph at least had a dream where the angel of the Lord appeared to him. Few of us today receive such visible and explicit signs of God’s presence and instruction.
Describing the hiddenness of God, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says God may be at work in us in ways we don’t even recognize.[i] He says, when it is positive we may call it a miracle, but we don’t often use that word when we see what is happening as negative.[ii] Imagine if Joseph had gone ahead with his plan and dismissed Mary quietly; Jesus would not have been in the line of David and his birth would not have fulfilled the prophecy from Isaiah that we hear in today’s text. Where would Jesus Emmanuel be found then?
As we wait with Joseph and Mary for the Messiah this Advent, may we be alert to the places where God is breaking into our lives, and instead of insisting on our original plan being the “right” one, may we listen and obey, and get out of the way so that God can act in miraculous ways for the sake of the world.
Amen.
[i] Walter Brueggemann. The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Volume 1. 60.
[ii] Walter Brueggemann. “The Prophetic Imagination.” https://onbeing.org/programs/walter-brueggemann-the-prophetic-imagination-dec2018/, accessed 12/21/2019
-Henri Nouwen
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