What a day! What tension! What drama! If we didn’t know any better, we’d be forgiven for thinking this was a script straight out of Neighbours, or ‘The young and the restless’.
There’s no mistaking all the indicators. She knew something was up and she feels so different. But how can it be? Anxiety surges to the fore—how is she going to tell him? How’s he going to react? What will everyone think? What will happen to her? Then she finds out what he thinks—just as she feared, it’s over. The look on his face as he left was haunting. The pangs of numbness begin to punctuate the confusion that engulfs her, as she lies in bed wondering how she will manage.
The pangs of numbness begin to punctuate the confusion that engulfs him, as he lies in bed, wondering what’s next. Tears well up behind closed eyelids. How could she do this to him? He wanted to marry her! Now what’s he going to do? The law demanded adulterers to be stoned to death[1]. But even though he is devastated, he can’t find it within himself to devastate her. He’ll divorce her privately to spare her from public shame and danger to her life. In disbelief he sobs himself to sleep.
Now, as we listen to the Gospel reading for today, just imagine being either of Mary or Joseph in this situation. This was no TV soap opera! This was reality! We know the outcome, of course, but we tend to rush onward to the birth of Jesus, rather than pausing to reflect on today’s Gospel for the fourth Sunday of Advent.
In the sequence of events, Matthew tells us that Mary was found to be pregnant. Luke’s Gospel says that an angel of the Lord announced to Mary that this would happen, but clearly in Matthew’s account Mary hasn’t told Joseph. Maybe because she thought he would never believe that an angel greeted her with the news that the Holy Spirit would overshadow her, and she would give birth to Son who would reign on David’s throne.
Joseph can only think and act from his own logic of what had happened. If we were in Joseph’s shoes without the benefit of hindsight, we all would have thought the same too—that Mary had slept with someone else. So a divine intervention is required. God needed to cut through the limitation of human minds and reveal his will to Joseph, to ensure that his plan that he announced in the Garden of Eden—of a saviour who would strike his heel crushing the Serpent’s head—would not be thwarted. In order for our small, limited human minds to understand the ways of God, God must first reveal them to us.
So an angel of the LORD appeared to Joseph in a dream and told him that Mary would bear a son whom they were to name ‘Jesus’. The name ‘Jesus’ comes from the name ‘Joshua’ and means ‘The LORD is salvation.’ In case the point is missed, divine confirmation is given: “For he himself will save his people from their sins.
We began this season of Advent by hearing God’s word from Genesis 3, explaining how the entire human race needs saving after sin came into the world through Adam and Eve’s turning away from God. This same condition is a part of our nature, passed on through the generations as flesh gives birth to flesh. An apple placed on the Jesse Tree symbolised this—Adam and Eve desired to be like God so much they disobeyed him and took from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, even though God warned them they would die.
Later on in Genesis, we are told God saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time (Genesis 6:5). We need not look any further than the tragedy that has devastated the Queensland Police force and community as to how true this is. God saw how people had gone wrong and resolved that it was time for a new beginning. He sent a flood to wash away all the evil, but he saved Noah and his family who trusted in the Lord, saving them in an ark. God sent rain for forty days and forty nights and the waters covered the face of the earth. But God remembered the promise he had made with Noah and caused the rains to stop and the waters to recede, and brought Noah and his family safely to dry land, and blessed them (Genesis chapters 7-9).
Today we put a rainbow symbol on our Jesse Tree. While the rainbow has been given a very different meaning and association by various groups in today’s world, the original meaning of the rainbow was first attributed by God, the Creator of it:
“I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life” (Genesis 9:13-15).
The biblical rainbow imagery has a powerful connection with baptism. In chapter three of his first letter, the Apostle Peter says:
“After being made alive, [Jesus] went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits—to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God” (1 Peter 3:19-21).
Baptism saves you because it joins you to the living Jesus who saves you. Baptism saves you because it joins you to Jesus and covers you with his righteousness and washes away all your sin.
To save someone or something involves two parts. The first is to rescue from some danger close at hand. But this is only half of what salvation is and means. Jesus not only saves us from our sin, but saves us for life with him, now. In his Small Catechism explanation to the second article of the Apostles’ Creed, Luther said: “I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, Son of the Father from eternity, and true man, born of the virgin Mary, is my Lord. At great cost he has saved and redeemed me, a lost and condemned person. He has freed me from sin, death, and the power of the devil—not with silver or gold, but with his holy and precious blood, and his innocent suffering and death. All this he has done that I may be his own, live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness, just as he is risen from the dead and lives and rules eternally.”
In this fourth week of Advent our human thoughts are typically on how to get preparations ready, organizing travel arrangements, completing the gift shopping, planning the meal, writing the Christmas cards. Those without family might ponder how they are going to spend the day. But as we wait to celebrate Jesus’ coming to the world, born in a stable, born of Mary, and as we long for him to come again to judge the world and make all things new, let’s not arrive at next weekend too quickly. Let’s not hasten to the manger too soon. Let’s reflect on today’s account of the angel’s message to Joseph. How does it connect with you?
For this account is not just a story…or even an historical account that we are simply a passive audience to. In our Advent waiting and longing, Jesus himself is in the hearts of his people. As Mary was pregnant with Jesus, God’s baptised people are also called to bear Christ into the world around us as his servants.
Before we rush to Christmas, what might the Holy Spirit be whispering in your ear? Just as Joseph, an ordinary man, was called to abandon his own plans and follow God’s instead, what might God be calling you to do, that is very different from your expectations of how he goes to work with compassion and grace to others? What might cause you to be anxious or concerned about this? As Joseph had unwittingly determined a course of action that was completely contrary to God’s plan, what plans of yours is God trying to disrupt and redirect? As Joseph and Mary were the better Adam and Eve because they obeyed the Lord after hearing his word, may we also be like them, in following God’s calling to work with him in bringing divine peace to those around us.
Today we light the fourth candle on our Advent wreath. It reminds us that Jesus is God with us, even now, a week before the celebration of his birth. Today’s text shows us that God works in ways that are very different to human logic. He chooses to bless the vulnerable and ordinary folk, and through them, bring blessing to others. It was through an unmarried refuge couple, that God brought the greatest blessing to the whole world. For Mary and Joseph’s dilemma show us that every person we meet is a person God sent his Son to earth for, that they might know the ever-present, saving help of God in Christ, and receive peace from him.
There are many for whom life is like a soap opera drama. There are many who are the ‘young and the restless’; the misfits, the hurting and broken. May these candles remind us that even though humanity has forsaken God, in his great love God has not forsaken us, but came down to earth, to a people lost in darkness and sin, to save us and dwell with the most unlikely and least deserving to bring peace between us and God. May those whom we meet, interact with, and who take notice of us, see less of us and more of the Christ child, as he goes to work softening, moulding, shaping our hearts through the baptised life, putting to death the old Adam daily so that a new self should arise to live with God in purity and righteousness forever.
May they see through us that Jesus came to an earth darkened by, and lost in sin, because God wanted to give all people his grace and compassion. May they see through us that Jesus came in the midst of real human experience complete with all the turbulence, fear, frailty and confusion. May they see through us that he came to make his home with those most humble and lowly. And might we be Jesus’ instruments of bringing divine peace to them, so that they might come to be our brothers and sisters who know the same love and saving power of the One who is Immanuel, God with us, forever. Amen.
[1] Deuteronomy 22:23-24
