Advent 4: Where Love and faith meet

The story from Matthew’s Gospel this morning, of Mary’s pregnancy, seems quite matter of fact, shorn of the mystery and descriptive nuance that some of the other Gospels use in telling the story. And yet Matthew stripping the event down to its core reveals the central point clearly: obedience. Joseph’s obedience to God announced by his angel in Matthew’s Gospel, parallels Mary’s own, which we find in other Gospel tellings of Jesus's birth. 

We hear very matter of factly that Mary was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Apparently Joseph doesn’t yet know the full details yet or what this implies. But he chooses to act in a way that will point beyond him to God himself. He believes, of course, that Mary has become pregnant in the only way he can understand it: through another man, even though they were engaged to one another, but had not yet had sex. Jewish law would dictate - at worst - that Mary be stoned for fornication if not adultery; in practice, it would mean Joseph would have grounds for a very public divorce which would humiliate and isolate Mary and prevent her from future marriage, and so potentially from having food, shelter and protection. 

Both actions would be deemed righteous judgment according to God’s law given to Moses. Laws that Jesus does not come to abolish but to fulfill. But Joseph foreshadows the way that Jesus will fulfill the law not in executing justice from a distance, but in assuming the violation himself even as it could cost him his own future life as well. He determines that he will divorce her quietly so that others will not know so that she is not humiliated or put in danger. So it is that Joseph foreshadows the judgement and mercy of God in Christ; taking on the consequences of sin that violate God’s law - an act that will cost him his life - but one that will give life to those who are willing to follow him with obedient faith. This one event of the annunciation by God’s angel is a microcosm of the very event of Jesus’s own life, death and resurrection; a microcosmic story told over and over throughout the Scriptures.

Just as with Abraham who is willing to offer God his only Son in sacrifice - an event that foreshadows God’s offering of his only son as the slain lamb of God - so an angel intervenes with Joseph before he dismisses Mary. Joseph, do not dismiss Mary. "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."

And so it is, as with Abraham, that by faith, Joseph receives the one who is new life, so it is by his faith that he becomes a catalyst through whom we see God transform this world from its darkest horrors into the light of God’s full and complete consummation where sin is vanquished, where evil and tyranny and death cease to exist, and where those who cling to the garment of Christ are washed by it and brought together from death into life eternal. This is the radical story into which you and I are adopted in Christ. 

But it is also a reality that we don’t see and experience yet. We wait in this dark world where things still seem bleak. Life is still filled with difficult, if not seemingly impossible circumstances, losses, disappointments, things that simply make no sense, things about which you and I can do nothing, things that challenge our faith and belief that God is doing anything, or maybe that God exists at all.

Recall that God came into this world in the Person of Jesus Christ not as a king, or emperor, or president. But through a teenage virgin on the brink of being dismissed or even stoned, whose faithfulness to God will lead her through a very dangerous experience: giving birth, and then more danger, in the wake of a ruler, Herod, intent on killing or exiling anyone who stood between him and his ultimate power. He came into the world in poverty, in the midst of struggles for power that easily turned violent, and in the midst of his own people willing to use power, law, manipulation, lies, deception and betrayal, torture and execution, to maintain their lust for power, control, and attention. He came into this at a time that, well, at a time that is much like our own. 

And therein lies our hope. That God so loved us that he came into this world not to condemn it, but to heal it. Not to permit everything that everyone wants - for we know that the road to hell is often paved with our broken and so often ignorantly developed intentions - but to draw us to see ourselves in him, through him, through his words and his works: not my will, but yours be done Father. And what is God’s will: that “everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." 

In Joseph and in Mary’s obedience we see Jesus simultaneously born and his faithfulness in difficult circumstances foreshadowed. In them we see God overcome the sin of Adam and Eve. In them we see new life, the birth of righteousness and faith. We see in this new life the hope of the world not in ascertaining land or possessions or power, but in being joined to God forever. It is in this hope of his love poured out for us, made sure in Christ, God himself, that we can make it through our struggles, doubts, and disappointments not in fear, but in faith. AMEN