"READY OR NOT...HERE THEY COME!"
December 23, 2001
Matthew 1:18-25
Mary & Joseph's great acts of love helped to bring Christ to the world.
Ready or not...here they come! Mary and Joseph arrive on the scene in our Gospel reading this morning, so we know...Christmas is practically here! Indeed, today is the 4th Sunday in the season of Advent...the day before Christmas Eve (a day I like to call Christmas "Preve"). On this final Sunday in the season when we remember, recognize and await
Christ's coming...the theme of the day is "love."
We've already enjoyed the beauty and innocence of children in our service
this morning, but here's a little bit more. A professional counselor posed
the question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, "What does love mean?"
One little girl said, "When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend
over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis, too. That's love."
Billy, age 4, observed, "Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts
on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other." (Now of course,
when people in this community smell each other, we can also identify the
fragrance designer...but it's the same idea.)
Karl, age 5: "Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs."
Tommy, age 6, reported, "During my piano recital, I was on a stage and scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and
smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared anymore."
Mary Ann, age 4, said, "I know my older sister loves me because she gives
me all her old clothes and then she has to go out and buy new ones."
And Cindy, age 8, decided, "My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don't
see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night!"
Interesting, isn't it? When asked to explain love, these children didn't talk about how love "feels;" they described acts of love. That's probably
the most important thing we can learn about love. It's not just a noun a thing, a feeling. It's also a verb; it's an action. Acts of love are what Mary and Joseph ride into town to teach us about this morning.
The full story of Mary's great acts of love is found in the Gospel of Luke.
That may be the more familiar story when the angel Gabriel comes to the young girl Mary and says, "Greetings, you who are highly favored!" The angel then tells her that she will give birth to a child even though she
is unmarried, a big problem in her ancient Jewish world and that the child
will be the long-awaited Messiah.
Mary's well-known response, of course, was, "I am the Lord's servant. Let it be to me as you have said." Her incredible act of obedience to God's
will even though it put her in a terrible position socially and an
overwhelming position for a common, young girl emotionally and spiritually
that act was an act of love for God that has never been surpassed by anyone
other than Jesus.
In Matthew's Gospel, however, the focus is on Joseph; here God asks more of
Joseph than any young Jewish man of his time should have been asked to bear.
He discovers that his young fiancee, whom he certainly has never been with
sexually, is going to have a child! He knows that religious and social
tradition demands that he cut off their engagement, but he is a good and
kind man he doesn't want to publically humiliate Mary -- so he intends to
end things quietly. But then he is instructed by an angel...and in a
dream, no less that he must go ahead and take Mary as his wife and be a
father to this child whom he is to name "Jesus."
"Let's see," Joseph must have thought, "based on an angel in a dream, I have to go against everything my upbringing has taught me is right, marry a
pregnant girl, and give the boy not my name but this other name, which no one in my family has had. Hmmmm.... Not asking much, are you, God?!"
And yet, in another great act of love, Joseph is willing to trust God even though none of this makes any sense. How many of us can say we would have
done that? In our world today, it would have been "Joseph says, That's not
my baby...and I won't marry you!' next on Rikki Lake!"
But Mary's act of obedience and Joseph's act of willingness to trust were
great acts of love that helped to bring Christ to the world. In fact, their
acts of love made possible, for humankind, God's greatest act of love. In 1
John 4:9 & 10, we read, "This is how God showed love among us: by sending
the One and Only Begotten Child into the world that we might live because of
that One. This is love: not that we loved God, but that God loved us and
sent Christ as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."
Christ God's ultimate "act of love" was first able to come into the world because of the loving acts of people. And you know what? That's still how it has to happen today. The whole season of Advent is meant to remind
us that not only did Christ come once -- and that Christ will come again --
but also that Christ comes into the world right now...and it is still
through peoples' loving acts that Christ is made known to us today.
So...what kind of loving acts help bring Christ to the world right now? Certainly there are many things people DO that would qualify as "acts of love." The responses of so many people, in so many ways, to the horrors of
Sept. 11th: acts of love. The things people do in this church to help each
other: many, many acts of love take place here all the time. We certainly
associate "doing good" with love.
But love is not just something we "do;" it's also something we have to "be." Mary and Joseph, each in their own way, embodied God's love even as
they did acts of love for God. It's not enough just to DO love...for Christ
to come to the world through us, we must also BE love.
Quaker psychologist and activist Charlotte Kasl writes, "One of my favorite
[ideas is that] God is love, lover and Beloved. If we break Beloved in two,
we have be loved': be loved by spirit, be loved by yourself, be loved by
others. If we remove the last letter of Beloved, we have be love.' Don't
seek love or lover, simply be love. Be at peace with All That Is and know
that you are [also] the Beloved. And when you find [someone] to love, know
that the journey is to dance together in the circle of love: growing,
playing, struggling and accepting with a smile the incredible predicament of
being human."
Now to hold up Mary and Joseph as examples to aspire to may seem like asking too much. Especially, when we think of Mary thanks to religious and cultural traditions around her we are holding up an ideal of perfection:
perfect obedience to God's will. That's asking a lot especially since most of us struggle constantly to even figure out what the heck "God's will" for
us really is!
Perhaps a more realistic example for us would be Joseph. Let us aspire to
emulate his willingness to trust God even when things don't make sense. We
should have a shot at that because, honestly, don't you find yourself and
your life in a lot of situations that just don't make any sense?!
Of course, this won't be the proverbial piece of cake, either: trusting God
when things just don't make sense. Illnesses, lost jobs, sudden relationship
break-ups, the unexpected deaths of loved ones, terrible accidents, weird
"twists of fate" there's a lot in life that just doesn't make sense to us.
And yet, by trusting God even in those times, we have the power to help
bring Christ to the world.
Think about the things that Christ brings; two things that certainly leapt to mind are acceptance and forgiveness. Those are things that can be
unleashed in the world, every day, through us if we will be people of love
even though we don't always understand everything.
Acceptance of others who are different from us: who look different, who act
different, who think different, who feel different. How many of us came to
experience Christ in our lives because a church called M.C.C. rose up and
said, "All people are accepted by God!" How many more people can experience
Christ in their lives when each of us is willing to accept another person --
even if we don't totally understand them -- rather than offer judgement,
rejection or even hatred?
And forgiveness: now there's something that doesn't always come easily. Especially when someone has hurt us, and we just don't understand why they
did what they did. Sometimes forgiving just doesn't make sense. And yet,
given how much of life in this world brings out the mistakes and brokenness
in all of us, wouldn't it be an act of trust in God to just go ahead and
forgive anyway?
A mother told the story of how, some years ago, after a vigorous sibling disagreement (in other words, a big fight!), her three children went to bed
only to be awakened around two o'clock in the morning by a terrific
thunderstorm. Hearing an unusual noise upstairs, the mother called up to
find out what was going on. One little voice called back, "We're all in the
closet forgiving each other."
Once we come to realize that we are all subject to the external...and internal...storms of life, it becomes a little easier to forgive the
trespasses of others...even as we have been forgiven our own trespasses. And
I suggest we bring the concept of forgiveness "out of the closet." Let the
world see that we are forgiving people, and we let the world experience
Christ!
Ready or not, here they come...every day: opportunities to be like Joseph
opportunities to trust God even when it doesn't make sense. Opportunities
not just to DO love but to BE love to help bring Christ into the world on
a regular basis.
Today the focus is on our Christmas present...the here and now where we have a chance to be Christ-bearers for the world. It's not in some package we can open; what we have to open is our own hearts...our own spirits...our
own lives. That's where love must be found...if it is to be found at all.
Amen.
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