Don't Skip to the End too Quickly

Brad Sullivan
Fourth Advent, Year A (RCL)
Sunday, December 23rd, 2007
Emmanuel, Houston
Isaiah 7:10-16Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
Romans 1:1-7Matthew 1:18-25


There are just two days left till Christmas, and time is running out to take care of all your holiday shopping needs! That’s certainly one approach we could take as near Christmas. There are certainly plenty of times we’ll hear that or a similar message in the next couple of days. I’d like to suggest a slightly different approach to Christmas as we finish our Advent preparation. Advent is almost over, the waiting and the anticipation, almost done, and most of us know the Christmas story well so we can already hear it in our minds, but today we still have this fourth Sunday of Advent, this last Sunday of preparation before the big day. So, my suggestion for how to approach Christmas is, stay in Advent for another couple of days. Looking at the Gospel story, I’ll explain why we don’t want to jump to the end too quickly.
For four weeks now, we’ve been preparing, hearing stories about the preparations for Jesus’ birth or preparations for his ministry, and today, we heard about some of the final preparations, God preparing Joseph and Mary for the birth of Jesus. “Joseph, son of David,” said the angel, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20b)
This must have been ever so slightly puzzling to Joseph and something of a relief for a man who thought his fiancé had had an affair with another man. Here Joseph was all excited, about to be married, and it turns out his fiancé is pregnant, presumably with someone else’s baby…at least he knew the baby wasn’t his.
So what does Joseph do? Matthew says he was going to dismiss Mary quietly rather than expose her to public disgrace. This tells us something about the character of Joseph, the kind of man he was. Matthew calls him righteous. You could also call him merciful and kind. That may not come across nowadays to us, hearing that he was going to dismiss Mary, but taking a look at the laws and customs of the times, Joseph was doing a wonderful thing.
According to the religious laws of Israel, Joseph had every right, and some might even say an obligation, to have Mary stoned to death for her apparent adultery (the other guy too, if they could find him). At the very least, Joseph could publicly denounce Mary. These were the legal and religiously expected things for Joseph to do. Instead of calling for her death and public disgrace, however, Joseph decided to dismiss her quietly. He was simply going to say goodbye and let her go on with her life, maybe with the presumed father of her child. Who knows?
The point is Joseph was a kind, merciful, seemingly even tempered, and righteous man. Further, we know by his acceptance of and obedience to the angel’s message that Joseph was a faithful man who trusted in God and followed God. Basically, Joseph was a really good choice to be Jesus’ father. God didn’t choose anyone to be the parents of Jesus, he chose Mary and Joseph. God chose people who were righteous, kind, merciful, and who had faith in God, the kind of people who would be loving parents to their son and who would raise their son according to the laws and faith of Israel.
Beyond telling us something about Mary and Joseph’s character, then, the Gospel story today tells us something about the nature of God. God loves us enough to trust himself to two human parents. Coming down here to live among us, to send his son, to send himself to live as a human being among us took enormous trust on God’s part, trust that these two parents would love and care for the child. So we see God loves us enough to trust us with his son, and we also see the love God has for his son in so carefully choosing the parents. In seeing the care and love God has for his son, we then see an aspect of what the phrase, “God is love,” means. We see the love of Father for Son, the love of parent for all of us, his children. We see this love in the gifts God gave at Christ’s birth, the gift of loving parents to Jesus and the gift of Jesus to us.
Knowing then, that God has given us this gift, knowing already the full story of Christmas, I want to take one more look at the passage we heard from Matthew. “All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’” (Matthew 1:23) This was Matthew’s note to the reader, quoting Isaiah, so the reader would have an idea of who Jesus was and would be. Joseph may or may not have had this passage of scripture in his mind when the angel announced Jesus’ birth to him, but let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Joseph did think of the passage from Isaiah about the virgin bearing a son and calling him Emmanuel. Joseph still probably didn’t know Jesus was the Son of God. He knew Jesus would be special, but I don’t think he was singing “Joy to the World, the Lord [God] is come.”
If Joseph thought of the prophecy from Isaiah, thinking of “Emmanuel,” God is with us, didn’t mean Joseph then made the intuitive leap that Jesus was God’s son. There was likely no understanding that Jesus was true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father, and that through him all things were made. (from the Nicene Creed)
Assuming Joseph recognized the prophecy which the angel was quoting, Joseph would have known the angel was quoting Isaiah, from the passage we heard today. Further, Joseph would have known Isaiah was talking to Ahaz, a not very good king of Judah, who, hundreds of years before, was being assaulted by several other nations. Isaiah seemed to be telling Ahaz that in a few years, the nations that were threatening Ahaz would no longer be a threat, and God would be with Judah once again. You see, Ahaz had turned to idolatry and abandoned God, so it was felt that God had more or less abandoned Judah.
Joseph might have known all this. He might also have known that the king after Ahaz, Hezekiah, was a great king who followed after God and led the people of Judah to follow after God. So, shortly after Isaiah’s prophecy to Ahaz was made, the prophecy seemed to have come true. God was with the people of Judah and they had some rest from the nations that were threatening them.
So, that being the case, assuming Joseph had this history and prophecy in mind, Joseph was still probably not expecting that the child in Mary’s womb was the co-eternal Son of God. Here this prophecy from Isaiah was coming true again in some new way, and so Joseph was probably expecting something great, some kind of big change and God coming in a new way to be with the people of Israel, but Joseph and Mary didn’t know the full story of Jesus’ birth. They knew the Lord was coming and that the Lord’s coming had something to do with the birth of Jesus. So, they were waiting, and probably really excited to see what was going to happen. What was Jesus going to do? Who was he going to grow up to be? How was he going to save his people from their sins? Mary and Joseph’s advent must have been very exciting, full of anticipation and wonder, maybe with a little fear and uncertainty in the mix too, but I’m guessing they probably couldn’t wait to see who Jesus was going to be and what Jesus was going to do.
So, as we approach Christmas this year and wind down with the last two days of Advent, I invite you to approach Christmas as Mary and Joseph might have, not knowing the full story. I know you know the Christmas story, but you don’t know what Jesus is going to do in your life this year. That’s how I recommend we spend these last two days of Advent. We may have some final preparations to make, some last minute shopping or sending of Christmas cards, but try not to let that overshadow the excitement of Christmas. We know Jesus is coming, or our remembrance of Jesus’ coming is coming, but we don’t know what Jesus is going to do. We know the story of Christmas; we know the Nicene Creed, true God of true God, but we don’t know the full story. We don’t fully know who Jesus is even now. So get excited. Jesus is coming. What’s he gonna do in your life this year? What’s he gonna do in our life at Emmanuel this year? Amen.