“The Messiness of Christmas" (Matthew 1:18-25)

Life is a journey and adventure.  It is filled with turns, ups, downs, and mysteries.  It has it good and its bad moments.  It can be peaceful and chaotic.  It can be full of laughter or of tears.  It can produce anxiety and have its moments of calm.  There is life, and there is death.  It is full of surprises.  It is never boring and often it is scary.  Life is never quite what we expected but is often more than we ever imagined.  But most of all, life is messy.

 

I think you know the truth in that statement . . . life is messy.  We are all old enough to understand the complexities of life.    We have lived it and know its reality.  Life does not always stack up to our expectations . . . and yet we dream, hope, and continue to live despite how messy life may be.

 

The season of Advent is built upon expectation.  The people of God have been under a militaristic rule . . . a rule that was cruel and crushing.  Yet they dreamed of the One who was to come . . . to come and set them free and re-establish the kingdom as it once was. Make them a great nation once again.  It had been a long journey fill with many bumps, but there was hope . . . hope for the One who was to come.

 

At least that is what the people were expecting.  What they got wasn’t quite what they expected.  They had forgotten that life is messy.

 

This morning we pick up the story from the Gospel of Matthew.  It is the birth story of Jesus.  Short, sweet, and to the point unlike the other gospels we know so well . . . no shepherds, no heavenly choirs, none of the wise men.  It is what it is.  It is no wonder then with its brevity that this story is not the most popular among the faithful.  The problem is that it sticks to the facts and only the facts.

 

Remember the old television show Dragnet?  Whenever the detective, Joe Friday, questions anyone in an investigation he only wants the “facts”.  He is constantly saying, “Just the facts . . . just the facts.”  Therein lies the problem with Matthew’s version of the birth story . . . it just the “facts”!  And the facts shared in the Gospel of Matthew are nothing like one would expect the story of a Savior . . . of a Holy One . . . starting out.  Instead of some beautiful flowing story the facts reveal what a real mess the reality is.  It is a mess!

 

Remember, life is messy.  Why should we expect anything less in the Christmas story? 

 

Here is the story in a nutshell: A man is pledged, betrothed, engaged—you pick the word you want to use—to a woman.  Before the marriage is consummated the man discovers that his wife is pregnant . . . assumingly from another man.  Angry and disgraced by the woman the man compassionately decides to quietly divorce the woman.  Once accomplished he would get on with his life.  In a dream the man is told by an angel that he is to honor the engagement and take the woman completely as his wife even though she is pregnant.  The angel even tells him that the two of them would name the child Jesus.  Upon waking the man did just as he was told to do . . . and the story begins!

 

This wasn’t like anything that Joseph had envisioned.  He thought that everything would go as planned . . . he and Mary would get through the year, join their two households together, consummate their marriage, and get on with life.  He never thought that he would wake up one day and be confronted with a pregnant partner.  He had been betrayed.  The scandal of it all! 

 

One of the problems with this story is that too often we look at it through our eyes in our times.  This story did not take place in the present moment . . . it happened in another time and place.  A time and place quite different from ours.  Take for example the idea of marriage.  According to the time and culture the story takes place, engagement is a contractual agreement . . . a legally binding union between two people and their families.  It is the promise of marriage.  What it involved was typically a year of relationship before the two households were joined together at which time they would move in together and consummate their relationship as husband and wife. 

 

Imagine the shock and turmoil Joseph must have felt on discovering that Mary was pregnant.  It could only mean one thing as far as Joseph was concerned . . . his espoused wife had been unfaithful.  She had cheated.  Basically, Joseph reacted as any person would in such a situation . . . he wanted out. He had to consider his options, of which he had two: public stoning or divorce.  Considering his options, he decides on divorce because he did not want any harm to come to Mary.  He hopes that he can do it quietly and out of the public’s view.  Remember, he was a righteous man as we are told.

 

Whatever the case . . . it is a mess.  This is not the story we are accustomed to when it comes to Christmas.  It is not the beauty and wonder of the birth of Jesus . . . it is a mess!  We cannot deny the distress, sense of betrayal, disappointment, and a host of other emotions Joseph must have been experiencing . . . nor can we turn away from Mary and what she must have been feeling—the hurt and fear—as the two of them attempted to sort out their relationship. 

 

You see, Mary and Joseph are not merely characters in a fairytale story yanked from the stained-glass window, but they are flesh and blood people.  They are just like you and me . . . they are one of us with ups and downs to their relationships.  They go through all sorts of things, some that are quite damaging . . . some good, some bad.  They have their highs and lows.  Life is messy.

 

Think about the whole story . . . the census call . . . no room in the inn . . . a manger in a stable . . . a bunch of strangers showing up at the birth . . . three men warning the parents to hightail it out of the country because King Herod was out for their child . . . a trip to a foreign land as strangers in a strange place seeking safety.  There is nothing typical in this story . . . nothing standard . . . it seems like one mess after another.  This is the messiness in which the Christmas story is told . . . it is life as it happens.  Life is messy!

 

And it is out of this messiness that God parlays it all towards accomplishing God’s purposes.  It is an extraordinary story and promise that God comes through ordinary, mixed-up people—just like us--in order to save ordinary, mixed up people . . . and that God comes through a birth like all the millions of other births in the world to promise us freedom from sin, fear, and death and rebirth as the children of God.  After all, Jesus was born like we were . . . Jesus came as one of us.  He lived life just as we do with all its messiness.  Through it all he showed us the way.

 

Yet we get ahead of ourselves. 

 

This is the story of Jesus’ birth as shared by the writer of the Gospel of Matthew.  It is a simple story without all the bright and flashing lights . . . no heavenly choirs . . . no shepherds or wise men . . . no shining star.  It is a simple story based on the facts of a relationship that hit a bump in the road and got messy.  Out of the messiness God saves us.  Too often we miss this because we are too busy lamenting our fate of the messiness of our lives as we journey onward.  Yet God even makes something out of the mess.  That is the miracle of Christmas.

 

As the writer reminds us from the words of the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel.” Immanuel means “God with us”.  Through it all, God is with us!  Yes, God is!  Amen!

 

“The Advent Contradiction” (Isaiah 11:1-10)

 

Expectations can be killers.

 

As a kid I can remember sitting at the kitchen table devouring not only the cereal but the box that it came it.  On the box was one of those “life-time” offerings of a revolutionary battleship.  A detailed picture of the ship took up most of the back of the box.  Sails were flapping in the wind.  Cannons were smoking.  It was a sight to behold and a dream to have.  All one had to do to get this replica of the battleship was to send in three box tops and a couple of dollars . . . both of which were hard to come by as a kid. 

 

Three box tops, a couple of bucks . . . and it was yours.  Thus began my campaign to get the battleship.  I moaned and groaned that I had to have the battleship.  I proclaimed that I couldn’t live unless I had the battleship.  I threw “puppy dog” eyes at my parents.  I was relentless until my parents finally broke, proclaiming, “Anything if you will quit bothering us!”  And so it was that I plowed through three boxes of what I would say was sub-par cereal, scrounged up the money, and sent off my request for my very own battleship.

 

It was weeks before a package from the cereal company finally arrived.  Coming home from school, my mother said that my ship had come in . . . that it was on the kitchen table.  Running into the kitchen, I looked at the table and saw a small package . . . way too small to be a grand battleship.  So, I asked my mother where it was and she said, “Right there on the table.”  Things weren’t looking good in the battleship department.

 

Slowly I opened the package only to reveal a small toy . . . the size of a Matchbox car . . . of a ship.  All the wind was sucked out of my sails.  This was not what I was expecting . . . not at all.  I was so disappointed.  I was suckered while the cereal company made a couple of bucks off me.  Never again did I ever order anything off a box of cereal.  What I received was a contradiction.  It was nothing like expected.

 

But isn’t life full of contradictions?

 

During the season of Advent, we are charged with two tasks: prepare ourselves for the coming of the Christ Child and to prepare ourselves for the coming of Jesus.  The Christmas story is set in a time when the Israelites were under the rule of the Romans who proved to be tough taskmasters and formidable rulers.  It was not a pleasant time in the history of the people who felt oppressed, disregarded, and forgotten by God.  Yet, at the same time, they remember the stories of the prophets . . . the promises of one who would come and free them from their oppression and re-establish the kingdom.  Thus, there was still hope.

 

It is in this scenario that the Christmas story is set.

 

Expectations and contradictions will abound in the story!

 

I am not sure why we humans are the way that we are, but when it comes to these sorts of stories our expectations are usually out of this world.  Typically, they are nothing like the reality we experience.  All of us grew up with the hero riding in on a white horse to rescue the damsel in distress . . . flashing the pearly whites and subduing the bad guys before riding off into the sunset.  So, it was for the Israelites at the time of the Christmas story.  They had dreams of a heroic warrior king riding into their world, freeing them from oppression, and establishing a new kingdom . . . a better kingdom—one where the streets were paved in gold and its people being prosperous--before riding off into the sunset.

 

At least that was their expectation.  What they received was a contradiction.  There was no white horse.  No fiery warrior.  No flashing pearly whites.  Not even a sunset!  Instead, they got some baby in a manger in some outback town in the middle of nowhere.  It wasn’t quite what the people were expecting.  So, they end up waiting . . .

 

The story really doesn’t pick up again until the baby grows up to be an adult . . . a carpenter to be exact.  A carpenter who has a message from God to establish a new kingdom . . . God’s kingdom, and who goes forth into the world sharing this message through his words and his actions.  Again, it is not quite what the people were expecting . . . in fact it was quite the opposite . . . a contradiction.  Where was the warrior king?  Where was the white horse?  The pearly whites?

 

None of it was anywhere to be found.  Instead, they got this contradiction.  We humans don’t always listen as well as we should, or we hear only what we want to hear.  Such is the case for the Israelites . . . they were either not listening or only heard what they wanted to hear from the words, stories, and prophecies the prophets shared.

 

Take for example the words from the prophet Isaiah this morning in our scripture reading.  The prophet is speaking about the one who is to come and rescue the people from their oppression.  It is nothing like the hero’s myth the people are expecting.  First, the hero will come from an unexpected source . . . rising in an unexpected place like “a shoot will come up from the stump” . . . the stump of Jesse.  This hero will not be the sort of warrior or king the people think.  This hero will not be a warring individual who rules through power, might, and violence.  Instead, this individual will be one who rules through wisdom, compassion, love, and grace.  This ruler will be the opposite of what the people expect . . . a contradiction.

 

The prophet states it.  This savior will be a contradiction.

 

The wolf will live with the lamb,

    the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling together;

    and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear,

    their young will lie down together,

    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The infant will play near the cobra’s den,

    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy

    on all my holy mountain,

for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord

    as the waters cover the sea.

 

 

This savior will be like nothing they ever imagined.  Yet this will be how God will save the people as the savior is the means of accomplishing the goal of establishing God’s kingdom.  The prophet proclaims: “In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious.”

 

It is a contradiction we have been dealing with forever as the followers of Jesus.  Every year as we start the Advent season we are reminded of this contradiction as we prepare ourselves for the child to be born in Bethlehem and the return of Jesus.

 

The contradiction comes between our expectations and God’s expectations.  The season of Advent is a one of contradictions.  On the one had we are called upon to prepare ourselves to receive Jesus into our lives as we would receive a child . . . called to welcome the baby.  This is an event that has already happened.  We are also called upon to prepare ourselves for the return of Jesus . . . an event that has yet to happen.  And we are to do all this while acknowledging that Jesus is here with us now.  He is our constant companion in the journey of faith.  It all seems like a confusing mess that we are attempting to sort out.

 

So, how do we approach this season of contradiction?

 

Maybe we start with our expectations.  All of us have had some sort of experience with children and raising children . . . we’ve had some sort of a role whether it is as a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, or close friend.  There is magical thinking, expectations, and hopes when it comes to the birth of a child.  There are those thoughts of what we think that child will be like . . . expectations of what we think a child should be like.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, any of us who have dealt with children from birth to adulthood know that what we expect and what we get are two different things when it comes to children.  Children are a constant surprise in how they grow and in who they come to be.  They are never exactly like we expect them to be.

 

Because of that we must prepare ourselves to receive them as they are.  We must prepare ourselves to experience them for who they are as they learn and grow into who God created them to be.  We must ebb and flow with them as they constantly surprise us in the twists and turns of life that make them who they are.  Though they are never quite what we expect them to be, in the end they are who we love them as being.

 

So, it is with receiving the child to be born in Bethlehem.  We prepare ourselves to receive the savior as the savior comes . . . quite different than the popular myths and stories we have grown accustomed to in the heroic realm.  We welcome the real Jesus into our lives.

 

Then we are live our lives as Jesus lived his . . . loving the Lord with our whole being and loving others as God has loved us.  We share the words of Jesus with others.  We act as Jesus acted in grace and love, peace and justice to establish the kingdom of God.  We invite others to join the journey . . . to become a follower of Jesus.  We live.  That is the door to the future and of what is yet to come.  We walk with the Jesus who is present to us today.

 

Our reading this morning reminds us that we are to set aside our preconceived ideas and expectations of what it means to be a person of faith.  To set them aside to receive the grand adventure of walking with Jesus towards the Kingdom of God.  A kingdom that will never meet our expectations because it will exceed them beyond anything we ever imagined.  And, that my friends is “good news” and the promise of what is to come.  Praise God!  Amen! 

“If I Had Only Known” (Matthew 24:36-44)

We live in a time of wars and rumors of wars.  There are earthquakes and famines.  We have seen many astrological signs in the sun, moon, and stars.  Nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the seas . . . hurricanes have wreaked havoc across the globe in our time.  More than once we have been told that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Signs, signs, everywhere signs . . . anyone up for an apocalypse?

 

There have been many predictions of the end of the world since the first century . . . and, yet here we are.  For the 21st century I am only aware of three predictions: Heinz Von Foerster predicted in 1960 that November 13^th, 2026 would be the end of humanity due to overpopulation; the Messiah Foundation International predicts that the world will in 2026 when an asteroid strikes the earth; and, Kent Hovind, a Christian evangelist, is speculating that 2028 is the “most likely” year for the rapture.  I imagine that there are more out there, but for now most of us are more concerned with the “signs” we are seeing around us in our world today.  Whether we want to admit it or not, those “signs” have created in us a little anxiety.

 

After all, how many times have we heard that the world we live in is going to hell in a handbasket?

 

As I said, probably enough to keep us on edge.

 

Jesus always told his disciples and followers he would be back.  Being inquiring minds . . . they wanted to know . . . WHEN?  Of which Jesus only told them that no one knows . . . not the angels in heaven . . . not the Son.  Only God knows and God isn’t telling anyone.  All Jesus would tell them is that it could happen at any time, in any place . . . Poof! Just like that! 

 

Our scripture reading is dealing with that issue.  The followers and disciples want to know.  In the previous part of this reading Jesus has given them what many Bible scholars and theologians have called the “mini apocalypse” . . . the talk about the second coming . . . the establishment of God’s kingdom . . . new beginnings.  Exciting stuff and they want to know when it is going to happen.  To which Jesus answers, “I don’t know.”

 

Instead, he tells his followers and disciples . . . keep watch, be prepared, be ready.  “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come . . . you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”  For those who are ready it will be no big deal . . . for those who are not, well, they will be left behind.  Jesus says, “Two men will be in the field; one will be taken the other left.  Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.”

 

Jesus tells them to keep watch, be prepared, and be ready.

 

And so it is that we kick off our first Sunday in the season of Advent with a message of preparation . . . a call to readiness.  This first season of the church’s liturgical calendar is a time of preparation for the celebration of the birth of Jesus . . . and, a call to preparation for the second coming of Jesus.  Each year we kick off the liturgical year with this season of preparation for the coming of Jesus . . . pretty much since the first century or at least of the establishment of the “church”.  Another year, another call to prepare.

 

Here we go again . . . one more time!

 

Someone once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  Are we followers of Jesus crazy?

 

 I don’t know.  But what I do know is the power of regret.  Regret can cripple us in our journeys . . . freeze us in our growth as God’s children . . . can stymie any relationship . . . and can keep us from ever realizing God’s Kingdom in our time and place.  As I read Jesus describing Noah and how the people were caught off guard . . . I get the feeling of regret.  As I hear him tell of two in the field and one gets left behind—regret.  Grinding at the mill and one gets left behind—regret.  Regret that they were not the ones who were saved.  And, I imagine, that they thought to themselves, “If I had only known.”

 

How often have we uttered that statement to ourselves during our lifetimes?  I have heard it more often than I care to over my lifetime.  I have heard a husband and wife say it at the death of their loved one . . . if I had only known, I would have done things differently.  We have all said it . . . if I had only known.  We have all felt the sting of regret.

 

If we had known, would we have done anything differently?

 

Well, here is the thing . . . the followers and disciples of Jesus did know.  They did know that Jesus was going to come back.  What they did not know was when he was going to come back.  Thus, he told them to be on the watch, be prepared, be ready.  Apparently for Jesus it was not just about doing business as usual because we see in two examples that people were doing just that and one got taken and the other was left behind.

 

What are the followers of Jesus supposed to do?

 

Primarily Jesus called upon his followers to live as he lived . . . to love God completely, to love others, and to establish God’s kingdom in their time and place.  As followers we are to do this.  While doing this we are to be “watchful”.  Watchful for what?  Watchful for those opportunities in which the love of God can be expressed in our daily lives towards others . . . of expressing the same grace showered upon us by God is showered upon those we encounter . . . of sharing the presence of Jesus with another.  We are to watch for those who are unloved . . . uncared for . . . left out . . . ostracized . . . forgotten.  They are all around us if we have eyes to see.

 

We are to be prepared.  Preparation begins with our own lives . . . inward and outward.  How is our relationship with God?  How is our prayer life?  Are we doing the things that strengthen our souls?  Are we pausing to allow the awesomeness of God and God’s creation to be discovered?  Are we studying and learning more about Jesus, his life, and his example?  And, lastly, are we practicing it on ourselves and others?  After all, practice makes perfect.

 

Lastly, we are to be ready.  I imagine that if we do those two things we will be as ready as we will ever be.  After that it is the grace of God . . . and that is how we go forth into the world, by the grace of God.

 

The way things are going I cannot say whether or not this is the end.  Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but I can say that like those Jesus is talking to in our scripture reading this morning—we know.  We have been warned.  Jesus is coming and we really have no room in our vocabulary for regret.  We know.  The time is now that we do what we would have done if we had known . . . because we do know.

 

As we enter into this season of Advent let us open our hearts to what we do know . . . God’s love for us . . . and let us explore its power to change the world to a better place as we make room, once again, for the coming of Jesus.  Let us be watchful, prepared, and ready.  Why wait for tomorrow when we can live it today as a gift to the One who is to come.  Amen.