“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!