December 19, 2004
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| In The
Promised Light Fourth Sunday of
Advent The banners designed by former choir director Stan Lepley and made by our former member Mary Lou Voneida now adorn the front of our sanctuary. Stan and Mary Lou have both gone to their eternal rest, but their creative work lives on to announce that the brightening light for which we wait is within sight for us. Today is the fourth Sunday in Advent. The season of expectation as we wait for the light of God to come to us is nearly ended. As we have heard as the candles of the season have been lit, Advent is about hope – we have some good things to look forward to in this church and in our lives. It is about peace – shalom, well-being, and completeness. Advent is about joy – we can know and serve God and find pleasure in doing so, and we can find pleasure and thanksgiving to God as we share in community together. Today we learned that Advent is about love; it is about feeling deeply and passionately for the world, committing our selves to another, and being a stakeholder, an interested and active participant in what happens to us. Advent invites us to let go of our fear of the unexpected so we can take on a sense of trust that even in the most unusual circumstances, God is with us to give us what we need. The question for us is how much do we trust God to be with us as we walk through some unexpected places into the promised light? We know now that the light we seek is Jesus. We also know that in some ways, Jesus, the light, the savior, the Messiah will always defy easy explanation. One writer says: “In any season of its life, the church has struggled to recognize, identify, and ‘explain’ Jesus. But it never can do so adequately. Jesus is larger than life. Jesus shatters all the categories of conventional religious recognition. Thus the stories of him are pushed to daring testimony, which seeks to honor the concreteness of the coming one, but at the same time honors the inscrutable, sovereign mystery that is present in the person of Jesus “ (Texts for Preaching – Year A. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995, p.28). Parents know that sooner or later, every child is going to ask a question that will cause you to wrack your brain for the right age-appropriate answer. “Mommy, Daddy, where did I come from”? As the story of Jesus was told, beginning with his resurrection and ministry, the non-believing world asked, where did Jesus come from? They said to the leaders of the church, “You say Jesus is the light that will give brightness to a dark world. But what kind of Messiah is this? We have been hearing strange things about his birth. There are rumors of scandal – who was his father anyway? Besides, he is not rich, he is not a soldier, his birthplace was not noble, his family is unusual –what is up with Jesus. Where did you say he came from”? The story of Jesus is indeed bold testimony, and no one has a bolder testimony about the birth of Jesus than Matthew. Matthew lays out fourteen generations of earthly ancestry for Jesus, beginning with Abraham. Then he simply tells a story that answers the question of who Jesus is, when he came from and what he will do. Matthew tells the story from the point of view of Joseph in part to show us how it is that he can show that Jesus stands in the lineage of David through Joseph, and so that we can see the kind of man Joseph was. Joseph has heard that Mary, his fiancé will soon give birth to a child and he is anxious because they have not been intimate in that way. He understands the customs of the day, and he understands that something has gone terribly wrong. He knows that “Jewish marriages were often arranged by parents, often when the children were still young. Before the actual marriage ceremony, couples began a year-long betrothal very much like marriage except for sexual rights. Betrothal was binding, and could be terminated only by death or divorce. A person whose betrothed died was considered to be widow or widower” (www.lectionary.org/matthew p, 2). Joseph is not quite ready to accept the claim of conception by the Holy Spirit. It’s just too strange, it makes no sense, he can’t quite figure it out. But he does not want to impose public humiliation on Mary. He would be within his legal right to bring a charge of adultery against her, the penalty for which would be death (Deuteronomy 22.23-24). But not wishing a Jerry Springer/ Maury Povich kind of episode, he decides to end things quietly. He is anxious, but resolute. The question in Advent, for us as we face our time of anxiety and uncertainty is this: do we trust that God is with us? As he comes to us, Jesus the light will help us deal with our anxiety, especially when the unexpected happens, and the unexpected is whatever we didn’t plan to happen. It is the bad news that sends the blood rushing from our brain so that for a moment we cannot hear, or speak, or see, or even stand. Anxiety raises up panic in us, it makes us act in irrational ways, it can so overwhelm us that we do what Joseph did. We take to our beds because sleep is the great escape, and it is so much better than being awake in the swirl of stuff we are facing. But even then, in his sleep is fitful. Have you ever had a night of uneasy sleep? You tossed and turned thinking as you slept restlessly of how to a some problem? That is what happened with Joseph. He is thinking how to arrange for a quiet divorce, and of how to rearrange his own life, an angel comes to remind Joseph and us with a word of assurance. “Joseph, it will be OK, don’t be afraid to go on with the marriage. There is no scandal here, just God doing what has never been done before. God is getting ready to come into the world in human form, through your betrothed, the promised light is coming”! This child will be, “God with us”, he will be Emmanuel. Do we trust God to bring us a word of assurance, “it will be OK, it is hard now, but this time will not lasts always, but as long as it last, and beyond, I am here”. Dream a world filled with the assurance of God. Let the presence of the Holy Spirit calm your spirit as we join together to pray and plan, worship and work, give and grow together. We walk in the promised light, the one who saves is so close we can almost touch him, and we are not alone. God’s angelic message is affirmed when Joseph wakes up, obeys the instruction of the angel, he got married, and shared no physical intimacy with Mary until after the child is born. he named him Jesus. Matthew tells the story simply. We will hear from Luke the story of shepherds and angels, mangers and heavenly hosts singing Friday night when we gather for our Christmas Eve service. Still we hear Joseph asking, “why me, why him, why here, why her? It is a strange way to save the world, but it is the way God has chosen and it is the reason we celebrate today in the promised light of Jesus Christ. Joseph learns that he is in the right place at the right time, and he is not left to himself. God is blessing him, God is with him. A son will be born, just as Isaiah said. And when he is, Joseph will do what fathers do, he will name the child, he will call him Jesus as the angel instructed him to do. “The name Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew Yehosua – Joshua which means “YHWH”, is salvation – God saves. The first Joshua saved people from their enemies, the second Joshua – Jesus, will save people from their sins” (lectionary.org, p. 3-4). Joseph is a model of discipleship for us. He shows us what Matthew hopes all believers in Jesus will do. “He finds himself in the tension between the common understanding of God’s commandments, (“put the sinful woman away” – and the new thing that God is doing in Jesus – (“do not be afraid, God is in charge and will show you a new and marvelous thing”). In a difficult moral situation, Joseph attend to the voice of God, and he is willing to set aside his previous understanding of God’s will in favor of this new word from the living and saving God” (New Interpreter’s Bible. Volume VIII, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995, p. 136-137). Matthew shows us that the pattern for our salvation was established at his birth as Jesus was born in the midst of anxiety, as he brings us the assurance of God, and as God affirms in him what Corinthians declares, “all of the promises of God find their yes in him” (II Corinthians 1.20). God affirmed through divine activity what Joseph dreamed of; we have that same assurance that God’s promises are true and can be trusted. It helps us in our own anxious moments to hear that Jesus will be born in our hearts again, that he will take away our sins, our separation from God, our breaking faith with each other, our selfishness that seeks our own good, without any thought about how what we do impacts others. We can rejoice today, because the source of salvation, Jesus Christ whose Advent we observe is already here. As he comes to us, Jesus will be Emmanuel, God with us. “He is not a character from the past, limited to life in three decades on earth, living and working like Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, and Judea. Jesus is the presence of God, accompanying the church in its mission, energizing its teaching and pioneering its efforts to make disciples of all nations” (Texts for Preaching, p. 36). It is the power of God with us that keeps us hopeful, peaceful, joyful and loving. It is God with us that will help us to know what is true in these days. I heard the South African theologian Allan Boesak declare these truths of Jesus Christ several years ago. His words ring out still today in words we have heard in this season. Because God is with us in Jesus Christ: “It is not true that this world and its people are doomed to die and to be lost. This is true: I have come that they may have life in all its abundance. “It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction. This is true: the deaf hear the dead are raised to life, and the poor are hearing good news. “It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction have come to stay forever. This is true: death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning or crying nor pain anymore. “It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek to rule the world. This is true: the Lord whom we seek will suddenly come to the temple and the Lord is like a refiner’s fire. “It is not true that our dreams of liberation, of human dignity for all people, are not meant for this earth and for this history. This is true: it is already time for us to wake from sleep. For the night is far gone, the day is at hand. (Imaging the Word, volume 2. Cleveland: United Church Press. 1995, p.95). We are called in this Advent and Christmas season to join our voices to the chorus of faithful believers who will declare boldly that in ways mysterious and glorious, the Light of the World has come, and because the light is here, we can live with the blessed affirmation that we belong to him, and because we do, the light shines in us. Thanks be to God. Amen. Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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