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Sunday, December 18, 2016

“Angel…in a Dream”

A Sermon Based Upon Matthew 1: 18-25
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Advent A-4,  December 18th, 2016 


Today we finally come to Bethlehem to the excitement of that very first Christmas.   The good news of gospel really begins: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place this way…”

Can you think of a better beginning than to anticipate the birth of a baby?  Christmas memories take me back to moment we adopted our daughter.  We had been on waiting list for several years.   Then, the day after hurricane Hugo came through, a social worker knocked on our door offering us a precious fifteen month old girl.   I cried when they took her back after a weekend ‘trial’ run. 

It was wintertime.   We gave her a swimming pool and sliding board for Christmas, then filled in up in the kitchen and watched her slide and splash all over the place.   We couldn’t wait.  We couldn’t wait to take her to visit family.  We couldn’t wait to go camping together.  We couldn’t wait to drive to Disney World.   It was a wonderful, magical, delightful time.  And it’s almost as if children come with Christmas ‘built’ right in.  They bring us the gift of the unexpected, the unanticipated and the unpredictable.  Isn’t that what we all love about children, but too much unpredictability can also scare us half to death!

SHE WAS FOUND TO BE WITH CHILD…
What was so unpredictable and scary about the ‘birth’ of Jesus was not the delivery, but the conception.   Matthew tells us that when Mary was ‘engaged’ to Joseph, ‘before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.’ (v.18).   

I know we want to get to the delivery room, but we need to linger a bit with this very problematic ‘conception’.   What happened to Joseph just didn’t look good.   Why did the Holy Spirit not come to both of them?  Why was Joseph not informed?  Why so much drama?  Could this miraculous conception have not have happened a less threatening way?  Of course, Matthew wants us to know there had been ‘NO marital relations’ (v.25).  “Joseph did not have relations with that woman.   Sound familiar?   

But there is no ‘cover up’ going on here.   Matthew wants us to know that a prophet predicted this: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son…’ (v. 23, Isaiah 7:14).  These are the final conclusions of the gospel ‘court’, but before this Joseph made a very different conclusion of his own.    As her betrothed ‘husband’ and a ‘righteous man,’ Joseph could have had Mary stoned for this, as the law allowed (Lev. 20:10), but being ‘unwilling to expose her’ he ‘planned to dismiss her quietly’ and privately.   To preserve all question of his rightness, he’ll them woman and her baby, die a slow, shameful death.

Can’t you see how this conception put Joseph and his reputation into a tight and embarrassing spot?   This is what Matthew wants us to see because his story comes exclusively from Joseph’s perspective.  Matthew takes the ‘family tree,’ or ‘the pedigree’ of Jesus right through Joseph (1.16), linking them both with the royal line of David (1.20).  At that time, the Herod family was running Jerusalem.  They were illegitimate rulers, put in place as ‘puppets’ by Roman authority.  Joseph’s family should be running things, but they have no power, no wealth, and no influence.  Joseph only had his good name.  Was God taking this away from him too? 

What is even greater than the ‘strangeness’ of believing in in the virgin birth,  is ‘how’ God choose to come into the world, through an engaged, unmarried couple.  The timing is problematic.  Things are complicated.   Whatever label you want to put on it, it was an unexpected, unplanned, and unwanted pregnancy.   Mary and Joseph, as Matthew shows us, were put under a lot of stress.

But when I read Christmas from Joseph’s perspective, I can only imagine that there are many unexpected, unplanned and unwanted ‘pregnancies’ which cause similar anxieties and problems.   There are still pregnancies and ‘births’ that get in the way, threaten our schedules, testing our beliefs about what is right or best.   Any pregnancy can bring difficulty, but when you are not married, this stuff brings even more shame.  The family will not be pleased.  People will talk.  Should we abort?  Should we shun?  Help!

Good religion and personal righteousness is supposed to prevent such ‘disgraceful’ things from happening.  Couldn’t this Immaculate Conception have avoided all this misperception?  Why would God go against ‘True Love Waits’!  Had only God informed Joseph first?   It does make Joseph look a lot like his ancestor Abraham, having to dismiss Hagar out into the wilderness to keep the promise pure (Gen. 21).  But it could get ugly.  The righteous are not supposed to have children like this.   Is it any wonder Matthew, in contrast to Luke, gave us the genealogy at the first.   He’s not merely giving us history or prophecy, but isn’t it legitimacy that he’s after.  Everybody’s talking.  Is Joseph really the father?  Now, Joseph knows he not the Father?  To him this baby is illegitimate.  He’s wondering awfully close to what people are still wondering about the baby too: Can this Christmas ‘baby’ be legitimate?  Is such a misconception any way to begin a marriage, start a life, or find the gospel?   Why does this ‘birth’ begin ‘this way’ (1.18).

AN ANGEL OF THE LORD APPEARRED
But strangely enough (and this story is much like life, very strange), sometimes God does not go with the program, or the plan—even interrupting some of the best of human plans.  Remember what the poet, Robert Burns, wrote, when after ploughing in a field, he had upturned a little mouse’s nest.  He then wrote an apology to the mouse, saying “Little mouse, you aren’t alone… the best laid schemes of mice and men often go wrong, leaving us with nothing but grief and pain, instead of the promised joy….” (http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-best-laid-schemes-of-mice-and-men.html).  

According to Matthew, before Joseph could get excited about this baby, he had to carry some pain and grief all by himself.   His ‘questioning’ and ‘fear’ hardly takes up a single verse in the text, but the moment must have seemed long and life-wrecking to him.   And when you think about it, just like Easter, Christmas began in a difficult and dark moment of worrying and wondering about what to do next.   Why God works this way, through a crucifixion, a puzzling paternity, or with all other kinds of difficult events, uncomfortable realities, or unanswerable questions, is still a ‘deal breaker’ for some.    If God is God, why can’t he tidy things up, at least a bit?   If God is God, why can’t he make life easier, better, and less complicated?    We’ve all asked ourselves such questions.  We’ve all been in such moments, even worse, when nothing in our lives seems legitimate.  Maybe this is why so many people leave this original story out of their own Christmas.   We start our own ‘nice’ family traditions and crowd this story out.  You can certainly clean up a ‘secular’ Christmas with all kinds of fairy tales, but the sacred story remains stubbornly messy, just like life.  It gets close, far ‘under our skin’, and we’d prefer to move beyond it.  And what does it really solve?   A Christmas that serves our needs, represses our fears,  substitutes for what’s going on around us,  full of ‘dreams’ of ‘sugar plum fairies’ and a whole lot of other ‘magical’ stuff, can be better, right?  

I understand perfectly how Joseph might have never accepted this very different ‘conception’ of Christmas, had not an ‘angel’ come to console:  “Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife…”   Don’t be a afraid of this unwanted pregnancy.  Don’t be afraid of things not turning out as you planned.   Don’t be afraid of Mary’s baby, Joseph.   Yes, it looks bad.  Yes, people will talk.  Yes, your family won’t like it.  No, this is not going to be easy, but, the angel in a dream says, that this ‘strange’, difficult, crazy mess you about to wade through is from God: ‘the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit….’ (1:20).  “She will bear a son…you are to name him Jesus,  for he will save his people from their sins” (1:21).    While I don’t know exactly how Joseph dreamed of this ‘angel’, I surely don’t think Joseph would have ever dreamed all this up.   Everything the angel told him went against what he’d been taught was righteous and proper.  Joseph was the kind of man who would not have allowed this ‘mess’ to continue without being convinced of something even more unusual abd amazing: that this strange, shameful, even scandalous scenario, could also be God’s own saving work.   

It is this very strange saving, forgiving, and redeeming work of God, that always remains beyond all ‘human control’ that still takes some getting used to.  In the middle of this very ‘unpredictable’ moment, neither Joseph nor Mary are in control, but the Holy Spirit is calling the shots, conceiving God’s purpose, and calling his chosen ones to respond to these events in a very different way.   For we read that ‘just when (Joseph) had resolved to do this’—dismissing Mary, dismissing Jesus, which would dismiss everything God was up to,  that ‘an angel of the Lord appeared…’  instructing Joseph to decide differently.   And this angel is telling Joseph not to fear, even when everything appears to go against all the social, ethical, and religious norms of his day: “The child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit’.   Don’t you find it at least a little bit ironic, that this child who looks to have been ‘conceived’ in sin, at least to Joseph, is now being announced as the very one ‘who will save his people from their sins?’   Who, would ever have conceived of a conception just like this?  

“THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME EMMANUEL…”
Finally, this ‘angel in a dream’ should remind us of another ‘miraculous conception’ as it happened before.   That ‘birth announcement’ was also given by angels—that is, heavenly messengers, who were simply described as ‘three men’ (Gen. 18:2) who one day just showed up at Abraham’s tent.  These ‘angels’ were strangers, visitors, looking like just about anybody, except that they were travelers on the road of life, hoping to receive a small token of helpful hospitality.  The story in Genesis makes you wonder: Will Abraham invite them in? 

These kinds of unexpected visitors are still considered, at least in the sacred story of Scripture, a kind of spiritual test---that is, a ‘test’ of entertaining ‘angels unaware.’  (Heb. 13.2).   These ‘angels’ are strangers or visitors sent to us from God to keep us following Jesus by faith, help us overcome our fears,  and give us hope, no matter how bad everything around us looks.   When these uninvited ‘visitors’ come, they can help us conceive how the saving work of God can still be found in the most unusual, unexpected, and maybe even unwanted people and places.   And only when we follow God through these strange, unwanted moments, and entertain such ‘unexpected’ visitors, will we also, like Abraham, and like Joseph, open ourselves to knowing that “God is with us” (v.23).

When the youth our church in Greensboro, decided to help at the Soup Kitchen located downtown,  I wanted to go with them on their first assignment.   The intercity-mission was located in an old abandoned school, and they also had started a church there, where lots of doctors, lawyers and other prominent folks participated in the ministry, and worshiped alongside of these folks who were down and out. 

When we arrived that evening, the youth took their positions serving the food, and was invited to take a tray and set down and eat with some of Greensboro’s homeless who came to get a warm meal that evening.   When found a place to sit, at first I felt a bit uncomfortable, but it wasn’t along until the folks at the table, started a delightful conversation with me.   I just couldn’t believe how hungry, not physically, but spiritually hungry and interesting they were.  I moved from table to table all evening.  After the serving was over, I went up to the mission’s director to tell him, that even as a missionary and pastor, how surprised I was that level of ‘spiritual’ conversation I had that evening.  “Yes, pastor,” he answerd.  “You’ll find that most of these people who come here are often more spiritually aware and attuned, and understand what really matters and what doesn’t in life, than most of church folk and most of you preachers and your sermons too, for that matter.  You come to ‘feed them’ and it’s not long until you realize that they are feeding you.  You come in to share with them about God, and you discover God is already here, way ahead, waiting just for for you.  And you realize, also, why so many lawyers, doctors, bankers and other professionals, like come here and participate in this ministry.   Here, they know that they are ‘entertaining angels unaware.’

Isn’t there something about Christmas that doesn’t happen, can’t happen, won’t happen, without us allowing ‘visitors’ and strangers into our very comfortable lives.  Such visitors often remain ‘invisible’ to us until we are willing to awaken to how God is still sending them as uninvited guests among the least, the last, and the lost around us (see Matthew 24: 31-46).   Could God be conceived, not in heaven, but here among us, calling  us  beyond our own self-centeredness, our smallness, and our selfishness and also inviting us to respond to some visitor, or stranger with real grace, actual kindness, and understanding love.   Some ‘angelic’ visitor just might interrupt your own plan for Christmas too, but if you will dare to stop and ‘entertain’ them, even for a brief moment, you too may come to sense the nearness and presence of God.   But this only happened to Joseph when he swallowed his own pre-conceived notions of what was holy and right, allowing the Spirit, who alone is Holy, to enable him to conceive of God’s work in him, in a new, surprising, and unforeseen way. 

So, let me ask, what are you ‘dreaming’ about this Christmas?   Does it preclude, or include an angelic visit from God.  I’m not referring to angels with big fluffy, feather ‘wings’ or halos, which we see delightfully floating around mangers this time of year, but I’m talking about ‘angels’ that could look like hungry, hurting people, waiting for ‘whoever’ will dare to stop, invite them in, give them the gift, offer them a place at the table, make them a plate to share, or just offer them your time and your bodily presence.   This angel looks a lot less like Gabriel, than like a lonely man in a nursing home.  She looks like a mother who just lost her child, her husband, or her last dear friend.   This angel might look like a child, who doesn’t have a chance on their own.   None of them, even Mary and this baby named Jesus, would have had a chance, unless someone, like Joseph, would give them a place in his heart.  


This Christmas, I invite you to hear again how this angel told Joseph not to ‘dismiss’ this God, who come to meet him, in some very real, very needy, and very helpless, human flesh and blood.   If you allow an angel to tell you too, what that angel told Joseph in a dream,  you will find this Christmas, and anytime you ‘entertain’ such angels, that God is closer to us, right now, that we could ever dream.   Amen.

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