Fourth Sunday in Advent, 12/18/2016

Sermon on Matthew 1:18-25, by Hubert Beck

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version,

© 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.

Used by permission. All rights reserved.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

 

If I were to ask you what the status of your preparations for Christmas is at this moment, I would be mightily surprised to hear even a third of you say, “Everything is in order. We are ready for the coming of Christmas.”

The month of December prior to the twenty-fifth day is, for most people, a frenzied time – and by this time of the month, only a week before the appointed time, “frantic” might be an even more descriptive word for many people’s state of affairs.

What the church calls “the Advent Season” is more aptly called “the Turbulently Harried Season” in worldly terms. Everything becomes more and more rushed with every day – rush to shop, rush to get the decorations up, rush to meet social expectations and gatherings, rush to bake Christmas goodies, rush, rush, rush everywhere for everything imaginable.

This is a season of predicaments, then. What to do first? What to do next? What to do after that? Is it even possible to get everything done on time?

JOSEPH’S PREDICAMENT

Joseph, the projected husband of the young maiden Mary, had, like children of today, been filled with high anticipation in the weeks before the day reported in our text. His, however, was the anticipation of bringing a bride into his home. The first of at least two (if not more) levels of preparation prescribed by Jewish law for the day of marriage had been properly kept by this time. The day when he would bring his bride to his home and bed was now rapidly nearing, and his heart leapt with anticipation and joy at the prospect.

Until – until an unexpected announcement was made – an announcement that would dash all his hopes and happiness onto the rocks of disappointment. It was, to say the least, a startling revelation that came completely out of the blue.

“Joseph,” his joy and delight had said, “I am with child!”

“With child?!?!?!?” Joseph had responded. “Certainly not mine! Whose, then?”

The more she told him about an angel appearing with an unforeseen message and a humble but accepting reception of the messenger and the message, the more preposterous it all sounded. Never in all the history of humankind known to Joseph had anything like this ever happened. It had to be an outrageous justification concocted by the father of this child and the young woman who stood before him. Either that or an absolute delusion had come upon her in the aftershock of a bewildering moral breakdown that had taken place in a weak moment when all her deeply engrained principles had failed her.

But what about Joseph’s principles? He was “a just man,” and that required him to deal with this shock in a proper way. The religious laws by which he lived permitted him to put her to public shame – even to have her stoned to death. But he, righteous man that he was, chose to deal with this blow to his pride – and to his future – in a more kindly and humane way – if there could be a more kindly and humane way to do what he now felt compelled to do.

Of course, he, too, was, as they say, “between a rock and a hard place.” If he renounced his pledge to her, i.e., “divorced her quietly,” which, in his mind, was the best thing to do, his own reputation was at stake along with hers, for the “rumor mill” would without fail point to the poor decision-maker he had turned out to be in failing to discern his promised one’s “weakness.” On the other hand, if he chose to go through with the marriage, the same “rumor mill” would snickeringly point to a birth at considerably less than an expected nine months following the marriage – and that would incriminate him, the “just man,” as having had intercourse with his “intended” before they had been properly married! He felt trapped whichever way he chose to act.

To “divorce her quietly” was impossible, however, for everybody knew that they had been promised to one another for quite a long time before this, so how could a divorce take place “quietly”? His name and reputation was already inseparably tied to what he chose to do with his now pregnantly unfaithful spouse (for “betrothal,” “engagement,” or whatever one calls it was tantamount to marriage in that society). Mary was at his mercy . . . but so was his own name and reputation. In what a hard place he found himself.

Yes, indeed. There was no end to the “problems” that had suddenly fallen upon a once peaceful and hopeful world within which that couple had formerly lived. The days before a birth that eventually would be celebrated throughout the world, although presently seeming to be only a privately shameful situation, was filled with problems. For both – Joseph, deciding what to do with his formerly-intended and for Mary, who knew she was “at the mercy” of Joseph, for she had no future in Nazareth if she gave birth to a child whose father was unnamed. The days must have been agonizing for both of them.

Neither was getting ready for a happy celebration upon the birth of the child. Yes, there were “baby things” to have ready and notices of a birth to be prepared at the appropriate time, but none of them was being done with anything resembling joy and gladness. All was solemnly carried out with little more than sadness and regret – even though Mary, herself – and only herself – could at least remember the time when her pregnancy was first inaugurated by the Holy Spirit announced by the angel who had appeared to her. But that seemed so long ago now! Her pregnancy, which had been initiated with a willing spirit on her part even though under the strangest of circumstances, had opened a Pandora’s Box of troubles and sadnesses. No “Advent hope” was to be found in either home!

There was little help to the expectant mother for society would frown harshly on a divorced mother of a child whose father remained unnamed. And the one divorcing her was not much help to her, either, in spite of his trying to do what needed to be done as unobtrusively as possible.

HELP ARRIVES! A DIVINE INTERVENTION TAKES PLACE! THE PROBLEM IS SOLVED! WELL, ALMOST!

“As Joseph considered these things,” we are told, God ended his considerations by putting an end to the problem. An angel appeared – very likely the same one whom God had sent to Mary – to confirm Mary’s version of the events leading to her pregnancy. This time, though, the angel spoke to him in a dream. “Do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

It must have come as a considerable relief to hear the angel say that Mary had been faithful to him all along and that she had reported the origin of her pregnancy truthfully. Everything that he had projected in his mind as a “problem” now suddenly came to a resolution. And what a resolution it was! He had been called to be the “guardian” of a son who was to be given a particular name – a name reflecting Joseph’s very own ancestry as a “son of David,” the great king who had put Israel on the world map!

Yet his name was neither to reflect Joseph directly nor David indirectly. He was named very specifically by the angel: “Jesus.” “He will save his people from their sins” the angel had promised.

Moreover, the baby was to be an “Immanuel,” “God with us.” The angel pointed out that this had been played out once before. At a much earlier time a maiden, along with the whole nation of Israel in the time of Ahaz, the king at the time, had been commanded to call her child of that time “Immanuel,” (which was to say “God with us”). This name was to be a reflection of the way God had been at work in the midst of a difficult time in Israel. Those times were interpreted through the name commanded through the prophet Isaiah who had set forth the promise of God to carry out an imminent divine intervention in the affairs of the nation, delivering Israel from the derisive threats being made by surrounding nations.

Now, in a much, much larger way (although it was actually as small as a newborn child), Joseph was to call the one to be born of Mary by a name signifying a divine deliverance from all that had bound the whole world in the chains of sin and death from the time that humans had severed their relationship with their Creator! It must have taken some time and thoughtfulness for Joseph to digest all this! It is, in fact, almost more than we, ourselves, after all the centuries since then, can fully digest.

By now, however, Joseph had been taught a lesson by his beloved – namely, trust God when he speaks and act devotedly when he instructs. After all, she had done both, had placed herself in human jeopardy by her betrothed in particular and by the society around her in general if God had not granted her a “guardian.” She had been right in submitting to God’s word then – and Joseph now followed in her footsteps, taking her as his bride without consummation of the marriage until the child was born.

THE RESULT?!?!?!

“Joseph did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.” The two were united again, but now on a still deeper plain than before. Before they had been united on a covenantal level as a maiden promised to a righteous man. Now they were united in the Lord, who had, himself, become the Promiser of a Promised One to United Believers, each of whom was faithful to the other as a Bearer and a Protector of the Promised One!

How marvelously God had resolved the predicament for each of them – and for all humankind at the same time.

THE STORY IN A NUTSHELL

That’s it, then! The whole Christmas story in seven verses, although the birth as such was mentioned directly and specifically in only three of those seven verses! “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. . . . When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.” That was all there was to the story of Christ’s birth according to St. Matthew! What more was needed, after all. The whole story was wrapped up in the names given the child! The story as such was so simple!

Nothing elaborate.

No detail.

No drama.

No angels in the sky.

No manger or animals standing watch over him.

No shepherds to hear the angels and come to see him.

Not even much about Mary.

Only an angel assuring Joseph that the child would be who Mary had said he would be.

Just a mother and a father naming a child in accord with instructions from an angel.

There is a certain focus on the names to be attached to the child, though! One dare not overlook those names!

THE NAMES! – DON’T OVERLOOK THE NAMES!

“You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” So spoke the angel.

Did Joseph have any idea of what all was packed into that name?

Could he have even dimly imagined that the one who bore that name would one day (long after Joseph had died so far as we can tell) become the most widely known man in the whole country – known for healing words and tender hands; known for expressing a deep care and having a receptive heart for people of every kind; known for confronting the religious powerhouses of his time, calling them to task for turning their vocations into humanly established forms of religion and using their positions to pursue self-serving ways rather than carrying out the godly ways that had been entrusted to them; known for his wisdom and insights into the word and way of the Lord far beyond the wisest of their rabbis and priests; known for his unwillingness to shun death when the religious authorities threatened him with it?

Would he have spoken the name “Savior” over this newborn child if he had had the most remote understanding of what that word meant for the future of this baby? Would he have so glibly answered the question “How is this child to be named?” if he had the slightest recognition that he would be “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” ^{Isaiah 53:3} Would he have shuddered to look upon this infant with eyes that would see nail marks forming in his tiny hands and feet from the time of his birth – the marks of one who was to “bear our griefs and carry our sorrows?” ^{Isaiah 53:4}

Surely Joseph must have had high hopes for this youngster whose ancestral name “son of David” was to be joined to yet another name: “’Immanuel, which means ‘God with us.’” “God with us,” mind you! A name given to another child by a prophet in the long-ago when Israel faced imminent catastrophe as one who would be so-named because of a great deliverance from almost certain disaster! Joseph must have looked into that little child lying in the hay of an animal’s feeding trough and dreamed big things for this child of a virgin called “God with us.” But could he have, in his wildest imaginations, known what deliverance from an imminent catastrophe of sin and death this child would bring about as “God with us,” “Jesus,” “Savior”?

THE FUTURE OF THE CHILD

Yes, the names. Do not overlook the names. But do not misread them as Joseph undoubtedly misread them.

They speak of many things – of illness and lameness healed and hunger assuaged; of acceptance offered to very unlikely people and forgiveness offered to sinful people; of parables and sayings opening windows into the “kingdom of heaven.” But they also speak of rejection and denunciation; of denial and betrayal; of oppression and persecution; and eventually, of course, a severe whipping and a death-dealing cross.

All those things and more were wrapped up in those names given him at his birth.

And all of that for us – for you and me, mind you! An innocent-looking child grown into a man whose burden was the sin of all humankind! The names tell it all. But neither Joseph nor Mary had any inkling of all this when “she gave birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.”

BACK TO OUR OWN DAY

Is this the child for whose birth you have been preparing in recent days and weeks? Have your fervently frantic lives been focused on this child – or have they been swallowed up by everything from wondering what to get for whom and will they like it and is it possible that you will have everything put together rightly for the grand celebration of gift-giving and sharing Christmas goodies and family gatherings and all that goes with the naming of Christmas as “the grandest time of the year”? How many problems have you encountered in these frenzied attempts at having all the gifts brightly wrapped and the tree properly decorated, in the midst of which you found all those efforts rather unhappily interrupted by an hour or so in an Advent service or two that you felt compelled to attend? After all, one should pay God his dues, should one not? But then back to the real world of preparing for Christmas as the world says it should be celebrated!

Joseph and Mary momentarily encountered a monumental problem until God broke into their lives, sorted everything out, and gave them a time of peaceful preparation for a child that had been “conceived in her from the Holy Spirit” to be born – even if it was in as unlikely a place as a manger in Bethlehem. Is it possible that God is trying to break into your world with a calming of the problems you are facing as the day of Christmas comes barreling down on you? His angels are also still at work bringing peaceful resolution to all the problems we make for ourselves.

They named the child Jesus, Savior, Immanuel, God with us. What name dominates your lives as you prepare to celebrate the coming of the child whose birthing time is due next Sunday.?

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.