Matthew 1:18-25
Two weeks ago, we heard Isaiah’s astonishing vision of hope: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks...” Last week we were treated to startling images of peace: “The wolf shall live with the lamb...and a little child shall lead them.” Those passages are probably more familiar to us than today’s, but, familiar or not, with this description of God’s appearance in the midst of wilderness, despair, and fear, Isaiah has outdone himself. It’s hard to imagine how we could improve on the majesty and poetry of this passage. Listen again:
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing...Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.”
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert...And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
A recent article in the Christian Century describes this time leading up to Christmas as “the numbing season.” As the author puts it: “There are the ceaseless rounds of Christmas parties, each requiring preparation of food and gift-buying, each surfeited with expectations of obligatory Christmas cheer. There is the flood of commerce, requiring a careful parsing of which are the newest and most "necessary" toys or clothes for children and grandchildren. There are the travel and the visits to family, spiked with all the stresses attendant upon such endeavors. Finally (and almost as an afterthought), there are added church responsibilities of nativity programs, Christmas Eve services and so forth.” [For us I would add the cookie sale, the Christmas tea, the Christmas Families projects...] The writer concludes, “No wonder many of us are likely to dread Christmas almost as much as we look forward to it.” (1)
If you think this sounds like an exaggeration, let me assure you, in my experience, it’s not. As hard as we may try to numb ourselves to the pain and dread and grief and, yes, fear, that surfaces for many of us this time of year, I often hear comments at church like, “I’m just not looking forward to the holidays this year.” “I wish we didn’t have to celebrate at all.” “This season is just too hard since...” since Dad died, since I lost my job, since the diagnosis, since my marriage is falling apart.
Lest we think that longing for God in the midst of our pain and despair is a new thing, remember that Isaiah too is speaking to a people in a numbing, wilderness season. And it is into this wilderness, this numbness that Isaiah speaks: “Be strong! Do not fear! Here is your God...God will come...God will come and save you!”
God will come. Hopefully, we believe at least that. In Jesus God came, in the Holy Spirit, God comes to us now; and someday, somehow, Christ will come again. Maybe what we fear the most, though, this time of year, in spite of our faith, is that for all the prophets’ glorious predictions, for all the lovely hymns about the child in the manger, God’s coming won’t change a thing. Our loved ones who died will still be gone, the job lost won’t magically be returned, the diagnosis won’t miraculously be reversed, the severed relationship won’t be restored. Christmas will come, God will come, and we will sing the songs and make the food and exchange the gifts, and our hearts will still be broken.
The preacher John Buchanan suggests that the whole Bible could be distilled into two words: “Fear not.” From the beginning until the end of the biblical story we constantly see human beings who are afraid and hear God, angels, and Jesus telling them they don’t need to be. Every time an angel appears, what’s the first thing they say: “Fear not!” “Do not be afraid!” And yet the shepherds in the fields were “sore afraid” the Bible tells us. Even Jesus’ disciples, who had the luxury of walking and talking and learning from Jesus, were constantly afraid -- that he could not save them from a storm at sea, that he was going to die and leave them alone...and when he did die, they were at first so afraid that they ran away from all the stories of the empty tomb and hid themselves in a locked room. (2)
So maybe instead of having Advent candles that stand for peace, hope, love, and joy, we should designate one for courage. After all, remember the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz? He was sure that he was a coward because he so often felt afraid. What he didn’t realize was that he displayed courage over and over again by acting in the face of fear. This is the very thing we are called to do this season, to move through Advent, through the pain and fear and numbness, toward the promise of God who is coming to save us.
Years ago, in Alaska, there was a visitors’ center built with the sole purpose of showcasing one of Alaska’s largest and most beautiful glaciers. A whole wall of windows faced the glacier, and huge curtains covered the windows. The idea was that a tour of the visitors center would end in front of the windows. After learning all about the glacier, the curtains would dramatically part and the visitors would get to see the magnificent sheet of ice for themselves.
Sadly, though, the effects of climate changed intervened. The windows are still there and the curtain still parts, but instead of a glacier, visitors see only a three-mile lake of water, much of which came from the glacier melting. (3)
Reading today’s passages together has the same effect. First we hear Isaiah’s dramatic proclamation: “Look! Here is your God! God will come...God will come and save you!” And then the curtain parts and THERE...IS...Joseph, a young man full of fear and despair. The woman he is supposed to marry is pregnant. He knows he isn’t the father. He’s going to take the high road, but because in that culture engagement was a contractual agreement, he’s going to have to officially break the contract, in other words, divorce her. No matter how quietly he does that, it’s a small town. People are going to know, and people are going to talk.
Then, in the middle of one of many nights of fitful sleep, Joseph has an extraordinary dream in which the Lord speaks to him and essentially repeats the words of Isaiah: “Be strong. Do not fear. Look! Here is your God. God is coming to save you...to save everyone.” But in this version, gone is the drama, gone is the transformation of all creation, gone are the blind who see, the deaf who hear, the lame who leap, and the mute who sing. In this version, there is simply a young, pregnant woman, and a young man willing to stake his reputation on a dream. In this version, God is coming not in power and might and glory, but the same way all of do, growing in a woman’s womb. Yes, here is our God, who is coming to save us, but certainly not in the way we might have expected or even hoped.
Near the end of World War II, the Allies gathered together many of the English children who had been orphaned during the war. They provided the children with three meals a day and a bed to sleep in at night. The problem was, the children couldn’t sleep. After all the trauma they had been through -- the bombings, the loss of their parents, hunger and malnutrition, they simply were afraid to close their eyes and go to sleep; after all, who knew what the night might bring. Who knew if they would get to eat again tomorrow. After weeks of this, someone suggested that each child be given a piece of bread at night, a piece they could hold onto while they slept, a tangible reminder that they had eaten today and they would eat again tomorrow, that they could close their eyes, even in the face of all the fear and tragedy around them, they could hold their bread, and close their eyes, and sleep in peace.
A piece of bread. It may not sound like much, but it gave those children the courage they needed to sleep through the night in the face of the fear and uncertainty they faced. Joseph was a faithful Jew. He knew the prophets and the predictions. He trusted that someday God’s Messiah would come to save God’s people. What he got instead was little more than a piece of bread. As Joseph’s hopes for his future crumbled, he got a promise from God that, “it’s not the way you thought I would come, but this is how I am coming to be with you, to be one of you, to save you...to save the world.”
Advent and Christmas do not come each year to take away our fears, they come to offer us something to hold onto that we too might have courage. Look! you who are grieving! Look! you who are afraid of what the future holds. Look! you who struggle to find hope or peace or anything like joy. Look! Here is your God. God is coming...as one of us. To be with us. To stand with us in our pain and grief and fear, and, yes, in our courage. It may not be what we expected, even what we hoped for. But this year, may it be enough. Amen.
Endnotes:
1. Rodney Clapp, The Christian Century, Dec. 8, 2010. Synopsis online here.
2. John Buchanan, Journal for Preachers, Vol. 24, No. 1, Advent 2010, p. 11.
3. Barbara R. Rossing, Journeys Through Revelation, 2010-2011 Horizons Bible Study, pp.31-32.
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