Take Courage - on the 4th Sunday of Advent, year A

Isaiah 7: 10 – 16

Matthew 1: 18 - 25

Our text from the Hebrew scripture today is a backdrop for the hopes and expectations of the Jewish people across centuries and at the time of the announcement to Mary and to Joseph of Jesus’ birth. 

They have lived for centuries in political turmoil, promised deliverance, promised a miracle, a person born to a young girl, who will be their savior, their messiah, the one who turns the world right-side-up again.

Into this promise come angels to Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, Zechariah. 

Mary gets a lot of lines, relatively speaking, across the gospels…I mean, not a lot, but a lot compared to Joseph.  Who gets exactly NO WORDS.

Yes….He doesn’t even speak…

(Some day we can explore the fact that Zechariah is struck mute for speaking in disbelief…so the men are wordless while the women bear the promise…but that is a conversation for another time.)

Make no mistake, without words, without words recorded for our reading, Joseph’s actions speak all the more loudly.

In fact they thunder.

They make the story work.

God asks something unthinkable of Joseph – something culturally unimaginable. Through an angel of the LORD, Joseph is asked to take Mary as his wife in spite of the fact that she is unwed and mysteriously already with child.

God asks that Joseph put his reputation on the line.  Because folks have always been able to do the math.  My mother’s earthy wisdom was that the first one comes anytime, and after that it takes 9 months…

People would do, could do and I assume did do the math.  Either this baby was the product of a sexual relationship between Joseph and Mary prior to marriage OR it was the result of another relationship.

In a conversation about this text, a colleague recounted a dramatic interpretation in which each character shed their historical period clothing throughout the story and eventually ended up in modern dress.  Mary was a high school cheerleader. Joseph was in a business suit.  Take that in.  That is the space that likely existed societally between this young maiden and the man to whom she was promised.

And now she’s pregnant.  And Joseph, you’re not the father.  But marry her anyway.  Because…well, because God has done this thing.

All of it scandalous.

God asks Joseph to risk disgrace…

Public Disgrace.

Dis-grace.

Ironic, then, to become the day-to-day father of one who ushered in new life for you  and for me.  Ironic then to manage the baby – toddler - tweener - adolescent and young adult disruptions of the one who ushered in God’s grace in a whole new way.

Grace that came from what might have been disgrace.

We are all asked to do the hard thing, to accept the word of God, and to believe it.  We are also called then to ACT in light of that.  Joseph accepts what the angel tells him, he believes that indeed this child is conceived by the Holy Spirit…

I mean, we assume be accepts and believes.  I guess we don’t know.  It would have been natural, understandable, perhaps even prudent of him to be skeptical, right?

Lately, I have been praying with daily poems by Steve Garnaas-Holmes, a United Methodist pastor currently in Massachusetts.  This week, he sent along something so beautiful:

The question is not whether you love her.
The question is whether you will marry her.

You have been given only glorious ambiguity,
darkness marbled with starlight,
possibility breathed in silence.
You seek assurance; none is given.

Your life will not be as you wish it.
Those you love will let you down.
This world is full of flaws and disappointment.
It is also full of the Mysterious One.

Give yourself without knowing.
Betrothed, beloved, to uncertainty,
pledge your loyalty to this one you cannot know.
Do not pray to understand:
pray to be present, to be faithful, to be loving
when you cannot know what will come of it.

Do not be afraid to take this life
and marry it.

Joseph is one of many in the story of Jesus who demonstrates faithful following for us.  In this season of waiting and watching as we are oh-so-close to God with us once more, Joseph is a reminder of the role we play.

That role:

Accept, believe, do.

Listen for what God is calling us to.

It’s never actually easy to hear, right? For very few of us is God’s tug on our sleeve as obvious as an angel of the LORD appearing to us and speaking plainly – just do the hard thing. But for some of us, it is that plain. I mean…for Joseph it wasn’t a conscious meeting with an angel – it was a dream in his deep sleep.  One he might not have really believe he’d had. 

We have to train our listening ears.

So…once you actually sense that God is speaking into your life, interrupting your sleepy existence, the call is to actually accept what you hear.  If Joseph is indeed an example, sometimes we are called to something way beyond our wildest imagining, way beyond what the rest of the world expects of us.

Hear that again…sometimes the whisper of God in our ear is about doing something that is WAY BEYOND what the rest of the world expects of us.  Beyond what our loves ones can imagine. Beyond what our families want for us.  Beyond what we think we’ve been prepared for.

Because…well … because God.

And so, we accept what we hear, we believe that it is God calling out to us with an assignment.  And then we must ACT.  We must DO something.

Our faith does not call us to tepidly, quietly plod ahead without actually behaving differently.  God wants us to be DOING things.  Things that seem out of step, perhaps, with the world we live in.  Resisting injustice.  Finding groceries for the person who shows up hungry, cold and tired. 

“Give yourself without knowing.
Betrothed, beloved, to uncertainty,
pledge your loyalty to this one you cannot know.
Do not pray to understand:
pray to be present, to be faithful, to be loving
when you cannot know what will come of it.

Do not be afraid to take this life
and marry it.”

Do the thing.  Do the hard thing, the unusual thing, the unthinkable thing that God is asking of you.  It will be hard.  There may be disgrace.

But the disgrace and dis-ease are not of God. They are of the world.  The world that is not listening to God.

What a tense moment we live in.

Here we are surrounded by holiday beauty. Surrounded by the promise of Emmanuel, that GOD truly is WITH US, touching the world, walking beside us and calling us forward.

Meanwhile, we are arguing with our neighbors, there are hungry people on our street corners, there are policies that make it difficult for people to access health care and safe passage.  The world is telling us one thing.

But, “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.”

Immanuel.  Nothing less than God with us.  Right here. Right now.  In the midst of the hard things.

Calling us to accept, believe, and then do something.

How scary.  How hard. 

How grateful l am that Joseph, who never said yes, still did the thing.

And became the keeper and the protector, provider and guide for Jesus who was the Christ.

I want to end today with another poem from Steve Garnaas Holmes, one some of you read on our Facebook page earlier this week…

You who sit by the bedside,
who stay late to finish the report,
who wrestle your tireless demons,
         do not fear.

You who gaze at the x-ray,
who face another meeting at the school,
who care for the aging parent,
         have courage.

You who lament our cruelty and greed,
who write letters about the climate,
who stand in silence outside the prison,
         stay firm.

God is not far, nor careless, nor scornful.
God is here, here to accompany,
here to love, here to save.
         Keep faith.

When you are weary God will strengthen you;
when you are afraid God will sustain you;
when you cannot go on, rest your head:
         God will carry on.

In your weak hands, in your feeble knees
the Beloved is present, full of grace:
not the outcome but the presence, always.
         Take courage.

May it be so.

Amen.

Poems used this morning are by Steve Garnaas-Holmes, published online at https://www.unfoldinglight.net/.  The first is entitled “Joseph,” and the last is entitled “Courage.”