19 December 2010

“Love”
4th Sunday in Advent – series A
19 December 2010


HOPE. PEACE. JOY.
These have been our bywords for Advent, our words which have conveyed The Word of God to us in this shortest of seasons of the liturgical year.
Ah, but for such simple little words, they have been pregnant with meaning. And not necessarily the meaning which we would normally attach to them at this time of the year.
For all around us, the world has been preparing for Christmas … carols blaring since Halloween … decorations hung up, lights blinking … but we, here … well, today is our first Sunday with the tree and lights … we have been marking this Advent well, as it was intended, FOR US …
… a season of HOPE … a three-fold hope which wraps itself in the promises of our God, to be with and FOR US … promises made and kept in the past … yes, promises birthed in the baby Jesus … AND MORE: promises to be kept, for us, when our Savior and Messiah comes again to us, not to punish but to save.
… a season of PEACE … PEACE, as John the Baptist proclaims, peace borne of repentance, a posture, a lifestyle, of “turning around,” of putting others first, of setting aside our all-too-human sinfulness which clings to place and power and prestige … we are called to repent, to turn around; like John the Baptist, we point to Jesus and then get out of the way, so others can see him and serve in their own unique, gifted, called ways.
… and a season of JOY … JOY coming from the opportunity, the charge and call, the blessing, for us, from our God, to go out and proclaim the message of Jesus … JOY, coming not from a hope that “those who have been against us will now get theirs” but instead, from the HOPE and PEACE of this One who brings the end of blindness, lameness, ill health, and death … and who says his era, his time, the Kingdom of Heaven, is drawing near … good news to the poor, the outsider, the downtrodden, the abused and foreclosed and ignored and swept over of this time and all time.
Those aren’t the usual words or themes we hear this time of year.
But they are the Word which brings the Advent of our God … the HOPE and PEACE and JOY of Jesus Christ … to us … and to the world … if we would simply slow down our headlong rush to “Christmas” enough to listen.
And so today we come to the final word of this season … LOVE. And here we might think, finally, finally, we “get” something which will put us into our “Christmas spirit” of things at last … as Charlie Brown’s Lucy says, “Jingle Bells and ho-ho-hos, presents under the tree and all that.”
Ehhh.
Sorry. Not just yet.
It’s not the “warm fuzzy” Christmas story we have before us today … but that “other one” … you know, the one we get every three years, as our lectionary cycle brings it around to us, turning up like a bad penny or the socks in the back of the drawer you want to put out of sight, out of mind … it’s the Christmas story from Matthew’s gospel.
Ohhhh. THAT one.
It is, after all, the story from Luke’s gospel which is the familiar, the beloved, the Linus-speaking-it-in-the-spotlight Christmas story we know and cherish. But you’ll have to wait for Christmas Eve for that.
John’s Christmas Gospel starts with the beautiful “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” But you’ll have to wait till January 2, the Second Sunday of Christmas, for that.
It could be worse. Mark’s Gospel contains the Christmas story in just this brief sentence: “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” No mention of Christmas at all. Bah humbug!
Ah … but here, today, we do get some mention of the whole first Christmas business … though it comes, unexpected and mysterious, through the words of “prophecy fulfilled,” through the words of an angel and the dreams of Joseph.
Even from this brief section of Matthew’s gospel, we get that he – Matthew -- has an agenda. Well, each of the Gospel writers does, because each one of them was individually listening, observing … and writing for a specific audience. We all do this … it is a human trait and characteristic after all. Poll four different people who saw the same event happen before them and you will most surely get four different accounts of what happened … oh, the basic message will be the same, but the tone and style and emphasis will be different because the human filters for the message are different.
And so it is with Matthew. His gospel is full of phrases such as “all this took place to fulfill…” because what Matthew is most concerned about is showing, telling, convincing the Israelites, God’s historic people from the ages, that Jesus is the One who God has always been about sending … the keeper of promises … the bringer of HOPE, PEACE and JOY as God has always been to and for his people.
Here, today’s Gospel Word contains this name for the promised One: Emmanuel, “God is with us.”
It is the same Word which that prophet of long ago, Isaiah, used to describe another baby, as he went out to meet his King, who was named Ahaz.
Ahaz was out checking the water supply for Jerusalem. He had brought his pregnant queen and the royal entourage with him because he was nervous and scared … scared that the armies bearing down on Jerusalem would capture the city and them. Ahaz had made a deal with the devil and sold out to his other enemy, the Assyrians, to help him fight against these invaders; but he was still worried.
Isaiah … the prophet of God … went out to meet the king … and to bring him the prophet’s word of hope.
Ahaz … for his part … did not want to listen … he’d rather take the easy out of trusting in the Assyrian army’s help. “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.”
Isaiah … exasperated … points to the pregnant queen. “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” God’s going to take care of you, Ahaz, queen, people of Jerusalem … God, our God, makes and keeps promises, not to abandon his people. Your new prince to come is a sign of God’s faithfulness to his people … he will grow into a mighty King for Jerusalem … trust God, not foreign armies, Ahaz!”
Seven hundred years later … the story repeats itself … with Joseph.
Joseph hears that the bride of his engagement, Mary, is pregnant. He’s a good Jew and he knows the law, he knows that he can get out of this marriage covenant easily and legally because of Mary’s unfaithfulness … but being a “righteous man” he wants to do it quietly … though the outcome could have, likely would have been the same regardless … such women as Mary were to be put to death for their offense.
But the Word of God comes to Joseph, as it does so many times in the Bible to other prophets, to other Word-bearers … the Word of God comes to Joseph in a dream … and Joseph hears another call … not to take the “easy out” but instead, to follow God’s call to stand by Mary, and be the savior for the Savior of the world.
It is tough-LOVE, to be sure … how could it be otherwise when an angel tells you that your son will “save his people from their sins” … ? … but it is what Joseph does, to fulfill the prophecy, to keep the Word that God had given to his people long ago, a word God kept through the ages, even though his people did not remain faithful to him.
Come to think of it, Joseph isn’t the only one who chooses not to take the “easy out.” Most certainly this is what God does too, here in the beginning of Matthew’s gospel, but more, throughout all of history.
Skip back a few verses … the first seventeen of Matthew’s Word for us, to be exact … and we see how our God doesn’t take the “easy out” when it comes to “saving his people from their sins.”
Those first seventeen verses list Jesus’ genealogy … his family history … all the people God had to work through to get to the point of the story thus far, with Joseph and Mary.
It’s quite a list. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Judah, Tamar, Ruth, David, Solomon. Rehoboam, Ahaz, Manasseh. The biggies of the faith, to be sure … but also, these are liars, cheats, thieves, foreigners, women of questionable reputation, and idol-worshippers.
God most certainly could have taken the easy way out … could have sent his Messiah through a much better bloodline … more distinguished people than this motley crew from a little backwater country in the Mideast … or, more logically, God could just have not bothered at all. Left the whole enterprise to wind down and run out and fall apart of its, of our own accord.
But the point of those seventeen verses of familiar and strange names is the same as what happens with Joseph … certainly, legally, logically, “going by the book” it doesn’t make any sense at all … but, FOR THE SAKE OF LOVE … this is what God does. FOR THE SAKE OF LOVE, this is what God calls Joseph to do, too. Not just once, but as we’ll hear later … indeed, next Sunday, after the celebration of Jesus’ birth … and in another dream, when Joseph is told to pick up the whole little family and flee to Egypt, to save Jesus’ life once more … and, then just as in this story, FOR THE SAKE OF LOVE, Joseph does it.
This Advent-LOVE … it surely is not for wimps.
It’s borne of all that has gone before it … the HOPE, PEACE and JOY of the ages … the Word that “God Is With Us” always …
… ALWAYS, through the past history of God’s people …
… ALWAYS, through the worship, Word and Meal of this gathering this morning …
(… through the baptisms of Alexander and Nicholas, and through Angie and Jim affirming their baptisms ...)
… and, most certainly, ALWAYS, through all the times to come, through all our times to come … no matter what happens, our persistent God who stops at nothing to come to us in LOVE, who does not take the “easy out” but is in it with and for us, for the long haul.
And the response God calls forth from Joseph … the same one God lives out, to and for us, throughout all of history, is where he calls us to be too … FOR THE SAKE OF LOVE.
The “easy out” might be legal. The “easy out” might be socially acceptable. The “easy out” might be nice and proper, quiet and polite.
But it’s not where God goes.
And, people of Nativity, I say this to you in all the HOPE, PEACE, JOY and LOVE of this Advent season … we shall not take it either.
Our faith will be lived out in Advent-tough-LOVE. We’ll get our hands dirty. We’ll follow Christ’s call to associate with the lowest of the low, even those others call the “scum of the earth.”
We might be called “ridiculous,” “foolish,” “time-wasters,” even “un-Christian” by those who define that word “Christian” so backwards, so opposite to the truth, so life denying rather than life giving.
Yet there, there, in our service, there in our witness, there in our work to and for the least of this world, there we will find Christ.
And there will be no turning back.
Why would we want to?
We will take the road, the highway, on which our God has walked before us. The road less traveled. God’s highway.
Almost a hundred years ago Robert Frost wrote a poem which describes this path we walk … this Advent path of HOPE, PEACE, JOY and LOVE. It’s called “The Road Not Taken.”
In these words … as they reflect God’s Word … the Word given to Isaiah, and Joseph, and us … hear The Word … given to us FOR THE SAKE OF LOVE … for the sake of us … and for the sake of God’s world.


The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


Now … now … can we say, do we say …
Merry Christmas. Amen.