For the Love of: Matthew 1:18-25
Advent IV
18 Now the birth of
Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been
engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child
from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being
a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to
dismiss her quietly. 20 But just when he had
resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph,
son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child
conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She
will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people
from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill
what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
23 “Look, the virgin
shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which means, “God is with us.” 24 When
Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took
her as his wife, 25 but had no marital relations
with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus. (NRSV)
It is,
indeed, jumping ahead a little to begin the fourth Sunday of Advent with the
birth of Jesus the Messiah—that’s for Christmas proper, later this week, not
yet, not yet. But the fourth Sunday of
Advent is the theme of love, and sometimes you have to skip ahead a little bit
for love.
“It
went like this,” Matthew tells us—Matthew, first listed in our New Testament
and probably second or third written of the gospels, directed toward the Jewish
community that hesitated at the onset of this new Way following a Man Who was
lauded as Messiah. This birth narrative
follows what the preacher Fred Craddock calls “Jesus’ family graveyard,” a
lineage stretching all the way back to Abraham to show, in numerically
important sets of fourteen, that Jesus was Jewish enough, was connected enough,
had every right to the title Messiah.
“It went like this, that Jesus the Messiah,” an epithet I’ve just proven
to you by His lineage, was born.
But
there is already a wrinkle. Jesus may
have the right pedigree, but definitely has the wrong birth plan—Mary was
engaged to Joseph but pregnant by the Holy Spirit. This is not an excuse that many men would
believe from their betrothed carrying a child decidedly not his own, so Joseph,
“being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned
to dismiss her quietly.”
The
adult Sunday school class has been studying Joseph this Advent, discussing what
it meant for him to be called righteous, for him to be merciful to Mary. Professor Ronald Allen summarizes that “Mary
and Joseph were betrothed, not yet fully married. Neither party in a coming
marriage could have sexual relations with an outside person. Mary’s pregnancy
catches Joseph by surprise. According to Deuteronomy 22:23-27, Mary could be
tried publicly and then executed. By resolving to ‘dismiss her quietly,’ Joseph
seeks to avoid public humiliation while also fulfilling the law.”[1]
Let
us climb into this for a moment, on this Sunday of love, of waiting just a
little while longer: engagement for Mary
and Joseph didn’t mean a ring and the beginning of six thousand cake
tastings. Engagement meant the exchange
of money—money enough to build the home for this new life—as well as expensive
gifts far beyond a registry of good Corelle plates. Engagement meant signing an official, legal
document called a ketubah that could only be broken in extreme
circumstances—like, say, sleeping with someone other than your betrothed.[2]
To
have someone seem to throw that away and get pregnant in the bargain would be
humiliating, heartbreaking, and angering.
If he stayed connected to Mary, Joseph would be an object of pity or
laughter; Mary herself would be regarded as the town shame, and certainly the
child would be a nobody. It was not how
the engagement was supposed to go, and we can only wonder what kind of inner
conversation and maybe even prayer Joseph went through to get to the place
where he would not insist on Mary being punished publicly for the choices that
could ruin them both.
The
fourth stage of grief, continuing our entwining this Advent of grief over a
year upended and joy at the Light born again anyway, is depression. There is a whole range of what that word
means now, as it has been recognized in some format since ancient Greece and
was officially listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,
or DSM, in the very first edition back in 1952.[3] Depression is more than feeling sad; it is a
persistent and unshakable lowness, a dark space of the mind, heart, and soul
that affects self-esteem, interest levels, and functional ability.[4] It does not have to be a permanent state and
can be related to a sudden shift in one’s life experiences, one’s supposed
security.
Like
having to suddenly decide whether to crush a woman’s social status or go down
with her, perhaps.
The
Rev. Dr. William Self preached a sermon that touched on depression, saying,
“Occasionally, someone will say to me, ‘I'm a Christian; I'm not supposed to be
depressed.’ That's nonsense! I have learned that just because I'm a pastor I am
not immune to my moods going up and down. I just hope and pray that I don't
have a dark mood on Sunday morning. One
time when I was in one of my dark moods, someone told me that if I really loved
the Lord, I shouldn't feel that way. ‘There is no depression in the Bible,’ he
said. I reminded him that Moses begged God to kill him. Jesus began to be
sorrowful and was in agony before His arrest. He wept before He raised Lazarus.
We should remember that Job cursed God and asked to die, and if you think that
being depressed or melancholy is non-Christian, I must say to you that if you
are a human being, if you have blood in your veins and skin on your bones, your
moods will go up and down.”[5] I don’t know whether Joseph was depressed;
the Bible isn’t often keen on the backstory that we so dearly love to have as
readers. But I do know that whatever
emotional maelstrom he did have was not because he was lacking in faith. “He was a righteous man,” we are told; we do
not get “he would have been righteous if only he were cheerier” or “if he’d
smiled a bit more, Joseph would have been the most righteous guy around.” Feeling whatever it was he was feeling,
Joseph was a righteous man who decided to disentangle himself from Mary
quietly.
But
what does the possibility of depression, or for that matter the level of faith,
have to do with love? With waiting? With a birth that started out so poorly,
despite an impressive lineage?
First,
let me emphatically say that love does not cure depression. The Beatles’ song “All You Need Is Love,”
while catchy, is untrue; sometimes you need medication, or therapy, or a hug,
or professional planning, or a healthier diet, or any number of things that may
be rooted in love in the loosest sense but are about recalibrating the
mind. Having someone tell you they love
you several times a day is nice, but it will not in and of itself fix
depression.
Second,
let me emphatically say that love helps.
I’m not talking about love that comes in Valentine’s Day cards or the
terrible poems we all write in middle school and then bury in the back of a
cabinet for our adult selves to find and cringe over. I’m talking about the kind of love that
differs from that the way joy differs from happiness; it runs underneath,
through, beyond, attaching itself not to the moment but to the reality of this
other beloved. It is the kind of love
that does not wait for a person to be likeable—which, incidentally, is how I
think marriage has lasted this long as a cultural fulcrum.
It
is the kind of love that prompts a man to be unwilling to expose a woman to
public disgrace, even from the midst of what was most likely deep sorrow,
anger, and betrayal. It is the kind of
love that creates a space in which one can be righteous.
“But
just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a
dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid.’”
“Matthew
thus presents Joseph as a model for all who encounter the message of Jesus
through the church,” continues Professor Allen. “Joseph was face to face with an unlikely
manifestation of the Realm of God. Matthew wants those who encounter this
message and this movement in similar fashion to do as Joseph did: To believe
the message is of God and to become part of its movement.”[6]
This,
too, is love: to be told that the
impossible is what is next, that the improbable is what is real, that God has
entered the time stream in a way never done before and to say yes, okay, let’s
do this. This is where that family
graveyard comes back—Joseph is becoming the newest member of a long line of
people who heard the outrageousness of God’s plans and said yes, I will. Here I am, Lord.
How
can it be anything but love to hear that Mary conceived of the Holy
Spirit a boy Who shall be named Jesus and wake to say yes, I am on board? What marvelous love of the God Who first
loved Joseph, of the woman to whom Joseph had been betrothed! What faith in the midst of one of the hardest
moments of his life! What powerful hope
that it would be made right, this whole mess of a birth narrative that seemed
to be so wrong!
This
past week, Scott Simon interviewed the Rev. Dr. Eboni Marshall-Turman on NPR’s
Weekend Edition about the way the Christmas season is used to bring light to a
dark time of year. “There’s a lot of
pain in the Christmas story,” Simon said.
Yes, Dr. Marshall-Turman affirmed; “God actually understands our human
predicament…God understands human suffering and the experiences of grief.” When Simon asked about such a celebration as
Christmas in this year of all years, Dr. Marshall-Turman said, “Evil is
real. It is present in the world. Despite that, though, we have a God
Who comes in light and in hope in the middle of the darkness…the
darkness does not overcome it.” And what
of this story, this strange and muddy birth?
“This disbelief, potential humiliation, at the fact that Mary…was with
child” was quite the shock, but when “the angel of the Lord says ‘fear not’…it
gives Joseph hope…even when the circumstances are unbelievable…fear not… I
believe firmly that God is up to something big even when we have no idea what
that is…I believe that God is still working; in my tradition,” says Dr.
Marshall-Turman, “we would say that God
is still in the blessing business. Grace
is still coming.”[7]
Grace
is still coming, Church. Grace is still
coming on Thursday, on Friday, next Tuesday, in February, come June, in
December again marveling once more at a man and a woman and a God winding their
way toward Bethlehem. Grace is still
coming because love is already here, love that does not bring harm to a
woman telling the truth, love that trusts that God can do infinitely more
things in heaven and on earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies, love that does not pressure but supports, love that asks permission, love that
settles next to us when we are sad, love that delights with us when we are
happy, love that brings joy and hope and peace and light to a darkened
world and is not overcome.
It
is almost Christmas, Church. On this
last day of Advent when our lungs are full to bursting with the held breath of
a whole month spent waiting not for sugarplum candies but for a
God-become-human Who fundamentally changed the way we live in this world, where
is our love? Where is our deep-seated
faith that hears God’s call to the incredible and says yes, Lord, for the love
of You I will go, for a love that goes deep on the days I don’t like this I
will go, for the love of recognizing that You loved me before I even knew the
world, I will wake from sleep and do as You have commanded me?
A
college friend of mine often uses the hashtag “Let Us Love” when she posts
things on social media. So in these last
few days leading up to a birth that changed history, let us love. Let us love one another as Christ loved us;
let us love ourselves as we love our neighbors; let us love this God Who sets
up expectations and knocks them down because there is no restraining the wild
wind of the Spirit Who knows the depths of sorrow and the heights of joy from
this strange and wondrous thing called the incarnation.
See
you on Christmas, Church. Let us
celebrate, then and every day until and after, the Light that shines in the darkness: Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.
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