The Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew, the 1st Chapter
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. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.
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. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
Interesting story, isn’t it? Joe found himself in a hopeless situation. He loved Mary, but she was pregnant and he wasn’t the father. How could he stay with Mary and be faithful to her when the law told him the faithful thing was to send her away? How would he handle his community’s scorn? How would he fix this situation? He was good at fixing things… being creative… working things out… he had hoped he could find a way to work this out as well. But no matter what he did… no matter how deeply he reached into himself for the answer…this one he couldn’t fix. It was a completely hopeless situation and you know what? As long as his hope rested in HIS own ability to fix this unfixable thing, it WAS hopeless.
I don’t want to be too hard on Joe though. It’s a trap many of us fall into. I have reason to hope that my driveway will get plowed. But it doesn’t take too long to start thinking that my hope isn’t because God places generous people in my life, but because I have a phone and I can call Elmer. I have hope, because I can use a phone! I have reason to hope that my Christmas sermons will get written. But it doesn’t take too long to start thinking THAT hope isn’t because the Holy Spirit is generous with inspiration but because I’m creative and good at writing. I hope because I've written sermons before! Over time, we fool ourselves into believing that the reason we should hope that things will get done, problems will get fixed and solutions will be found, is because WE are good at getting things done, getting things fixed and finding solutions.
But what happens when things grow beyond the level of snow and sermons? What happens when the images of the horrors of Allepo fill my screen? What happens when I look at our deeply divided country… when I hear all the hate and racism… when I see people I love leaving our church… when there is no choice other than to watch the bells come down and the ascension window being wrapped up and driven away? I’ve foolishly taught myself to place my reason for hope in my own abilities, so I wrack my brain, dig deeper and try to figure these things out and I toss and turn in the middle of the night and I look even deeper for hope in my smarts, creativity and my ability to fix it. After all, that’s where I’ve found a reason to hope before… inside myself. So why are these things hopeless? These are bigger than snow or sermons. They’re HUGE in fact. No matter how deep I go into myself, they are beyond my ability to fix… They’re hopeless! And in hopelessness I end up immobilized, paralyzed and completely undone.
And the truth that Joseph confronted and the truth that the world confronts us with now, is that as long as we keep looking within ourselves for the answer… as long as our source of hope for a resolution rests in our ability to come up with a solution, we will all eventually encounter something too big for the likes of me and you and we'll all end up in hopelessness… immobilized, paralyzed and completely undone.
That’s where Joseph was when he went to bed that night. He had tried and failed to find an answer within himself and went to sleep in hopelessness. But that’s not the end of this story, is it? An angel of the Lord came to Joseph in a dream. I imagine the scene like this... Joseph in his dream is looking deeply into a mirror… looking, searching, longing to see a reason to hope, the source of hope, in that reflection. Now imagine the angel taking Joseph gently by the head and physically turning him... redirecting his gaze from the mirror where he could see no hope and toward the unlimited source of hope. Imagine the REAL source of hope now coming into focus right in front of his eyes. Ironically, it had been there the whole time, right there, bulging out from Mary’s maternity clothes… the Christ child… Immanuel… God with us.
The soon to be born Christ child is the unlimited source of hope that neither Joe, nor you, nor me will EVER find in a mirror. It had been there… RIGHT THERE, ALL ALONG, through all of Joseph's squirming and scheming, planning and plotting as he spiraled further toward hopelessness… right there all along, bulging out from Mary’s maternity cloths was the One with the power. Power to handle the little things... the things we convince ourselves we've handled all on our own. But also with the power to transform even the impossible things like the horrors of Allepo, turning spears to plowshares and unite the impossibly divided getting lions to lay down with lambs. RIGHT THERE! All this time! Immanuel. God with us. There IS a reason to hope, even in the midst of the most horrible and impossible and the source of the hope was in Mary's womb.
When Joseph stopped trying to do God’s work, when he stopped looking for his source of hope in a mirror, when he stopped trying to fit the plans of God into a box of his own design… when Joseph stopped trying to BE God, he was suddenly free to hear God calling him to simply be the person God created him to be and play his part in God’s work of making all things new… he was free then, to give his love to Mary, to care for her and to care for the child to whom she would soon give birth.
Like Joseph, we get trapped, looking into a mirror... searching there for solutions to problems big and small… looking there for a reason to hope. But as long as we’re looking to ourselves for solutions and looking to our own abilities and resources as our source and reason for hopefulness we’ll always come up empty.
May the angel of the Lord come to us all this Advent. May that angel take us gently by the head and redirect our gaze from the mirror, which is so tempting but can never show us the source of the hope we need, and may the angel of the Lord redirect our gaze onto the One who is the unlimited source of all hope and life, the One found in the womb of a woman named Mary, cared for by a man named Joseph, the One who is Immanuel… God with us. Amen.
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