Matthew 1:18-23
Fourth Sunday in Advent
Joseph dreamed of a house with a white picket fence and two camels parked in his garage. Mary was his dream come true, and Joseph asked her to marry him. He was, as they said in those days, betrothed to her. To be betrothed was somewhere between an engagement and marriage. People didn’t live together before marriage back then. More binding than an engagement, it could only be broken with an act of divorce. A betrothed woman who became pregnant was seen as an adulteress. And that is what happened to Joseph’s love of his life. She got pregnant. What was he to do? He did not want to shame Mary. If he made her condition public, her family might disown her, and she could be stoned to death. Being a righteous man, Joseph decided to do the righteous thing. He would quietly divorce her. Yes, that would be the right thing to do, he thought.
Having made the decision he thought God would want, Joseph climbed into bed, pulled his covers up, and fell asleep. That night, in his dreams, an angel showed up and said to him, Joseph! Don’t be afraid. Go ahead and get married. Mary’s baby is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and when she does, you, Joseph, are to name him Jesus, meaning God saves. Because that is what this baby will do.
I’ve tried to put myself in Joseph’s shoes. The Gospel of Luke tells us that Mary pondered these things in her heart, and the same must have been true for Joseph. Did he ever have doubts? When Mary’s baby bump became obvious, did Joseph hear people’s whispers? What a position to be in! But Joseph believed that God was present in all of it. What appeared to be a position of shame was, through God, a place of honor. What looked like the edge of scandal was centrally a place of holiness. Joseph was not sure exactly where God would take him and Mary, but he knew something wonderful had been promised.
“Jesus” means God saves, “Emmanuel” translates God is with us. That the Word became flesh and lived among us is beyond anything we humans could imagine in our wildest dreams. How is this even possible? Not only does God take on our dreams, God give us God’s dreams in the flesh. Our God does impossible things! That’s how the Cubs won the World Series this year—for the first time since 1908. The Washington Nationals will have to wait for Christ’s second coming.
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way, Matthew tells us. Translations of the word “birth” obscure Matthew’s description of what is happening in Jesus as a “genesis,” a new beginning. We are brought back to the story of creation, when God spoke the world into being. God does new things and creates new beginnings, things that we would never think possible.
That impossibility is why wrinkled old Abraham and Sarah laughed when God told them they would have a son. Pharaoh let his primary source of cheap labor, the Israelites, leave for a new land and new beginnings only because of God’s impossible intervention. Through Jesus, Bartimaeus regained his sight and a paralyzed man walked. Jesus kissed the leper clean, and evicted unclean spirits out of the Gerasene demoniac. He healed a woman who had been bleeding to death for half of her life. Water was changed into wine, and over 5,000 were fed with just five loaves of bread and two fish. Like Father like Son; Jesus made the impossible possible.
God is still doing impossible things with impossible people. I know that because I am one of them. My husband will tell you the evidence is in my agreeing to marry him. That I am in good health, after one serious cancer and ten years later a difficult to discover, aggressive cancer, is nothing short of a miracle. That I became a pastor is in itself a miracle. That I am serving here, at this church in which I was ordained, can only be because God creates new beginnings.
What has God done in your life that you never thought possible? People have told me that after failed relationships they thought they would be alone for the rest of their lives, and then they found love so deep they didn’t know it could exist. One of my friends spent over 100 days in the hospital because her placenta had ruptured. The baby that never should have survived is named Olivia. She is now six years old, loves the color pink, and is learning to be a cheerleader. Then there’s the person who would have bet she could not do it, but she did. She was able to take care of her mother while she was dying. If you have forgiven someone, or been forgiven yourself, then God has been working miracles in your life. If you have had a broken family relationship that has been restored, God has turned hearts. What inconceivable thing has God done in your life?
Advent is a time of God’s impossible possibilities. It is the time in which we wait for the coming of Jesus as a baby, and for Christ’s coming again. Advent highlights our living in both the now and the not-yet. The not-yet that includes mothers and sons and sisters and grandmothers in Syria fleeing their homes, and others who died in the fighting. Suicide bombers killed people in Turkey yesterday. Our local shelters are overcrowded and people struggle to find relief from the bitter cold. Cancer still ravages bodies and families. The world is exhausted. So we wait with longing for Christ’s return. We light a candle and we pray, your kingdom come. We look for the time when God will wipe every tear from our eyes, and when death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.[1] We wait for Christ’s coming again.
Even as we wait, we are witness to the in-breaking of God’s kingdom. Advent is the time of sure and certain hope that God makes the impossible possible. Our hope comes, and can only come, from a God who has over and over again created new beginnings. We wait with hope that comes from a God who is born as a baby who cries and needs his diaper changed. Emmanuel, God with us, lived with a family and friends and love. Our hope comes from a God who was betrayed, and suffered, and died. This is the God who brings us hope of impossible possibilities through his resurrection. There is no darkness so dark that God’s light cannot shine in it. There is nothing so terrible from which God cannot bring good, and there is no one so sinful that God cannot redeem them.
~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin
[1] See Revelation 21:4.