4 Advent, Year A

Isaiah 7: 10 – 16
Psalm 80: 1 – 7, 16 – 18
Romans 1: 1 – 7
Matthew 1: 18 – 25

A homily by: Fr. Gene Tucker
Given at: Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, December 19, 2010

“HARDSHIP, BEWILDERMENT, AND JOY”
(Homily text: Matthew 1: 18 – 25)

Hardship, bewilderment, and joy.

Each of these three realities are present in today’s gospel text, our very familiar reading from Matthew, chapter one.

Now perhaps many, if not most, of you, can recite the basics of this text from memory. Though it’s not as familiar a text that we hear at Christmas time as is the passage from Luke, chapter two (where we hear about the shepherds in the field, the angelic hosts saying “Glory to God in the highest”, and so forth), this text is still quite familiar to most of us. We can recall, for example, that it is here that we hear about way God informed Joseph about the events that were to take place via a dream. Indeed, if Luke’s focus in telling us about the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth is on Mary’s role, then Matthew’s focus is squarely on the work God had to do in getting Joseph ready for Jesus’ arrival.

So, let’s look at this very familiar passage from the perspective of: hardship, bewilderment, and joy, for all these of these realities are present in the text before us today.

Before we consider these three aspects of our reading, we should begin by noting an important aspect of the cultural situation that Mary and Joseph found themselves in.

We begin with the matter of pregnancy and betrothal. In the culture of Judaism 2,000 years ago, a couple who were bound for marriage first became betrothed to one another. In our terms today, we’d say they were engaged. This was a formal, legal arrangement, which could be broken only by undertaking a divorce. However formal the arrangement was, in contrast to our contemporary practices today, it did not permit consummation of the partnership, however. We’ll have more to say about this subsequently.

Now, we turn to the three aspects before us today:

Hardship: When Jesus’ arrived in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago, the world was a harsh and foreboding place. There was no scarcity of hardship, especially for God’s people living in the Holy Land.

For one thing, there was the matter of the Roman occupation of the Promised Land. Brutal, oppressive and harsh, the Roman overlords exacted a high price for their presence among the Jews in blood, economic slavery and high taxes. Partly in response, God’s people reacted by asserting their uniquely God-given role as His people, putting a high priority on the strict observance of the Law of Moses, the place and priority of the construction of the Temple (which was ongoing by the time of Jesus’ birth for about 20 years or so), and on maintaining Jewish identity by erecting walls of separation between Jew and Gentile in matters of social custom and other transactions.

For another, it seemed as though God’s voice had grown silent. The last of the prophets had long ceased to be, and their voice, which had cried out in years past, “The word of the Lord came to me, saying,” was not to be heard in the land. Moreover, God was seen to be so remote and so unapproachable that it had become the custom not to be able to even utter the Sacred Name at all.

In short, times were tough, life was short and filled with hardship, and God seemed to be distantly removed from the struggles of everyday life.

And what of Joseph and Mary? Their predicament is even harsher, for they live in a small hamlet in Galilee known as Nazareth. Most likely, everyone knew them, and knew their circumstances. But Mary is pregnant, and most everyone would have known that no marriage had yet taken place between the two. Abiding by the demands of the Mosaic law meant death by stoning for Mary. This reality is in the background of Joseph’s consideration of what to do about this situation. Obviously, he cares for and loves Mary, and wishes to divorce her quietly, thus ending the relationship, and sparing Mary the awful consequences that her situation would normally bring with it. There is no shortage of hardship where Joseph and Mary are concerned. They have hardships in abundance!

Bewilderment: Into this very bleak landscape, breaking in as the first ray of sunshine on a golden morning, is the voice of God, delivered to Joseph via an angel in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

What now?

Perhaps Joseph might have wondered a couple of things at this point. (I will admit I am conjecturing here, for Matthew does not tell us what Joseph’s reaction was beyond his willingness to obey the voice of the angel who had appeared to him in a dream.) Perhaps Joseph might have wondered, first of all, just how it could be that a woman could become pregnant without a man to assist in the process. Joseph and Mary lived in a very traditional, honor-and-shame culture, a culture in which the procreation of children was reserved for marriage alone. That culture had what we would call “zero-tolerance” for any deviation from that expectation.

For another, perhaps Joseph wondered just who the Holy Spirit could be. God’s people had long had an understanding about the spirit of God, the one who had been present at the creation of the world (see Genesis 1: 1), but God’s spirit was regarded as being something that went forth from the presence of God. Their understanding was far different from our Christian understanding of the nature of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity. So, it seems possible that Joseph might have wondered about the identity of the Holy Spirit. Again, we are speculating, though it seems normal to suspect that Joseph might have had some of these thoughts. Nonetheless, that same creative ability that the spirit of God demonstrated at the beginning of creation is again present within Mary, for the angel says, “….that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.”

Joy!: But the news of Jesus’ arrival must have been an occasion for joy, as well.

Initially, it might have been an occasion of deep joy, mixed with hardship and bewilderment, for Mary and Joseph alone. Then, perhaps close family members and friends were also told about the dream Joseph had had, and perhaps Mary had related the visit of the Archangel Gabriel, too.

For hardships lay ahead: An arduous trip on the back of a donkey from Nazareth, in the north of the Holy Land, to Bethlehem, in the south, and this when Mary was nearly full term in her pregnancy. Then there was the plot to kill Jesus by King Herod, and the subsequent flight into Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath. And all the while, there were the suspicions of their neighbors back in Nazareth to reckon with.

But the central message of the announcement of Jesus’ birth is this: God had not forgotten His people, God’s voice was to be silent no longer!

The ancient prophecies were coming true, as Matthew takes great pains to confirm for us, time and again, in his gospel account. Matthew wants us to understand that God’s timeless plan was unfolding, that what God had promised centuries earlier was being put into reality, in the person of Jesus, the one who had come to save God’s people from their sins. (Jesus’ name in Hebrew (Yesh’ua) means “God saves”.)

And so, all three realities are present together, side-by-side, in Mary and Joseph’s lives, as God’s plan to save His people come to being through their agency.

All three realities: hardship, bewilderment and joy, are also present in our own lives today.

The world is still, for most of us, a dark, foreboding and difficult place, filled with more than its share of disappointment, loss and challenges.

Moreover, as we read the sacred pages of Holy Scripture, we might, as Joseph might have done, scratch our heads in bewilderment, asking ourselves, “How can these things be?”

And yet, we have cause for joy, tremendous, lasting, deep-down joy, for we know the entire account of Jesus’ life, His suffering, death and resurrection, and His eventual coming again in power and great glory. We know, as Mary and Joseph didn’t know at this point in their lives, the “rest of the story”, its power to save, its power to change lives, and its power to bring hope into hopeless situations.

And so, in this season of Advent, how are all of these three realities present in your life and mine? How do we experience hardship? How do we see bewilderment as we struggle to understand the mysteries of God? How do we find occasions of joy in what God has done in Jesus Christ, and continues to do?

For all these things, thanks be to God!

AMEN.