If Only in My Dreams

Welcome

What’s your worst Christmas memory? I know mine for sure - it was Christmas Eve, and I was living in Columbia, MO. I was a youth pastor, and it was our annual Christmas Eve worship gathering.

As we were concluding, I looked down to see I had missed calls and a text message: mom has been in an accident.

I called my sister back to find out my mom and step-dad had been t-boned by car that jumped a median and three lanes of traffic to hit them on the driver’s side of the car. They were both in the ICU. My mom had a few broken bones. My step-dad had been driving, and they weren’t sure he’d survive the night.

I jumped in my car and hurried home to pack - I hadn’t been planning to make the 2 hr trek to their house until the next morning.

I remember going in to see my mom. She was in pain, but conscious and coherent. Because she was in the ICU, only two of us were allowed back at a time. A couple of her close friends arrived not long after I did, so I led them back. When she saw them, she hugged them tight.

And what I remember most about that night was what I saw when I was closing the door to her room - she collapsed into sobs in her friends’ arms. She had been holding herself together for her kids.

We spent Christmas day between the hospital and their house, too worried to think about the usual sorts of Christmas festivities like carols and presents. In fact, I honestly don’t remember much about Christmas at all. Not the lights, the gifts, whether I got a new ornament that year. I remember the hospital. My stepdad hovering at death’s door. My mom’s tears.

All these years later, we’re all okay. Both my parents survived and made a full recovery. We don’t even talk that often about ‘the Accident’, as we’ve come to call it.

But I always think back to that awful Christmas during this time of year. It’s a reminder for me that - no matter how well we prepare, there’s no such thing as the perfect Christmas.

And maybe that’s for the best. Maybe our quest for the perfect Christmas is a fool’s errand. Today, I want to explore that idea - the possibility that Christmas has never been perfect, and that when we stop trying to get that postcard perfect holiday, we can attend to the God who came into our world because we’re a mess. The Good News of Christmas is that God is Immanuel - God with us. Mess and all.

Message

Today is the fourth Sunday of Advent. Advent is the beginning of the Church year. Advent is a season of preparing for Jesus’ arrival - Christmas. Think about that for a moment: the beginning of the Church year is marked by waiting. By preparing.

That in and of itself is counterintuitive. We mark New Year’s by making resolutions - we’re going to be slimmer, richer, bolder, smarter in the new year! We do, do, do.

But faith says, “Let’s begin by waiting. By watching. By preparing.” Let’s let life be a response to God’s action.

We’re preparing for Jesus’ return to Earth, what Christians call the Second Coming. And for a couple of thousand years, we’ve thought the best way to prepare for Jesus’ second coming is by looking back at how God’s people prepared for Jesus’ first coming.

So: Advent to prepare for Christmas. A time to look forward by looking back. This year, our series is called, “I’ll be Home for Christmas.” We’re going to be looking at the Gospel of Matthew. In the passages this Advent season, we’re going to hear about what the world will look like when God returns, and how we can be preparing even now for that life.

We began by affirming the central truth of the Christmas story: this world belongs to God, and we are all part of God’s great rescue mission. God has not and will not abandon the world. Then we explored the necessity of repentance in our preparation for Christmas. Do we produce fruit consistent with a life rooted in the Spirit? Last week, we saw Jesus’ mission to heal the world, and faced the reality that it’s not finished yet. We acknowledged the reality that our hope and hurt go hand in hand.

Today, at this final Sunday before Christmas, we realize we still have a whole week until Christmas Day (since it falls on a Sunday this year). That’s either great news or causes a little panic - maybe both.

We’re doing our last-minute shopping and wrapping and making sure if we’re travelling that all those ducks are in their rows and maybe still putting some finishing touches on some decorations and… How many of us, by the time we get to this last week of Advent just want New Year’s to get here already?

Either that or we’re sort of just trying to survive. There’s real pain around the holidays - family we have to see or we know we won’t see or we’re trying really hard to avoid seeing. Or financial constraints that feel particularly burdensome these days. Or we’re just feeling the weight of the state of the world on our shoulders and we’re really struggling to find any good cheer.

What does Christmas look like for the weary and the worried? Is there actually peace on earth for the tired or the troubled? Anything worth celebrating for the broken or the broke?

Tur with us to Matthew 1.

Today, we’re looking at Matthew’s version of the announcement of Jesus’ birth. Luke is the one who gives us Mary and her holy yes, her visit with cousin Elizabeth. Matthew is much more terse, and to the point. Let’s read together:

Matthew 1:18–25 NLT

This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly. As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet: “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’ ” When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus.

Let’s talk about this virgin birth prophecy. Because it’s where a lot of folks get tripped up. Matthew tells us that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus (Luke says this too). So we fight about it (what else?). A bunch of people say, “This is a scientific impossibility. Jesus has to have a mother and a father, so this is a story made up to justify his divinity.”

But Jesus isn’t the only person in history to be alleged to have been born of a virgin. Alexander the Great’s mother was allegedly impregnated by Zeus’ thunderbolt. Plato was allegedly born of a virgin and Apollo. Romulus, the founder of Rome, was the son of a virgin and Mars (the Roman god of war). Even Caesar Augustus, the ruler when Jesus was born, was said to be the son of Apollo.

Of course, there’s a problem there: Alexander the Great, Plato and Romulus were humans. Augustus was worshiped as a god, but only after death. He was explicilty elevated to godhood. He wasn’t a god on earth. And even some of the ancient heroes like Hercules were what they called demigods - half human and half god.

But Matthew is doing something different here: because Christians have never said that Jesus was only human. Or only God. And certainly not a demigod.

No, Christians have always said that Jesus is both fully human and fully God. He’s 100% both - the impossible math where 1+1=1.

And we see Matthew hinting at that when he insists that it’s not God the Father who is the source of Jesus’ life, but the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit in the Bible is the one who moved across the primordial waters at creation. The Spirit is the one who came upon the judges when they set out to liberate God’s people. The Spirit is always a sign that God is up to something new.

So too here. When we say Jesus was born of a virgin, we’re not particularly interested in Jesus’ DNA. The biology of the incarnation is probably the least interesting thing about the Christmas story.

Instead, what we celebrate is the creator becoming the creation, embracing us in the most humble and messy way possible - by becoming a fetus that must be born into the world, helpless and vulnerable.

Let me say that again: what matters about the Christmas story is not Jesus’ biology. When we confess that he is ‘conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin,’ we are celebrating the good news that, in becoming human, God inaugurated a new era in human history - one marked by God’s presence with us.

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It’s worth noting too that Matthew focuses his story on Joseph. I suggested that Jesus’ biology isn’t that interesting to the early church. Matthew illustrates this by opening his gospel with a genealogy of Jesus that traces from Abraham through king David to Joseph. Then he immediately tells us Joseph is not Jesus’ father.

Um… okay.

This sharp turn only highlights further Joseph’s actions in this text: here is a man who is known to be good and righteous. Now his bride-to-be is found to be pregnant.

You know how we can tell Joseph is a good person? Because of his initial response. He was well within his right to make a big spectacle out of this scandal. In fact, if he wanted to preserve his own reputation, that’s exactly what he should have done. Leave no question he is the victim here.

But he doesn’t do that. He seems to care for Mary in a real way, so he makes plans to divorce her quietly. Knowing this will lead to whispers - it always does in a small town. Knowing his reputation will never recover. Not really.

But it’s the best way he can care for this woman he’d planned to marry.

Even before God intervenes, we can respect Joseph. He’s the sort of person who’s willing to sacrifice his own reputation to protect another person.

Maybe this is why he’s so open to the dream he receives from God. Because when Joseph awakens from sleep, he’s changed. He’s had a dream of a future that is impossible and yet true. God is being born into the world. Into his family. He’s going to be step-dad to God’s Messiah.

That really is amazing news, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that it cost Joseph. It cost him reputation and social standing. In such a tight-knit town like Nazareth, it may very well have cost him income.

In other words, the choice Joseph made to stand with Mary meant that his first Christmas wasn’t calm, merry or bright. All he had was his fiance, their new baby and a promise from God.

All they had was the dream.

Friends, I don’t know what this Advent season has looked like for you. I don’t know if you’re tired or afraid or worried or hiding or maybe just joyous.

What I do know is that Christmas is not just a time for us to tire ourselves out. And it’s not a time for faking cheer while we hide real grief. The whole point of Christmas is that our world is not perfect and that’s why God came.

God didn’t come to perfect palaces or flawless families. God came to a poor, unmarried couple in a small backwater town in a small, backwater country. God came to liberate us all.

That’s the Christmas Dream. And if, like Joseph, you can believe it, then this Christmas might be good news for us after all.

Communion + Examen

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Assignment + Blessing

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