Imagine

Michelle was a pretty and happy girl at my elementary school. I confess that, even though I had told my parents on numerous occasions something akin to “I don’t like girls,” that I was attracted to Michelle. But sometime during the sixth grade, Michelle stopped coming to school.

Over the summer between elementary school and Junior High School (back then, between sixth and seventh grades), I forgot about Michelle, and frankly any girls at all. I went off to explore the woods and fields near my home by day. Well, near enough...and play ball and hide-n-seek under the streetlights in my suburban neighborhood by night.

When I went back to school that Fall, I became suddenly aware of girls again. They were everywhere at Hayward Junior High. And they came from other elementary schools all over the area. Those Junior High girls dressed differently too. Or maybe I was just more observant by the seventh grade. Something caught my eye.

Despite all the other girls (Did I mention they were everywhere?), eventually, I missed Michelle. I didn’t see her in my classes, in the hallways during class changes, or in the cafeteria and study halls. So, I started asking around. “Where’s Michelle?” Nobody knew or would tell me until one boy informed me that Michelle was going to a “special school.”

Somewhere between elementary school and Junior High, Michelle found herself with child, as we say in the Bible. The family was embarrassed, and I imagine Michelle was too. 12 or 13 years old and pregnant. They were so embarrassed that Michelle and her baby-to-be were packed off to a special school and I never saw here again.

This morning, I want to talk about the embarrassment of a girl around Michelle’s age, and that of her betrothed, and what happened when Mary and Joseph went to the school of faith.

Let us pray… Give us such faith that we may go through life bearing the embarrassing or terrible news that any day might bring. Do not allow us to abandon you when we are upset and ashamed—whether because of our own sin, or that of another, or because that is just the way life played out for us. Extend your grace to the extent that you are more irresistible to us than our pride or honor. Give us the humility to set these aside and trust you with our lives. Amen.

California, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma have no set minimum age for marriage—so long as the partners are consenting. Imagine. 13-year-olds can get married there, and in many other parts of the world too. And so it was in Mary’s and Joseph’s world, Mary being somewhere 12 and 16 years old when she became pregnant with Jesus, and Joseph probably being in his late teens to early twenties.

Here, I have to confess that I always imagined Joseph being older. But in his day 20 or especially 25 would have been nearly over the hill. (I remember when it was 30.)

Let’s say they were 13 and 25 and betrothed when they found out that Mary was pregnant. Can you imagine Mary’s astonishment turned to embarrassment? She and Joseph were not yet living together and had had no physical relations but somehow, she was with child. How did this happen? You will remember from the Gospel Lesson that Matthew fills in the blank for us.

Mary was betrothed to Joseph. This was more than a promise in their society; they were already legally married. That’s why we are told Joseph is considering divorce. But the big party and the consummation that followed had yet to happen. Joseph had gone to prepare a place to take his wife to live with him and start a family together. But until the day he returned for her, they would not have consummated their vows.

We get all of this more than a little bit backwards today. But the point is, they did not. They did everything by the book, yet somehow Mary was pregnant.

Matthew comes out and tells us that “she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:18). If you did not know Jesus’ origin story, Matthew’s explanation might be insufficient. What does it mean, you might wonder, to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit? Luke helps us out in his gospel narrative.

You might remember that it was an angel who first told Mary she would conceive a great child. This detail of an angelic announcement is left out of Matthew’s gospel. In Luke, when Mary asks the angel how this could be since she was a virgin, “the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God’” (Luke 1:35). that

Okay. That might have seemed incredulous to you and me but Mary seemed to own it. “Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word’” (Luke 1:38).

Still, by the time she began to show, it wasn’t just her and the angel anymore. Now, the whole village could see her condition. And so would Joseph. Regardless of “let it be to me according to your word,” you know she still had to be embarrassed, even ashamed.

And so would Joseph. He suffered the embarrassment of his family and friends thinking they had not waited until they were meant to be together. He would have suffered the shame of the so-called “knowing” jabs of the other men.

Or worse, he might have suffered the shame of people thinking Mary had been with another man than Joseph. And being a good guy, Joseph would have been embarrassed for Mary.

So, he resolved to put her away privately—like Michelle’s family did for her. This approach would save Michelle and Mary as much embarrassment as possible. But there was something very different between Mary’s and Michelle’s pregnancies and how they were handled.

I don’t know the circumstances of Michelle’s conception. But I do know that an angel did not visit her beforehand and inform her of God’s will, that she would find herself with child, that child would be “conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Michelle’s was not a virgin birth; Mary’s was. Michelle was made pregnant in the way every other child on this planet is conceived. Except one.

Mary is the exception. This was prophesied by Isaiah more than seven centuries earlier. What happened to Mary was the sign promised to Ahaz in antiquity.

Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”

And Mary believed it. She believed the angel’s announcement and likely had connected it to Isaiah’s prophecy.

And if Mary did not, Joseph did. Of course, he had a little tutoring. While he was considering how to divorce her quietly, a messenger from God appeared to him in a dream.

Now I have to say that I have some crazy dreams. Last night, I dreamed I was flying a spaceship into the sun to save the earth from something or other. I had another weird dream that I meant to remember to put into this sermon as an illustration. But you know how dreams are; usually you can’t remember them. That might be a good thing.

But Joe remembered his dream. The angel told him not to divorce Mary, not to put her away, but to to take her home as his wife. Why? The explanation comes again like it did to Mary. “That which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20).

It is easy for us to imagine the embarrassment. It is easy to imagine what we might do in certain shameful situations. But is is almost inconceivable for us to imagine the faith it took for Mary and Joseph to follow through on their plans—which as it turned out, were God’s plans, God’s will.

It would be lunacy for me to actually believe I am actually going to be on a sunward-bound spaceship to save planet earth from some cataclysmic catasrophe. But it was sheer faith for Mary and Joseph to believe God’s incredible word, that she would bear a son by the power of the God’s Spirit, and that they should “call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21).

Imagine.

Imagine what you would do at the age of 13 or 25. Imagine that you might have had such profound and mysterious faith. But such faith they did have, this young couple. Thanks be to God.

Through their faith in this promised child, God’s long-awaited Messiah, we receive both grace and the obedience of faith so that we too may believe the promise. This is the blessing of the Lord: the righteousness of faith in the chosen, anointed one. As the ancient headers and gates of the temple needed to be removed so that the great God of Israel might enter the sanctuary, just so, our small hearts must be lifted up in faith so that God may enter in and be Immanuel, God with us. 

Advent is a time for remembering the promise of old. The gospel good news of God that was promised by the prophets is fulfilled through Mary’s and Joseph’s (and our) faith in the incarnate Son of Man and Son of God.

So, imagine with me one more time. Imagine the scene were it to occur today. A 13-year-old discovered to be pregnant but claims she is a virgin. She is laughed to shame, accused of fooling around outside of marriage. But she sticks to her story, while we call it unbelievable. We would not believe a word of it. And her family and neighbors likely thought it as outlandish as we surely would. And they resolve to cover it up as best as possible. All the while, the 13-year-old sticks to her story of being a virgin.

That unbelievable tale was Mary’s story—and Joseph’s—and ours too. Mary and Joseph both (and we) have heard from angels, God’s messengers. Who would believe them? Would you have believed? More importantly, do you believe? ...that this child, born outside of polite society, has saved his people and many from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).

Mary and Joseph believed it so fully that they named their son “Jesus,” the name prescribed by the angel, a name that means “Jehovah saves” or "Yahweh saves." This is what Mary and Joseph had the faith to believe.

It is this same incredible story that we believe and remember this last Sunday in Advent.

Imagine.