Sermon Tone Analysis

How does God come to Us?

Advent refers to the four Sundays preceeding Christmas.

The word advent means “to come” or “to arrive.”

Advent can refer to Jesus’ birth or to His second coming.

Advent is a season of anticipation and preparation.

We would not know God if God had not revealed Himself to us.

Most religions are concerned with understanding divinity or attaining to a superior state.

Christianity is the only religion where God comes to us.

God comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

God is a person, not an idea.

God does not come as we expect Him.

He comes as He is and we may well miss Him if we are not looking.

This series looks at different parts of the Christmas story and asks, “How does God come to us?”

As we look at the story from different angles, we see different facets of God’s character.

We can say, “Immanuel - God is with us,” when each of these begins to manifest in us!

Mary and Joseph: two case studies in finding peace

Our advent figures this week are two people, the so-called parents of Jesus, although their relationship status truly fits the category of “it’s complicated.”

They both found peace in overwhelming circumstances and that peace was more than just a feeling.

For Mary it involved acceptance and yielding to God.

For Joseph it meant making a difficult decision, but one that God would help him to make.

Mary: peace through acceptance

Mary is a young woman in her teens who has never married.

She has some Jewish nobility in her family background, but that is not to her advantage since her people are subject to Roman rule.

She lives near Nazareth, a working class town where most are tradesmen working on the nearby colonization of Tiberius on the shores of Galilee.

She has been pledged to marry Joseph, the carpenter, who will be employed for the next twenty years in the construction of the Roman City.

Six months after hearing that her cousin, Elizabeth, was pregnant following an angelic visitation to her husband who serves as a priest in the Temple in Jerusalem, Mary also receives an angelic visitation.

Mary is neither accustomed to angelic visitation nor to favorable greetings.

She is a woman in a paternalistic society where her place is to perform household chores and her worth is in bearing children.

On that note, she is promised to bear a son, which is the best news any woman can receive because it means that she will be valued by her husband since she has enabled his family heritage to continue.

But the news is premature, because he has not yet sent for her to become his wife in the real sense.

The description that followed would have been similar to the little bit that Mary might have known of what would take place on her wedding night, except that it is God Himself that would extend His covering over her and the Holy Spirit would come into her belly, not in the ordinary way but in a supernatural way.

The child would be God’s Son.

Now Mary surely had questions, but as a woman she was not expected to have answers.

Her cousin Elisabeth was similarly on a Divine assignment, that would have been a comfort to her, not to feel like she was the only one.

A common person should never be singled out, much less a woman.

Most of her decisions were made for her by her family and by her husband.

However, God’s authority superseded that of her family, her husband or any authority that she could think of.

She saw herself first and foremost as belonging to God and she accepted His proposal.

Joseph: peace as a decision

Let’s read what the Bible says about Joseph:

As a man in those days, Joseph’s life would have been about what he could produce.

He could take raw materials and skillfully turn them into functional structures.

He would have lived in a man’s world, and other than his mother and his relatives, he probably didn’t interact much with women.

He might have chosen Mary, because he liked what he had heard about her or what he could see from a distance, or she might have been chosen for him.

He wasn’t supposed to know her personally until after they were married.

And even then, marriage was not so much about love and relationship as it was about finding your place in the larger community.

It was about raising a family and passing on the traditions of the elders.

God would someday save his people, but day to day life was about survival, keeping hope alive and passing the knowledge of God to the next generation.

Joseph obviously cared more than most men would.

The normal response to Mary becoming pregnant before he had come for her to take her to his home would have been to create a public outcry, which should serve to convince everyone that he is shocked at her condition and certainly not responsible for it.

Mary could be stoned according to the law, Joseph would want to avoid being presumed guilty.

But Joseph was better that that and considered what that would mean for Mary, not just for his own reputation.

He showed that he was innocent in that he resolved to do the right thing as discreetly as possible.

And for that reason, the scripture calls him “righteous.”

Joseph could not marry her, that was out of the question.

The normal order of things had been violated.

It was not about one person’s best interest, it was about the Jewish survival as a people.

Women were often raped by occupying forces as a strategy because questionable parentage disrupted homes, families and communities.

It produced outcasts, fatherless children, who would spend their lives causing trouble and ensure that another generation would continue to live as victims of tyranny, if not of the government, of themselves.

Women were often raped by occupying forces as a strategy because questionable parentage disrupted homes, families and communities.

It produced outcasts, fatherless children, who would spend their lives causing trouble and ensure that another generation would continue to live as victims of tyranny, if not of the government, of themselves.

If the truth was to be known about what had really happened to Mary it would have to come by revelation.

She could not tell him and he had no reason to believe her.

The truth came in a dream.

It was delivered by an angelic messenger.

It collaborated Mary’s story and it was attested to by the Prophets.

Joseph could make a decision on the basis of two, even three witnesses.

Joseph chose to obey God.

A man’s life is not only about producing, as a husband and a father it is about making decisions.

It is about making decisions that will either put food on the table or not.

It is about positioning your family where there are the best possible resources for your family's’ survival and success.

It is about deciding what will lead to peace, health and prosperity for generations to come.

Joseph decided that God knows best.

He not only took Mary as his wife, he took Jesus and raised him as his son.

He provided a stable home environment (no pun intended) for Jesus, Mary and the other children that he and Mary would eventually have together.

By the time Jesus begins his ministry, Joseph would have passed from the scene, but as a man he has been successful because he is outlived by what he has helped to produce.

God came to Mary and to Joseph and they found peace

God comes to us as peace

God disrupted Mary, a virgin who was looking forward to being married with a proposal to bring His Son into the world.

God disrupted Joseph, a carpenter with decent job and promising future with a tragic scandal.

But he also gave him Divine confirmation.

We don’t get the sense that Joseph or Mary continues to be trouble by their disruptions.

We get the sense of peace, that they were settled with their decisions and that peace was from God.

God comes to us as peace.

What is peace?

Some would say that peace is the absence of conflict.

“Peace.

The Meaning of Peace.

In English, the word “peace” conjures up a passive picture, one showing an absence of civil disturbance or hostilities, or a personality free from internal and external strife.”

God disrupted history to bring peace.

God disrupted Mary, a virgin who was looking forward to being married with a proposal to bring His Son into the world.

God disrupted Joseph, a carpenter with decent job and promising future with a tragic scandal.

But He also gave him Divine confirmation as to what he should do.

We don’t get the sense that Joseph or Mary continue to be trouble by their disruptions.

We get the sense of peace, that they were settled with their decisions and that peace was from God.

The definition continues:

“The biblical concept of peace is larger than that and rests heavily on the Hebrew "Shalom”, which means “to be complete” or “to be sound.”

The verb conveys both a dynamic and a static meaning—“to be complete or whole” or “to live well.””

Schaefer, G. E. (1996).

Peace.