God With Us

Waiting in Advent

As a teacher and a pastor, I can tell a lot about people by the questions they ask. A repeated question that came up in my Old Testament class was why did God wait so long to send Jesus?

There’s something to this question that probably resonates with all of us. If God has the means of saving the world, why does he wait thousands of years to do it? Now that Jesus is come, why is He still waiting?

More personally, if God has the ability to fix my illness, my finances, my spouse, co-worker or roommate, the bad teacher I have to put up with this year, and so on, why is He taking so long to do it?

As we celebrate Advent, we wait.

We wait in Bethlehem for Mary to arrive

We wait for Jesus to be born

We wait for his public ministry

We wait for his death

We wait for him to rise

We wait for him to come again

Our waiting in Advent is legitimately distorted because we bring the full import of the person of Jesus into the events as they unfold. As if Mary and Joseph knew their son would do miracles, die, and rise again. We can’t help ourselves because we can’t wait. We have full hindsight and know what happens.

Because of this, we end up with what I call the “glamor shots baby Jesus,” like this image [embroidery image]. I can hear Joseph threatening the sheep now…

“if you don’t sit still and face Jesus, you are going to be first on the sacrifice list.”

The danger in this combination of our idealization of Jesus’s birth with the lights and tinsel of our commercialized holidays is that the first Christmas never happened quite as we imagine it.

Now, there is benefit to our remembering in full hindsight, and in their own way, the Gospels are doing this. But it is also fruitful to start over, so to speak, from the beginning. And when we do, the first Christmas story is not so pretty.

We are prone to miss this point because the Christmas season can often be a big blur of lights and parties, and we know this story all too well. But it’s not so much the untidiness of the story that is important, it is the nature of how the Kingdom comes to Joseph, Mary, and the people of Israel that we can’t miss.

Christmas Story is Not Pretty

Mark and John do not recount anything about the birth of Jesus, but this is not out of the ordinary for ancient biographies. Luke focuses on Mary, our Gospel text for next Sunday, while Matthew tells the story from Joseph’s perspective.

For the remainder of our time I’d like for us to reflect on how Joseph received God’s salvation in taking Mary as his wife and Jesus as his son.

Joseph trusts God in the most awkward and difficult circumstances. [Joseph’s Problem & Solutions] He is faced with some of the most disturbing news a young man, probably around the age of 18, could receive.

His wife-to-be, probably around the age of 13, is not only pregnant but he is not the father.

He can only assume that Mary had been with another man, perhaps during the three months that she visits her cousin Elizabeth in Judea. The only possible solution is divorce.

Although they are only “pledged to be married,” unlike engagement in Western society, their betrothal could only be annulled by divorce. And according to Jewish law, he was required to divorce his wife under the given circumstances.

For Matthew, Joseph is righteous because of the manner in which he intends to divorce. Rather of making Mary pay publicly, he plans to divorce her privately. 

But then God intervenes. In a dream, an angel tells Joseph to marry her anyway because the child is from the Holy Spirit. Joseph gets a bum deal. His wife is pregnant and God says to him, “trust me.”

The trust of Joseph here is astounding, and this is one of Matthew’s points. Joseph walks into a situation that looks dubious no matter how it’s looked at. Anyone who saw Mary’s bump would have concluded that Mary and Joseph came together a little too soon. Both would deny it. Then Mary must have been unfaithful. Both would deny it.

“Right Joseph, you had a dream, and the Holy Spirit caused her to have a baby. That’s a good one!”

Who would believe this? In fact, here’s a rare photo of Mary and Joseph entering town. [Joseph & Mary Entering Town]

Joseph had no good options, but he chose the way of faith. No matter what it looked like from the outside, and no matter how much of a struggle it would be for him, he chose to follow the Lord, a decision that would affect every day of the rest of his life in the most mundane way: raising a son and being a husband.

That’s the most amazing part of God’s salvation. It is unhurried and personal. It meets us where we are, as people who must get through our daily routines without losing our salvation. As Tish Harrison Warren puts it, [Warren Quote]

Christ didn’t redeem my life theoretically or abstractly—the life I dreamed of living or the life I think I ideally should be living. He knew I’d be in today as it is, in my home where it stands, in my relationships with their specific beauty and brokenness, in my particular sin and struggles.... How I spend this ordinary day in Christ is how I will spend my Christian life.” (Liturgy of the Ordinary, 21, 24)

God’s salvation comes as a baby born to a young Jewish family. Joseph names the child, “Jesus,” meaning “God is salvation,” because the angel told him that he will save his people from their sins. How is He going to do that? When is He going to do that? What about people who need saving right now?

We may be asking similar questions this morning, but the good news, Wilmore Anglican, is that God is with us.

God Isn’t Doing Things on Our Terms

It should be clear that God isn’t doing things in terms we expect. This is a slow and sloppy way to save his people, and us. Not because God is sloppy, but because we are.

Salvation sometimes feels like a slow torture as we long to be better than we are. Even John the Baptist wasn’t certain about Jesus as Rick reminded us last week.

In my own life, I’ve been struggling randomly with getting to sleep at night. I know part of the issue is that for the last year or so, I’ve been living life with too little margin and have too many things on my mind. Even when I’m not trying to think about things, my brain won’t shut off.

The other day I was sharing this struggle with Hule and I told him, in the midst of living this way, I haven’t entered into any deep darkness. Of course, I meant something like, I haven’t descended into the abuse of porn or substance abuse.

Later, as I reflected on this, I was dead wrong. I have descended into deep darkness. Mine is living life without a margin, trying to do too much, and trying to please myself and others rather than the Lord.

The deception is, this doesn’t feel like darkness, it doesn’t feel evil, but it is just as bad. I, my family, and others suffer because of my choices. So, I’m setting the record straight, this morning, Hule. I have fallen into deep darkness and I need God’s salvation in my ordinary choices today and tomorrow.

God With Us

What about you? Where do you need God’s salvation in your life?

We think of Advent as waiting on God, when in reality, God is waiting on us.

God’s salvation is not efficient, it is personal. He comes to us where we are and waits on us to see life His way. He waits while we are distracted and flounder. We get desperate and demand miracles. He patiently invites us to follow Him in the ordinary no matter what.

This is where he met Joseph and Mary. This is where He wants to meet you this morning. This is where His salvation always begins.

The good news, Wilmore Anglican, is that God is with us.