Advent 4: The Impossible Light Arrives

Children’s Time

Come they told me, pa rum pum pum pum  A new born King to see, pa rum pum pum pum  Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum  To lay before the King, pa rum pum pum pum,  rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

So to honor Him, pa rum pum pum pum,  When we come. 

Little Baby, pa rum pum pum pum  I am a poor boy too, pa rum pum pum pum  I have no gift to bring, pa rum pum pum pum  That's fit to give the King, pa rum pum pum pum,  rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum, 

Shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum,  On my drum? 

Mary nodded, pa rum pum pum pum  The ox and lamb kept time, pa rum pum pum pum  I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum  I played my best for Him, pa rum pum pum pum,  rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum, 

Then He smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum  Me and my drum.

The New Revised Standard Version The Birth of Jesus the Messiah

The Birth of Jesus the Messiah

(Lk 2:1–7)

18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20 But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

23 “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.” 24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, 25 but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

Opening Prayer

To be vulnerable...

I want you to think back for a moment to that beloved Christmas Carol, “The Little Drummer Boy”. Let’s picture the scene, with Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus in the stable, the nativity setting with animals all around, hay and mangers and birds and cows and sheep.

It’s idyllic, isn’t it? The Nativity?

But remind yourself, also, of Joseph’s feelings in our Scripture reading. The man was scared. He was a “righteous man” and this birth of a child that wasn’t his would have meant ruin for his betrothed wife and perhaps his own place in society.

So think about this Carol, the Little Drummer Boy. Imagine, for a moment, that Joseph had remained scared and was mulling over how to dismiss Mary and this child, to abandon them or exile them in order to save face for everyone.

You want to know who the last people I bet Joseph wanted to see were in that moment? A bunch of shepherds and a kid with a drum!

Picture for a moment how Joseph had just been treated by the many innkeepers who had turned him away. The boiling up of anger he could have been feeling, as his plan to get this birth story over with becoming more and more complicated by people in power refusing to help him.

Think for a moment how easy it would be for Joseph, to in turn, stand at the stable door and project all of that frustration and fear back onto anyone who came knocking. Can you play your drum? No way, get out of here, there’s nothing to see. No room for you here.

We all know what this is like. Don’t we struggle, each day, with what it means to treat others with kindness even when we aren’t always treated that way ourselves? Don’t we struggle not to project our worries and fears upon everyone we cross paths with, regardless of whether they have done us wrong or are actually seeking to help us?

It’s so very common for us to pass on a hurtful remark or criticism we recieved right to the next person we meet.

So as we consider Joseph this morning, I want us to remember how much we are apt to be like Joseph. It is our privilege to act this way. It is our fear turned to pain turned to active strength against whoever would hurt us or whoever we can hurt.

The lineage and the turn

Matthew’s Gospel opens with the famous genealogy of Jesus the Messiah. It highlights the family line from Abraham to David and from David to the Exile in Babylon and from Exile, a return to the promised land and the line which proceeds to Joseph, the husband of Mary, of who Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.

This whole first 17 verses of Matthew set us up to see that Jesus is of royal lineage AND that Joseph is a man of power and privilege.

So what happens next is of great importance. Because next, we hear that Joseph’s wife to be, Mary, has gotten pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Here, again, is a perfect moment for Joseph to turn the problems he is presented with into a deflection for his own gain. He mulls it over and plans to dismiss Mary quietly, so as to not disgrace her. That’s nice, right? As a man of privilege, he won’t have her stoned or publicly humiliated. This is the proper thing to do with someone who has betrayed, is it not?

Joseph sits with privilege in this moment.

But…just as he resolves to do this…something happens.

Joseph is sitting with his privilege and has every right to dismiss Mary. She’s the one who went and got pregnant. It’s not his fault, certainly. And as a man of position, he has a reputation to uphold, power to yield.

But…then…a messenger appears. An angel.

In the same way that Mary received a message from an angel reporting that she would have this child and call him Emmanuel, God with us, so Joseph is stopped in his tracks and given a revelation about what is actually going on here.

The messenger speaks to Joseph’s privilege and lineage: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her his from the Holy Spirit.”

Then the messenger shows how grand this whole endeavor will be, how might and all-loving and world-changing this birth will be:

The New Revised Standard Version The Birth of Jesus the Messiah

She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

23 “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.”

The message ends. The dream is over. Joseph wakes up.

And here…Joseph has a choice.

The choice to believe the message, to stay with Mary and be faithful to this child.

Or the choice to cut and run, to protect himself and his station in life. The reasonable choice — to let Mary’s obvious betrayal of him be known, to wash his hands of her, to let go and let her infidelity be their end. To project his fear of loss onto her and let her, the vulnerable and disgraced woman, take the brunt of the culture’s response.

Fast forward to that Joseph — he’s standing at the door of the stable, refusing to let the shepherds or the little drummer boy in to see the baby. He’s saying “no room here.”

Later, he’s running off to Egypt, not only to flee Herod, but hopefully to rid himself of his unfaithful wife and child in a foreign country and to return home alone and in grace.

Imagine all of this — it is not hard, is it?

So much of our time in the Advent and Christmas season is spent on the beautiful stories of the baby Jesus, Mary, the angels, the Wise Men and the glory of the birth. But we gloss over a guy like Joseph. He’s just in the background.

But what about the impossibility he faced? Doesn’t his dilemma connect to our stories so well, too?

How many times have I been tempted to throw someone else under the bus for my problems? How many times have I been drawn to the darkness of isolation rather than embrace the complexity of living in the light of real, messy relationship? How often do we wish to pawn our problems off on someone else?

The Weakness of Joseph and the Weakness of God

And yet…this not how the story goes.

Instead…Joseph rises to his position and privilege by giving them up. He yields. Because the messenger has shown him something that is greater than himself. This is the child of the Most High God. This is Emmanuel, God with us. If he knows his lineage like Matthew does, this is the fulfillment of the line of David, the King of the Jews, the Messiah, being born in his family.

And Joseph does not take this as an opportunity to claim more, but rather, embraces the downward place of a man who supports his beloved wife, who lives into calming her fears, who holds their child in love and raises Jesus as his own.

This is a man who lets his privilege be yielded to the ones who are weaker than he. His weakness has been exposed and he’s let it win — he finds his strength in weakness. May it be so with us.

The Impossible Light

Today we close the Advent season, this is the final Sunday.

And yesterday was the darkest day of the year. We have entered into the deepest weakness, the deepest place of fear that light may never return. How could it? It has been growing steadily dimmer and dimmer, it seems impossible things would change.

Much like Joseph, we’ve reached the end of the line, the place where all our privilege and position and knowledge and hope for something better must be let go of, forgotten, given up because, clearly, the darkness has won, right?

And yet…on this beautiful darkest Sunday, we know the story is not finished.

We witness Joseph’s letting go and yielding to what seems impossible — to love even in the face of disgrace. To let go of his privilege.

What if the story of Advent is, for us, a story that calls us to something likewise impossible, likewise instigating of our letting go?

What if we’re meant to let go of the hope that the light will dawn?

And what if, in doing this, in knowing all the longings and hopes and fears of all the years…we find they are met in the humble Christchild, born in a stable, who for the sake of all creation would live, die, and rise again to break forth a new kind of dawn, a dawn from on high which opens wide the way of light and life? What if...

Friends, we have the choice, like Joseph. To embrace what seems impossible or to grasp tightly to what our privilege gives us. To let the impossible light arrive, or to keep walking in darkness.

Matthew’s famous lineage opening, and then the weakness of Joseph leads into the birth narrative

Weakness vs. Privilege

Weakness vs. Privilege

Light vs. Dark

Embracing weakness as a sign of Christ’s presence among us

Hear it, the call to the good news. The path of life, the choice of light. And here how Jesus lived this, with this closing reading from the second chapter of Philippians.

Embracing the light, the impossible light, as resistance to the darkness.

To be weak is to be vulnerable, to yield, to choose the good of the other over ourselves.

Closing

The New Revised Standard Version Imitating Christ’s Humility

5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

6 who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

7 but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

8 he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross.

9 Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name

that is above every name,

10 so that at the name of Jesus

every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

11 and every tongue should confess

that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

Amen.