December 07, 2014
WHEN GOD DRAWS NEAR- 2. Obedience to the Undressed God
Matthew 1:18-25
Preface to the Word
On our Advent path to Christmas, we came across a couple of interesting characters last week. The Gospel of Luke introduces us to an elderly priest named Zechariah and his elderly wife, Elizabeth, who had been unable to have children. One day, while serving in the Temple, an angel informs Zechariah that Elizabeth would have a child, whose name was to be John (which in Hebrew means “Yahweh has been gracious,” or “Yahweh has shown favor!”) Zechariah is literally left speechless, but after his son John is born he sings his heart out, proclaiming what God has done.
And that is how our Advent began – with the awareness that we cannot save ourselves. None of us can give birth to the life, to the love, to the joy, or to the peace that God intends for this creation by our own human power, any more than we can make the sun rise in the morning. We can’t make it happen, but we can train our eyes through worship, Scripture and prayer to see it when it comes. And so our task during Advent is to keep the spiritual disciplines that will prepare us to experience the presence of this God who, in deep compassion, draws near to give light to people who live in darkness, to reveal the dawn in the face of death, and to guide us along the pathway of peace.
As we move along the Advent path to Christmas, we are going to spend some time with other characters in the story of Jesus’ birth… like his mom, Mary and the man to whom Mary was engaged, Joseph. Luke’s accounting of the birth story focuses on Mary, and we’ll pick up that trail next Sunday. Today, however, I want us to hear Matthew’s version of the story, which is all about the young man Joseph, who finds himself faced with an awkward situation and a tough decision. Joseph also has a few things to teach us on our way to Christmas.
Let’s hear the story from the first chapter of Matthew…
Scripture Reading: Matthew 1:18-25
Sermon I.
A. George Herbert was a brilliant priest, poet, theologian and orator who lived in 17th century England and served his whole priestly career in the little parish of Fugglestone St Peter near Salisbury. He died of consumption at the young age of 39. But in his brief span of life, he established a lasting legacy through his poetry and hymns.
In the early 1600’s, Cambridge University printed a collection of Herbert’s sacred poems, called “The Temple.” In his poem, “The Bag,” one finds this unusual poetry…
Hast thou not heard, that my Lord Jesus di’d?
Then let me tell thee a strange storie.
The God of power, as he did ride
In his majestick robes of glorie,
Reserv’d to light; and so one day
He did descend, undressing all the way.
B. The gospel is, indeed, a “strange storie,” the rather incredulous, shocking story of the way the God of power stripped off his “majestick robes of glorie,” “undressing all the way” to come to us as Emmanuel, “God with us.”
C. The truth is, we’ll never really experience the full impact of what happened in Bethlehem until we are, to some degree, shocked by it… astonished by the notion that God came to dwell among us as a baby born from Mary’s womb – wet, screaming, helpless, and naked in the same way we’re born.
God came to dwell among us, “undressing all the way.”
D. Paul captured this notion by including in his letter to the Philippians a hymn of the early church:
Though he was in the form of God,
he did not consider being equal with God something to exploit.
But he emptied himself
by taking the form of a slave
and by becoming like human beings.
When he found himself in the form of a human,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient
to the point of death,
even death on a cross (2:6-8)
E. …Even death on a cross. God came to dwell among us, “undressing all the way.”
You know, it’s due to our own sense of decency that the Jesus we see hanging on the cross has a loincloth wrapped discreetly around his waist. But in truth, there was no loincloth. Crucified prisoners hung on the cross as naked as the day they were born, with the intent of stripping away every shred of dignity, of leaving them with nothing but their human flesh.
The gospel is the shocking story of God coming to dwell with us, “undressing all the way.”
F. If this “strange storie” doesn’t somehow shock us, or confuse us, or disturb us, or astound us, then either we’ve heard the story so often that we’ve become numb to it, or we’ve never really got it at all.
And if after 2,000 years, we find ourselves somewhat shocked, confused, disturbed, or astounded by this strange story, imagine how Joseph must have felt!
II.
A. When Matthew introduces Joseph to us, he is shocked and perplexed, wrestling in the dark about what to believe and how to react to Mary’s inexplicable pregnancy.
Welcome to Matthew’s version of the story.
B. You see, Luke’s story is the Christmas Eve candlelight version, with the focus on Mary and Elizabeth. Luke has the shepherds, the angels, and the music, and it ends with everyone gathered around the manger singing “Silent Night.” But Matthew’s keeps our eyes trained on Joseph, and Herod, and the wise men from the east.
Jesus is born in a world filled with fear, tension, uncertainty, and conflict. Herod is frightened by the news he receives from the travelers from the east, and all of Jerusalem with him. (You’d be frightened too if a new king was threatening your control! And there’s nothing more frightening than authoritarian rulers who feel their authority being threatened.) These stargazers have followed a star from the east, but they don’t know where they’re going. Unlike most men today, they had to stop to ask for directions! And Joseph…Joseph was perplexed, unable to make any sense of what was going on with Mary. This situation just didn’t fit in to any of the previous categories by which he defined reality. The whole thing was utterly incompressible.
C. If we really dug deep and were honest, we also would admit that there is something about this story that leaves us scratching our heads over the incomprehensible mystery of it all. This may be the reason Joseph is included in the Christmas story. If there’s room for Joseph beside the manger, there just may be room for us, too.
D. We don’t know if Joseph was angry, or embarrassed, or ashamed, or befuddled. All Matthew says is that Joseph was a “righteous man,” and being committed to doing things right, he considered quietly dismissing Mary because of her incomprehensible pregnancy.
Joseph questioned. Thank God! He is one of the numerous biblical witnesses who help us see that honest doubt is not the contradiction of faith, but an essential ingredient in a growing faith. He reminds us that we don’t need to have all our questions answered before we find our place in the gospel story.
Being a follower of Jesus does not mean that we have all the answers to all of our questions. It means trusting that as I learn more about myself and about Jesus, my questions will find their own answers.
E. Leslie Weatherhead, in his book The Christian Agnostic, gave this counsel to people struggling with certain tenants of the Christian faith:
Don’t exclude yourself from the fellowship of Christ’s followers because of mental difficulties. If you love Christ and are seeking to follow him, take an attitude of Christian agnosticism to intellectual problems, at least for the present… only accept those things which gradually seem to you to be true. Leave the rest in a mental box labeled, ‘awaiting further light.’ In the meantime, join in with us in trying to show and to spread Christ’s spirit, for this, we feel, is the most important thing in the world.
Weatherhead’s idea of a mental box labeled “awaiting further light” can be immensely helpful, particularly for people like Joseph, who are both surprised and grateful for a church in which it is okay to doubt, to question, to struggle and to search for a meaningful relationship with Christ.
III.
A. So Matthew begins with Joseph scratching his head in perplexity over the unexpected coming of this child into his world. But that’s not where the story ends. Matthew also tells us of Joseph’s faith – not faith in terms of intellectual assent to every doctrinal statement in some creed or confession, but faith as a deep, inner trust in the promise of God and faith as a living, growing, dynamic relationship with God in Christ. We’re not talking about faith that removes every doubt or question, but faith that sets our lives in a new direction and expresses itself in active obedience to what we understand as the promise and purpose of God.
Faith doesn’t mean accepting each detail of this “strange storie” as factually true, but rather putting our full trust in this story of an intrusive God who draws near to us, undressing all the way.
B. In verse 24 we read: “When Joseph woke up, he did just as an angel from God commanded…” Still shocked, still confused, still wondering what it all would mean Joseph obeyed. He took Mary as his wife. In taking his place as the father of Mary’s child, Joseph also took his place in the long line of those for whom faith was not only something they thought with their brains or spoke with their lips, but also something did with their hands and feet and lives. It wasn’t only about the beliefs they affirmed in their heads, but also about the way they lived. It was faith forged on the anvil of active, faithful obedience.
C. This is the faith described in Hebrews 11…
By faith Abel offered a better sacrifice (verse 4)
By faith Noah responded with godly fear (verse 7)
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was call to go out to a place… He went out without knowing where he was going (verse 8)By faith he lived in the land (verse 9) By faith Abraham offered Isaac when he was tested.(verse 17)
By faith Isaac also blessed Jacob & Esau concerning their future (verse 20)
By faith Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter…He chose to be mistreated with God’s people (verses 24-25) By faith he left Egypt (verse27) kept the Passover (verse 28)
By faith, they crossed the Red Sea (verse 29)
By faith, Joseph did as the angel commanded him and took Mary as his wife. Like those who went before him, Joseph’s faith was refined in the crucible of decisive obedience to what he understood to be God’s call on his life. He took Mary as his wife and Mary’s child as his own, meaning that his life would be intertwined with the life of Jesus.
D. But even in his obedience, Joseph no doubt was still scratching his head at the incomprehensible way God had come into his life! And this is what it means to live by faith. Faith does not mean that we never have any questions or doubts, but it does mean that we have personally claimed the “strange storie” of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to be the central story by which we determine to live our lives.
IV.
A. Joseph’s active obedience resulted in a major reorientation of his life. Joseph, a righteous man, was a Synagogue-attending, law-abiding man. And this is where the tension comes in the story. For you see, God’s law handed down from Moses said that a betrothed woman impregnated by another should be stoned to death. With Mary’s pregnancy, Joseph faced a situation that ran directly against the grain of everything he had been taught to believe or obey. His love for Mary went against the rules by which he lived his life, forcing him to begin living by a new set of assumptions.
B. Like Joseph, we all live our lives by some basic assumptions. These assumptions are typically formed by our life experience, family, schooling and culture. Sometimes they are rooted in the way we have been taught to read and interpret the Scripture. These assumptions become the unwritten rules that inform our decisions and govern our behavior.
But somewhere along the way, we run into experiences or relationships that force us to question some of those assumptions. Sometimes, our obedience to the way revealed in Jesus, will mean that some of these assumptions, these “rules” that inform our decisions and behavior are contradicted or challenged by our loyalty to Christ, just the way Joseph’s loyalty to the law was superseded by his love for Mary.
C. The messenger from God told Joseph that his supporting role in the drama of salvation was to take Mary as his wife and to name the child Jesus, because “he will save people from their sins.” And that’s what Joseph did. Being a righteous man, Joseph at first was going to “call off” their engagement, but Joseph changed his mind and moved in a totally new direction. In light of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ, the old assumptions passed away and everything became new.
The birth of Jesus into Joseph’s life called for a radical reorientation in his assumptions that resulted in a radical change in his behavior. The coming of Jesus into Joseph’s life changed Joseph’s plans so that he could participate in God’s plan.
The Bible calls that “obedience.”
D. Biblical obedience means taking action in the present based on what we believe God is doing now and what God will accomplish in the future. Obedience means that we live our lives in ways that are consistent with Jesus’ portrayal of the way this world will be when God’s kingdom fully arrives and God’s will is fully done on earth as it is in heaven. Obedience means that we all become supporting actors in God’s drama of salvation.