|
Back to Sermon Archives
December 23, 2007 - 8 am
George Bennett - Student Associate Pastor
“Do
Not Be Afraid.”
Matthew 1:18-25
The Birth of
Jesus the Messiah
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.
19Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose
her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20But 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. 21She will bear a
son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their
sins.’ 22All 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.’ 24When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did
as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, 25but
had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son;*
and he named him Jesus. (NRSV)
Prayer
God of peace and mercy, we pray that this entire service – readings, music and
sermon be received today as you intend us to receive them & that our Lord
present in the Holy Spirit dwell in our hearts. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.
Introduction
About this time last year, I was finishing a class called Bibliodrama at the
Pacific School of Religion. This class was fascinating. About twenty students
would read a scriptural passage. All using the same passage, we would read from
a variety of Bible versions. Eventually, we would start to be adventurous with
the scriptures. We started by using the words of scripture that we had in our
hands. We could say any words that we wanted to, as long as they were a part of
the scripture, in the version that we were holding. Our class of seminary
students retold the story of the annunciation by selecting the words that we
were compelled to speak. The words that were already spoken and the people that
were speaking them influenced the story that unfolded in our play.
Our goal in the class was to learn to embody parts of the scripture, and then to
use our embodied expressions within the group to make a complete study of the
scriptural passage. The story of the annunciation is a lot like our scripture
today in that an angel is speaking to Mary about the child that she will give
birth to, and the angel starts the conversation with the words "do not be
afraid." Our final play divided the class onto four parts. We had Angels that
could speak, and angels that were mute. We also had Maries that could speak and
Maries that were mute. The discoveries that came to me in this play will not
easily fade away.
Try to imagine ten angels with varying speech capabilities descending upon ten
Maries. I was an angel with the gift of speech, and the Mary that I had chosen
to approach was mute. We had spent weeks studying the message that the angel was
to deliver, and we wanted Our Maries to know how much God loved them, how
important their lives and the lives of their son Jesus would be, and just how
wonderfully progressive God was in God's willingness to put a seemingly
powerless young woman in this important role. I had plenty of information for
Mary. Moreover, I was sure glad that I had the part of a speaking angel. It
would have been outrageous to think that I could convey such an important
message by a silent expression. For about thirty minutes, the room was
pandemonium while the Maries and their angels tried to interact.
Not all of the interactions went well, but we learned an important lesson. My
own exchange with Mary was a disaster. My Mary was mute, and I was never able to
change the expression on her face from one of sheer terror and confusion. I
started with "do not be afraid," and I spent time explaining that she was
favored by God; but nothing I said really got through to her. We were done in
ten minutes; and spent the rest of the time watching the other interactions. My
favorite pairing was a mute angel and a speaking Mary. The angel decided to
spend the entire time comforting Mary, being with her quietly, close to her,
holding her hand, caressing her hair or her shoulder. Mary could only express
gratitude and wondered why she was the object of such grace. This was one of the
Maries that was truly able to accept God's message.
What I learned was that No message, not even God's own arrival in the created
world is so important that we can ignore caring for the people to which we are
wishing to communicate. The most important thing that our angels needed to
communicate had nothing to do with prophetic destiny, the revelation of God, or
theology. The most important thing that our angels needed to communicate was do
not be afraid. God is saying something special when we read the words "Do Not Be
Afraid," but God is also caring for us in a very special way.
Exegesis
The scripture that we read today has spent a significant portion of the passage
describing the situation that Joseph was trying to deal with. As I read it back
to you, I want you to think of the predicament that Joseph was considering in
light of the law and the culture in which this story is unfolding. First, I will
remind you of the law.
Deuteronomy 22:23-24
23 If
there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets
her in the town and lies with her, 24you shall bring both of them to
the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did
not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbour’s
wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. (NRSV)
Note that Matthew's gospel is describing Joseph as righteous with the following
words.
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.
19Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose
her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20But just
when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream
(NRSV)
Keep in mind that there is over five hundred years between the writing of
Deuteronomy, and the application of this law by Joseph. By the time of Jesus'
birth, it was more customary to handle this situation with permanent public
disgrace than it was to practice capital punishment. Elizabeth Morris Downie,
writes in Joseph the Righteous,
2004
"Joseph faced up to the fact that the girl he had promised to marry was
pregnant, and not by him. It's hard for us to imagine the full impact of
learning such a fact in that society. Today, unwed mothers are common, and
pregnant brides are not exactly rare. But for Joseph, the “righteous” thing to
do, according to law and custom, would have been to dismiss Mary, refuse to
honor the commitment he had made, and condemn her to life-long
shame."
But no, Joseph is righteous. Joseph resolves to be more compassionate than
either the letter of the law or the common practice of his culture. Joseph will
dismiss his fiancé quietly. This resolution is the first of two actions that
Joseph has in the scene that we are reading. The other action is that Joseph did
as the angel commanded. Prior to the angel's suggestion, there is no evidence
that Joseph had even considered marrying his pregnant fiancé. What happened
between Joseph's resolution and Joseph's obedience?
At face value, the scripture leads us to believe that the angel made a
convincing argument, but the experience that I shared about my classroom
experiment has me convinced otherwise. I want to draw your attention to the
words of meditation that are in your bulletin. This is an explanation of the
other five times that Matthew uses the words "do not be afraid" in his gospel. I
will let you read the information on your own, but I want you to notice that the
words "do not be afraid" are used by Matthew as a literary device. Whenever
Matthew wants to show that the situation is going to be controlled by God rather
than the human subjects of the story, Matthew inserts the words "do not be
afraid." After the phrase, Matthew quickly re-engages the story and reveals
God's plan, but the art of story telling only represents what actually happened.
The transition from a resolved Joseph to an obedient Joseph likely required a
caring pastoral presence like the mute angel that soothed Mary in my class's
study of the annunciation.
Hermeneutic
At this point, you might be thinking that I have gone off the deep end a little
bit. After all, we are talking about the will of God. We are use to
acknowledging that the Holy people of scripture can be easily swayed toward
God's divine plan. Why should we imagine that Joseph and Mary would be inclined
to be as faithless as the role players in my seminary class? Were they not
chosen for their own exceptional faith?
Maybe, but I for one resist the idea of assigning super-human characteristics to
the people we are told about in the Bible. This tends to let us off the hook. If
we are to hear the Good News, if we are to hold ourselves accountable to the
Good News, then we must be able to see the stark humanity of the people that God
transforms in the scripture. People like us, people who would rather be resolved
than obedient.
We held a memorial service on Friday for the homeless in our community that died
on the street in the last year. More than eighty people came to show their
respects and their commitment to making a difference in the homeless community.
We prayed, sang, read the names that we knew, and acknowledge people who were
known and loved only by God. At one point, Officer O'Brien, a downtown beat
walker for more than twenty years, made some remarks about homelessness in our
culture. His sentiment is expressed in a question that I could only paraphrase,
"Why do the people in our society who are gifted see their gifts as a means to
get ahead at the expense of others rather than a means to serve one another in
community?" Officer O'Brien is not stating a moral ideal that Jesus forgot to
mention. He is questioning why our society has not submitted itself to the great
commandment
"The first is this: 'Hear O Israel!
The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with al1 your
heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The
second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other
commandment greater than these." (Mk 12:29-31 NRSV)
The answer for Officer O'Brien is in our scripture. We are afraid. We would
rather be resolved than obedient. We see ourselves as compassionate when we
modify our use of the laws like the righteous man Joseph, but God is calling us
to a new understanding of compassion. God is wooing us with the message "do not
be afraid." The Great Commandment itself is not enough to change our attitude
from one of entitlement to one of gratitude; as we can see from the fact that it
has been nearly two thousand years since the commandment was issued, and still
the world has not obeyed.
On the other hand, we can see the flickers of light bursting out from the
darkness. Leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have called for widespread
humanitarian efforts. Quoting economist Hyman Bookbinder, Dr. King wrote, "We
can end poverty completely if the rich are willing to get richer at a slightly
slower pace." Dorothy Day, of the catholic worker movement explains her actions
that mocked our culture and our laws by saying, "We never felt it necessary to
ask permission to perform the works of mercy." Mahatma Gandhi draws attention to
the awkwardly practiced Christianity that he has witness by writing, "I do not
seek redemption from the consequences of my sin. I seek to be redeemed from sin
itself….Until I have attained that end, I shall be content to be restless."
Without exception, all of these great people agreed that there is much work to
be done.
This is the season of anticipation. As we celebrate by remembering the time just
prior to our redeemer being born into this world, we acknowledge that the
purpose of Christ Jesus was to redeem the world from sin. The world is still
being wooed into obedience. Reinhold Neibuhr explained that groups are always
more evil than individuals. By this logic, it can be understood that seven
billion people have not yet made the transition, as a group, from resolved to
obedient. But until we have, we must be content to be restless, we must keep the
tide a turnin', we must put our shoulders to the work of transforming the world
like the leaders before us and among us, we must acknowledge that God is
revealing a beautiful new reality, and we must not be afraid.
Amen.
top of page
Archives
|
