THE VISIT

Matthew 1: 18-25

Our world today would be a tough one for God to enter to plan for any other divine event, like God did so long ago with Jesus. This week, and this week alone, we and the country watched as council proceedings in New Orleans were disrupted by those who tried to storm the courtroom and by police officers who tried to hold them back with shields, physical force, verbal orders, tazers, and chemical sprays. The crowds did not listen to the warnings of those in authority. In our media frenzied world, some cried that police officers crossed a line of justice with the use of force, while others supported their efforts to keep control. How many television chases make your blood boil when persons driving a car are told to stop and they don’t, driving through cities and highways with careless abandon? What part of stop don’t they understand? “Make them pay for every car, house, and person they hit with their own cash or their own prison term with no leniency!” I say under my breath to the television screen. But I digress …. The nation watched as a woman in one of our own electronics stories had to be held and tazed for acting in a totally defiant manner when an officer asked her to stop. Then the media asked bystanders if they believe the police for overreacted! What part of “Just a moment ma’am” did she not understand? I hope we will still have honorable men and women going into law enforcement after all the scrutiny these officers are under. May God raise up a new generation of children who respect those whose job it is to teach, govern, or protect them. And may those in positions of authority work to keep conduct high and to bring to justice those among their group who don’t. Our sense of outrage was raised again this week as a young TV star announced that she would have a child, without marriage, one who just was old enough to shift from a learner’s permit to a driver’s license. “According to one source, she plays a perfect, well-liked and pure teenaged girl in the show Zoey 101 on the Nickelodeon channel. Even our world, with its “blowin’ in the wind” sense of morals, has had trouble with this one, and with good reason. Children and teenagers have trouble separating a movie or TV character from the actor who plays the part. I’m grown up and I still have trouble with that! So it can be seen as incongruous when we act differently “at work” than when we’re “at home.” But still, there are still boys and girls who have a sense of what is right and wrong, who have been taught about God, and who are learning how to connect the dots in their life. I witnessed some of that good focus as we were preparing children and youth for the 5:30 service tomorrow night; I almost always see it in those playing a part or those reading from the Bible, who treat their role with such careful attention that tears cloud my vision for a few moments. God looks for ones such as them to collaborate with life changing plans for tomorrow.

A long time ago, in a rural region called Galilee, not a power region like Jerusalem; and from a small and unimportant town in that rural region called Nazareth, God searched not for a young woman and young man who were stars, nor those who were popular. God searched for and, through an angel, visited two who had hearts that would not react adversely to the request that came from the authority of God, nor did they react to the messenger by suggesting better ways to carry out the plan. God needed two people who, when visited by rather frightful creatures called angels, would listen, withhold judgment, trust the request, and then follow orders. I used the word “orders” deliberately. Our Confirmation Class learned that a “multitude of the Heavenly Host” was a description of the army of God, literally, those who were asking/drafting people for a greater cause, including following orders from on high. So the visit was made, first to Mary, according Luke, and then to Joseph, according to Matthew. Our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters revere Mary to a fault, perhaps, some would say, going overboard with reverence. But from such theologians we find this description of what happened in Luke chapter 1: “Mary is not the initiator. Her ‘Yes’ is a response, an Amen to the saving initiative of God…. Her response is active, not passive. God deals with her as a free agent, not as an object to be manipulated. As St. Augustine put it, ‘she conceived the word in her mind before giving the Word a body in her womb.”… All of us are invited to … copy her faith, her patience, her obedience, her meditative spirit, her fortitude, her surrender, and her spotless purity.” [Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J, THE LIVING PULPIT Vol. 10, No. 4, p. 30-31] Most sermons on this Sunday deal with Mary, and certainly not without good reason. What that young woman said and did in response to the request almost certainly made her ostracized by her village because a child was growing in her that didn’t belong to the man to whom she was engaged, but it also made her revered for generations to come. The hymn known as the Magnificat in Luke chapter 1, shared between Mary at her young age expecting Jesus, and her cousin, Elizabeth, in her old age, expecting a child who would be called John (“the Baptist”), is the song of her young heart and will, as she magnifies God for choosing her.

But few sermons talk about the step father, Joseph, the one who an angel also visited to calm him down before news of his fiancée’s condition reached him. What the Heavenly Father could not teach his son, he knew the earthly father would teach, so God made the selection carefully. This man had to have some extraordinary qualities. For instance, if Galilean women were generally submissive in the first century, Galilean men were generally stubborn and sure of what they knew even when they had no business being as sure as they were. I know some men like that today. So to find a man, already engaged to a young woman by prior arrangement of her father, and have him exhibit the same good heart and character as the young woman, makes me also wonder if God had picked these two long before their daddies had picked each other’s children! Oh, God can be very patient in plans that change eternity! But even after so much planning, there was still a question mark in the mind of our Creator: God had always agreed not to breech our human will, with the hope that we would choose God’s way, but that we could also choose otherwise. The Heavenly Father must have held his breath until Mary had said “yes” to the request from the visitor, and until the news reached Joseph and he had reacted favorably. Being the honorable man that God knew he was, he decided to “break off the engagement, and part from her,” even though by law he could have had her stoned. I know that some Bibles translate the Greek word there as “divorce” but there had not yet been a marriage. The word “divorce” is used by some to show the full and complete agreement that had been decided by the fathers for their marriage. Calling one off almost never happened, but could be justified under these circumstances. Joseph, you see, would have been perceived as an honorable man in this event, and Mary, well, much less than honorable. As Joseph laid down for his troubled night sleep, wondering how he and his father could have so misjudged Mary, God had an angel visit him in a dream. Who listens to dreams? Psychologists tell us that some dream in black and white and some in color. My experience is that some of my dreams make sense but many don’t. God chose a man who listened to his dream: what a rare man indeed, although another Biblical Joseph also interpreted dreams, didn’t he? From today’s dream in Matthew chapter 1, we read that Joseph, not by God’s crushing will, but by his own human will, agreed to the arrangements that the angel outlined. And in next week’s sermon, when a dream again guided him, Joseph took Mary and baby Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod’s maniacal rampage.

One thing some have learned from Joseph is to be a better listener to our dreams. But more than that, to trust that God has a bigger plan in mind for our lives and our world comes through in the Christmas story. If Joseph had had a problem with authorities he may never had said “yes” to the angel’s words of assurance. If Mary had had a smart remark or a quick temper the Savior might not have been born, and certainly not in the same way. As we look at others from store clerks to co-workers to family members, and children look at parents, and adults look at their parents and at teenagers, we find that attitude, spirit, patience, and faithfulness matter when dealing with others. They mattered as God planned the soul saving events that involved the tiny villages of Nazareth and Bethlehem, and they matter today. How could such qualities either invite or hinder God if holy plans for our world were being formulated even now? With all the clamor of merry muzak in stores and chasing lights on houses, even tonight, God may be looking for a quiet corner, in a rural area, with only the glow of starlight, where hope could be born again into the hearts of those ready to hear and receive a visit; a visit from an angel prepared to break through the crusty, arrogant, or stubborn hearts of those with authority … and the crushed spirits of those with none. May every heart prepare him room; prepare the way of the Lord.

Jeffrey A. Sumner December 23, 2007