Sermons

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I Never Thought . . .
December 15, 2002
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
3rd Sunday of Advent

Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 1:26-31

There are just two main texts in the Bible, you know, that give us any details of the Christmas story. Just two texts out of all the Bible to undergird 1½ months of holiday celebration, just two texts to underline the last four weeks of the church calendar. Only two of the gospels tell the story we’ve heard a million times … or maybe we still haven’t heard at all. The story of a God who simply, quietly walks into human history. Just two texts, two passages to tell us of the culmination of ages and eras and generations, of nations and false gods and wars and backstabbing and scandals and prophecies and longings until ONE DAY human history stands poised on the brink of something huge…some momentous breakthrough, some salvation event so powerful, so ominous, so good … that the world held its breath and stood hushed. So much so that, as CS Lewis once wrote in a poem, at that point “the tide lay motionless at ebb.” Waiting.

Just two texts, in the Bible. One in the gospel of Matthew, one in Luke. Matthew by-and-large tells the story of Joseph, Luke the story of Mary. Matthew is very brief, Luke has great detail. Matthew tells in these seven verses what it takes Luke over 100 to get down. Matthew’s Joseph mutely goes about his business, Luke’s Mary embellishes with speeches and prophecies. Matthew is an old black and white TV (if you remember those!), while Luke is a Powerpoint, multimedia extravaganza on the big screen!

But no matter how you weave back and forth between the two texts, when you hold them up to the light, the bottom line is the same. Two very ordinary people. One very ordinary couple. Caught in a painful but ordinary, age-old dilemma: a child on the way at an inappropriate time.

Joseph was pondering his options. He was engaged to Mary; no, he was married. In Joseph and Mary’s culture, a marriage was a two-step process. In the first step, there was an exchange of consent before witnesses … the marriage actually starts here … though the bride continues to live at home, and there is no sexual intimacy. If the relationship were to end at this stage, it would require a divorce, so it truly is part of the marriage. The second step came about a year later, when the bride moves to the groom’s home. Clearly, Mary and Joseph are between these two steps, having “married” each other, but still living separately and having no sexual relationship. Naturally, the news that Joseph receives is both shocking and sad: Mary is pregnant.

Joseph is a righteous man…he wants to do what is right. Well, what is right? Infidelity has apparently occurred, and Joseph of all people knows that the fault surely lies with Mary. He would be totally in the right to break the marriage … seek a divorce, under Jewish law. This would publicly humiliate Mary, which Joseph is unwilling to do. So Joseph thinks more deeply. “I will go a step further,” he says. “I will divorce her, which is right under the law … but I will do it quietly, to protect her from unwanted and embarrassing attention.”

“I never believed this could happen to us,” he might have thought. I wonder if he was angry at God? “I never thought God would do this to me.”

For her part, Mary knows that she has not been unfaithful in any way to Joseph. Yet she is undeniably pregnant, and she has only the hazy and overwhelming recollection of a conversation with an angel of God telling her what is happening. A crazy, physically impossible pregnancy? Who will believe that wild story? She won’t be able to blame Joseph when he divorces her … how could he believe anything else? She is bewildered, her marriage is ruined, and soon her reputation will be as well.

“I never believed this could happen to us,” she thinks. I wonder if she was angry at God: “I never thought God would do this to me.”

Now the two stories, the stories of the two ordinary people come together.

God speaks the same word to them both: To Mary, through the angel … to Joseph through an angel in a dream, and the word is: “Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” It’s no small thing, this word. If Joseph follows through, it is now HE who will be embarrassed and publicly ridiculed, not Mary. For a man to marry a woman pregnant with someone else’s child … Joseph would be scorned, and seen as a fool for continuing in such a relationship.

“Joseph was a righteous man.” He wanted to do what was right. But now it gets very hard. Bible scholar Dale Bruner says that every time Jesus shows up in the gospels, “he causes righteous people to rethink what righteousness really means.” Here, even at the first hint of Jesus’ birth, it starts. It seems that righteousness is not merely living impeccably … but responding to God. Righteousness for Joseph has moved from trying to minimize the pain of Mary’s guilt (at least in the eyes of others) … to actually taking that pain upon himself. Joseph, who would act as a human father to Jesus … very early on experiences the foretaste of what Jesus would later know so well … bearing the guilt and shame that belongs to others.

I think, really, Mary and Joseph were pretty ordinary people. So what makes this such an extraordinary story? Mary and Joseph are confronted with a God … who is alive and real. Three things have jumped out at me this week in their story:

First … Mary and Joseph both heard God. I believe that God sometimes speaks to us very directly. When I talk with people about how the Lord speaks, I usually list three things:

1. the still small voice inside of us
2. scripture
3. the community of faith

These are common ways that God communicates with us. But there are other ways as well, and of particular importance in these stories is the voice of God through a dream. In fact, in the Bible, dreams are routinely ways that God speaks to His people. We don’t put much stock in them anymore, it seems. I actually believe that God still uses dreams … to the point where I try to keep a paper and pencil by my bed to write things down, and I try to remember to commit my dreams to the Lord at night. My problem is … rarely do I EVER remember a dream!

I want you to hear a story on how God speaks today: [Lynne McMahan tells the first part of the story … of how God gave her a vision of a person in China who needed a Bible, and she was led to send a Chinese-English Bible with Dan to China].

It seemed clear that God had put this on Lynne’s heart. It also seemed clear that I had too much luggage, so I doubt if I accepted the Bible with overwhelming enthusiasm. So I carried that Bible to China, a Chinese-English Bible. Though we smuggled several hundred Bibles into China, I kept this one in my carry-on backpack. Several times in the first 2-3 days I wondered … doubted, even … if God would make clear what I should do with this Bible. Then when we were in Beijing, I spent a day teaching at an underground church leadership school. In the late afternoon, we had just finished up and I was talking to the translator who had taught with me all day. Some students were there visiting with us, but one young man in his twenties stayed on the fringe of the group just a bit, thumbing through the translator’s Bible … which was a Chinese-English dual translation. He was obviously quite intrigued with it.

His name was Lu Jeng Sheen. When I noticed him, I had the translator ask him why he was interested in it. He explained that he lived in a university town in Northwest China, and that such a Bible would be very helpful in his ministry there because of the many students studying English. Clearly, this was the person God had spoken to Lynne about! I asked him about himself, and he told me his story. He had been a premed student in school, and he became so sick, that in the midst of his sickness he called out to God and said “God, if you just heal me, I’ll follow Jesus!” [Never say those things to God unless you mean it!] The next day he was totally recovered, and began to follow Jesus.

Now he is ministering to the students and people of that city. I found the Bible in my backpack, brought it back and gave it to him. His eyes got very wide, and he said, “Do you realize how much this would cost here?”
I explained Lynne’s story, and how I had come to bring the Bible with me. His eyes got wider and wider, and he took it gently in his hands, and with tears in his eyes (or was that mine?) he said, “I never thought that God would do this for me.” God speaks.

The second thing common to both Mary and Joseph’s stories … after they heard God … they obeyed. They were obedient. Usually, that is a lot tougher than hearing God.

Mary responded simply, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.” And Joseph, when he awoke from his dream? Simply “… did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife.” Once Joseph and Mary heard from the Lord, they believed by acting on what they heard.

That is no small task. We have a million barriers we put up: “That couldn’t be God’s voice. I’m just imagining things. I’m in too much of a hurry. Making that phone call would be awkward. How do I know that’s you, God? That doesn’t fit my set of gifts. God wouldn’t want me to be uncomfortable.”

As important as I think it is to know ourselves, to know what our gifts are … I think we overdo it, friends. There are some things that EVERY Christian is called to DO. Every Christian … feeding the poor, befriending the lonely, sharing one's resources, sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those are not things we have to wonder if God wants us to do, or wait for his voice on. We simply need to be obedient to doing them. But beyond those things … we need to respond to God’s voice speaking into our life. That begins with the everyday little promptings that we sense: Will we talk ourselves out of it because it feels strange? Or just do it? I believe that it is as we are obedient in small things … that we can begin to hear God more and more clearly.

The third thing about this story … is that God acts. The story is not really so much about Mary and Joseph as about God, the God Who Acts. From the beginning of Genesis, God is a god who acts…NOT who sits back and watches. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Moses, the God who called the people Israel is a God of passion and compassion, of jealousy and tenderness, of anger and love, but above all he is the God Who Acts. And when God ACTS, we say, “I never thought God would do this for me.”

• I never thought God would grab hold of me … but he did. I was a senior in high school who believed, but thought God was an intellectual concept, and He began to show Himself in my life.
• I never thought God would draw my grandpa to himself late in life, but He did.
• I never thought God would forgive my failings. I always thought God forgave Sin, in general … but not MY sin. I never thought he’d care enough about ME to do it for ME … but He does. And for you too.

I have to confess, I’ve spent a lot of years in my Christian life believing that God is much smaller than He is. I’m tired of believing in such a small God. This God, the one who came into the world, the God who speaks and acts…he’s a BIG God!

All of this comes together for me in one last story. A favorite seminary professor of mine died last June. Dr. Robert Jacks (RJ, or Bob) taught speech and preaching at Princeton for 35 years. And in the middle of the pretty staid and dignified (and dare I say snobby!?) Princeton surroundings … Bob Jacks unabashedly loved Jesus Christ. Prayed, sang, taught, and joyfully witnessed to his excitement over what he saw God doing all around him. Dr. Jacks knew that God was at work.

Just this month, I was able to read some of what was said at his memorial service last June. And interesting to read this quote, that they had found on the wall of his office. It is now a rather well-known statement attributed to an African pastor who was later martyred:

“I am a disciple of Christ.
I will not let up, look back or slow down.
My past is redeemed, my future is secure.

I am done with low living, small planning,smooth knees,
mundane talking, chincy giving and dwarfed goals.

I no longer need pre-eminence, prosperity,
position, promotion or popularity.
I don’t have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised or rewarded.

My face is set; my goal is sure.
My road is narrow, my way is rough, my companions few.

My God is reliable, my mission is clear.
I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, delayed or deluded.
I will not flinch in the face of adversity,
negotiate at the table of the enemy,
or meander in the maze of mediocrity.

I am a disciple of Christ.
I must go until He comes, speak of all I know of Him,
and work until He stops me.

And when He comes for His own, by the grace of God,
He will have no problem recognizing me,
because my colors are clear.”

That sounds to me like Dr. Jacks. It sounds like someone who has heard God, who has responded in obedience, but most importantly…who has seen God act in the world we live in. That’s the God who came one night at the world’s ebb tide to be with us … I never thought God would do that for us. But He did. Let’s pray.