SPECIAL DAYS: Fourth Sunday of Advent

December 20, 1998 - LESSON: Matthew 1:18-25, NRSV

SERMON TITLE: From Disappointment to Joy

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INTRODUCTION:

  1. Today the Packers play the Oilers at Lambeau Field.
    1. They are having, at best, a disappointing season.
      1. They have won 9 games and lost 5
      2. The Oilers are 8 and 6
      3. The Packers won Super Bowl 31 and lost Super Bowl 32
    2. They have an outside chance of making it to Super Bowl 33, it is an outside chance.
    3. The fans are disappointed.

MAIN BODY:

  1. Disappointment is an experience and an emotion with which we all are faced.
    1. Our expectations remained just that, expectations.
    2. Our hopes are not realized.
    3. People behave in ways which are sometimes unexpected and inappropriate.
    4. Christmas is a time for evaluating disappointment and finding ways to overcome it.
    5. Perhaps Joseph and Mary have something to teach us.
  2. What is Mary to do, she is unmarried and pregnant.
    1. The euphoria of angel's visitation is fading.
    2. The full import of her family and social position intrudes on her thinking.
      1. Times are different then.
      2. Today we take out-of-wedlock pregnancies differently.
        1. There is not the stigma or shame that there used to be.
        2. We still disapprove, we have become more modern.

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    3. Mary is betrothed, but not yet married.
      1. A betrothal, while less than a full marriage, was certainly more than any modern notion of an "engagement."
      2. Betrothal was a definitive legal state, contracts had been signed, dowries exchanged, binding agreements set in place.
      3. While a legal marriage did not exist until the husband had taken his wife into his home and consummated their union.
      4. A betrothed couple was, nevertheless, a legal entity and already bound by the strict Hebraic codes of conduct.
        1. A woman whose betrothed husband died was considered a widow.
        2. A betrothed woman who had sexual relations with another man was considered to be an adulteress.
      5. When Mary was found to be pregnant, she faced the full measure of the adultery laws found in Deuteronomy 22:23-24.
        1. (Deuteronomy 22:23-24 NRSV) 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, [24] you 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 neighbor's wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.
      6. This is a extremely serious condition in which to be.
    4. How is she going to tell Joseph?
    5. What is she going to tell Joseph?
      1. A miraculous conception
      2. The Holy Spirit?
      3. He is a practical man, but a man of his times.
      4. How will he respond?
        1. What will he say?
        2. What will he do?

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  3. When he hears the news, Joseph is deeply disappointed.
    1. What is he to do?
      1. Matthew's text stresses that Joseph was "a righteous man" (1:19) - a moral state that both forced his hand and yet allowed him to act with mercy.
      2. As one who was "righteous," Joseph's obedience to the law insisted that he have nothing more to do with Mary.
      3. Under the law, she was an adulteress and must be sent away - their marriage could not occur.
      4. But Joseph could choose one of two ways to disintegrate their betrothal contract.
        1. He could bring public charges of adultery against Mary and let the law take its full course.
        2. Or Joseph could simply take two witnesses with him as he formally confronted Mary with charges of adultery.
        3. In the presence of just those two witnesses, Joseph could divorce his betrothed.
    2. He decides that he will put her away quietly.
      1. He does not want Mary to suffer the trial and punishment called for by Jewish law.
      2. He does not desire that she be stoned to death.
    3. He has some very positive characteristics
      1. He is not only a "righteous" man.
      2. He is an honorable man.
    4. But even as Joseph considers this more compassionate, face-saving way out of this awkward situation, he receives a direct message from a divine messenger about what he should do and why.
      1. This dream that tells Joseph to take a quite different course of action than the one he had been considering.
      2. The angel tells Joseph to go ahead with the marriage because the adultery accusation is not true.
      3. Mary should not be made subject to the law because her pregnancy came about through the activity of the Holy Spirit - the child she bears was conceived through divine activity, not human disobedience.

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    5. We know what Joseph does, we still don't know how he feels.
      1. We do not act on feeling but on principles.
      2. Feelings are important.
  4. We can only contemplate the disappointment of a tired couple entering the city looking for a place to stay
    1. Why not stay with relatives.
      1. Their guest chamber is full.
        1. An Inn - (kataluma)
        2. In Luke 22 Jesus sends his disciples to seek out space where they can observe Passover. He instructs them, "say to the owner of the house, 'The teacher asks you, "here is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?"' He will show you a large room upstairs, already furnished. Make preparations for us there."
      2. Though there is no room, there is a place to stay.
      3. This was a disappointment, but not as severe one as you might think.
        1. I do not know if you have seen a Northern New England farm home.
          1. The various building are all attached.
          2. This is so that the home-owner, the farm family, did not have to go out in severe weather to tend to their chores.
        2. Ancient homes were built also on this principle.
          1. The building were two story.
            1. The family lived above.
            2. the animals were kept beneath.
        3. This is the place where Mary delivered her child.
          1. it was a place where there was help from the other women who were staying there.

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    2. Consider the disappointment when people fail to recognize the birth of Jesus, not as a child, but as Emmanuel, as the Messiah.
      1. Mary and Joseph, after the birth of the child, are alone.
        1. Where is everybody?
        2. Don't they know?
      2. Then the shepherds come and their promise is verified.
      3. Disappointment turns to joy.

CONCLUSION:

  1. We emphasize the disappoints of Mary and Joseph only to helps us realize how their disappointment was turned to joy.
    1. The human condition was very sad and fraught with extreme danger.
    2. The two of them must live with what has happened.
    3. It is the intervention of the presence and the Spirit of God which turns disappointment to joy.
  2. The world in which we live is a beautiful and productive place.
    1. Lurking in the shadows is the specter of disappointment.
    2. We experience many disappointments.
      1. So often we cannot change the circumstances of an experience.
      2. We can only learn to live with it.
      3. We can only use it to help us prepare for future disappointments.
    3. So our disappointment is not changed it is relieved.
      1. Like Mary and Joseph we are comforted by the presence and the word of God.
      2. This word provides understanding and wisdom.
      3. The word transforms disappointment into joy.

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  3. Ron Klug wrote, "Joseph's Lullaby," which appeared in the Decision Magazine of December 1973.
    1. In this poem he has Joseph speaking to the infant Jesus.
    2. It is the expression of sheer joy.

Sleep now, little one.
I will watch while you and your mother sleep.
I wish I could do more.
This straw is not good enough for you.
Back in Nazareth I'll make a proper bed for you
of seasoned wood, smooth, strong, well-pegged,
A bed fit for a carpenter's son.
Just wait till we get back to Nazareth.
I'll teach you everything I know.
You'll learn to choose the cedarwood, eucalyptus and fir.
You'll learn to use the drawshave, ax and saw.
Your arms will grow strong, your hands rough--like these.
You will bear the pungent smell of new wood
and wear shavings and sawdust in your hair.
You'll be a man whose life centers on hammer and nails and wood.
But for now, sleep, little Jesus, sleep.

    1. God, at least in our mind's eye stands over us.

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