If you only had Matthew’s Gospel, what would you have?

Last week we looked at the opening of Luke’s Gospel and his version of the Advent narratives, his “orderly account.” He begins with Zechariah and Elizabeth and the birth of John the Baptist who would come to prepare the way, then on to Mary and the miracle birth. But if you only had Matthew, what would you have?

No Annunciation to Mary

No visit to Elizabeth and the Magnificat

No detail on John’s miraculous birth

No enrollment calling people to Bethlehem

No over-crowded inn

No stable, manger, sheep or cattle lowing when the baby wakes

No boisterous angel choirs or adoring shepherds

If you only had Matthew, what would you have? You would have Joseph.

Across the ages we venerate Mary and sing about shepherds who watched their flocks by night; we are hushed by the wonder of angels sweetly singing o’re the plains, and the mountains in reply echoing their joyous strains; we even tell tales of an innkeeper who isn’t really there, a drummer boy who is only fiction and kindly beasts who are only assumed. But we have none of that in Matthew. Matthew begins with what we in our day consider to be the somewhat boring details of Joseph’s genealogy, tracking back across the centuries to show the connection of this baby with all that has gone before, linking Jesus through Joseph to the long journey of faith from Abraham and Isaac, David and Solomon, through the exile and the Babylonian captivity, all of it building to the birth of this child. He focuses on Joseph’s dream and Joseph’s response, and in less than a sentence he tells the whole of the birth story itself.

Then he fast-forwards—possibly three or four years later—to the mysterious visit of the magi from the east followed by Herod’s brutal response with the slaughter of Bethlehem’s babies. And of course it is Joseph who comes out the hero once again. He has another dream and saves the child as the family become refugees in Egypt.

So if you only had Matthew and you only had Joseph, what do you have?

1. You have the promise: “Don’t be afraid.”

At the risk of repeating myself from last week, here it is again the monotonous message of the angels, repeated in every passage of every Gospel like a broken record to Zechariah and Elizabeth, to Mary and the shepherds, and now to Joseph: “Don’t be afraid.”

It is the redundant promise which provides the reoccurring theme running through the whole story. When God calls, when God acts, when God moves, the first promise is the promise to cast out our fear. “Don’t be afraid.” Though it may indeed be frightful to find yourself in the presence of an angel, though life may indeed have frightful elements in it and there may be, in fact, plenty of things to fear, if God is present and active, his first invitation is the invitation to get beyond fear as the primary force in your life and discover a calm center in the midst of the crisis.

The angel always begins by saying, “Don’t be afraid.” No matter how bad the news and no matter how panic-stricken the news reporter may sound, do not allow fear to control and dominate your life. Yes, the world can be frightful (and who knows that better than Joseph,) but the world will not have the last word. God is also present and by his grace, we will not fear.

If you only have Matthew and you only have Joseph, once again you have the promise that comes to everyone in the story… “Don’t be afraid.”

2. And if you only have Matthew and you only have Joseph, you have a name: “Jesus…Immanuel.”

Matthew borrows from the Old Testament prophet, once again to make the connection with the long prophetic history of covenant faith and he gives this child a name:

“You shall call his name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Call him Immanuel, which means ‘God with us.’ ”

Matthew takes Isaiah’s words of comfort and assurance from another time and another century and offers them as the name of the one who comes among us, even this child, even Joseph’s son. As Charles Wesley says it:

Veiled in flesh the God-head see
Hail the incarnate deity
Pleased with us in flesh to dwell
Jesus our Immanuel. [1]

When you strip away all the frills and flourishes, all the angel wings and starlight; when you take away the shepherds on bended knee, the sheep in the hay and the cattle lowing; when you get right to the heart of it, this is what lies at the very heart of Christmas: God has not left us alone. God is no longer just “out there,” but has come to be one with us to live in our flesh, to share in our lives, to experience our pain, going with us all the way to our death, in order to make known God’s unending, unfathomable, undeserved, unlimited love.

I came across a column I clipped from the Ann Arbor News a few years ago by columnist Jo Mathis, entitled “Crazy World Could Use Direct Word from God.” She offers the laundry list of everything that’s troubling in the world religious zealots who want to kill the infidels (meaning you and me); wars, diseases and natural disasters; the ugliness of hate and racism, and the prevalence of violence. Then she says:

“I’ve come to the conclusion there is only one answer—God is going to have to get down here and settle things once and for all. Sure it would be a little freaky if the world came to a halt and there was God in a burning bush or a chariot of fire, but I say it’s time.”

Well I say God has already done that.

God has already come down here to settle things once and for all. God has already spoken. He has spoken in the form of a child born to Joseph and Mary, spoken through the parables of an itinerant teacher and healer, spoken in the life of one who has inspired the ages, spoken ultimately from a cross and an empty tomb. And if we are not going to listen to the Word he has already spoken, there is little chance we will listen to the next one either.

When I go to church growth conferences, I listen to all the ideas and suggestions, and I often say to myself, “I already know more than I am doing.” And in all truth, we probably all do. God could send another “direct word” into this crazy world, but the fact is, we already know more than we are doing. We have heard, and we have seen God’s word made flesh in Jesus Christ.

We already know that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

We already know that we should love our enemies and pray for those who despitefully use us.

We already know that the peacemakers are blessed and shall be called the children of God, that the meek are blessed and will inherit the earth; that the merciful are blessed because they shall receive mercy.

We already know we should forgive 70 times seven.

We already know we should turn the other cheek

We already know that it is more blessed to give than to receive.

We already know that love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and that love never ends.

We have already seen and heard the word from God and we have beheld his glory, glory as in the only begotten Son of the father, full of grace and truth. Frankly, we already know more than we are doing. We already know this one named Jesus, who came to save us from our sins; this one called Immanuel, which means God is with us…already, here and now, one with us.

When I was in college, I traveled with a drama troupe called “The King’s Players.” One of the plays we performed was called “For Heaven’s Sake” by Helen Kromer. In it there is a poem which I can still, after all these years, repeat from memory:

I’m nothing, I’m nobody, no one,
But someone made something of me;
He lived in my flesh and he walked in my bones
And he saw all the grief that I see.
He knew what I know of tormentors,
This haunting and howling within;
Of the blood that can spill and the bone that can break
And the flesh with the nails driven in.
He hung on the cross as a creature
Wearing my sin-spattered cloths;
And the pride in my flesh died with him when he died
And my raiment was new when he rose.
This clothing I wear with a difference—
It’s flesh that the King entered in!
He put there his love and his almighty law
And it never can be what it’s been.
I’m nothing, nobody, no one,
I’m someone in Christ who’s in me;
And I’ll put on his flesh and I’ll walk in his bones
And a part of his body I’ll be. [2]

If you only have Matthew and if you only have Joseph, you have a promise, you have a name: “Immanuel, God with us.”

3.…And you have a task.

The angel said, “Joseph, Game On! I’ve got a job for you. Take Mary as your wife. She will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus. Get up and get going. It’s time to move out of the comfort zone of the carpenter shop and take up the task of carrying the Christ into the world of corrupt rulers and down the road of struggling refugees. You are entrusted with the task…

…of preserving the gift

…of nurturing the message

…of caring for the good news.”

And maybe that’s why we prefer Luke’s version.

Perhaps we prefer an Advent focused on looking back across the ages to the warm memories of shepherds in the fields and silent nights, a baby in a barn and adoring angels. Perhaps we prefer a Hallmark Christmas by Currier and Ives or the Thomas Kincaid version, all misty in glowing candlelight and glimmering snow, and of course Luke’s gospel has its place.

But Matthew won’t leave us there.

If your lead character is Joseph, the Christmas story becomes the story of awesome responsibility, a tale told in the face of warring worlds, unjust rulers and suffering refugees, in the presence of families huddling in hiding and babies born in barns. If your lead character is Joseph, the Christmas angel comes with calling, a task. There is work to be done, and it’s up to you to do it.

Several years ago, Marjorie Holmes wrote a fictionalized version of the nativity, attempting to fill in the blanks, telling the love story of Joseph and Mary. It was “Two From Galilee.” After the word from the angel, she describes the conversation between Mary and Joseph, capturing his struggle with the call and the task:

Mary: Joseph, you don’t believe…for all your reading of the scriptures, you don’t believe.

Joseph: Mary, I do believe. I do believe God will keep his promises. The Christ will come, someday. But not now, not to us in our time, in our town, to us and our neighbors. Not to you and me. No, no, this great event will happen far away, to other people. That will make it credible and safe. People will not have it—they will not have evidence that God will keep his promises, not if it is personal. Personal involvement in God’s plan is too terrible. It costs too dearly. [3]

Ah, Joseph, you are so right. We all want to see God at work…someplace else. We want to see God’s kingdom come, God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven, but we would prefer it was through someone else. We want to see the promises fulfilled, but certainly not here, not now, not in our time and our town, certainly not through us. It is too terrible. It costs too dearly to become personally involved with God. But to encounter the angel of Advent is to become a part of the mission and calling. The task given to Joseph becomes our task as well carrying the Christ into the world.

Well, if you only had Matthew’s gospel, all you would have is Joseph,

…and if all you have is Joseph, you have the promise, you have the name and you have a task. And Matthew says that in simple trust, “When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel commanded him.”

May it be so. Even in us. Even today.

1. Charles Wesley, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” UM Hymnal page 240
2. Helen Kromer, “For Heaven’s Sake!” page 56
3. Marjorie Holmes, “Two From Galilee”, page 209

It was a Christmas pageant presented by a class of four-year-olds and it was an evening to remember.  It began with the three virgin Marys marching out onto the stage. As they stood there, they, of course, were waving to their parents. It’s not every Christmas pageant that has three virgin Marys, but over the years the school had acquired three Mary costumes, and so, quite naturally the script was revised.  This gave a chance for more children to be involved and kept down the squabbling over who got the starring roles.  The two Josephs walked up behind the Marys.  Then twenty little angels came out. They were dressed in white robes and huge gauze wings. They were followed by twenty little shepherd boys, dressed in burlap sacks. They carried an array of objects that were supposed to be crooks. 

“It was at this point that the problem occurred.  During the dress rehearsal the teacher had used chalk to draw circles on the floor to mark where the angels were supposed to stand and crosses to mark the spots of the shepherds.  But the children had practiced with their regular clothes on.  So, on the night of the pageant, the angels came walking out with their beautiful gauze wings and stood on their circles.  However, their huge wings covered the crosses of the shepherds as well.  So when the time came for the shepherds to find their places, they did not know where to go because the angels took up all their space.

“There was one little boy who became extremely frustrated and angry over the whole experience. He finally spied his teacher behind the curtains and shocked everyone when he said in a loud stage whisper heard by everyone, ‘Because of these blankety-blank angels, I can’t find the cross!’”  (1)

He didn’t say, “blankety-blank,” but we are in church, after all. 

I wonder if that can’t happen sometimes? The romantic elements of Christmas the shepherds, the wise men, the angels, the star in the East not to mention the commercialism of Christmas have a tendency to obscure the important meaning of it all, and particularly the message of the cross. 

That is why it might be healthy for us on this Christmas Day to turn to the prologue to John’s Gospel for our scripture lesson. There are no angels, no shepherds, no star, not even Mary and Joseph. Instead there is some of the most beautiful and important theological language ever written:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

“In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it . . . The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

“He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God children born not of natural descent,  nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (NIV)

No shepherds, no angels, no star yet here ultimately is the story of Christmas.

This story says, first of all, that Christmas is not an act of humanity, but of God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”  When we could do nothing for ourselves, God stepped in to save us. 

A man by the name of Bob Considine tells of the time he accompanied an infant Vietnamese orphan to the U.S. so she could be adopted after the Vietnam War. On the long flight to the U.S. the baby’s eyes overflowed with tears, but she made absolutely no sound. Considine found a stewardess and asked her what the problem was. The stewardess had seen war orphans before, and was quick to tell Considine that this was normal. As she said, “the reason they don’t make noise when they cry is because they learned a long time ago that nobody will come.” (2)

What a sad story. A child quits crying when she learns that no one will come. It could be our story. But it is not our story because of the babe in the manger. Christmas is not an act of humanity, but of God.

This story says, in the second place, that God acted in the only way God could act.  “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it . . . The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”

Why could the darkness not understand him? Why did the world not receive him? The problem is quite clear.

If you can imagine the difference between a keeper of an aquarium and the fish in that aquarium, then you might begin to understand the difference between humanity and God. God is Spirit. Have you ever seen a spirit? God is the creator of a universe that may be billions of light years wide. Can you even begin to imagine a Being of that extraordinary Power and Knowledge? How could God even speak to us without scaring us to death? 

Dr. Daniel Paul Matthews, rector of TrinityChurch, delivered a message on Christmas Eve, 2001, at St. Paul’s Chapel, New York City. This was in the year that the WorldTradeCenter was destroyed by terrorist on 9-11. St. Paul’s is very close to Ground Zero. And yet, in that message he expressed God’s solution to the gulf that exists between Absolute Power and human need in a beautiful way:

Pretend something like this happened for a moment: The angel Gabriel got back to heaven and rushed up to God and said, “I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news.”

And God said, “Well, give me the good news first.”

“The good news is,” said the angel, “mission accomplished. I’ve visited those people you told me to visit. I told them what you told me to tell them. And it’s all accomplished.”

God said, “So what’s the bad news?”

“The bad news,” the angel said, “is that those people down there on earth are terrified of you. Every time I visited someone I had to start it off with ‘fear not,’ because they got so frightened that you were coming close.”

God said to the angel, “That’s the reason I have to carry out the plan I’ve made.”

“You see,” he said to the angel, “I need to go to earth because my people are so frightened. They are so full of fear that I’ve got to bring the message that they no longer need to be afraid.”

The angel said, “And how are you going to do that, since they’re so fearful?”

God said, “There’s one place on earth that people are not afraid: that one remaining place is a little baby. My people on earth are not afraid of a baby. When a baby is born they rejoice and give thanks without fear because that’s the only place left in their lives where they’re not afraid. So I will go to earth. I will become a little baby, and they will receive me with no fear at all, because that’s the one place my people have no fear.” (3)

God acted in the only way God could act without overwhelming us and taking away our freedom.  God became a tiny babe. Christmas is an act of God. In Christmas God acted in the only way God could have acted.

And, finally, in Christmas God gave to us the greatest gift God could give us–God told us who we are.  

Have you ever received a Christmas gift that you knew was not well thought out? Someone sent it to you just to get the gift-giving over and done with. Oh, you’ve sent a gift like that? 

Some of you will remember a Democratic presidential candidate of many years ago named Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson was a respected politician who had the misfortune to run against a genuine war hero, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

There is a hilarious story that is told on Adlai Stevenson.  When he was working in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, he wrote a marketing agreement for the walnut industry. That Christmas the industry thanked him by sending him an enormous gunnysack full of packages of walnuts. This generous gift came at just the right time because Stevenson had not done his Christmas shopping. Happily he took these packages of walnuts and sent them to all his Washington friends.  Then he made the awful discovery. In each of the individual packages was a little card saying, “Merry Christmas from the walnut industry to Adlai Stevenson.”  He should have known better. At least, he should have examined one of the packages of walnuts before he started sending them out. But he was in a hurry and did not give much thought to what he was doing.  We do that sometimes, don’t we? Give gifts without much thought to them? 

Not so with God. God knew right from the beginning what He was doing. God gave us what we most needed. God told us who we are. “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God children born not of natural descent,  nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”  That’s who we are children of God. When we know that, the meaning and purpose of life changes. 

Marjorie Tallcott was married and had one child during the Great Depression. The family managed to scrape their way through, but as Christmas approached one year Marjorie and her husband were disappointed that they would not be able to buy any presents.   A week before Christmas they explained to their six-year-old son, Pete, that there would be no store-bought presents this Christmas. “But I’ll tell you what we can do,” said Pete’s father, “we can make pictures of the presents we’d like to give to each other.” 

That was a busy week. Marjorie and her husband set to work. Christmas Day arrived and the family rose to find their skimpy little tree made magnificent by the picture presents they had adorned it with. There was luxury beyond imagination in those pictures a black limousine and red speedboat for Dad, a diamond bracelet and fur coat for Mom, a camping tent and a swimming pool for Pete.  Then Pete pulled out his present, a crayon drawing of a man, a woman and a child with their arms around each other laughing. Under the picture was just one word: “US.”  Years later Marjorie writes that it was the richest, most satisfying Christmas they ever had. (4) 

Pete’s card summed it up. “Us.” The love and security of a family.   It’s the kind of picture God presents to us on Christmas Day. Read God’s Christmas card: “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God children born not of natural descent,  nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” Christmas is an act of God, not of humanity. God acted in the only way that God could have acted without taking away our freedom. God became a tiny baby. And God told us who we are: God’s own children. We don’t need to fear anything. We belong to God.

1. Best Sermons 3, Harper & Row, 1990, pp. 49-50. Cited in a sermon by Dr. Mickey Anders, First Christian Church, Pikeville, KY. http://www.pikevillefirstchristianchurch.org/Sermons/Sermon20000827.html

2. Pastor Dan Mangler’s Sunday Sermon,  http://www.smlc-elca.org/Sunday_sermons/march_13_2005_sermon.html.

3. http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/news/alert_123.shtml Posted on Trinity News 3.

4. Mike Turner, jmturner58@bellsouth.net, The Rock Baptist