Matthew 1.18-end
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. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But 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. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’,which means, ‘God is with us.’ When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
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I went to a my son’s nativity service last Wednesday at School. As parents we packed into the school hall and waited for the children to arrive from their classrooms. And they walked in, sixty four year olds, all dressed up in all manner of costumes; as stars and angels and camels and sheep and Mary and Joseph and wise men and shepherds and all sorts. It was great!
And I reflected that, if what was recorded in our gospel passage didn’t take place, then I wouldn’t be there watching my son Sebastian dressed as a sheep, singing and dancing about a baby boy born in Bethlehem. I wouldn’t even be in Saint Mark’s school. There wouldn’t be a Saint Mark even, if what happened in the gospels didn’t happen, so much of what we do today, just wouldn’t happen at all.
It’s a strange thing to think about, the stories that have shaped a culture. One may get sick of preachers at this time of year reminding everybody the real message of Christmas again and again; ‘it’s all about Jesus’ hey say, continually, constantly.
That’s because it is. And we need reminding of that all the time because we always forget. Part of the life of faith is that, we constantly remind ourselves, in our activities, our rituals and our songs just what Jesus has done for us. We see this especially in communion, where Jesus says, ‘‘do this in remembrance of me.’
Coming to church on Sunday isn’t what life’s about, the point of it is to remind us of what life is all about, life is all about Jesus.
This is nothing new; there’s the story of Saint Frances, who created the first nativity scene hundreds of years ago in the thirteenth century in order to remind people of what Christmas is about. Now we have our own crib in our churches, seven hundred years later and thousands of miles away, which does the same thing, it reminds us what it’s about..
These stories that have shaped our lives, and even long after the belief has sadly gone away, we still cling to the rituals, though we’ve forgotten the reason why.
In our passage this morning, we turn to remember two of the most important people in history. Joseph and Mary. The story from Matthew focuses mainly on Joseph; to hear Mary’s side of the story you need to look at Luke’s narrative.
Both sides of the narratives emphasise different aspects of this amazing story that we all know so well. Mary is visited by the Angel Gabriel with the message that she will have a child. How can this be? Since I am a virgin, she asks in wonder of what how such a thing could be possible before her marriage to Joseph. And God’s answer that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and she will conceive.
It’s a story about her willingness to say yes, to become a part of God’s story. and indeed she does assent to be the God bearer, the one to carry the boy who will save the world.
Joseph is visited by and angel as well and told not to fear taking Mary as a wife, because she has not become pregnant by ‘playing away’ but rather, God himself has made it so, for the child that she will give birth to is the most important person to have ever lived. And Joseph for his part, is obedient to the call. He takes Mary as his wife, and commits to being his wife and the earthly father of Jesus.
Taken together, we have a very strange event happening where God acts decisively in the lives of this couple. Some try to explain away all this; to deny how extraordinary this story is or indeed it’s validity. ‘How can God become human?’ They ask. And the story is dismissed as a myth, nothing different then the classic tales of the creation of demigods of Greek mythology, which Matthew and Luke would have been familiar with.
But no, this is not some ancient myth that two writers are cobbling together or anything like that. No, this is a semitic context, and it says that God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the peoples of Israel and Judah, and the prophets, who remained faithful to his people even when they turned away again and again into their sinful ways, has acted. He has acted and he has acted decisively. Finally, after so many years, so many generations of waiting, God will send himself to us to save us from our sins.
And if that wasn’t amazing enough, what’s even more amazing is that God doesn’t just snap his fingers and sorts everything out. No, he asks humanity to get involved in the task of redemption. He asks a human family to bear his son, and when this happens, they get caught up in the amazing story of God. If you think about it, they could’ve said no, Mary could’ve said no to the Holy Spirit Joseph could’ve said no to taking Mary as his wife. Yet they didn’t, they accepted the invitation of God to get involved in his story and through them something amazing happened.
And it’s not only Mary and Joseph who get involved in God’s story, but it was also those whom Jesus interacted with when he got older. It was his disciples to whom he said ‘come and I will make you fish for people.’ Be a part of making this world as it should be, be a part of making the kingdom of heaven come to earth. Be a part of God’s story. some said yes, others said now. Some chose life and some refused it.
Do we want to be the people who get caught up in God’s story? Do we want to be a part of what God is doing?
The answer is simple, we turn to God and say that we are willing; we repent of our sins, we acknowledge who Jesus is; And when we do that, how things change, how we change. How this life that can become so
vibrant and compelling. We can refuse to do that and simply keep doing what we are doing. But how we change when we do accept Jesus for who he is as our Lord and Saviour.
How much more vibrant and loving our lives, when we get involved in his story to bring his kingdom to earth. How we see others not as our enemies or rivals or anything like that, but as fellow brothers and sisters, pilgrims on the same journey. How our own lives stop being about what we want, and become about what God wants. If we let him, he will do incredible things with us. This is what it means to have a life of faith
And I don’t mean that we will all suddenly be famous or save millions of lives or develop a cure for a terrible disease or anything like that. But we will do the extraordinary in our lives. We will go beyond what we are able to do without God. We will serve with all our hearts, we will serve his people; showing them his life and his grace. And when we look back at the end of our lives, we will look back at our lives and say ‘it was worth it.’
May the Lord when he comes find us watching and waiting.
Amen.
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