Broadway Christian Church ·Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship ·December 19, 2004

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Prayer of the Day

We light the fourth Advent candle with child-like anticipation.  May we approach the manger with a sense of awe about the sheer goodness and love present in Jesus Christ.  In Jesus we get a glimpse of the life you intend for us.  May we always be ready for opportunities to make your love known in the world.  Amen.

Scripture
Matthew 1:18-25

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about:  His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.  Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

But after he had considered 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 home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

All of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” – which means, “God with us.”

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.  But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son.  And he gave him the name Jesus.”

Message
When the Ordinary Get the Call
Rick Frost

You know, there are lots of things you can find on the Internet.  You can plug in all kinds of words and receive all kinds of images.  Some of them are good, and some of them are very, very dark.  This week I plugged in some key words: Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Christmas, religious art.  And one of the pieces that popped up was a wonderful piece called “The Merode Altarpiece,” painted in about 1425.  It was there on my screen.  The main painted panel had an angel announcing to Mary that she was pregnant, and that she was going to have a child.  The colors were very bright.  The room was beautiful.  Mary was draped in a very rich, lovely, beautiful red dress.  She was in somewhat of a state of repose, reading a book, probably the Scriptures, you know.  It was the medieval way of describing such things.  To the right of that scene in the painting was a man.  He was a man at work in a rather small, rather dingy workshop.  He had his tools.  He had his bench.  He seemed to be focused clearly on the task at hand.  In his particular panel, there was nothing religious to be seen in the scene.  There was no angel.  There was no candle.  And there was no holy book.  There was just a carpenter by himself, hard at work in his shop.

The man’s name, as we all know, is Joseph, and his world is about to be rocked.  The news the angel is giving his fiancée Mary will soon be given to him.  He will discover, of course, as you know, that she is pregnant and not by him.  Since to be engaged in that day and time was a legally binding affair, it meant that since she had obviously had sex with someone else, she was guilty of being an adulteress.  It was a capital crime in its day.  Being a just man, according to the Scriptures, he decided to divorce her.  Not out of anger, says the Scripture, but out of really deep religious conviction.  No matter how much he may have still loved Mary, it was his religious obligation, in that day, to annul the marriage contract.  It was not his prerogative, as we might think, to forgive her, to forget it, to go on with life regardless.  It was, however, in his day, his prerogative to do it quietly, to do it secretly, and to grant her no public humiliation.

Matthew, the gospel writer, wants us to know that Joseph is a good man.  He is an honorable man, and most of all, he is a faithful man who lives in accordance with a principle that we are going to hear from Matthew all year long.  That principle is this: “I desire mercy,” says the Lord, “not sacrifice.”

But before Joseph can act on his convictions, the angel shows up in one of Joseph’s dreams and tells him what is conceived in Mary is of the Holy Spirit.  It is God’s doing.  It is something God wants done, and it is God’s activity for God’s purposes.  And Joseph’s job is to take Mary home as his wife.  And even though, according to the Scriptures, he is not the biological father, it is he who must shoulder the responsibility of being the parent. 

There are men in this room who know exactly of what I speak today.  He must support Mary in a rather awkward situation.  This child must be born, must be protected, must be provided for, and must be preserved.  Joseph is the man who is to be the Dad to this newborn and raise that child as if it were his own, because someday, it says, this one will grow up and save his people from their sins.

Isn’t that amazing?  It’s an amazing story.  You know, you never know.  You never know, do you?  You never know what God is going to do next.  But most importantly, you don’t ever know what your part in all of that is going to be.  Do you?  That is why we lift up Joseph today on this fourth Sunday of Advent.  This Sunday, just before Christ Mass, just before that day when the whole world of faith celebrates the birth of that particular child. 

Joseph is an amazing guy: quiet, ordinary, humble, common, but faithful.  And more than faithful, he is rather courageous, really.  Through no plan, no design of his own, as far as we know, he finds his life all of a sudden disturbed, rocked, caught up in the grand, awesome, saving purposes of God.  His claim to fame was one word: obedience.  Obedience!  Just a faithful, simple, behind-the-scenes, quiet man who goes about doing what he really believes God wants and calls him to do.  Then he goes out and just does it.

You know, there really are folks like that in this world.  They are not flashy.  They’re not big talkers.  They’re not center stage, limelight types of people.  They just see what needs to be done, and they go out and do it.  You know, come to think of it, a lot of folks like Joseph are sitting right here in this room.  They are really rather ordinary people.  Some are quite ordinary, but they are persons who get the call.  And when they get the call, they step up.  And when they step us, they get done what needs doing.

The question today: Have you ever received such a call?  Do you know what that call is for you?  What is the Spirit of the Living God of the universe, not just calling you to hear, but to actually do something about, to act upon?  Maybe today.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe tomorrow for the next nine months.  Maybe for the next few years.  What is that?

A friend of mine asked the treasurer of his church to give him a list of the top 20 financial stewards of his congregation.  I want you to know that wasn’t me, by the way!  But a friend did ask that, and to his great surprise, do you know what he found?  Only three of the top 20 financial stewards in that congregation held an office in the church.  None of them taught Sunday School.  None of them were in the choir.  None of them had ever stood up in front of the congregation and spoken a word of faith.  Interestingly, the age range of those top 20 was between 23 and 78.  Isn’t that interesting?  None of them would have been considered around town as being particularly rich or wealthy.  And yet here they were, the top 20 financial stewards of that congregation.  They are people, I suggest, who are sort of like Joseph.  Unspectacularly faithful people, pretty quiet, actually.  They are people who just go about doing and giving their best, graciously, gratefully to God.  I think it is nothing short of a miracle.

Peter Gomez, of Memorial Church at Harvard, says the birth of Jesus, as we all know, is the great mystery of Christmas.  But he says the great miracle of this season (and he makes a distinction between mystery and miracle) is the fact that Joseph, the husband of Mary, believes what he hears and acts upon it.  The miracle is that here is a very sensible, reasonable, pragmatic, good man who acts contrary to the evidence that surrounds him on every hand. 

You know, that is a great definition of faith, I suggest.  Faith is not life lived in the absence of evidence.  Faith, real faith, biblical faith, is life lived contrary to the evidence that is all around.  Think about that.

Think about that.  The evidence you and I see every day is that people around us are selfish, snobbish, rude, sometimes even nasty.  The evidence all around us is those people will do us in if we give them the chance.  The evidence is there.  The evidence is that the good guy, the good gal, generally comes in second, third, or maybe fifth.  And yet the Gospel tells us to love our neighbors and to pray for those who despitefully use us.  And to hope for peace in the midst of war, and to pray that we might see the better side, the bright side of people, rather than their dark side.

That, folks, is faith.  It’s the definition of faith.  And that’s why Joseph, I think, is such a powerful example of faith.  He never says one word in Scripture.  We never hear him speak.  But here is a guy who could have cut and run, but he chose to stay and play – play his part, play his role.  It turned out he didn’t know it at the time, but it turned out to be the greatest drama of all time, the coming of the Christ of God into this world.  He was the one, Scripture says, who will save his people from their sins.

Well…  it is almost here.  Friday is just around the corner.  I want to invite you, today, to be listening for your call.  I have absolutely no idea what that call may be for you, but I suggest it might be very surprising.  May you believe what you hear and have the faith to act on it. 

And we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

Transforming Lord, you amaze us with the powers to use our meager gifts for extraordinary purposes.  Make our hearts ever willing to say “yes” to you and to your purposes.  Make us instruments of your will.  Come, Lord Jesus.  We give ourselves to you.  Amen.