December 24, 2024

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY: Faith, Peace, Joy, LOVE

““Do not call conspiracy everything this people calls a conspiracy. Do not fear what they fear. Do not dread it.

The Lord Almighty is the One you are to regard as holy. He is the one you are to fear, He is the one you are to dread. He will be a holy place; for both Israel and Judah….” (Isaiah 8.12-14a)

“The angel went to Mary and said, ‘Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.’ Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of his father David, and He will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; His kingdom will never end.’” (Luke 1.28-33)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD during the Fourth Week of Advent 2024:

Let’s just do it. Let’s bundle up the “negatives” in birth narrative into a nice, neat package and find our comfort there so. Mary was a fourteen year-old virgin engaged to be married to a prominent carpenter and stonemason. That’s it. End of story; at least this part of the story. Remember their “sitz im Leben,” their place in life: the time, the culture and the tradition. Was it unreal for a girl to be a virgin in those days? Was it scandalous for a teenager to be engaged for marriage? Was it uncommon for an “older” man to take a “young” girl to become his wife? The answer is “no.” So where is the scandal, the horrible news, the unrealistic negatives which everyone wants to accuse Mary and Joseph of? Ah, yes. It was about a pre-marital/extra-marital (the understanding of betrothed and married abided along a very fine line) affair. Mary was pregnant and “unwed.” The question for many, if not most unwed mothers generally has been “Who’s the father?” No one in their right mind would have imagined Mary’s answer would be, if she were asked, “Yahweh Elohim, Immanuel.” Okay, that might do it. If there were scandal sheets available in those days (there were; they were called “wagging tongues”), the headlines might have looked like this “God takes advantage of the innocent for His own purposes!” What would the neighbors say? Neighbors? What would Joseph say? Well, that part we know. Well, we know it in part. Did Mary tell him? What we know is that Joseph found out Mary was “with child.” She may have witnessed to him what the angel of the Lord had told her and the experience of being “overcome by God’s Holy Spirit” to conceive the child who was to be called Jesus Immanuel. Joseph may have believed it or denied it as something far to difficult for “him” to conceive. We know that when he learned she was pregnant, he decided to be honorable and divorce her quietly so as to preserve her dignity and reputation. Did he decide she should go to visit with her cousin Elizabeth as we hear she did from Luke? Was that the plan? Of course, we also know God interrupted Joseph’s thinking with the revelation that a miracle had been worked as only God could do. The Creator God who called all things into being and formed life out of lifelessness most certainly could fulfill the scriptures of old which declared “…and a virgin will give birth to a child who will be called Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7.14) We are told that Joseph was a righteous man and faithful to the law. He was also a compassionate and kind man because it said he cared about Mary’s welfare if a scandal broke out. It would seem his faith in and love for God were his best attributes. Mary was a fortunate woman blessed by God with a blessing like Joseph. Shouldn’t all men be that way? Shouldn’t all women be that way? Wouldn’t the children of such a union benefit from such a blessing? So where was the shame and the scandal?

Are we back reading into the story of Jesus’ birth? We project our own “signs of the times” onto the good news that God was fulfilling His promise to Israel and Judah. The creation of a sympathetic mindset of “how troubling it must have been” when word got out about Mary and poor Joseph. Except, where is that word? It is an assumption. Is the scandal answered by having Mary go to visit Elizabeth who herself was the recipient of a blessing. She, too, was childless and in her old age (Zechariah was, too) mirroring the story of Abraham and Sarai who themselves received the blessing of a son, Isaac, as revealed by God to be a sign of faith and faithfulness. Both their sons, Isaac and John, were precursors to a greater promise. Isaac was the evidence of God’s promise to Abraham to be the “father of nations” who would believe in God. It was an evidence of faith believing, after an “internal” conflict, in God’s decree. Was it any less for John whose father was silenced because “he could hardly believe his ears” what the angel of the Lord said to him? Notice, there were no “angel” words to Sarai or Elizabeth. Now the “tables” are turned. God speaks to Mary because the promise is different. It isn’t at the expense of Joseph that God speaks first to Mary. It is the evidence of God’s intention to reconcile, restore and redeem humanity by blessing her where her distant relative, Eve, had been “cursed.” We hear that blessing declared by Elizabeth who baby in the womb leapt for joy at the sound of Mary’s voice. She said “Blessed are you among women and the child you bear is blessed as well!” Mary is safe with Elizabeth. Maybe because there is some anonymity in Zechariah’s house; no one seems to know Mary or Joseph there. There would be scandal anticipated, perhaps. Also, it renders Nazareth helpless to “wagging tongues” because Mary is not there but away visiting. Joseph himself, while we do not read such an explanation, may well have escaped scrutiny by going to Capernaum where he had a business as well and a home to live in.

So, where does this leave us in Bethlehem? All we know is that because of the census of Caesar Augustus when Quirinius was governor, all males (and in many cases, their families) had to go to their ancestral home and be registered. For Joseph, and for Mary, that home was Bethlehem. It was far enough away from Nazareth (where apparently nothing good comes from), Capernaum (a crossroads of many cultures) and Ein Karem (the presumed hometown of Zechariah and Elizabeth which was south of Jerusalem and therefore not far from Bethlehem.) Besides, it would seem that Joseph being from Nazareth and Capernaum may have indicated he was not so close to “family.” Distance does not always make the heart grow fonder. So, why would we assume that Joseph and Mary with child were alienated and isolated when they got to Bethlehem and had to stay in a stable because there was no room in the inn. I considered that in such a small town as Bethlehem there may have only been one inn. It would have been left to family to open their doors to family. But with everyone’s family “and their dog” coming to town, what room was there? No scandal. No controversy. No suspicion. Accommodation. They offered what was available. And it provided the necessary scenario to bring the whole world into scope of God’s mercy, grace and desire to save it. After all, the census was reported to include the whole world, at least the whole of the Roman world. Now the picture is transformed from chaos into order, scandal into gospel, duty into love. God found the best way to get into our hearts, into our minds and into our souls. It comes with a love story that transforms stables into nurseries, feed troughs into bassinets, the profane into the profound, the unclean into righteousness, dark into light, despair into hope, sorrow into joy. It is the story of “Immanuel, God with us” and He is with us still!

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, before we were conceived in the womb, You had already formed us in Your love and by Your Spirit brought us into being. Each one of us is blessed with the opportunity of doing right, being good and producing the fruit of the Spirit in order that others be fed the truth of that same love so that the two will become one. It is our soul’s sincere desire to embrace the oneness You have in mind so we would know we are Your people and You are our God. Lead us in that discovery of the truth and the manifestation of that love for us all. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.