Giving Up The Perfect Christmas?
Matthew 1:18-25
Debbie Macomber writes in her book, “The Perfect Christmas” about receiving a Christmas card a week before Thanksgiving from a college friend, named Jill. Jill had married her college sweetheart two weeks before they graduated. They now have a boy and a girl who are both adorable. The Christmas card photo showed all four of them in matching red and green outfits, the mother and daughter with full green skirts and red and plaid shirts and the father and son in 3 piece suits with vests matching the lady’s shirts. After reading their enclosed letter, it appeared that everything was absolutely perfect in their lives. Jill was a successful financial planner, kept a meticulous house and still managed to be a terrific mother and wife. And inside the letter was another photo of Jill’s new home they had just purchased and moved into and it was, well, perfect. Have you been there? We’ve all received those types of Christmas letters painting a picture of how everything is so wonderful in our friends and family’s lives.
But even though we know that life is never that perfect, we get so focused on how everything appears perfect and that bleeds into our lives as we begin to yearn for the perfect life and this time of year, the perfect Christmas. This causes us to fall into the trap of what Cynthia Ewer calls “The Ghost of Christmas Perfection.” We build up such high hopes and expectations for Christmas that we will have all of our shopping done early, the season will be so well planned it will be stress-free, we will have the perfect gift bought for everyone and the perfect meal where everything is cooked to perfection and comes together at the appointed time. The problem is these are unrealistic expectations for any gathering, let alone Christmas.
There was another person 2000 years ago who along with his wife had high hopes for the perfect Christmas. His name is Joseph and he only appears three times in the Scriptures. The first is in our Scripture today where Matthew tells us Mary and Joseph are engaged, but before they lived together. Like most young couples have great dreams of life together and of starting a family. As was the custom of the day, the prospective groom would go to the home of the prospective bride and negotiate with her father to determine the price that he must pay to marry her. Once agreed upon, the marriage covenant was established, and the young man and woman were regarded to be husband and wife. As a symbol of the covenant, the groom and bride would drink from a cup of wine over which a betrothal benediction had been pronounced. Then the groom would return home to his father's house and begin building an addition onto the house in which he and his wife would live. Homes were one room, usually 15’ by 15’ and multi-purpose where kitchen, dining room, living room, bedroom were all the same space. Joseph would build his home in the evenings after his regular work hours. This is one reason why the groom and bride would remain separate for a period of 12 months so the home could be finished before the wedding ceremony. And so Joseph has been hard at work for months preparing a place to live for his new bride and certainly in the process thinking and dreaming about married life together and of course, starting a family.
There are three things we learn from Joseph’s experience of the first Christmas. First is the experience of Christmas is sacrifice and pain of following God. That’s a strange thing to focus on at Christmas because we think good thoughts and have warm and fuzzy feelings when considering the Christ child. But amidst all of Joseph’s hopes and dreams, Matthew drops a bombshell: Mary “was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” In that moment, his hopes for a perfect Christmas were suddenly destroyed. Matthew then tells us that Joseph is a righteous man, meaning he is obedient to God, is fulfilling and living by the law and thus, is in good standing with God. But this righteous man discovers that his engaged wife is pregnant! Can you imagine what Joseph was feeling when he discovered this? Our Scripture says Joseph “considered this” which in the Greek can be translated two ways. First is that he pondered what to do. But the second meaning is “he became very upset.” The only other time this word is used in the New Testament is in Luke’s story of the wisemen where Herod is enraged after discovering the wise men left Bethlehem without informing him where the Christ child was. Kenneth Bailey suggests that a more accurate translation might be “while he (Joseph) fumed over this matter.”
One can only imagine what Joseph felt! When you’re engaged, you have a lot of expectations, hopes and dreams of what marriage will be like. And when you want to do right by God, you don't expect things to go wrong. That was the expectations of the Jews in Jesus’ day, that if you are faithful and obedient, God will bless you, relationally, materially and financially and that included sparing you pain and suffering. So you can imagine that Joseph had the expectation his engagement would go like all of his other family members’ and friends’ engagements. They would be married, get pregnant and have a child and his life would be filled with joy. Instead, they got engaged, Mary got pregnant without Joseph, and now the question is how to respond.
Joseph is faced with a dilemma. According to the Jewish law, he can have Mary publicly disgraced and divorce her or he can have her stoned to death. Being a righteous man, Joseph didn’t want to yoke himself to a woman who is unrighteous and untrustworthy. When you are doing everything right, you don't expect wrong to show up in your life. Joseph’s experience teaches us that a relationship with God does not exempt us from pain and difficulty in the world. If you’re not willing as a follower of God to experience the pain and suffering that often comes with following the Messiah, God can’t use you! Joseph began to understand that the cost of righteousness and participating in God’s plan of redemption can mean suffering, pain and sacrifice even when it means going against the faith expectations of others in the name of God. Even when life goes awry, or tragedy hits or you’ve been betrayed or hurt by those close to you, the invitation to follow still stands. When the Bible says that God calls many but few are chosen, it’s because very few are willing to pay the cost of what it means to follow Jesus, to walk in his footsteps and to join him in His pain, sacrifice and suffering as a part of God’s plan of salvation. But Joseph was willing to do just that.
Second is the invitation of Christmas is to participate in God’s work. An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph 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…” Suddenly Joseph begins to realize that this is not going to be an ordinary birth or an ordinary child. Whether Joseph was chosen because of his righteousness and integrity before God, we will never know. But what we do know is that he was chosen and offered a great responsibility with God’s only son. Any parent knows it’s never easy to entrust your children to someone else. Imagine God looking down to choose a man to raise his own son? Joseph is chosen to care for, protect, raise and mentor Jesus. This is the invitation of Christmas: to participate in God’s plan of salvation, even when it comes at the expense of great sacrifice, humiliation and pain.
And yet often it seems that we are so busy and preoccupied that we miss out on the opportunity which stands before us. If we’re honest, the distraction of day to day life makes it hard to hear God. Add in the rush, stress and noise of the Christmas season, and it’s even harder. God can only use people who make it a priority every day of their life for God to show up and speak. Carl Kelleher tells the story of some years ago at a resort area along the East Coast. A small community was having an open town meeting about some financial problems they were facing. Among the two dozen or so people was one man no one seemed to know. Well, the conversation became involved and then rose to heated as they fretted over the emerging crisis. The unknown man started to make a comment as various projects to solve the financial crisis were considered, but he was interrupted. So for the rest of the time, he kept silent, and then finally left before the meeting ended. Just as he went out, someone arriving late came in, said breathlessly, “What was he doing here? Is he going to help us?” The rest of them said, “Who are you talking about? Who was that man?” He answered, “You mean you don’t know? That was John D. Rockefeller.”
Third is the purpose of Christmas is salvation. “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 fulfill 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.” Emmanuel means “God with us.” For Isaiah and the people of Israel in the 8th century, as the Assyrian army is planning to attack, Isaiah prophecies that the people are not alone. God is with them. In the 5th century when the exiles are in Babylon separated from family, home, temple, the land and thus God’s presence. Isaiah proclaims through this name, “You are not alone, God is with you.” And even as the centuries pass and one occupying army and government is replaced by another and times have grown more difficult, the name rings out, “You are not alone, God is with you.” So that when the angel pronounces this name to Joseph, the message is loud and clear, “Joseph, in this imperfect Christmas, you will not be alone, I will be with you because this child’s name is Emmanuel.”
But that is only part of the purpose of Christmas for his name will be Jesus. A couple of weeks ago, I was driving my daughter over to her friend’s house so she could catch her ride to school. As we entered a bend in the road, I saw a cross with a white cloth draped over the outstretched arms, an image you are much more likely to see during Easter. And I thought to myself, “How strange that someone would put out a cross symbolizing the resurrection for Christmas.” It was only then that I saw what was at the foot of the cross and that was the manger. And I got it. This one who is Emmanuel, God with us, shall be named Jesus “for he will save his people from their sins.” And the way he will save us is as a sacrifice for our sins on the cross. As uncomfortable as it may be at Christmas when we focus on his birth, this child was born to die, that we might know forgiveness of our sins and be reconciled and be reconciled to God. And so maybe Joseph’s imperfect Christmas was perfect after all…
Bill Adam tells the story of a nativity pageant that like life itself didn't go quite as planned. The youth group at a certain church was performing a manger scene. Joseph and Mary and all the other characters were in place and ready including a light bulb in the manger as the baby Jesus. They did their parts with seriousness and commitment, looking as pious as they possibly could And then it came time for the shepherds to enter. Dressed in flannel bathrobes and toweled head gear, they proceeded to the altar steps where Mary and Joseph looked earnestly at the straw which contained a single naked light bulb that was playing the part of the glowing newborn Jesus. With his back to the congregation, one of the shepherds said to the person playing Joseph, in a very loud whisper for all the cast to hear, "Well, Joe, when you gonna pass out cigars?" The solemn spell of that occasion was not simply broken by his remark, it was exploded. Mary and Joseph struggled to hold back the bursts of laughter. The chief angel, standing on a ladder behind them shook so hard in laughter that she fell off and took the curtained back drop and all the rest of the props down with her. She just kept rolling around on the floor holding her stomach because she was laughing so hard. The whole set was in shambles. The only thing that didn't go to pieces was that light bulb in the manger. It never stopped shining.
The experience of Joseph and the first Christmas is a reminder of the living promise that we are never ever alone. No matter where we are in life, no matter in what condition we find ourselves, no matter how far we might stray, or how unfaithful we might have been, God is woth us and in Him Salvation and forgiveness has come! And that’s the perfect Christmas! Amen.
