The Baby is Coming - Advent 4a

Saint Luke 1:46b–55
Saint Matthew 1:18–25

Every pastor can tell you a story like this which sounds almost as if it could be the beginning of a joke.

 A couple walks into the office.  Months ago they had talked about how beautiful a June wedding would be with perhaps a champaign and strawberry reception on the terrace.  Now, it seems, they have changed their plans and they want their wedding in April.  I usually just find their form and  replace one date with another but one couple was foolish enough to ask if I wanted to know why.

 “Nooooooo.  You don’t have to tell me?” I replied. 

“You know!” they responded in horror as if we were living in Victorian England or they were dealing with the most prudish pastor in Christendom (which all of you can attest, I am not). 

“No, I don’t know but I can guess.” 

“Guess?” they foolishly dared. 

“Listen,” I said, “I have been doing this a long time and there are only two reasons a wedding date gets changed.  Either, the groom is in the military and being deployed or the bride is pregnant.”

Turning to the now fire-engine red groom, I said, “Since I know you are not in the military my guess is your bride to be is pregnant.  Relax!  Rejoice! This happens more than you think.”

I went through a period of time, where I had performed three ceremonies outside of this congregation for young people who were in my youth group in another church and who were at the time of their nuptials, as my aunt would say, at least “three times seven” only to have them, or their parents meet me on the street shortly after the wedding and announce a baby was on the way.

 Again, most pastors have better things to do with our lives than to calculate the months between day of a wedding and projected day of birth.  However, and it is one of those moments where I can take you to the exact spot where the announcement took place, after hearing two stories of unusually quick conceptions, the mother of the last newly minted bride met me coming out of Happy Foods and told me her daughter was pregnant.   I honestly heard myself say, before my mental filter kicked in: “For the love of God.  Don’t any of the males in this community shoot blanks anymore?”

Really most of us when told of a birth don’t bother to do the math in our heads.  Most of us hug the couple or their parents celebrating and pray for a healthy birth.  But there was a time, in many of our lives when the birth of a baby, “out-of-wedlock”, could turn into the talk or the secret of the neighborhood and family. 

You and I can probably even remember a time when parents fretted over telling their children they were adopted.  Gone are those days and it is probably for the best.

Twenty-first century Marys and Josephs do not face the same strain that the original first couple did.

Experts in family systems theory will tell you that the introduction of anything – from a new baby, to a new puppy, even a bird, will radically alter the dynamics within a family.  Any change, at any level of your life radically alters your lifestyle.  We may tell ourselves, “What’s another child?”

We may stop to make a contribution to Anti-Cruelty and come home with a cat or a dog and find that there is more to their care and keeping than we thought of when we looked into their soulful eyes and fell in love.  We can even think we can make changes in our lives and discover that a change that we kept telling ourselves was going to be so easy turns out to be anything but. 

In this, Mary and Joseph can be our prime examples. 

You know the story.  Or, you know, at least the romanticized version of the story.  In reality what Joseph and Mary had on their hands was a scandal of the first order. 

Remember theirs  was not a betrothal the way we think of one.  They didn’t date for awhile until Joseph got down on one knee and proposed marriage. 

In the first century marriages were arranged.  It was a deal not  between Joseph and Mary but between their two families.  It may have even been made between their fathers long before either was aware of it.  A rabbi and two witnesses were all that was needed to consummate the arrangement. 

All of that had been done when Gabriel shows up at Mary’s doorstep with perhaps the toughest “sell job” in human history.  The angel has to convince Mary that she should go along with God’s plan, and bear God’s child, “out-of-wedlock.” 

At first Mary is not convinced and rightly so for she knows in her heart what is going to happen to her.  The late Morton Kelsey in his book, The Drama of Christmas, imagines the gossip.

Most people are more comfortable with violence than unconventional sexual behavior and Mary’s neighbors were no exception. The villagers could count and they talked about the impropriety of Mary’s pregnancy. They smiled knowingly as Mary passed them to draw water from the village well. When the story of a heavenly visitor leaked out they snickered openly. 1

 Joseph, if he took Mary to be his wife, would have to endure the same backlash.  According to Greg Keener in his commentary, “Mediterranean society viewed with contempt the weakness of a man who let his love for his wife outweigh his appropriate honor in repudiating her.” 2

Both of their honors were at stake.  Both of them risked at least ridicule if not outright rejection from their family and friends.  And that is our first take away from this story.  If any one tells you that following God is going to be easy or something done in your spare time don’t you dare believe them. 

Most folks are smart enough to have figured out what one Duke University student told his chapel dean, Dr.  William H.  Willimon.  “You’ve got some pretty smart students here.  Smart enough to realize that if they came to church they would be putting their lives at risk of being commandeered by Christ, who might make some demands on their lives, making them only the more unmanageable and difficult.  So they say safely home.” 3
 

That is one of the reasons people who want the church only as a crutch when times are tough or a hobby to be dabbled in stay away.  They are afraid that if they come here they may be asked to be braver than they have ever been and truer with themselves than they could possibly imagine. With  God closer and more involved in their lives than they would ever want sometimes things get more, not less, difficult.

My guess is that all the couples that I have married who discover that their baby would be coming a little earlier than could be accounted for had to make the same decision.  The baby was going to come anyway and so might as well go through with things as planned, or juggle the schedule, and hope none of the friends are bean counters or month counters.

So too it is with Jesus and you. 

Whatever you are facing, whatever is wrong with your life, Jesus is going to come.  Amidst your greatest crises and your biggest worries about tomorrow, Jesus will come. 

He is going to be born into the human family and cast his lot forever with us.  Jesus will come to walk beside us into the next chapter of our lives, however uncertain that chapter may be and stay with us in our rejoicing and our weeping; our struggling and our loving; in our living and in our dying. God will be with us though it all. 

Just as God was with Mary.  Just as God was with Joseph.  God will be with us and for that we too can count ourselves blessed.

________

1.   Morton Kelsey, The Drama of Christmas.  (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994), p.  20.

2.  Gregg Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew.  (Grand Rapids: William B.  Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009), p.  91.

3.  William H.  Willimon, “Embarrassed by God.”  Pulpit Resource.  December, 2013.  p.  53.