THE REV. ROBERTO DESANDOLI
4th Sunday of Advent
Isaiah 7: 10-16
Psalm 80
Romans 1: 1-7
Matthew 1: 18-25
“God with us”
Friends, this morning I would like to plainly state the Good News that God has for us in the Scripture we have heard on this Advent of Love Sunday:
That God willed himself to be in loving relationship with humanity so much that he chose to place himself into our care for his safekeeping.
In our text from the Gospel of Matthew this morning we have heard how God chose Mary and Joseph to be his loving, earthly, parents; how he chose two humble and deeply human persons to be the ones who would lovingly care for the Himself, the most precious gift humanity would ever receive.
And how this gift itself, the Christ Child himself is the perfect embodiment of this new relationship between God and humanity: fully divine and fully human, dwelling within the single person of Jesus Christ, our saviour.
This is the Good News that I would like to explore with you this Advent of Love Sunday:
God’s willingness to be in loving relationship with humanity.
The loving relationship He made between himself and Mary and Joseph, two deeply human people.
And how this all prepares us to receive the Christ Child, the embodiment of loving relationship between God and Humanity
Now, before we dig too deeply into this Good News this morning, I think it is necessary to clarify something:
Notice, in each of the aspects of this Good News, the place that love takes.
Love defines God’s willed relationship with humanity
Love defines the relationship between the Christ Child and Mary and Joseph
Love defines what it is that Jesus Christ, “God with Us” is about to do for humanity
So what is this Biblical love? This Advent Love? This Christmas Love?
Well to start with, I’d like to invite us to all feel safe together, to admit to one another that for as much as the world around us in 2019 talks about love, we really have no idea what it is, at least I have no idea what secular love is.
Now certainly, the poets and songwriters of our time are eager to tell us all kinds of things about love:
Love is central to the human experience
Love is what makes life worth living
Love is all we need.
And yet, for as beautiful as these reflections on love can be, the world around us more often confuses love than clarifies it.
Love, according to the consumer world, is something we can buy in a store
Love, according to car dealerships is something we can drive home at 0 down and 0% financing
Love, according to reality television is something that can be manufactured if we just get enough attractive people in one room
Love, according to movies is a long-pan slow-motion kiss at the top of the Empire State Building.
Considering that we live in a society in which love is all around us and yet is impossible to define precisely, we should be forgiven for being a little bit confused on the subject. Love “actually” is hard to define.
This is the reason why, when two people decide to get married, whether they confess faith in Christ or not, they will stand before one another, their family, and their friends and all listen together to the true authority on “love”, that is, Christ Jesus, and the testimony written about His “love” in Scripture.
Specifically Paul’s words about love at 1 Corinthians 13:
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all thing. Love never ends.
As we consider these words from Paul, either at a wedding, or in Worship, or in our own Bible reading, we learn an important truth about Love:
Love is not something sentimental
Love is not safe
Love is not easy
Love isn’t found in the million messages and products meant to evoke a warm, fuzzy feeling
In actual fact
Love is about deep commitment
Love is about giving freedom to the object of our love
Love is about trust and care
Love is about self-sacrifice, sacrificing our control, sacrificing our comfort, sacrificing our desires, all because we love the one we are giving them up for
Today, on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, on the Advent of Love, we are invited to consider how God entered into loving relationship with humanity through Jesus Christ, and through his birth at Christmas.
Jesus Christ is, as we know, the human embodiment of this loving relationship:
God became humble to the point of putting on human flesh in order to save us from all sin.
God bent low to lift us high in the Kingdom to Come.
God gave up everything and sacrificed everything by becoming Christ and dying for our sins.
That is the Good News, this is always the Good News.
But this morning, as we consider the particular way that God gave Himself to His earthly parents, Mary and Joseph, there is another aspect to this self-giving love that we are called to recognize and to celebrate
That God willed himself to be in loving relationship with humanity so much that he chose to place himself into our care for his safekeeping
In the two Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth, from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, we are given two different versions of the events surrounding Mary and Joseph:
In Luke’s version, Mary is the one who receives an angelic vision and she is the one who is given the faith to trust in God’s loving plan.
In Matthew’s version, it is Joseph who is visited by an angel and who must be given the faith to trust in God.
In Luke’s Gospel we hear Mary’s beautiful words of praise, her Magnificat, where she proclaims the Good News for humanity that God is about to accomplish through human flesh.
There, Mary sings to God:
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed (Luke 1: 46-48)
In Matthew’s version, the verses we have heard this morning, things are not so poetic, but there is greater focus placed on God’s will to work for, through, and with us: the most humble and the most human that humanity has to offer.
In Matthew’s version, this is the way that he begins the story about Jesus’ birth:
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.
Right away we notice a huge difference between Luke’s Magnificat and Matthew’s earthy version of events.
In Luke, Mary literally sings her faithfulness to God.
In Matthew, we begin with the matter-of-fact statement that though Mary had received her miraculous conception, Joseph did not believe her and was already planning to “dismiss her quietly.”
…what a humble and human beginning to God’s relationship with humanity in Jesus Christ…
Since the dawn of creation, since Genesis, God had willed Himself to come into the world in human flesh, to take on human suffering, to offer Himself and His sacrifice as the loving rescue mission for all of humanity, and now, just as Jesus is about to enter the world in a firework explosion of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, there is a big, human, problem:
Jesus’ earthly father does not believe Mary’s words about the Holy Spirit and he is about to “dismiss her quietly” rather than open them both to public ridicule.
Friends, this is this morning’s Good News:
That God willed himself to be in loving relationship with humanity so much that he chose to place himself into our care for his safekeeping
God loved humanity so much that he chose earthly human parents to take care of him. He chose Mary, a terrified pregnant teenage girl for his every meal, and He chose Joseph, a righteous man who did not even believe in the divine reality happening in Mary’s womb, for his earthly protection.
Friends, as odd as it may seem, this is the moment that I believe proves more than any other in Advent God’s deep, deep love for humanity:
A love that is anything but sentimental
A love that is anything but easy
A love that is anything but warm and fuzzy
But rather…
A love that is about the deep commitment God placed himself into when he chose Mary and Joseph as his parents
A love that gave human freedom to two frightened and confused human beings
A love that trusts and cares for a humanity that is struggling to believe
A love that is self-sacrificial to the utmost
Thirty three years before He died on the cross to take away our sins
Thirty three years before He was betrayed and arrested
Thirty years before He began ministering in the countryside
Twelve years before He taught for the first time at the Temple in Jerusalem
Mere days before his birth, God trusted humanity so much that he chose us for his safekeeping.
He chose the most human among us. The poor, the humble, the doubtful… Mary and Joseph…
Not at all who we might expect
Not the mighty kings we read about in the Old Testament
Not rulers, or emperors, or even holy priests
But Mary and Joseph
A young woman of no noble birth and a humble carpenter, who just happened to be a son of David.
Chances are, each one of us in this room knows (or certainly has known) a Mary and a Joseph in our lives;
A young woman, who has found herself in a very serious situation, and
A man, who is trying to determine what the right thing is for him to do.
These are who God blesses with himself at Christmas.
It is truly amazing, that even when God had his whole rescue mission for humanity worked out; even when he had decided to send himself in the form of the Christ Child in order to save the world from all sin, he still chose to work through two such ordinary people.
It is amazing that the same God who created the world and everything in it
The same God who sent himself as an infant to save us from our sins
This same God chose us as the final ingredients for his rescue mission
A woman to feed him, and a man to protect him
Two people who were so ordinary, so flawed, and so completely human that Joseph even reached the point of resolving in his mind to dismiss Mary and not to marry her.
At least, that is what Joseph had decided to do
That night, as Joseph was sleeping, an angel came 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.”
The Scriptures teach us that God can work through every medium imaginable to bring about his purposes for creation:
God can work through angels and supernatural forces, through burning bushes, through earthquakes, through storms that flood the earth.
God can work through prophets, He can work through battles, and heroes, and miraculous acts.
But when it came down to his ultimate purpose for humanity, when it came to His mission to be born into the world in Jesus Christ, the melding of God and human into one body, God lovingly left his safekeeping to a man who needed a little help in believing.
This man named Joseph, who, after he awoke from his vision still had the words of the words of the angel in his ears when he went to seek out Mary his betrothed:
Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel
“Emmanuel” – “God with Us”
Friends, it truly is Good News:
That God willed himself to be in loving relationship with humanity so much that he chose to place himself into our care for his safekeeping
It truly is Good News that God chose one who was doubtful, one who was unsure, one who was the most human amongst us, to be the father of his fragile form on earth.
This is the depth of God’s love for us.
That He loves us and He trusts us to take care of His Son on the eve of his birth.
This is the way that God is preparing our hearts for Christmas this morning on the Advent of Love, that as we look up to God and as we look inward to ourselves and we ask “Am I ready?” “Am I worthy?”
Am I ready to receive this amazing gift?
Am I worthy to receive the Christ Child? The proof of God’s loving salvation for humanity?
The answer is yes.
You are ready, you are worthy, not only to receive Christ, but to be the kind of person that God would choose to raise Christ if you are like Mary and Joseph:
If you have ever found yourself out of your depths
If you have ever found yourself struggling to cope with what God has dealt you
If you have ever doubted God’s Word or God’s plans for your life
If you have needed to turn to God for help in believing the things he asked you to undertake
You are exactly the kind of person God would choose to take care of His most precious gift for humanity.
Our proof of this
Our Good News
Our Advent of Love encouragement this morning is that we know this because God has done this
God has taken the most human among us and made us the caretakers of Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, “God with Us”. Amen.
