Mangers are Not Exactly Pure and Simple

Advent 4A

Matthew 1:18-25

December 22, 2019

St. Matthias

We are down to just 3 days before Christmas and clearly the signs are everywhere.  50% off already low prices – 3 for the price of 1 when you use the right credit card.  We’ve had black Friday which actually began on Thanksgiving Thursday and ran through the Sunday after.  Then there was Cyber Monday which apparently set a new sales record this year.  There are the usual television Christmas specials – TV Guide lists over 450 from today through Christmas Day and you will have already missed the first 30 or so by the time you get home from Church.  I looked through a list I found online and saw the old favorites like It’s a Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  I also saw several I don’t plan to watch –Invasion of the Christmas Lights on TLC – Discovery Channel’s A Very Moonshiners Christmas - and of course The Duck Dynasty Christmas Special. 

There are the usual Christmas signs hanging from businesses and churches with a variety of quasi-religious messages – like Ask Santa to bring you Jesus this Year and Let’s keep the Christ in Christmas.  One church sign in particular caught my eye this week.  It said STAY PURE AND SIMPLE!  THIS IS GOD’S WAY.  Not your usual Christmas greeting.  I thought about that message for a while.  It is a rather religious sounding idea, but I’m not sure that’s the way God works.  Our scripture lesson from the Gospel of Matthew this morning suggests that the first Christmas was anything but simple.

We hear the story of Mary – chosen by God in a message from Gabriel telling her that she would be the mother of God.  There were no doctors or hospitals or Lamaze classes.  To be pregnant and not married and living in 1^st century Galilee was anything but simple.  And then there was that 80 mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem on a Donkey when she was 9 months pregnant.  If they averaged 20 miles a day that meant she rode that donkey for 4 days.  Like much of Christmas – it is tempting to make the Bible story into a pure and simple Christmas special with Mary as the supreme example of motherhood – a cross between June Cleaver and Mother Theresa. But the Bible tells a much different story about a young girl who accepted the call of God to be the mother of Jesus.

But lest we forget, this birth of Jesus was no less significant for Joseph.   The Gospel of Matthew tells us the story of a man who had every reason to reject God’s message - Mary - and the Son she would bear.  Joseph gives us a supreme example of faith.  The angel appears with a message and he believes, and we really don’t hear much more about Joseph after that. I would have to think that when we say we believe that Jesus came to earth as one of us – fully human and fully divine – that an important part of who Jesus was throughout his ministry was the result of Joseph accepting the call of God and raising Jesus as the earthly father of God’s only Son.  Being a father is not simple – so imagine being this father.

And I don’t know that Christmas now is either pure or simple.  This time of year, is so rushed and overloaded and seems to pull us farther and farther away from Bethlehem and the Birth of Christ.  It is easy to make Mary and Joseph and the manager scene little more than the subject of paintings – television – and church front lawns.  The world gives us no reason to remember the season beyond the signs of sales and television.  Yet from the story of the Gospels given to us centuries ago we are called to once again worship a child – a Savior who is God’s gift to the world.   We gather as the Body of Christ – and we share God’s love and the grace we feel as we sing the hymns and carols of Advent and Christmas.  Christmas is real when we come together to worship and then share that love - given first in the manager centuries ago.  This is how we celebrate.  This is the meaning of Christmas.

Mary and Joseph gave everything they had in the world TO the world.  There was in the night sky a star over Bethlehem and Angels singing to the Shepherds.  And in just 3 more days Christ will be born again.  There are 12 days of Christmas – feed the hungry – call a friend who is sick and take them a present – pray for peace in world.  And we will be the living sign of Christ’s presence in this world.  Joy to the World – the Lord is coming.  AMEN.