“What’s In a Name?” (Matthew 1:18-25)

 If you were expecting a baby—and you knew it was going to be a boy—what do you think you would name him? Well, in Canada apparently the most popular name for boys right now is Noah, followed closely by Liam and William. (And for the record, the top three girls’ names are Olivia, Emma and Charlotte.)

“You are to name him Jesus”

In our Bible reading this evening, however, Joseph wasn’t given the luxury of a choice when it came to naming the baby to whom Mary was to give birth. Can you imagine him saying back to the angel, “No, we’ve done some thinking, and we’ve decided we’re going to name him Liam…”? It wasn’t going to happen!

And so, over the next few minutes, as we stand on the cusp between Advent and Christmas, I invite you to join with me as I meditate on the name that Joseph and Mary gave to the baby who was to be born to them: Jesus.

Now that name Jesus has a noble lineage. I’m sure many of you are aware that in the Hebrew spoken by Joseph and Mary it would have been Yeshua. Perhaps we are familiar with it as the biblical name Joshua. And Joshua was one of the greatest heroes of the Old Testament. It was he who as the successor to Moses led the people of Israel into the Promised Land. And his name, “Joshua” in turn means something like “The Lord saves” or “The Lord is salvation”.

Today the name Jesus comes in as something like number 2003 on the list of babies’ names here in Canada. However, in first-century Israel Jesus was not an altogether uncommon name. Indeed, we meet with two other Jesuses in the New Testament. There was “Jesus called Justus”, a companion of the Apostle Paul, whom he mentions in his letter to the Colossians. And there was Jesus Barabbas, the criminal who was released by Pontius Pilate when the crowd clamoured to have him set free.

We don’t know how or why those two were given that particular name. But we do know why Jesus was given it: because, in the words of the angel, he would save his people from their sins.

Now I can’t imagine that either Mary or Joseph can have had any precise understanding of what the angel meant by that. But they would have been in no uncertainty that the child who was in Mary’s womb was special—and that he would play a unique and all-important role in God’s dealings with his people.

Forty days after the baby’s birth, when they came to the Temple for Mary’s ritual purification, it was the devout Simeon who would give them an inkling of what was to come. After blessing them, it was Simeon who told Mary, “This child is appointed for the falling and rising of many… and to be a sign that will be spoken against, and a sword will pierce through your own soul also…” (Luke 2:34-35) Ominous words—and no doubt among those that Mary would ponder in her heart over the years to come.

“Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews”

Looking back, it is clear that Simeon’s words of prophecy pointed directly to a grief that years later would tear deep into Mary’s soul. Indeed his prophecy would be fulfilled just a short distance from where he had spoken it. No doubt Mary could see the Temple rising above the city on the horizon, as she helplessly watched her son, bruised and bloodied, being hoisted up on a cross. And it is there that we encounter the name of Jesus again—not from the lips of an angel this time, but displayed prominently on the crass sign that Pontius Pilate ordered to be fastened above his head: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews”.

Of course Pilate intended it as a form of twisted humour, a mockery not only of Jesus but also of a people Pilate himself openly despised. And the religious authorities got the message. They recognized it as the insult, the blasphemy that Pilate intended it to be. And they demanded that the sign be amended, so that it no longer read “The King of the Jews”, but “This man claimed to be king of the Jews”. However, Pilate was in no mood to change his mind and the wording stood: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews”.

This time it is not shepherds who gather to look on in wondering awe and humble adoration. It is ghoulish spectators who have come to look on as a man’s life painfully slips away from him. And it is not an angels’ chorus that we hear, singing, “Glory to God in the highest…” It is the voice of mockers sniggering among themselves, “He saved others, but he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.”

Yet not many days would pass before there were those who came to see what had happened that day in a whole different light. The sign of humiliation and shame would become for them the symbol of victory and salvation, so that less than a generation later Paul, a former persecutor of the church, could write, “Far be it for me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 6:14) Jesus, the child in the manger. Jesus, the crucified Saviour.

“At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow”

It was looking back on the crucifixion that the same Paul could write these words:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the form of a servant,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5-11)

“You shall give him the name Jesus…” The shepherds were overcome with fear. The wise men bowed in reverence. Faithful believers have trusted and worshipped and proclaimed him for nearly two thousand years. And the day is surely coming when you and I and all who have put their trust in him will gather around his glorious throne. And there we will bow before him to sing with all creation,

Worthy are you …
for you were slain,
and by your blood you ransomed people for God
    from every tribe and language and people and nation,
and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
    and they shall reign on the earth.

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honour and glory and blessing!

To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be blessing and honour and glory and might for ever and ever!
(Revelation 5:9,10,12,13)

We have Jesus’ promise that, as he came once as a helpless baby to Bethlehem, so he will come again as King and Lord of all to claim every last particle of creation as his own. His promise is there for us in the final verses of the Bible: “Surely I am coming soon.” And in wondering awe and humble reverence, together with believers from every people, language and nation, we reply, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Revelation 22:20) Let’s say it together: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all! Amen.

“The Dark Side of Christmas” (Matthew 2:1-18)

 It’s going back quite a few years now, but I suspect there are some in the congregation who can recall the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding. One of its more memorable characters is Gus Portokalos, the father of the bride. At one point in the story Gus makes the claim, “Give me any word, any word, and I show you how the root of that word is Greek.” “OK,” someone pipes up from the back of the car, “how about the word ‘kimono’?” “Kimono, kimono, kimono,” Gus mutters to himself. You begin to wonder if he hasn’t been stumped. Then he triumphantly shouts, “Ha! Of course! Kimono is come from the Greek word cheimónos, is mean winter. So, what do you wear in the wintertime to stay warm? A robe! You see: robe, kimono. There you go!”

Well, perhaps unbeknownst to many of us, today we enter the season of Epiphany—and unlike “kimono”, “epiphany” really is a Greek word. It has to do with showing forth or making an appearance. By and large the only time we hear the word nowadays is on those rare occasions when someone might say, “I just had an epiphany,”—by which we might understand they had something like an “Aha!” moment, a flash of insight when suddenly something became clear.

That actually comes pretty close to the meaning of the church’s season of Epiphany. It begins with today’s reading about the journey of the wise men and how Jesus was made known to people from outside the Jewish nation for the first time. It will continue next Sunday with the account of Jesus’ baptism and of God the Father’s pronouncement that Jesus was his beloved Son. And so it continues, until we come to the mount of the transfiguration, where Jesus is revealed to Peter, James and John in all his heavenly splendour.

Yet to observe the season of Epiphany in that way is really to recount only half the story. Running side by side with the account of Jesus’ glory there is another narrative: the context of the dark world into which that light shone. If we take a moment to examine them closely, we find that surrounding those charming scenes on our Christmas cards of angels and shepherds and the wise men presenting their gifts there was a sinister world of hardship, shame and squalour.

The Darkness of Bethlehem

Those of us who watched the “Walking the Road to Bethlehem” video series during Advent were given a different perspective on the events surrounding Jesus’ coming. Let’s begin with Mary and Joseph. Nazareth, where they lived, was a village of fewer than five hundred people and news of Mary’s premarital pregnancy would have spread like wildfire. Although they had both been visited by angels, there was no one in Nazareth who would have believed that Mary was a virgin. In the eyes of the townsfolk her condition would have been a scandal, the subject of endless rumour and chitchat, bringing shame to her and embarrassment to Joseph.

And months later, when they came to Bethlehem, what about the manger where Jesus was laid? It is easy to forget that what we are talking about is a feeding trough for animals. It could not have been the least bit sanitary. Yet it was the only thing available. I wonder what was going through Mary’s mind as she laid her tiny baby down in it. Did she and Joseph have to shoo the animals away as they came in search of food?

Then there were the shepherds. They were not clean-cut farm boys, as we might like to imagine. Rather, as Adam Hamilton pointed out,

They were typically uneducated, usually poor, and, since they lived among animals in the elements, sometimes smelled of dirty sheep… Shepherds were tolerated but not always esteemed by their neighbours.[1]

In fact, Hamilton was being kind. First-century rabbis classed shepherds with thieves and cheats. Their roving life gave them the opportunity to steal from the flocks and they were known to take advantage of it. They had what one commentator has described as an “unfortunate habit of confusing ‘mine’ with ‘thine’ ”.[2] For that reason, to buy milk, wool or kids from a shepherd was forbidden, because more than likely you would be receiving stolen goods.[3]

This morning we read of the visit of the magi. Behind that story there lies the evil shadow of King Herod, sitting on his throne in Jerusalem, less than ten kilometers away. History records Herod as an insanely jealous, paranoid, ambitious and despotic ruler. He maintained a personal bodyguard of two thousand soldiers and employed secret police to keep a watchful eye on the common people. He banned anything that smacked of opposition and would have it put down by brute force. His insatiable thirst for power led him to a series of ruthless acts, including the execution of his wife, his brother-in-law (who also happened to be the high priest), three of his sons, three hundred military leaders, and many others.

So it is that this morning’s reading concludes with a horrific act of violence. It is a scene not depicted on any Christmas cards that I know of. It is not re-enacted in children’s Christmas pageants. Yet it is part of the real world into which Jesus was born. And as a result Mary and Joseph are forced to take another journey, this time to flee with their infant child as refugees to Egypt.

Thus before he reaches the age of two, we find Jesus already the subject of rumour and innuendo, homeless, in the company of the lowest of the low, threatened, persecuted, and a refugee. As we follow the gospel story, we find him hungry, thirsty, tempted, caught in a violent storm at sea, grieving over the death of a friend, in such intensity of anguish that his sweat becomes like drops of blood falling to the ground… So it is that the author of the Letter to the Hebrews can claim that in Jesus, “We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all” (Hebrews 4:15, The Message). “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

Darkness Today

The apostle Paul summarizes it in his famous hymn in Philippians, chapter 2:

Although in very nature God,
     he did not consider equality with God something to grasp;
rather, he emptied himself
     by taking the very nature of a slave,
     being made in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
     he humbled himself
     by becoming obedient to the point of death—
              and nothing less than death on a cross!

Jesus knows what it is to be poor, oppressed, homeless, a refugee… And so he stands beside such people; he stands beside you and me today. He is with us, not just for the good times, but in our moments of weakness and need, in our moments of doubt and sorrow, in our moments of anguish and grief. As we pondered in the sermon a couple of weeks ago, Jesus is Immanuel—God with us.

In the church where last served I had my eyes opened to what that means in extreme terms. One Christmas Eve we had the privilege of being “invaded” by the first of what became more than a hundred refugees. They were Karen people from Burma and they are among the most persecuted minorities in the world.

This past Friday Burma marked the seventy-first anniversary of its independence as a nation. Not one of those years has passed when the Karen people, along with other ethnic minorities, they have not been hunted, tortured, forced out of their homes and villages, and slaughtered by the Burmese army. They have been subjected to bombings, sniper shots, machine gun fire, torture, germ warfare and chemical attacks.[4]  Some of my parishioners had seen their relatives shot down in front of them. Others bore machete scars and bullet wounds. Still others had found escape only by risking their lives to walk through minefields. And when they reached the supposed safety of refugee camps in neighbouring Thailand, the Burmese army continued to shell them.

Yet through all of this they never lost their love for Jesus—and, more importantly, their confidence in Jesus’ love for them, Jesus’ presence with them. To hear them sing some of the old favourite hymns like “Take my life and let it be” or “O Jesus, I have promised to serve thee to the end”, and to see them come humbly and faithfully to the Lord’s table, for me was a deeply moving experience. They had known what it was for Jesus to dwell with them in the darkness.

Never Alone

It’s my sincere hope that 2019 will be a year of blessing for all of us. Yet inevitably there will be times of darkness. My prayer is that, as Jesus stepped into the darkness of Bethlehem twenty centuries and more ago, so you may know his presence with you both in the good times and in those moments when darkness seems to be closing in your life.

So allow me to conclude with a story:

At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God’s throne. Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly—not with cringing shame but with belligerence.

“Can God judge us? How can God know about suffering?” snapped a pert young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. “We endured terror, beatings, torture, death!” In another group a man lowered his collar. “What about this?” he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. “Lynched for no crime but being black! We have suffocated in slave ships, been wrenched from loved ones, toiled till only death gave release.”

Far out across the plain were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred. What did God know of all that people had been forced to endure in this world? “God leads a pretty sheltered life,” they said. 



So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he or she had suffered the most. A Jew, a slave, an untouchable from India, a 
person from Hiroshima, a prisoner from a Siberian gulag, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child. In the centre of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather simple: before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured. Their verdict was that God should be sentenced to live on earth—as a human being!

“Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Let him champion a cause so just, but so radical, that it brings down upon him the hate, condemnation and efforts of every major traditional and established religious authority to eliminate him. Let him try to describe 
what no-one has ever seen, felt, tasted, heard, or smelled: let him try to communicate God to human beings. At the last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him be indicted on false charges, tried before a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let him be tortured and let him die! Let him die the most humiliating death—with common thieves.”

As each leader announced a portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of
 approval went up from the assembled throng. When the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No one uttered another word. No one moved. Suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.[5]

---

[1]     Adam Hamilton, The Journey, 113

[2]     Leon Morris, The Gospel According to St Luke, 84

[3]     Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 902

[4]    See Andrew Boyd, Baroness Cox, A Voice for the Voiceless, 215-257

[5]     Author unknown

“Simeon’s Song” (Luke 2:25-35)

 

Allow me to begin by saying with what a great sense of privilege it is that I come before you at All Nations this morning. My wife Karen and I have been worshiping here only a few short weeks after resettling in Halifax and your pastor and elders have entrusted me with what I regard as a sacred responsibility—to open the word of God with you so that together we may hear him speak to us and to our lives today. I hope that by his grace and power I can in some small way live up to that calling in the next few minutes this morning. And so let us begin by praying together… 

God, the Father of lights, by the entrance of your word you give light to our souls: Grant to us the spirit of wisdom and understanding; that being taught by you in holy Scripture, we may receive with faith the words of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I don’t know if any of you have had your radios on this morning. If you did, you might have noticed a distinct change in the music. Those Christmas tunes that have been blaring at us for weeks have suddenly stopped. No more rockin’ around the Christmas tree, no more chestnuts roasting on that open fire, no more holly, jolly Christmas, no more mommy kissing Santa Claus… All the anticipation that led up to that magical day has vanished for another year and tomorrow morning for many of us it will be back to work as usual.

For the rest of the world Christmas ended on December 25^th. For the church, however, December 25^th is only the first of twelve days of Christmas. And there are some who maintain a tradition of a forty-day Christmas season, leading all the way to February 2^nd. And that is exactly the locus of the reading from Luke’s gospel this morning.

It is forty days after Jesus’ birth and Joseph and Mary have come to the Temple in Jerusalem to do what the Law required of them. In the books of Exodus and Leviticus there were two separate regulations regarding the birth of a child. One was that the first-born male in any family was to be consecrated to the Lord, as a remembrance of how the first-born males of Egypt had perished before the Israelites gained their freedom (Exodus 13:11-15). The other was that a woman was considered ritually unclean for forty days following the delivery of a child. At the end of that period she was to come to the priest with an offering of a one-year-old lamb and a young pigeon or a dove. The law also provided that if she was too poor to afford a lamb, she could offer two pigeons (Leviticus 12:1-8).

These Old Testament regulations form the context of our passage from Luke. Mary and Joseph have come to satisfy those two conditions of the Law: to consecrate their newborn son to the Lord and to make the offering required on behalf of Mary.

What Luke has given us in just three verses is a wonderful and touching picture of their faithfulness—a quality we have seen in both of them since we were first introduced to them at the outset of the gospel story. Certainly one of the themes that come through strongly in Mary’s story (and there are many) is faithfulness, beginning with her response to the angel announcing that she was to give birth to the Saviour, the Son of the Most High. Do you remember what she said on that occasion? “I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.” And her profound hymn, which she sang to her cousin Elizabeth and which Pastor Dave preached about a week ago in Advent, gives eloquent voice to her deeply rooted faith in God.

Joseph’s story on the other hand is found mainly in Matthew’s gospel and it too is a testimony of faithfulness—not least in his decision to go ahead and take Mary as his wife in spite of the fact that she was pregnant and he had had nothing to do with it. So now we find this couple continuing in that pattern of faithfulness as they come to present the offering prescribed in the Law.

The faithfulness of Simeon

It is at this point that a third character enters the picture: Simeon. And in Simeon the Bible gives us a third example of faithfulness. In our NIV Bibles he is described as “righteous and devout”. Frankly I find it hard to think of two more misunderstood words in the world today. I suspect when most people think of a righteous person, they think “self-righteous”. What pops into their minds is someone who is “holier than thou”. And to be devout isn’t much better. For many people it is just one step removed from being a fanatic. But neither of those things is what Simeon was. I think J.B. Phillips came closest to what Luke intended when he described Simeon as “an upright man, devoted to the service of God”.

Even more than that, Luke tells us, “He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him”. Can you remember when you were a child, longing for Christmas to come, so that you could dig under the Christmas tree and open your gifts? We don’t know how long Simeon had been waiting, but I suspect it was a very long time, not days or weeks or months or even years, but perhaps decades. God had given him a special revelation that he would not die before he had set his eyes on the promised Messiah. In my mind’s eye I can imagine him coming into the Temple precincts day after day, praying that this might at last be the day.

Then, out of the corner of his eye he sees a couple with their tiny baby. And something tells him that this child is the one. Had he had any inkling that the Messiah was to be a child? And what made him so sure that among all the people jostling through the Temple courts that this was the one? Luke doesn’t bother to tell us how he knew—the Bible is so often tantalizingly silent on those details—only that Simeon was moved by the Holy Spirit. And so as quickly as his old bones would move him, Simeon made his way over to Joseph and Mary, took the baby into his arms and began to praise God. I can imagine tears of joy flowing down his cheeks as he cried aloud,

Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
      you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
      and the glory of your people Israel.

It doesn’t come across in any English translation, but the word with which Simeon addressed God in his song is almost unique in the New Testament. The usual word for “Lord” is kyrios and you will find it more than six hundred times. The word Simeon uses is despotes and you will find it used of God only three times. Elsewhere the word refers to slave-owners, who have absolute authority over their slaves. So it is that in the next line Simeon refers to himself as a slave, for that is what the word “servant” literally means. Thus we see in Simeon a man who has totally and utterly devoted himself to God, one who has laid himself before God as a servant and a slave, whose only desire is to serve him. Now all those years of faithful service, of prayer and patient expectation, have been fulfilled.

The rewards of faithfulness

In those few fleeting moments with the Christ child in his arms, God had rewarded Simeon for all those years of faithful waiting. Now at last he could know true peace, that beautiful shalom, of which the Old Testament gives us so many pictures, such as these words from Isaiah:

‘No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
     or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
     so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
     the work of their hands.
They will not labor in vain,
     nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the Lord,
     they and their descendants with them.
Before they call I will answer;
     while they are still speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
     and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
     and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
     on all my holy mountain,’
says the Lord. (Isaiah 65:22-25)

Simeon’s words also echo those of Job who, after he had lost his wealth, his children and finally his health, still remained faithful to God. “My eyes have seen your salvation,” cries Simeon. “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,” declared Job after his sufferings had ended and he stood before the Lord, “but now my eye sees you” (Job 42:5).

There is a promise that runs through the Bible that our faithfulness to God will be rewarded, that it does not go unrecognized—not always in this life, as was Simeon’s privilege, but most certainly in the age to come. To the prophet Jeremiah God spoke these words: “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve” (Jeremiah 17:10). “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters,” writes the apostle Paul in the New Testament, “stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58). “Look, I am coming soon!” declares the risen, glorified Lord Jesus in almost the last words of the Bible. “My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done” (Revelation 22:12).

The faithfulness of God

In Simeon and his song we have a wonderful example of faithfulness. Yet we would do both him and the Lord whom he served an incalculable injustice if we were to stop there. For the far greater reality that filled Simeon’s heart and caused it to overflow was the faithfulness of God. In his arms he held the confirmation of all of God’s promises. God, who had faithfully shepherded and guided his people from the calling of Abraham to the crossing of the Red Sea to the conquering of the Promised Land, through the reigns of kings good and bad, through times of disobedience and rebellion, through captivity in Babylon, had now come to his people in the person of this tiny baby. The sun that had long lain hidden beneath the horizon had finally begun to spread its rays across the sky, to bring its light not only to the people of Israel but to all the world.

Yet light inevitably casts shadows. As he gently returned the child Messiah to his mother’s arms, Simeon spoke more foreboding words, dark words about the falling and rising of many, about the child becoming a sign to be spoken against, about a sword that would pierce Mary’s soul. It is in those words that we discover that the faithfulness of God leads us not only to the birth of the Christ child, but also to his death. For in Christ we have a God who not only fulfils his promises, but whose faithfulness led him to the cross, to go to the very death for you and for me.

Our faithfulness (or perhaps I should say my faithfulness) is intermittent at best. Jesus is the friend who sticks closer than a brother, whose faithfulness has led him to take even sin, our death, upon himself. If we are to be faithful like Simeon, or like Mary and Joseph, it will be because we have a God who has first been faithful to us. The one who was held in Simeon’s arms now holds us in his, with hands scarred by nails—and we can be sure that he will never let us go.

“A Christmas Triptych” (John 1:14)

I understand that the triptych began as a specifically Christian form of art. Instead of a single canvas, three panels are used to portray a particular truth or incident. In that sense, triptychs offer a fuller, you might even say three-dimensional, perspective of what they portray. Perhaps for this reason the Bible gives us not one but three accounts of Jesus’ coming into the world: one each in the gospels of St Matthew, St Luke and St John. Each of them has a slightly different story to tell, recounted from a different perspective. I believe it is only when you have heard all three, looked at all three panels so to speak, that you can come to a full understanding of the Christmas story.

Unfortunately, at the Christmas services we usually have time only to read one, to look at a single panel. But for the next few moments I want us to fold out the triptych and to look at all three.

Luke: A picture of Mary

We begin with St Luke, whose account of the first Christmas is perhaps the most familiar. It is Luke who tells us of the angel coming to Mary and announcing to her that she will bear a son. It is Luke who tells us of the long trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem. It is Luke who tells us about the shepherds and the angelic choir.

It has long been observed that Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth is written from the perspective of the Virgin Mary. Mary was probably a young girl in her early teens, barely a woman at all, when she became betrothed to Joseph, a carpenter. Betrothal was the stage that preceded marriage. It lasted for a full year and was something considerably more serious than modern-day engagement. For one thing, it was every bit as binding as marriage and could only be broken by a formal act of divorce.

It was in this betrothal period, then, that Mary received a strange visitor—an angel sent from God. Now we mustn’t necessarily think of an angel as some winged being robed in dazzling white, as artists so often portray them. The word both in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New simply means a messenger. So we have no reason to think that the room where Mary sat was necessarily flooded with blinding light. It may have been just an ordinary meeting. What was extraordinary was not the messenger as much as the message that Mary received: that without having engaged in sexual relations with any man (not least her fiancé Joseph) Mary was to become pregnant and give birth to a child. Even more astounding was that that child would be the Son of God.

Mary’s initial reaction was bewilderment. How could any of this be possible? She lived in an era centuries before the development of modern embryology but she knew as well as you or I do that virgins do not get pregnant. Perhaps it was the angel’s final words that convinced her: “Nothing is impossible with God.” And we all know Mary’s response: “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” And the rest, we might say, is history.

Matthew: A picture of Joseph

We turn now from Luke’s gospel to Matthew’s. Luke wrote his account of Jesus’ birth from the perspective of Mary but Matthew tells the Christmas story from the eyes of Joseph. And of course it is from Matthew as well that we learn about the visit of the wise men, of King Herod’s uncontrollable jealousy, and of Mary and Joseph’s being forced to escape to Egypt with their newborn son. But back to Joseph.

Somehow word had reached him that Mary was pregnant. Could it have been through Mary’s relatives Elizabeth and Zechariah? Could it have been through the village grapevine? I like to think that Mary herself might have told him what had happened. Whatever route it took, Joseph had learned of Mary’s condition and this threw him into a moral dilemma. What was he to do? One option was to call off the betrothal. But he would have to find a way of doing it quietly, behind the scenes, or else Mary could end up being publicly accused of adultery. And on that topic the Scriptures were clear: “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death” (Leviticus 20:10). Perhaps images conjured up in Joseph’s mind similar to what we read of the woman who was brought to Jesus after being caught in adultery.

It was as Joseph was tossing all of this back and forth in his mind that he too received a visit from an angel—in his case not in person, but in a dream, but the message was the same. “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.” This was all that Joseph needed. He awoke from sleep determined to take Mary as his bride and to suffer the consequences of people always talking (but never to him) about the questionable provenance of her child.

John: A picture of God

Turn on a few pages now to John’s gospel. If Luke wrote from Mary’s outlook and Matthew from Joseph’s, whose perspective does John represent? The answer, I believe, is God’s. We hear nothing from John about the maid in Nazareth or of the carpenter who was her husband-to-be. Instead, John points us upward to gaze into the vastness of the cosmos and to look back, if we can, to the very beginning of time.

As John tells it, the story of Jesus does not begin with an angel coming to a virgin or with a carpenter waking from a dream. No, it begins deep within the very heart of God. What happened that first Christmas morning had somehow, mysteriously, been a part of God’s plan of creation, part of his very being as Love, right from the beginning, before ever the first word was spoken and there was light.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

So there you have a triptych: three pictures of the coming of Jesus from three different perspectives. But what is it that unites these three pictures, that gives them unity? The answer, I believe, is faith. We have the faith of Mary, who not knowing what the future might hold, trusted God enough to take that next step after which nothing could ever be the same again and say to the angel, “Here I am… Let it be to me according to your word.” There was Joseph, who was also willing to trust God to bring him and Mary through the shame and the gossip, the sideways glances and whispered murmurs that would forever be a part of their life in the village of Nazareth.

I am grateful to Nancy Clauss for posting on Facebook a recent op-ed article about faith by New York Times columnist David Brooks. I found it tremendously helpful and challenging. He describes the main business of faith as

… living attentively every day. The faithful are trying to live in ways their creator loves. They are trying to turn moments of spontaneous consciousness into an ethos of strict conscience. They are using effervescent sensations of holiness to inspire concrete habits, moral practices and practical ways of living well.

Marx thought that religion was the opiate of the masses, but [Rabbi Joseph] Soloveitchik argues that, on the contrary, this business of living out a faith is complex and arduous: “The pangs of searching and groping, the tortures of spiritual crises and exhausting treks of the soul purify and sanctify man, cleanse his thoughts, and purge them of the husks of superficiality and the dross of vulgarity. Out of these torments there emerges a new understanding of the world, a powerful spiritual enthusiasm that shakes the very foundations of man’s existence.”

Insecure believers sometimes cling to a rigid and simplistic faith. But confident believers are willing to face their dry spells, doubts, and evolution. Faith as practiced by such people is change. It is restless, growing. It’s not right and wrong that changes, but their spiritual state and their daily practice. As the longings grow richer, life does, too. As [Yale professor and poet Christian] Wiman notes, “To be truly alive is to feel one’s ultimate existence within one’s daily existence.”[1]

The Letter to the Hebrews puts it more succinctly: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” This was the case with Mary and with Joseph. They had come to see their lives, indeed life itself, within the context of the transcendent, always loving purposes of God. Not that there were not doubts, problems, conflicts—but their faith in God would always sustain them through them.

We’ve thought about Mary and Joseph, but what about the middle panel of our triptych? What about God? Perhaps I am teetering on the brink of heresy, but I believe that at Christmas our God himself also showed faith—faith to become a tiny cluster of cells within a woman’s uterus, faith to be a helpless infant in his mother’s arms, faith to think that one man in a far-off corner of an empire could change the world, faith to undergo his own death… And that same God comes to you and to me today and invites us on that same adventure of faith, to follow the one who teaches, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mark 8:35).

---

[1]     David Brooks, “The Subtle Sensations of Faith”, New York Times, 23 December 2014, p. A27. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/opinion/david-brooks-the-subtle-sensations-of-faith.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0