Worship for Sunday, December 19, 2010
The Fourth Sunday in Advent
Theme: Love
Candle liturgy
One: We have lit three candles—for hope, for peace, and for joy. Today we light the fourth candle—the candle of love. With this flame we signify the love of God that surrounds and fills us at all times, but that we recognize in a special way in the Christmas story. There is no greater power than love. It is stronger than rulers and empires, stronger than grief or despair, stronger even than death. We love, because God loves us.
(Four candles are lit. Sing verse four of “One Candle Is Lit " #128")
Come, wander where lion and lamb gently play,
where evil is banished and faith takes the day,
a babe in a manger to fool the world's eyes.
One candle is lit for God's loving surprise.
All: Loving God, we open ourselves to you this Christmas season.
As these candles are lit, light our lives with your imagination.
Show us the creative power of hope.
Teach us the peace that comes from justice.
Fill us with the kind of joy that cannot be contained, but must be shared.
Magnify your love within us.
Prepare our hearts to be transformed by you,
That we may walk in the light of Christ. Amen.
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
Father - we rejoice at this time in your most gracious will - a will that
is so shaped by your love that has held nothing back from us. As we ponder
this day the message of the angels to Mary and to Joseph and how their
lives were changed by their acceptance of that message - we pray that our
lives too may be changed - that we may be people who trust in your word
despite the obstacles - despite the impossibilities - that at first present
themselves to us as we hear it. Grant that like Mary we may be your
willing and humble servants - and that like Joseph we may place obedience
to the vision you give us over any thoughts of our reputation or
convenience... In your gracious love, Lord hear our prayer....
We thank you God, that is since it is to the needy and the lost, and to the
least that you sent Jesus, we can know that he also comes to us. We thank
you that in Him, the Mystery of Love was born and is known, the love that
names us good and the power that makes us good. Help us to always
celebrate the radiance of Christ, he who was born in
light and the light of the whole world. In your gracious love, Lord hear our prayer...
Lord - we pray today for those who need the gift of Christmas in their
lives - those who have not understood your unique statement of their worth
in your sight... We pray for our cities, and those who govern, that you will give them wisdom and courage. We pray for those who feel empty, that they may discover
the Babe of Christmas who fills the soul with peace and hope... We pray
for those who feel alone - that they may discover that you are with them -
that Jesus is still Emmanuel, and that in him and through him you inhabit
every heart and transform every life open to his Spirit.. We pray for those who are sick and hurting, whether from ailments that are obvious, or perhaps more subtle. We pray for those who serve this nation at home and abroad, especially those who are apart from their families. In your gracious love, Lord, hear our prayer...
We ask all things through Christ Jesus - the babe of Bethlehem, the lamb
that was slain, the one who is both our brother and our Lord. Amen.
Matthew 1:18-25
18This is how Jesus Christ was born. A young woman named Mary was engaged to Joseph from King David's family. But before they were married, she learned that she was going to have a baby by God's Holy Spirit. 19Joseph was a good mana and did not want to embarrass Mary in front of everyone. So he decided to quietly call off the wedding.
20While Joseph was thinking about this, an angel from the Lord came to him in a dream. The angel said, "Joseph, the baby that Mary will have is from the Holy Spirit. Go ahead and marry her. 21Then after her baby is born, name him Jesus,b because he will save his people from their sins." 22So the LORD'S promise came true, just as the prophet had said, 23"A virgin will have a baby boy, and he will be called Immanuel," which means "God is with us." 24After Joseph woke up, he and Mary were soon married, just as the LORD'S angel had told him to do. 25But they did not sleep together before her baby was born. Then Joseph named him Jesus.
“I Know It to Be True”
Many of you know that I am one-eighth Cherokee, but you may not know that Kate has Mayflower passengers in her family tree. And so, in our house, we often have discussions about what “her people did to my people.”
Native American wisdom is interesting to me—not just because of my background, but because of how grounded it is in simplicity, and how compatible it is with the Gospel.
A friend of mine in Oregon—who is of Nez Perce tribal lineage-- once told the way in which his people would begin a story. The storyteller would start by saying, “I don't know whether it happened this way, but I know it to be true.”
Do you see what he was getting at? The factual details of the story are secondary to the point, or truth, of the story. The truth of the story stands on its own, no matter where the narrative might take off from reality.
And in that regard, I've got to tell you that this story of the birth of Jesus makes me a little uncomfortable. I mean, I know it to be true, but I wonder if it really did happen this way.
Matthew's version of the birth is a stripped down, bare-bones tale. Mary and Joseph are already in Bethlehem, so there's no need to set the story against the national census like Luke does. No need to have the couple travel from Nazareth to be counted. No need for a full inn leading to a birth in the stable.
Matthew does not deal with all of that. He is far more concerned with the relationship of Joseph, Mary, God, and the Holy Spirit.
Joseph and Mary were engaged, which in that culture meant you were already married—that your fathers had selected your partner in our to form a family alliance of the type needed to survive. We used to ask, “who gives this woman...” in the wedding ceremony because the wedding in history was a transaction in which one man gives a woman—his property—to the next man who will own her.
While the transaction was not finalized—as in consummated—it was a done deal. The Hebrews regarded this relationship with such honor, that it was considered adultery to violate it. If a woman who was promised to one man slept with another, then the woman and the man were both put to death. Women belonged to men—either their fathers or their husbands—and that arrangement was not be violated.
This was a patriarchal society—both in Roman and Hebrew terms. Women were not terribly important in the general scheme of things—vessels for childbearing mostly. The important part of a marriage is that the line and the name of the father would be carried on through his heirs, especially male heirs, who would then make alliances with the daughter of other powerful men to be certain that the future of the family lineage was secure.
And so, when Joseph finds out that his bride is carrying a child not of his making, it must have really ticked him off. Can you imagine him walking around Bethlehem muttering to himself? “How could she? And who did this with her? Was it Ezra? Simon? I'll kill him!”
Except, he wouldn't have to, by Levitical code, both Mary and the violator of Joseph's property would be killed by stoning from the whole community.
But Joseph loved Mary, and he was a better man than his traditions would allow him to be. He was just going to quietly divorce her—in which case she'd simply be an outcast and not the victim of a lynching.
Joseph was good guy—not so good that he would just pretend the baby was his—that was too much. But to have Mary put to death for her mistake, well, that was too much, too.
And then the angel—the messenger of the Lord appears to Joseph and tells Joseph that his bride is not an adulterer, but rather a chosen one—impregnated by God through the Holy Spirit. She will give birth, not to any ordinary boy, but to the son of God, whose name would be Emmanuel—God with us.
Boy, if Joseph hadn't been confounded and bewildered already, now the situation was downright, well, bizarre. And so, Joseph takes a leap of faith, and keeps Mary as his wife.
I worked for several years in a Catholic hospital named for Joseph. In the garden outside the main entrance stood a marble statue with a plaque which read, “Saint Joseph: foster father of our Lord.”
In our culture, calling Joseph a foster father might make sense. But, what would that have meant to him? To raise a child that was not his own? To pretend that his name, his line would be continued through this child—knowing that it wasn't so had to have painful in that culture. We call Mary “the first in faith,” but I think Joseph has the much longer leap to make. Mary, after all, knew what she did or didn't do, but Joseph...?
I gotta tell you, this is just beyond reason. I'm just not able to say with confidence that I know it to have happened just this way.
But, yet, I know it to be true.
Flash forward 80 years.
The stories that have surrounded the life, death, and life again of Jesus that have been swirling about are compiled by a writer which the tradition has named Matthew—and he includes this part of the story; that Jesus was divinely conceived by a virgin. Yes, in part, he does so to match the story to the prophet Isaiah, and yet the case can be made that the translations of Isaiah were influenced by Christian tradition.
And yes, it's true that Roman mythology was full of virgin birth stories—virgins impregnated by the gods to produce demi-gods. But, those stories were told of the gods raping young women in order to assert their power over humans.
The story of Joseph and Mary and God and the Spirit is not that kind of story. Rita Nakashima Brock, a Disciples theologian who teaches at Starr King School of Theology, wrote this month in a very provocative article in The Huffington Post of the scandal that this telling of the story would have—not in the Jewish community of Joseph's peers—but in the Roman Empire in which it was set.
Told in this way, this story was an in-your-face challenge to the Roman Empire—where male emperors carried on their father's line in power.
Listen to the words of Mary in Luke's account of the annunciation:
And Mary said,
"My soul magnifies the Lord,...
for the Mighty One has done great things for me, ...
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
A story told of a woman, conceiving and bearing a child with no human father who was not only God, but King was a direct challenge to the emperors who demanded that they be worshiped as gods. This Son of God who is born to Mary is one who will topple kingdoms and turn on its head the world in which the rich always win and the poor are always trampled underfoot.
The communities which formed around these stories did nothing short of change the world in the name of Jesus. Did they take the stories as literal fact and accurate portrayals of events, or understand them in the metaphorical sense like we do? I don't know, but I know they knew it to be true. And they so changed the world that there were for them no more “our people versus your people,” because even the Romans became a part of the body.
And today, we claim this story as our own—knowing it to be true. But, in order to live out its truth, we must allow this child to be born in the manger of our hearts and change our very being, so that we, too, can change the world in his name.
This Advent season is that opportunity we have each year to welcome the Christ-Child once more, and to hear Mary's words anew of God's turning wealth and power on its head. It’s our chance to use Joseph as our model of faith—faced with an overwhelming situation that defied everything he knew about reality, he trusted in God and knew it to be true. True, not in his head, but in his heart. True, not as an intellectual assent, but a something that touched his very being. Once again, this opportunity is before us.
Let's not blow it.
Offering Invitation
The theme for this fourth Sunday of Advent is love. For God so loved the world, that he gave... We too, give, not from compulsion, but from love. Let us now lovingly present our tithes and offerings to God.
Offering Prayer
Father, teach us how to listen for your call in our lives. Teach us how to be faithful stewards with the gifts you have entrusted to us. Teach us how to use this offering as a source of your ministry and mission. Teach us how to bow down on our knees and to spend time beholding the miracles all around us. In the name of the greatest teacher, Emmanuel, we pray. Amen.
Benediction/Commission and Blessing (Minister and Congregation)
Depart in peace, and take with you the certain knowledge
That God is always coming into the world.
We will seek God, not in a long ago stable or ancient manger,
But in the people we meet and the depths of our own hearts.
May the blessing of Christmas make you a blessing to others;
May the peace of the season pervade all that you do.
We will welcome the challenge of discipleship.
We will offer ourselves as God’s ministers.
We will go forth in hope, peace, joy, and love.
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