C:sermons/year-a/Advent4-2010-Scandalous!
December 19, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Thomas L. Truby
Matthew 1:18-25
“Scandalous!”
I want to start from a strange place on this fourth Sunday of Advent. I am going to begin by talking about scandal.
To get us going, let’s remind ourselves of some recent scandals. I thought of six. There is Tiger Woods treatment of his now, ex-wife; the beautiful Swedish woman who is mother to his two children. That was a scandal. Did she come after him with a golf club on the morning he wrecked the car in their front yard?
Then there is Sam Adams, mayor of Portland, who had this relationship with a much younger man who when quizzed about it prior to the election, denied it. Should he be recalled? Does that make him unfit as mayor? And then we found out that he has not been making payments on his mortgage. If he can’t handle his own affairs, how can he handle the affairs of the city? Scandal!
And then there is the Wikileaks phenomenon! All those secret government cables delineating what our government thinks of our friends and enemies; how embarrassing? I like the grace and humor in the Turkish government’s response. They said, “You should see what we say about you.” It is all a scandal.
Steroid use among athletes; sexual misconduct among priests hidden by the church hierarchy; the “Wall Street Whitewash”, to quote Paul Krugman in yesterday’s Oregonian, or was it do-gooder government that nearly brought the world financial system to ruin? Scandals in different forms and at different levels!
Last week we noticed how Jesus warns John the Baptist to not let himself be scandalized by Jesus. Don’t write me off like you did Herod because I don’t fit with your way of thinking. Stay open to the way of compassion and forgiveness that looks weak but actually is capable of changing hearts. All this is hidden in the phrase, “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” If we were to translate that phrase fresh from the original Greek it would read “Blessed is anyone who is not scandalized by me.”
This morning I want to expose how even before his birth, Jesus is a source of scandal. Matthew 1:18 reads, “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.”
Mary is discovered to be pregnant and they don’t know who the Father is. Can you imagine the gossip in a small village? This is terrible. This is shameful. Do you suppose it was that Roman soldier who has been hanging around? She says God got her pregnant. Right! Who is she trying to protect? She is probably afraid that if she told the truth the villagers would stone her. That’s what happens to teenage girls who mess around with Roman soldiers. Do you see how before Jesus is even born he is a source of scandal?
Enter Joseph. “Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” Actually, they were engaged but in that culture engagement carried the same moral and legal obligation as marriage.
I like what Bob Hamerton-Kelly wrote about Joseph in a sermon he preached in 2007:
Joseph was a just man and unwilling to put Mary to shame. Imagine the shame and humiliation of an out of wedlock pregnancy in a small village, and imagine the maturity it must take not to shame her but rather to shelter her. I like to think of Joseph as a mature man, a grownup in control of his life and able to do without the constant approval of others that so many so-called adults seem to need all the time. His first instinct was to protect Mary, to save her pride and guard her dignity…. (And then he goes on to say,)…To guard Mary's honor in a village of normal human backstabbers and fashionable finks requires courage and cunning and Joseph had both.
Let’s look at that text again. “But just when he had resolved to dismiss her quietly, an angel of the Lord appeared 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.”
Joseph, in obedience to the angel's message, is not scandalized by the seemingly scandalous nature of Jesus' conception and birth. Trusting the angel he does notcut himself off from this tainted woman.
This in itself is a miraclefor to listen to the Angel he must break with his literal understanding of his Bible. Joseph knows enough of his Scriptures to know that he is not supposed to marry a woman who carries someone else’s child. But Joseph, being a righteous man, is also open to revelation, and God speaks to him through a dream, revealing Jesus’ identity, not only as God’s child, but God’s child who comes as scandal.
What I want to say next is a kind of sidebar to this morning’s theme and here I am quoting Rosemary Hamerton-Kellywho Bob quotes in his sermon of 2007 (I have made a few editorial adjustments to make it all flow):
"Consider that the hero of many of Jesus’ parables is a father or father figure. Consider that the image of the invisible God that he revealed to us he called his “Abba” or "father." Could we say that Jesus’ sense of his “Abba”came from his stepfather Joseph? I think so. As a human child Jesus would have learned like all human children learn, and he would have learned much from the example of his parents. This means that Jesus' idea of God as Father, as “Abba,” was likely formed from the example of Joseph, whom he knew had protected rather than prosecuted his mother;whom he knew had cast the mantle of his own honor over the dishonored girl, and whom he knew had delivered her intact into her earthly role as the mother of God. Could it be that when Jesus spoke of his father he meant God, but he imagined God through the memory of his earthly father and the quiet courage with which Joseph maintained the honor of his mother?“
What an interesting idea! That for Jesus,the inner sense of the importance of forgiveness and compassion may have had its roots in how Joseph treated Mary. Joseph put his life and reputation on the line for Mary and the child she carried within her. That is something we men, fathers and step-fathers, can look too for guidance on how to fulfill our roles in a way that pleases God.
Just before the sidebar we ended a line of thought with “God’s child comes as scandal.” What does that mean? All of us are embroiled in mimetic conflict; in envy, jealousy, revelry and the impulse toward revenge. We are all caught in it inescapably and have been since Cain killed Abel.
This is why Paul said all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We experience anything that does not come from a place of embroilment in sin as scandal. This is why everyone, both Roman and Jew, hated Jesus and wanted him dead. He was a scandal because he showed us things about ourselves we refuse to admit. Because of who we are and our denial of who we are; God can only come to us in a way we experience as scandalous.
Paul again said, “God chooses what is weak to shame the strong. God chooses what is foolish to make foolish the wisdom of the wise.” If we are not scandalized by the Incarnation, by Jesus being born among us in a stable, to an unwed mother, we aren’t looking closely enough. As Michael Hardin says, “Jesus begins and ends his life as scandal, and in the middle, he teaches us, ‘blessed is the one who is not scandalized by me.’”
Scandalous, yes, Jesus is scandalous. But if we choose to not be scandalized and instead to believe; we will be blessed. That’s the message on this fourth Sunday of Advent.
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