4^th Week of Advent, Joseph and Mary, Fear and Joy

Lord, in this busy season, still us, and open our ears to hear Your Word, as we quietly prepare our hearts for the wonder of Your coming at Christmas. 

As Advent progresses and Christmas, with the birth of Jesus Christ taking centre stage approaches, we become aware of the presence of many a prophet and many an angel being present in the wondrous story. We’ve reflected already, with the lighting of each advent candle, on the role of the patriarchs, the prophets, John the Baptist, and now, on the fourth week of Advent, we turn our minds to Mary, a young teenage girl, betrothed to be married to Joseph, a carpenter.

I become aware of the many lives and stories, choices and attitudes that impact on the lives of us all. In Sunday’s readings, Isaiah 7.10-16 and Matthew 1.18-25, we hear about two men - King Ahaz of Judah and Joseph, born about 700 years later. Both men were in challenging circumstances, and both were afraid, and needing to make big, life changing decisions. Both were spoken to by God: King Ahaz through the words of the prophet Isaiah, and Joseph by and angel of the Lord. But there responses were totally different. Attitudes, actions and choices matter.

I reflect first on Ahaz’ response: Judah was in deep political crisis, with the Assyrians threatening to attack.  Ahaz is afraid, naturally. Will he join forces with his two northern neighbours against Assyria, or will he submit to the King of Assyria? The Lord spoke these words to Ahaz earlier in the chapter: ‘Be careful, keep calm, do not be afraid’, and ‘If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all’. Now, his is told: ‘Ask your God for a sign’. But Ahaz doesn’t believe God because of his fear. He has already decided what to do – he will submit to the King of Assyria. He doesn’t want to see a sign or hear God’s words because he is trusting in his own human intelligence, rather than in God. Ahaz failure of nerve and inability to risk hearing and doing what God is saying to him has consequences: he chooses not to be part of God’s salvation plan for Israel and Judah, and he loses out on seeing God acting on his behalf and on behalf of his people.

How often are we caught up in a cycle of fear, and unable to trust God to act in our situation? Is there something God is asking you to do today, which seems risky, but which he has assured you he will be present in, and will work it out for good?

The sign God promises to give Ahaz is this: ‘a young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel’. As with most prophecies, this may be multi-layered finding fulfilment in Ahaz’ day. But with ultimate fulfilment in the birth of Christ.

Fast forward some 700 years to another man named Joseph, a descendant of King David and betrothed to be married to a girl named Mary. Joseph is described as a righteous man. He found that his fiancé was pregnant, and not by him. He was not going to have her exposed publicly,  but clearly he couldn’t marry her. He, like Ahaz, had decided on his course of action – he would dismiss her quietly. But that night, an angel appeared to him in a dream, telling him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife and assuring him that the child in her womb was, ‘from the Holy Spirit’. He was also told to call him Jesus, which means saviour, ‘for he will save his people from their sins’. Matthew quotes the prophecy in Isaiah 7,  ‘the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel, meaning ‘God with us’.

How did Joseph respond? He was afraid, like Ahaz; he was being asked to take a risk, like Ahaz was, but instead of trusting in his own decision or judgement, he heard the words of the Angel, acted on them and did as the Lord commanded him, taking Mary to be his wife.

Joseph never says a word in scripture, but he is always present in every nativity, and in every account of the salvation story unfolding in history. He is dependable, he is faithful, he lays himself open to embarrassment and shame, and because Joseph is present there for Mary and her baby, he makes room for Jesus, Emmanuel, to be born in our world. Attitudes, actions and choices matter.

What about Mary’s story? Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t tell her story but Luke’s does. So we know that she, too, was spoken to by an angel, the Angel Gabriel, in a vision, not a dream, telling her that she is favoured, and that she will be with child by the Holy Spirit. She, too, was troubled and afraid. Her response. Though afraid and perplexed is ‘I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said’. Attitudes, actions and choices matter.

As we reflect on Mary, the theologian Lucy Peppiatt reminds us that she was not ‘simply a receptacle of the divine, housing [Jesus], as it were. She supplies his humanity from her own body. Her blood forms him, her food nourishes him, her breasts feed him.’ My reflection prompts me to consider the miracle of the eternal Son of God, being formed as a human infant in a teenage mother’s womb.

In this last week of Advent, of waiting and watching for Emmanuel, I leave you with a challenge to reflect on: will you stand with Ahaz or with Joseph and Mary? Either we refuse God’s sign and disbelieve his promise, stepping out of the story and handing our part to someone braver and more trusting, or we accept the call or God spoken to us in dreams and visions, through his word or the words of others; Attitudes, Actions and Words matter.

I finish with a prayer penned by Penny Bonham:

O come, O come, Emmanuel

and teach is that our inadequacies

need not paralyse us.

Draw close to us this Christmas and show us

how your grace is sufficient for all our meagreness,

how your strength is perfected in weakness.

Open our eyes to look beyond our fears

to see your deeper purposes.

May your hand grip our own tightly

when it trembles at what the future holds.

Thank you that you are Emmanuel, ‘God with us’,

even in the unknown, Amen.