Advent 1B - Sermon based upon Psalm 42 & Matthew 1:18-2:12
Good morning and welcome to Advent. This is a season of expectancy and preparation. A season of joy, hope, and promise. And given the themes of our advent devotional and sermon series, it is also a season of faith, peace, new life, and love.
You’re going to notice a pattern in the coming weeks that lead us all the way through Christmas. Each week’s theme that goes with the devotional is going to be lifted up in worship in multiple ways. The devotional theme is The True Gifts of Christmas: The Journey to Bethlehem. The music, prayers, liturgy, and even scriptures will go along with the weekly theme. Each week we'll have a Psalm that captures the emotional experience of the theme and a Gospel passage that tells the story.
But for now, we’re here on the first week of Advent. We enter with the theme of faith and the story told in Matthew about Jesus's conception and birth. If ever there was a story of faith in God, this is it.
Here we have a young unmarried woman who finds out she's going to have a very special baby. The scripture tells us that her fience doesn't want to disgrace her but he's still going to “quietly dismiss her.” After transformative encounters, they both believe in God’s will for this child move forward to have the baby.
From the Luke story of Jesus’ birth we also know that they had to make a journey to Bethlehem for census and taxation. That must have been horrible. Can you imagine setting out on a donkey, a man and a 9 month pregnant woman, in a time when life was so much more treacherous than it is now?
And even after Jesus is born, King Herod sends spies so that he can plot against the young Messiah, Emmanuel, God with us. But they too had a transformative experience rooted in joy and did the right thing to protect this child.
And our Psalm this morning is also a true story of faith. It is about the fear and anxiety we experience when we can’t quite feel God’s closeness to us. We want to lash out as the Psalmist does with “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?” But just as with Mary and Joseph, the Psalmist remembers “hope in God.”
These are some pretty powerful scriptures if we pause to let them capture our feelings and imagination. So, what do they have to tell us on this first Sunday of Advent?
Well, I think one of the messages is that just because we’re journeying faithfully doesn’t mean that it’s smooth sailing. It’s often an anxiety and fear filled path. Even Joseph was going to leave Mary because he couldn’t understand how God’s plan for Mary included him and I imagine he felt a lot of social pressure as well.
How often are our lives like that? Maybe it’s that we know what the right thing is to do but we feel the pressure and embarrassment of what others are saying around us. Or sometimes it’s that we are not sure how we fit into God’s plan. Or sometimes it’s more a feeling like the Psalmist had of wondering where God is in all this and how to remain faithful while it feels so dark. When faced with loss, uncertainty, and other things that raise our fear level, our lives, just like Mary and Joseph’s are filled with moments that make our faithful walk forward feel more like a burdensome trudge.
Whether it’s the journey of the PNC in search of a pastor or the daily work it takes to make relationships last, we are ALL journeying… and sometimes it’s a tough one. But here’s where the story turns.
God reassures Joseph of his part in all this. Then God protects Jesus from Herod. God even touches the wise men and they go on a different path. Hope and joy healed them from their worries, doubt, and uncertainty. In the case of the wise men, quite literally, the story tells us that they were overwhelmed by joy.
I think this is the real heart of our scripture lesson for today. We worry and struggle in uncertainty quite often. And it becomes a cycle that just gets worse if left to our own devices. The more we worry, the more we drag ourselves down. The more we drag ourselves down, the more we fret about digging back out of the hole of fear, grief, and depression. The more we fret about those things, the more ashamed we feel. And the more ashamed we feel… well, that’s just a terrible spiral downward.
But God’s support and love for us is never wrapped up in fear or shame or overly burdensome toil. God reaches out to us with hope and joy offering us help to put one foot in front of the other and continue our faithful journey. That support comes in all kinds of forms. In the case of Joseph, it came in the form of messenger from God and I imagine it also came in the form of support from people around him and most especially from Mary. For the wise men, they found support from God to do the right thing through an intense sense of joy at the witness of a phenomenon in nature right before meeting Jesus. And while most of us don’t have an experience of meeting and angel, I know that all of us have met messengers from God or had experiences that coincided with special event that invigorated our faith.
See, this is what faith is about, whether it’s during the season of Advent or any other time. We are on a journey and each and every day is another opportunity to keep moving forward toward the hope and promise of God while being open to the nurturing support God gives us.
Now, I’m not trying to make this sound easy. I’ll give you a deeply personal example. All my life, even as a little child, I’ve struggled with depression. It seems to be genetic because most of my family struggles with it. Depression has gripped me in ways that I’ve often felt forgotten by God. The way depression chokes off the light is painful. And after feeling the emptiness and darkness months on end, I’ve even thought that it wasn’t that God had forgotten me. I’ve felt that God must be punishing or cursing me. Now logically, I know that isn’t the case. But depression is an illness that tells us lies about ourselves, others, and God.
Having struggled with this illness for most of my 37 years, I can tell you quite a few things about finding God in the darkness and what faith looks like when you barely have the energy to get out of bed. But I can also tell you that faith cannot be stifled or destroyed by darkness, fear, worry, doubt, and uncertainty.
Just like Mary and Joseph, I have found God’s support every step of the way. Just when I thought I couldn’t bear the isolation any longer, God has sent messengers that reminded me who and who’s I am. God has placed people in my life to help me when I couldn’t help myself. When I needed a jolt to point me in the right direction, God has shown me great joy through phenomenon in nature. God has called me forward in love all along the way.
God’s nurturing love and my faith in that love have helped me journey forward every step of the way. In fact, you’ve even been part of God’s work in my life. As you know, I’m a chaplain and I work night shift at Children’s Memorial Hospital. Working night shift is more than a choice. It’s a metaphor for my experience with God. Because I’ve had to work so hard to find God in the long nights of depression, I want to be part of God’s light to others in the night. I never thought I’d work in a church because I thought my place was in the darkness.
But being here with you has shown me that God calls me into the light as well. The way you’ve encouraged me and the relationships I’ve built here have shown me new paths in my own faith journey. My faithful journey is not only that of holding people in the night but also that of proclaiming God’s radiance in the light and you’ve been the ones who’ve helped cultivate that in me and show me God’s way for which I’ll always be grateful.
Now I didn’t tell you all that to spew out my own story. I told you about my journey because I believe it speaks to the struggles we’ve all had. Advent, holidays, faith, journeys, family, church… all of these things are precious but they also stir in us anxiety and fear about the unknown. But God is with us, each and every one of us. God is speaking and leading and calling us every step of the way.
Sisters and brothers, as we move forward in Advent, may we have faith that God is alive and well in all areas of our lives. Even when it feels scary or burdensome, God is with us, offering us support wrapped in love rather than fear. Our job is to keep putting one foot in front of the other on this journey taking the next step in faith and being open to all the ways God is supporting us. Emmanuel, God with us… We welcome you! Amen
