Homily: Yr A Advent 4, Dec 22 2013, St. Albans
Readings: Isaiah 7.10-16; Ps 80.1-7,16-18; Rom 1.1-7;
Mt 1.18-25
God’s
Promises
Today in our gospel reading
we get Matthew’s version of the birth of Jesus, told from Joseph’s perspective.
It’s quite different from the story we’ll
get from Luke’s gospel on Christmas Eve just two days from now. No angels,
no shepherds, no Bethlehem, no manger, no swaddling clothes, no
singing. There is absolutely no
sentimentality in Matthew’s account of Jesus birth, no sense of awe and wonder,
nothing you could put on the cover of a Christmas card. Matthew’s version of
the actual birth compared with Luke’s is stunningly brief and spare:
“Now the birth of Jesus took
place in this way . . . Joseph had no
marital relations with Mary until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.”
One of the commentators that
I was reading this week, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, said that this recounting
of the birth of a child must have been written by a man, because the only thing
that seems to be worth saying is that he didn’t get to have any sex until after
the baby was born.
So why did Matthew write
about the birth of Jesus this way? If he
isn’t trying to inspire us with a sense of awe and wonder about the birth
itself, and clearly he isn’t, what is he trying to do?
For Matthew it’s all about
promises. God’s promises. Matthew wants to tell us that the birth of
Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises which had been made to the people of
Israel through the ages by the prophets.
We don’t usually read the beginning
of Matthew’s gospel because it consists of a long genealogy, in which we read,
in the old King James Version, that Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob
and so on. But Matthew puts that
genealogy there for a purpose, or maybe several purposes. One of the purposes of the genealogy is to
establish that Jesus the Messiah is the Son of David. And that is reinforced in the gospel text we heard
today, where the angel addresses Joseph as “Son of David”. And why does that matter? It matters because in the book of Samuel we
read that God through the prophet Nathan made a promise to David. And that promise made to David was that God
would raise up a son of David, through whom he would establish his kingdom
forever, and to whom God says “I will never take my love away from you. I will be a father to you and you shall be a
son to me.” This is the first promise
that Matthew is pointing us towards.
The second promise that
Matthew points to is the one made through the prophet Isaiah found in our first
reading today. In the book of Isaiah in
the 8th century BC, King Ahaz of Judah is worried because Assyria
and Samaria are laying siege to Jerusalem.
But God sends the prophet Isaiah to King Ahaz and tells him not to
worry, that Assyria and Samaria will not prevail, and that God will give Ahaz a
sign: “Look the young woman is with
child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel, ‘God is with you.’
And so if we put these two
Old Testament references together, here is the promise:
God will always love us, and
God is with us. The birth of Jesus is
both the sign and the fulfilment of God’s promise to always love us and always
be with us.
But who is this promise
for? When God says “I will always love
you and I am with you” who is God talking to?
In the Old Testament, in the
passages that Matthew is pointing to, the prophets Nathan and Isaiah were speaking
to King David and King Ahaz when they proclaimed these promises.
Are God’s promises just for
kings, for the rich and powerful?
No! At Christmas, in Luke’s gospel we’ll read
that the first ones called to the birth of Jesus are the poor, poor shepherds.
Are God’s promises just for one
particular ethnic group, the people of Israel?
No! At Epiphany we’ll read that wise men,
foreigners from the east, travel from afar to worship Jesus.
God’s promise to always love
and to always be with his people is for all:
All nations, all races, for rich and poor, for the powerful and the
lowly.
I think we get that.
But I also think that many
of us have another question about God’s promises. The question is this: Are God’s promises active, are they relevant
today, or are we simply remembering things that happened 2000 years ago?
During this season of
Advent, we have been preparing for the coming of Christ. Are we simply remembering the coming of
Christ as a babe some 2000 years ago?
Or, are we looking forward to Christ’s return at some point in the
future? Or, are we preparing for
something that happens in our time and our place, the encounter with God that
happens now, in our lives today?
Let me tell you a story
about something that happened while I was in my previous parish of
Huntley. It was almost exactly three
years ago.
There was a woman in that
parish named Ellen, whose mother Frances lived with her. I used to visit them fairly regularly because
Frances was in her 90s and couldn’t get out.
At a certain point, Frances' health began to fail, and her illness was assessed
to be terminal, but it was a slow process and she had a nurse that came to visit
and provide palliative care. There was
some thought that maybe she should be moved to the Maycourt Hospice, but for
now she was being looked after at home. All
things considered, this was good for Frances, but it was all quite hard on Ellen who was very close to her mother.
So one day about two weeks
before Christmas, I finished up some work at my office and was gathering up my
things and looking forward to going home, when I had this thought come into my
head. “You should go and visit Ellen and
Frances.”
So I picked up the phone,
because I was always in the habit of calling before visiting, and I called, and
there was no answer. Maybe Ellen's gone
out I thought, I’ll try again tomorrow.
But then I thought, maybe I’ll just drop by anyways on my way home.
So I drove over to Ellen's house and I saw that there was a car in the driveway. A friend maybe, or perhaps the nurse that
came by to look after Frances was there.
So once again, I figured that it was best not to disturb them, and that
I’d try again tomorrow. But just as I
was about to back out of the driveway, another pesky thought, “maybe you should
just go in and see what’s up”.
So I did. And it was indeed the nurse who was there,
and as it turns out, she was there by accident as well, she’d been scheduled to
visit in the evening, but for some reason had decided to come in the afternoon
instead.
While the nurse and I were
there that afternoon, Frances died, peacefully, in her sleep. And Ellen, who was profoundly affected by her
mother’s death, was also immensely comforted to have with her at that moment
her nurse and her priest.
That afternoon, I saw God
having compassion on one of his people in need.
The God that promises to always love us, to always be with us was there
with Ellen, acting to make good on those promises in a very concrete way.
God has promised to always
love us and to always be with us. That
promise is as alive today as it ever has been.
And when God asks us to help, it is our privilege to be able to respond
and share with God in the fulfilment of God’s promises in our time and place.
And this shall be the
sign: “the virgin shall conceive and
bear a son.” “And you shall find the
babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”
Amen.
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