Year A
 Isaiah 7:10-16
 Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
 Romans 1:1-7
 Matthew 1:18-25
May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

Presbyterian minister T. Denise Anderson writes that in today’s passage from Isaiah…   God tells King Ahaz to ask for a sign…   Ahaz rules the southern kingdom of Judah…  which includes Jerusalem…  King Pekah of the northern kingdom of Israel…  has allied himself with the neighboring…  but non-Israelite kingdom of Aram…  to attack Jerusalem…   because Ahaz refused to join forces with King Pekah to attack Assyria…  Ahaz and all of Jerusalem are shaken…  but God reassures Ahaz that this plot against Jerusalem will not prevail…  Ahaz however…  is not convinced… ] ask for a sign…  God says…  as deep as Sheol…  or as high as heaven…   so that God’s promise can be memorialized…   Ahaz refuses…  he must remember what Moses said in Deuteronomy 6:16…  Do not put the LORD your God to the test…  as you tested him at Massah…  which was a grumbling against God about water and food in the wilderness…  and Isaiah basically says…  Look…  if you’re going to weary God by NOT asking for a sign… God’s going to give you one anyhow…  and here it is…   and it’s a sign of hope and new life…  the young woman is with child…   and shall bear a son…   and shall name him Immanuel… which means God is with us…  and before this child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good…  the land which your two enemies inhabit…  will be deserted…  but the King missed the point of God’s offer… Ahaz does not test God by accepting God’s offer… instead God is testing Ahaz… and when Ahaz refuses… he refuses to trust in the living God who is speaking to him… it was scandalous… 

God speaks to us through prophets…  but God also speaks to us through dreams and our interpretation of them…   and through other circumstances and how we meet them with grace and mercy…  we all know about the Joseph who was sold into slavery in Egypt…  who interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams…  and as a result…  rose to power over all of Egypt…  and because God spoke through Joseph…  he was able to provide for his father and brothers when a famine came…  his brothers feared retaliation…  but Joseph said…  Do not be distressed…  or angry with yourselves…  for God sent me before you to preserve your lives…  grace and mercy…  and Joseph and his eleven brothers became the twelve tribes of Israel…

Mary was found to be with child…  Joseph would have have been within his legal rights to dismiss her and expose her to public humiliation… because even though they were only betrothed…  it was no different than if they’d been married and Mary committed adultery…  there was scandal because their betrothal was a legal contract… and Joseph knew the law from Deuteronomy 22 which said that…  If there is a young woman…   a virgin engaged to be married… and a man lies with her… you shall bring both of them to the gate of the town and stone them to death…  ancient inheritance laws helped ensure that a man’s property… and name… would go only to his rightful heirs… and the death of a young woman insured that there’d be no fraudulent heirs… 

But Joseph trusted God…  who spoke to him through an angel… ] he became as receptive to God’s dream… as Mary had been to the Holy Spirit… he emptied himself of his own dreams… and gave up much… he gave up his legal rights to lord his Mosaic-law rights over Mary…  and send her away… gave up consummating their marriage until the child was born… gave up his paternal right to choose the child’s name… ] he let go of his own dreams… in favor of the dream that had overshadowed him… Joseph the carpenter… was a righteous man… and he became a paternal womb who would protect Mary and this holy child… he extended forgiveness to what looked like sin… he built a response of love in a world of law… ] because to fulfill the law… you must sometimes go beyond it…  and as Australian minister Michael Frost said…  when male pastors call on us to recover something called biblical manhood…  I suspect they’re not thinking of the silent…  loyal Joseph…  submitting himself humbly to his wife’s God-given calling…

It’s Advent 7… we’re on the cusp of Emmanuel… of God with us…  and now…  as many of us have already done some Christmas decorating…   we can hardly avoid looking ahead to the Incarnation… it’s a fitting acknowledgement of Joseph’s receptivity to dreams…  as we also consider what it is… that we are receptive to…

Last week… Jesus directed the Baptist’s disciples to look at what Jesus was doing… not at what he was feeling… and although Joseph could have followed the law…  could have followed his feelings…  he wasn’t led by how he felt… he chose grace…  and acted honorably… he saw past all the differences that could have become major stumbling blocks… and acted with unity…

Scripture is full of stories about dysfunctional families… ordinary people whose lives didn’t go the way they wanted… or expected… and who were re-directed… or helped… or saved by God…  we believe God’s got a finger in the pot when things are going smoothly… but we can wonder where God is when things get a little out of kilter…  and that’s when God can get our attention… those times make for the best stories… and though we sometimes turn the spotlight on ourselves to highlight our successes…  we often turn them away too when we don’t want to draw attention to our failures…  we’re all part of one human family… and as I’ve said before…  the divisions between us are lies…

But we live with division… and there are many who can’t be with their family of origin this year…  and who form their own families of choice…  immigrants…  those fleeing from war…  Americans living in other countries…  foreign exchange students living with American host families…  and often… it’s not in spite of… but because of… these new configurations that we grow closer to God…  and scripture proclaims that we have been destined for adoption into God’s family… that we have received a spirit of adoption… and in Joseph’s wonderful and paradoxical adoption of this child…  who has then adopted us…  we find more riches than any earthly treasure… we find that our ordinary expectations are not big enough to hold God’s dreams… that we can be open to God’s startling revelation… we find that God is with us… and that there is more grace in God… than sin in us… 

In some ways…  we are all Ahaz…  unwilling to be tested…  or we are waiting for our willingness to be like Joseph’s… not to be evaluated against laws written on tablets… but against love written on hearts of flesh… and while we don’t know how Joseph and Mary came to be betrothed…  I wonder if it was because of his love for her…  and that dream…  that he refused to shine a spotlight on what many would have mistakenly considered her shame…

And so in less than a week… some of our waiting will be over… and we’ll gather to celebrate that flow of love… we may wait for a white Christmas… or to find out what’s in the box with the white paper and the blue bow… if we’re fortunate enough to have such…  but what we most deeply wait for… what our souls long for… what no earthly thing or circumstance can satisfy… but what we may glimpse in moments of transcendence… and know as real and worthwhile…  are for God’s dreams to pervade…   and find expression in our lives…  so we can heal each other and creation…  and that would certainly exceed all of our Advent expectations… and make all the waiting… truly worthwhile…  a woman will bear a son…  and shall name him Immanuel…  which means God with us…  and Mary doesn’t just bear the incarnate Christ-child…  she bears new life…  and hope itself…