Uncertain News

Text: Matthew 1:18–25
Other texts: Isaiah 7:10–16

It was an extraordinary event in ordinary but difficult times. Joseph was engaged to Mary, something which then meant nearly-married. Finding her to be pregnant—the details of the discovery remain untold; how did that conversation go?—finding her to be with child was, from Joseph’s point of view, unfortunate but not without precedent.

That was not the extraordinary thing. It would not have been the first time something like this—what would have been seen as adulterous behavior—happened with a young couple. There was even provision for it in tradition and in the statutes. A divorce was in order. Joseph, it says, was a righteous man. Meaning not that he was good—though it turns out that he was—but that he was law-abiding. The whole awkward transaction would be accommodated by the scheme of things.

What was extraordinary was what the scripture oddly treats as simply matter of fact. Sort of mentioned in passing. Not that Mary was with child, but that she was with child from the Holy Spirit. Not an every-day event. To help him deal with the news, Joseph gets heavenly advice, which he heeds.

We typically like things to be ordinary. Ordinary things give us a foundation. There is no way we can from scratch think our way through every little moment of our lives, make considered decisions about the thousands of little choices we have, or plan every action. Most of what we do is ordinary and we like it that way. The ordinary both reflects and shapes the values we already hold.

But the ordinary is not flawless. It is rough and crackle-y. There is always a small (or not so small) gap between what is and what ought to be. Like a bumpy ride, a pixelated image, a song out of tune. Aggravating at best, terrifying at worst. We know how things should be, and this is not it.

That gap is the fuel of prophecy. It is the spark of the prophetic spirit. A prophet, like Isaiah, highlights the discrepancy and instructs us about how we can, or how God will, repair the breech.

The life of a prophet is a frustrating one. You can hear it in the reading from Isaiah, who complains about us weary mortals who rarely do what is right and needed. But at the same time that frustration energizes the prophet, who works hard to make the world be as it should, as God intends it to be.

We ordinary mortals find the daily grind of trying to change things to be tedious. We long for a savior. A king in the line of David for some, or just a charismatic and effective leader, for others. Someone who will draw up the plan and recruit us for its implementation. (Or maybe just do it all for us). You do not have to be religious to want a savior. Our longing for someone to save the world is so strong that we are on the constant lookout for a sign. When is the savior coming? Is this the one? We want a sign.

But then again, we don’t. If the ordinary is our foundation, then signs of a savior and sounds of prophecy threaten it. For a start, prophets tell us what we have up to then ignored (or even fostered) that we know we should not have. But more, they ask us to change our ways, or they predict that ways will be changed around us. Something will be different. A leader will take us into new territory.

For some, this worry is clearly sensible. The status quo benefits those with status. But even for those who suffer, sometimes the oppression of the certain present is easier to take than the anxiety of an uncertain future.

In Isaiah a sign is promised to Judah. Matthew interprets the birth of Jesus as the sign that is the fulfillment of that promise. But on the face of it, the birth of Jesus is not very striking as a sign. The birth of a child is hardly unusual. And there are few decorations that alert the people to the child’s future power. Mary gives birth to a son, and Joseph calls him Jesus. End of birth story. The Magi come later in Matthew and the shepherds are there, but that is in Luke. This was not a theological accident, as we sing praises at Christmas to a God who was born not only as a child but also born humbly.

An infant is an embodiment of uncertainty. All potential in a little package of actual. Parents-to-be fret about the growing child in the womb. Ultrasound does not help much. There is plenty unknown. Joseph is beneficiary of a kind of divine ultrasound; did that comfort him about the baby? The angel’s announcement is maybe not welcome, for it means that things are going to be new and strange.

Unlike Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, who was unable to speak after an angelic visitation regarding his son to be, Joseph could talk. I’ve sometimes wondered about what he and Mary, speaking late at night as expectant parents do, what they said to one another about the coming child, who has already been an occasion for dismay, confusion and cosmic hope.

Parents live equally thrilled and terrified about what might happen to their children. They extrapolate from what they know of the world and the way it works. But in difficult times the past is a poor predictor, and even worse if something extraordinary happens. Even a message from heaven is not helpful. How could Mary and Joseph have known, after hearing the angel say that their son would save the people from their sins, what was really going to happen in the next 30 years, to say nothing of the next 2000?

The birth of God in the person of Jesus seems to tell us that God works in the uncertainty of this world. That the savior does not bring along a set of construction blueprints for the new world, but rather is a problem solver with a big idea and a willingness to work with whomever he can recruit—including us—which is pretty much what happened. Jesus it says, fulfills the promise that God is with us. Immanuel. God as Jesus is with us in this world as it is.

And yet, Jesus is a power for a new world. His birth from Mary and the Spirit is not an assertion about his DNA but about his mission and his method. The Spirit is the person of God that is the bringer of new life. As we say in the creed, the Holy Spirit, Lord and giver of life.

Matthew tells us that Jesus is born to change the world. He comes enacting and teaching a way of living that is out of the ordinary. He threatens the certainty of things, even the former certain power of death.

We worship a God whose birth portends not eternal sameness but eternal newness.

His coming disrupts the old way of being, not by transferring power to the righteous people, but by offering patient uncertainty that makes possible a new world.