December 21, 2014: Jesus as Immanuel

Matthew 1:18-25

¹⁸ This is how the birth of Jesus Christ took place. When Mary his mother was engaged to Joseph, before they were married, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Joseph her husband was a righteous man. Because he didn’t want to humiliate her, he decided to call off their engagement quietly.

 ²⁰ As he was thinking about this, an angel from the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because the child she carries was conceived by the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you will call him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” ²² Now all of this took place so that what the Lord had spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled:

²³ Look! A virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son,
        And they will call him, Emmanuel.^[a]

(Emmanuel means “God with us.”)

²⁴ When Joseph woke up, he did just as an angel from God commanded and took Mary as his wife. ²⁵ But he didn’t have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son. Joseph called him Jesus.

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Pastor and Professor Fred Craddock has written a sermon on this lesson that simply can’t be beat. I was tempted to type out the entire thing, word-for-word, but ultimately decided against it. It would take a long time and there are these tricky things called copyrights…  Craddock talks about the dilemma that Joseph finds himself in: the woman he is set to marry has just become pregnant.  He knows it’s not his child, so something bad has happened.

Craddock says that Joseph has two options, “First, he could get the opinion of people in town…Go to the coffee shop, ‘What do you think I ought to do?’…Spread it everywhere, spread it everywhere.”  But he won’t do that.  Second, “some friends just fresh from the synagogue who say, ‘Just do what the Bible says. You can’t go wrong if you do what the Bible says.” What about that for an answer? I have heard that all my life.  ‘Just do what the Bible says.’ Well, I will tell you what the Bible says. From Deuteronomy 22: ‘She is to be taken out and stoned in front of the people.” That is what the Bible says.”

Craddock says that the Bible can justify just about anything if you read it a certain way.  That’s scary.

Joseph won’t do that either.  It says that he is a righteous, or right-related, stand-up guy.  Instead of having Mary killed, Craddock says “Joseph is a good man, and he rises to a point that is absolutely remarkable for his day and time. He loves his Bible and he knows his Bible and bless his heart for it.  But he reads his Bible through a certain kind of lens, the lens of the character and nature of a God who is loving and kind….where does it say that, Joseph? In your Bible? I’ll tell you where it says that. It says that in the very nature and character of God.”

Maybe you have been in a position like Joseph, where there is a tough decision to be made and you don’t know which way to turn.  Maybe you feel wronged and things seem to be all up-in-the-air.  If you are looking for a way to go, if you are looking for guidance, always look to the nature and character of God that is compassionate: it makes an excellent lens with which to view the world.

And, just like Joseph, we get to experience something amazing.  Out of a difficult and dangerous situation God shows up.  The angel who tells Joseph to marry Mary says that the child will be known as Emmanuel, which means GOD WITH US.  It was all crazy, a scandal and certainly not what anyone expected.

But again and again we’ll find that’s how God works.

NOTE: The sermon quoted above can be found in: The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Know Press, 2011), 62-67.