Stay The Course Joseph !

This last week I’ve been reading again the account of Jesus’ birth in Matthew’s Gospel. Talk about living life in circles… This is my 41^st Christmas and I know this story like the back of my hand. It’s all there…

There’s the angel appearing to Joseph saying, “Stay the course Joseph. Mary is pregnant and you are not the father but hang in there. This child is special. This baby is destined for great things.”

Then there’s the wisemen, the Magi who arrive in Jerusalem from the East. They’ve come expecting to find a kingdom in the middle of a party. And they come asking, “So are we too late ? Where is this baby who has been born King of the Jews ? We saw his star rising in the East. We want to meet him and we… have… presents !”

And then there’s the startled King Herod. He’s hosting no party. All he seems to want to give the wisemen is his suspicion and his forty questions. And then Herod sends the wisemen on their way with murderous intent. He’s says, “Look, you keep following your star. When you find this royal child, you let me know. I have something special I want to give him !”

And the wisemen… well they just keep following their star & searching, till they find the baby Jesus. He is certainly not living in a palace but the wisemen are certainly not disappointed. Scripture says they are overwhelmed with joy.

Yet despite their joy, despite their celebrating… the many threads of this story begin to unravel. Herod is filled with murderous intent. He is anxiously waiting for news of the location of the child. The wiseman are warned via a dream. They do not return to their country via Herod’s palace. And when Herod finds this out he unleashes his murderous rage.

One night soon after, Joseph is woken up from restful slumber by another angel. The angel says, “Wake up and run Joseph. Take Mary and the baby and go far away from this place. Go to Egypt. Herod is coming to kill the baby. Run Joseph, run away now!”

I said before, I know all these aspects of the story like the back of my hand.

However, the part of the story that rings the most true with my experience of the world is also the most terrible. It’s Herod’s slaughter of the infants. In response to the arrival of the wisemen, Herod is threatened at the most fundamental level. In fear & fury he unleashes infanticide on all the toddlers and babies 2 years and under in and around the town of Bethlehem. It’s a monstrous act of political expediency.   

Can you imagine it ? Can you imagine the impact, the pain of this action rippling through a community, through an entire district ? Can you picture the mass of mothers weeping inconsolable in their grief, over their lost children ? All that hope, all that potential wiped out in one callous and capricious act. It’s breath taking in its sheer horror. 

And the wonder of it, is that Jesus, the helpless & unknowing infant survives. God intervenes and Scripture gives us the image of this one who is born King of Jews fleeing with his parents. They run like refugees and their only protection is the cover of darkness.

For a time this fragile royal family become aliens and strangers in the land of Egypt. But the world turns. Scripture says Herod dies but Joseph is still afraid to return to his own country. Again Joseph is woken from peaceful slumber. And the angel says, “Get up and go Joseph. It is time to return home. Take the child and his mother and go back to Israel!”

So Joseph gets up and again he goes. And when Joseph finally arrives back home, I get a sense he continues living anonymously and below the radar in Nazareth. Even at this point, you can still see the consequences of Herod’s actions… rippling out in all directions, affecting Joseph’s choices long after Herod is dead. Jesus, the shoot from the stump of Jesse, the King of the Jews, becomes Jesus the son of Joseph, a carpenter living in a rural Jewish backwater.  

For Unto Us a Child Is Born

Living life in increasing circles…

Truly, one of the great joys of life is now seeing my own children get excited about Christmas. It wasn’t always like this… I remember my daughter Zoe’s first Christmas. She was 6 months old and we propped her up under the tree with presents all around and a cute Santa hat on her head. Zoe’s delight that year wasn’t the presents, it was ripping up all the Christmas paper.

The next year Zoe was 18 months old and I remember taking her to see Santa for the very first time at Harrods in London. She was terrified of this BIG red man with masses of white hair… so much so that I had to sit next to Santa and Zoe sat on my wife’s lap next to me.  She did not want to talk to Santa, so Santa talked to me instead.

By Zoe’s 3^rd Christmas she got the broad strokes concept of what was happening. Thankfully she didn’t get up any earlier but I remember Zoe was now definitely interested in opening every present under the tree.

This year on her 8^th Christmas, Zoe directed her 2 brothers through the delicate process of decorating the Christmas tree. She typed out her own gift list for Santa on the computer. With a little encouragement from her Nanna, Zoe even gave some of her own pocket money towards the Christmas hampers.

You know it takes kids a while to get Christmas but once they do Christmas sparkles with the purity of their sheer delight…

The other evening my son Ethan was decorating the Christmas tree, and he turned to me and said, “Christmas makes me feel so happy Dad !” And I sat there wide-eyed and I gulped. I couldn’t begin telling him how much hearing those words filled me with overwhelming joy.

Earlier this week I watched my kids pack twenty hampers for the shutin members of our church community.  I didn’t have to ask them… they begged me to help. They did it enthusiastically, totally naturally. And in the middle of it all little Dawson looks up at me with a big, big smile and a twinkle in his eye. And he tells in a look, “Of course we get the idea of these hampers Dad… we are doing this to help all the poor people.”

This is my 41^st Christmas and Christmas just keeps becoming deeper and richer. When I was a child, Christmas was filled with the magic and wonder of childhood. Now as an adult Christmas has been transformed. There is still magic and wonder but it is the magic and wonder of a father delighting in his children delighting in Christmas. You see when we live life in circles, the familiarity of those persistent repetitious rhythms makes life a sacred gift… a high calling.

A Virgin Shall Conceive a Son and They Shall Name Him Emmanuel

Jurgen Moltmann says when we celebrate Christmas, at its heart we are celebrating something almost unimaginable, “the Creator of heaven and earth, whom even the heaven of heavens cannot contain, becomes so humble and small that in this child Jesus, he is beside us and lives among us”.

Matthew’s gospel says, “Look, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel which means, ‘God with us’”. Yet what manner of child is this, in whom is expressed all the majesty and glory of God himself ? I don’t just stumble at the thought of that, I literally stagger at the possibility. 

Don’t worry about putting God into a box. When you consider the Creator and Sustainer of the universe freely packaged into a tiny, helpless frame of a baby – then God literally bursts out of the box of convention & cliché. And the unimaginable happens. Suddenly the God ‘whom even the heaven of heavens’ cannot contain is up close and personal.

Like Christmas wrapping after the presents are opened – there is nothing neat and tidy about it. I have my struggles with the logic of Incarnation as it is. Process it just for a moment – holy God and finite hormone driven, male humanity – packaged together in the God-man Jesus. The divine and human natures are united. At best this is holy irony – at worst it’s madness.

It leaves me feeling off balance & uneasy – almost overwhelmed at times with unknowing – like as though all I thought I knew has been erased back to ground zero. And what does that sound like ? 

In Old Testament language we would call this being humbled in the presence of God. And you know what ? I don’t think rationalism or logical argument quite cuts it in these places.

In moments and events touched by the finger of God, a more appropriate response is wonder, awe and radical amazement. Abraham Herschel says, “…wonder is the pre-requisite for an authentic awareness of that which is.” You see, when we use reason, we are trying to explain & adapt the world to our concepts. However, when we experience wonder – we make a significant shift. We begin seeking to adapt our minds to the world as it is. Herschel says, “Under the running sea of all our theories & scientific explanations, lies the original abyss of radical amazement”.

From the Stump of Jesse, From the Line of King David

Sometimes I think we live in a world of broken promises, a world of good beginnings and either bad or incomplete endings… It is a world where so often the people who lead us, disappoint us. They let us down.

Martin Buber says when you look at the Scriptures, “the history of the kings of Israel is the history of the failure of the one who is anointed to realise the promise of his calling. The rise of [the idea of a messiah] – is the hope of the coming of an anointed king who realizes the promise of his anointing”.

You know the prophet Isaiah lived during the reigns of 4 kings of Judah… King Uzziah, King Jotham, King Ahaz and King Hezekiah. They were all descendents from the stump of Jesse, from the line of David.

Now Scripture records problems with 3 of the 4 kings. While 3 of them did what was “right in the sight of the Lord”, they still mostly behaved and pursued the trappings of the kings of the lands all around them. Instead of placing their faith in the help of the Living God of Israel, more often they relied on their own success. They put their faith in political intrigue and timely alliances and their own ability to make war.

Take King Uzziah for instance… Under Uzziah, the Kingdom of Judah reaches the height of its power. Uzziah develops the economic resources of the country as well as its military might. He conquers the Philistines and the Arabians and he receives tribute from the Ammonites. Scripture says he was strong and prosperous because “… he did what was right in the sight of the Lord”.

Yet Uzziah’s success & strength became his weakness. Scripture says, “he grew proud… to his destruction”. Uzziah attempts to enter the Temple to burn incense on the Alter, a privilege reserved for the priesthood only. Azariah, the chief priest pleads with him, “It is not for you Uzziah, to burn incense to the Lord but for the priests, the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense. Go out from this place, for you have done wrong… it will bring you no honour from the Lord God”. 

Uzziah becomes angry and as his anger grows leprosy breaks out on his forehead. And Scripture says, “King Uzziah was a leper to the day of his death and being a leper lived in a separate house, for he was excluded from the house of the Lord”. 

And when things got really tough, when the Kingdom of Judah began paying tribute to the Kingdom of Assyria, King Ahaz from the stump of Jesse, from the royal line of David – even turned his back on the Lord. He desecrated the Temple & called on the help of other gods.

All of these events occurred during the lifetime of Isaiah. And as a prophet it was his duty to call people back to God. It was his calling to describe the visions he was given of God’s alternative reality. And while these visions filled Isaiah with hope, they also made him unpopular with the kings he served.

Isaiah 11:1-10 is a messianic vision of a peaceful kingdom. It is an alternate vision of a king of the stump of Jesse overwhelmed by the Spirit of God, who is both human and holy. This king is so singled minded in his zeal for God, that he realizes the promise of his anointing… he establishes the Kingdom of God… a kingdom of righteousness and justice and mercy.