Saturday, December 15, 2012

The Other Side of the Manger

How do you receive bad news?  I’m sorry.  That wasn’t the question I meant to ask at all.  That wasn’t the entry into this moment that I was looking for.  That question was a throw away, an unintentionally benign time-filler to while away a long drive or a late night dorm room bull session.  That question was more along the lines of what would buy first if you won the lottery? Or if you were stranded on a desert island what three things would  you want with you?  An ice breaker game in a small group meeting, or a baseline psychological assessment before getting into anything serious.

Let me try again.  When your world shatters from words delivered like a sledgehammer to your gut, how do you stand?  When you are plunged underwater by news you can scarcely comprehend let alone respond to, how do you take your next breath?  When all your visions of a joyous tomorrow are spoken out of existence by whispered words of tragedy or denial how do you put one foot in front of another on your way into the void?

We watched in horror as yet another well armed individual destroyed the comfort and joy of a quiet community, tipped the scales from hopes to fears of all the years in a few moments of terror, a modern day slaughter of the innocents.  The echoes from the weeping prophet all too evident – Thus says the LORD: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more. (Jeremiah 31:15) 

One of the threads online last night was a story headed “How the father of the shooter got the news.”  His wife was dead, shot by his son who was also now dead.  Do we need to know how this father heard this story?  How does it help us comprehend a world gone awry?  Besides, I hesitate to even mention, but we’ve been there.

No, not such news.  At least I pray that you have never been told such a thing as this poor father and husband was told.  Though, in my years of ministry I have sat alongside those who have been told some devastating news.  I’ve watched them stagger under the weight, like a lifter who has taken on more than the body can bear.  I have whispered “breathe” into the ear of one gasping for meaning in the vacuum of a terrible moment.  I have felt my soul vibrate in sympathetic pain to the keening a mother needing to give voice to her pain. 

Though we shrink from comparing, from measuring suffering, but it is a rare soul who has known none.  And it frequently reorders one’s existence in unforeseen ways.  So, the question remains, how do you live into this new reality?  How do you go on when you stand in the rubble of your hopes and a step in any direction is a step into the unknown?  What do you choose when there aren’t any choices to be made?

It had to be a long night for Joseph as he wrestled with a terrible decision.  As usual, the Gospel account leaves so much unsaid that we can’t help to try to fill in the gaps.

Matthew 1:18-25  Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.  19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.  20 But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."  22 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:  23 "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us."  24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife,  25 but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

You’ve heard the word “betrothed” defined before.  Even our newer translations turn it into “engaged.”  But it was a fully legal designation.  They belonged to each other, even though the formalities had not yet been performed.  It was a binding covenant.  But now it was broken.  Joseph’s hopes spilling out into the night like a clutch of eggs dropped on a concrete floor.  He planned, Matthew tells us, to take the high road, the quiet, unassuming, sweep it under the carpet route and just step away.  It was within his rights to do so much more, to take revenge, exact a punishment for embarrassment, for shame, to present himself as the injured party, unsullied by this sordid affair.  But in the dark of the night he chose distance.  Just get out, get away, try - as impossible as that would be - to forget, to move on.  Having made up his mind, he slept.

As disturbed as his waking moments had been, so too was his sleep made uneasy, as choices were given to him.  Here’s a question I have never heard discussed: did he already consider and dismiss this option?  Did it even come to his mind that he could have simply accepted her wild narrative that stretched any normal mode of thinking to the breaking point?  Or did he simply refuse to even let that thought enter his conscious mind, so that it could only be considered when he was asleep?  Was the angel - from a word that translates as both message and messenger - his own beating heart that wanted to hope what was impossible to hope?

Matthew doesn’t relate and further struggle.  He woke from sleep, did Joseph, and did just what the angel commanded.  Just did it. Against what had to be opposition from family and friends, he did it.  He took Mary in.  That’s how these things were sealed.  After a betrothal, she legally belonged to him, but it wasn’t sealed until he took her into his own home.  The old translation “he took his wife” sounds almost embarrassingly intimate.  So we changed it to “he took her as his wife.” 

But the truth is, it is embarrassing, it is intimate.  He took her into his house.  He declared in a public way that he didn’t care what was being said behind his back, he took her in.  He announced that while he might not understand the story, he chose to believe it, and he took her home.  He took a step that he couldn’t even comprehend before.  And chose to love with an unexplainable love.

Pastor Mike Slaughter, in his book Christmas is Not Your Birthday, titles this third week of Advent “Scandalous Love.”  He tells of other moments in the story of God’s people where God asks for a love that seems beyond belief.  He writes about Hosea who loved a woman who was unfaithful, and then to love her again when she wandered away.  That seems to be God’s M.O.  To love the unfaithful, to love the undeserving.  To love when nothing else makes sense. 

Joseph took Mary home and loved her.  More than that he claimed a son not his own.  When the child was born Matthew says “he named hm Jesus.”  That’s not just a sweet moment in the delivery room with proud dad and exhausted mom.  No, this is a statement, a proclamation.  This is scandalous love lived out.

In any life event we have a choice.  We can rage, we can crumble, we can become bitter and withdrawn.  Or we can love.  We can love the wounded and grieving into wholeness, we can love the broken and the damaged, we can even, if we are bold enough, scandalous enough, love ourselves when it seemed no one else will.

 We can, like Joseph choose to look at life from the other side of the manger, and see love be born.

Shalom,
Derek

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