Sermon for Advent 4

Sermon for Advent 4

When I was younger, one of my dreams was to get married and have a family. I wanted to find someone to build a life with, a life that included children and a home and all the best parts of the life I remembered as a child.

It took some time, but the right person eventually crossed my path, and the dream of a family came to be. We first welcomed Sebastian into the world, and then Dhiya, and finally Axan. Each child was a blessing and with each child it felt like my capacity to love only grew larger, almost like love is something not limited to a few. Rather, the capacity to love expands the more love is used, an infinite expansion that is only predicated on letting it flourish, rather than trying to restrict it. That is one of the many beautiful gifts that children give us. They give us the chance to know what it truly means to love, completely and without reservation. The moment our eyes behold our child for the first time, our hearts and our souls are no longer ours. They belong to that child and there is nothing we wouldn’t do to give that child the best life possible.

At least, that is my experience. I do not presume to speak for anyone else. For me, the moment I met my children, my life was no longer mine. It belonged to them. It was given to them as I endeavored to be the best father and protector I could and that only deepened with every subsequent child. In them, I came to understand, at least in part, what God’s love for us must be like. Of course, God’s love is far greater and far more expansive. But with my children, I could understand some measure of God’s love for me and for all people.

On this fourth Sunday in Advent, we hear the story of a parent, though not the parent who we normally hear about during this season. Often, our reflections surround Mary and her faithful yes to God’s calling. We ask ourselves what it would have been for Mary like to carry the saviour of the world in her womb and to understand that he was given into her care, at least for a while. Our reflections often revolve around Mary and for good reason. But today, we are asked to consider the story of Joseph, the man who would help raise the Saviour of the world.

Little is known about Jospeh, save for his lineage and the fact that he was a carpenter. He was from the region of Nazareth and seemed to be a good, devoted Jew. We know little else about him. This story from Matthew is his moment in the Gospels, a short tale about the surrogate father of the Christ.

I can’t imagine what he felt like, as he was confronted with this heartbreaking scenario where he finds out his intended is with child and he is not the father. Although he chooses not to make a public example of Mary, I can imagine the amount of hurt that must have accompanied this news. His intended, his beloved, had seemingly betrayed him. His own dream of family lay in ruins. If I was in Joseph’s position, I would have felt completely gutted. My world, at least in the short term, would have collapsed. Perhaps Joseph was more stoic, but it certainly would not have been easy.

But God interceded, as God does, to make sure that the feelings of hurt and betrayal were not the undoing of God’s plan. The truth of the matter was explained to Joseph, and he accepted this holy call, staying true to Mary and the unborn child in her womb. Many people in his situation may not accepted this truth, choosing instead to leave Mary and find another partner, but he was obviously a man of faith, a good match for Mary.

We don’t have much more about him. There is no story that reports his reaction to the birth of Jesus, his son. But I like to imagine it went something like this.

As a new mother, Mary would normally have been surrounded by a support network of older women who would have helped her deliver her child. Instead, she was in town and region she was unfamiliar with, with only her intended to support her. After arriving in Bethlehem, likely in labour, Joseph is unable to find a place for the child to be born and so they resort to the only place left, a stable. And unlike the pristine versions we get in modern stable scenes, this stable was likely a cave, damp, dirty, and cold. Joseph would have tried to help where he could, but he would have been woefully underprepared. In the labor that followed, the two parents, frightened and alone, would have struggled through the darkness to bring this child into the world. Likely, there were times when Mary thought she was going to die. Likely, there were moments that Jospeh thought he was going to lose her and there was nothing he could do to help her.

But somehow, they managed. They managed and the crying baby, messy baby was in the world, taking his first breath through his new lungs. It is often said that women feel like mothers when they come to know that a child is growing inside them, but for men, that moment arrives once they see their child for the first time. We don’t know Joseph’s reaction to Jesus, but I want to think that he loved that child so completely in the moment that his whole life was flipped upside down. Nothing mattered more to him than his son, his intended, and the God who had made all this possible. I like to think that Jospeh, in his bumbling, naïve fashion, tried to keep the Baby Jesus warm, only to have Mary inform him he had wrapped the blanket wrong. He would try, in his complete ignorance, to do everything he could for the child, because his love for the baby demanded nothing less. And as the child grew, I like to imagine that Jospeh grew with him and became a father figure to the boy, a protector that stood by his son Jesus until Jospeh’s time on this earth ended. It is said that Mary and Joseph went on to have other children, but it was through his first born that Jospeh would come to know the depth, responsibility and absolute joy of fatherhood. With Jesus, Joseph knew what it meant to love.

I imagine this, because that was my experience when Sebastian came into the world. I was nothing but a bumbling idiot who wanted nothing more than to care for my newborn son, but I had no idea how to do that. I covered the heat lamp because I thought the light was in his eyes. I was informed that he was cold. But all I could think was to protect him. It is all I have tried to do since. And I would like to imagine that’s how Joseph felt.

On this final Sunday in Advent, we are invited to remember what it is liked to love, only as a parent could love, whether as a father figure, mother figure or some other type of parental figure. We are invited to remember that love and to know that such a love, like all love, finds its origins in God. And in the Christ, in that tiny babe that changed Joseph’s life so completely, the world was changed, for as the Christmas hymn so eloquently phrases it:

Love has come, a light in the darkness!

Love explodes in the Bethlehem skies.

See, all heaven has come to proclaim it.

Hear how their song of joy arises:

Love! Love! Born unto you, a Savior!

Love! Love! Glory to God on high!

Love is born! Come share in the wonder.

Love is God now asleep in the hay.

See the glow in the eyes of His mother.

What is the name her heart is saying?

Love! Love! Love is the name she whispers.

Love! Love! Jesus, Immanuel.

Love has come, He never will leave us!

Love is life everlasting and free.

Love is Jesus within and among us.

Love is the peace our hearts are seeking.

Love! Love! Love is the gift of Christmas.

Love! Love! Praise to You, God on high!

May that love be born, again and again, in our hearts and may it transform us into people who willingly give of themselves for the sake of the world.

Amen