“A Father’s Story”

(based on Matthew 2:18-25)

When the time was accomplished that my wife should be delivered of our first-born child, we made our way to the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. It was one o’clock in the morning, and there was little traffic on the streets. When we entered the doors of the Emergency Department, there was no delay. One look and the nurse commandeered a wheelchair and speeded us on our way to the elevator that would take us to the labor and delivery room. We had pre-registered and in no time we were at the swinging doors of the Delivery room. “Give your husband your wedding ring and kiss him goodbye” were the instructions given to her. I think it was the first time either of us had considered what it was going to feel like having to say this abrupt “goodbye” and face this moment alone.

I thought of that moment as I reread this passage in Matthew. Though procedures have changed a great deal since that moment in Houston in 1965, and fathers can take a much more active role in the birthing event than we were allowed in those days, yet there’s still a poignant element to this scene where Joseph must stand by, empty handed and subject to fears named and unnamed. It’s all very well to honor Joseph for his role in the Christmas story, but the truth remains that his position in that stable is clearly a supporting role.
He had a right to fear and wonder. Though marriage customs were different in his day, and pregnant brides probably no more uncommon then than they are now, yet he had a right to know this pregnancy was different. He certainly knew he was not the father, and if he was not, then who was? And if word should ever get out about this, Mosaic law was clear on the matter. An adulterous woman was to be shunned, if not stoned outright. Of course he was afraid. No one would blame him for putting her away, perhaps in the care of some distant relation in a village far away.

Then comes the dream.

I suppose we might consider him remarkable for giving credence to it. Could it not have been wishful thinking? No doubt we all would like to have an angel give us advice, especially in a difficult and embarrassing situation like his. But on a deeper level, heart-wrenching circumstances cry out for divine guidance. How comforting and reassuring to have a dream give us the answer we can’t find on our own.

In Joseph’s case, I rather doubt he’d understand our talk of dream analysis, or how wishful thinking and rationalizations can produce vivid and convincing images. In his day dreams were respected, trusted. They were to be divine communications that not only were significant for the dreamer, they could have significance for the whole community. Pharaoh’s dreams, in the time of Joseph, is a case in point. His dreams about seven fat calves and seven lean ones bore a message that the whole country of Egypt needed to hear.

So we would expect Joseph to take his dream seriously. But he also had to deal with a message that would mean shame and hardship and grief before it was over. He must take on responsibility for a child, not his own, that was to be a threat to Herod and who could say what beyond that? My fears about becoming a father in Houston in 1965 pale by comparison.

The lesson I learn from this moment is how Joseph dared to trust the dream, dared to believe that God was an active God, alive and well and initiating something new that would make a permanent difference to the world. That is a remarkable faith.

There are many sadnesses in our world, many tragedies that overwhelm us. But one sadness I think we don’t notice, and should, is the numb inertia of human hearts that have stopped looking for wonders, that no longer dream dreams or expect visions. We are so completely submerged in our man-made miracles of technology we are immune to wonder. If God were to initiate a miracle in our midst, chances are likely we’d never notice it, or dismiss it as some new kind of marvel created by science.

We need the simplicity of Joseph who still believes in the miraculous, but not the kind of miracles we can analyze and dissect and turn to some profit of our own. His miracle was the kind that unsettled, displaced, drove him to the edge of all he’d ever believed and known and forced him to continue on into the unknown.

In my life, the real living has begun when I was in foreign lands where I seldom could speak the language or find my bearings. My real growth began with the admission “I don’t know what I’m talking about.” My advance occurred when I dared go to Egypt - dared? Was forced more likely. That’s why I sometimes chuckle when I hear someone say, “I’m not comfortable with this” or “I wouldn’t be comfortable doing that.” Good words, and appropriate words, but sometimes I think those are the very moments we should be uncomfortable. Birth isn’t comfortable. For the mother or the child. We are foolish to think we could ever grow without it.

Joseph took his family to Egypt on the instruction of a vision. We probably will not have any such vision, but we will take risks. How silly of me to think, at my wedding, that merely saying “I do” with this person whom I thought I knew and loved so well, was just a formality. It meant a whole new world, one I still explore, even all these years after she’s gone. And who could have predicted the life that was about to open to me when I first made the discovery of the magic of alcohol? That first drink would mean a journey that wold take me virtually around the world. And how could I ever have imagined that an innocent remark from my pastor when I was still a teenager, suggesting I might have a calling for the Ministry, would find me here in Delta long after I had retired still trying to make sense out of that call?

Joseph trusted the angel and the dream. He faced his fear and took action. He dared to be open to a God who asked so much and to act upon that trust. Amazing. We thought the miracle of God happened in Bethlehem centuries ago - who could ever have believed that stable was right here, in our hearts, today? Amen.

Are You the One

Are You the One?   (based on Matthew 11:2-11


I stumbled across a quote from the great (and admittedly controversial) stage and film director Elia Kazan who, in his autobiography, summed up his philosophy of life with a few simple words: “Wonder is our need today, not information.” I am forced to admit this is not a popular philosophy. We are products of a different culture and a different way to thinking. We demand understanding. We want clear explanations for everything. We measure our progress by our scientific knowledge and technological no-how. What works? We ask. And what will be in it for us? Pragmatists, materialists, even in our religious beliefs, we are not as concerned about how we might best live our lives today as we are in how much we can assure ourselves of salvation and eternal life in the hereafter. To counter that, I would suggest we re-examine this interchange between John and Jesus.

John, please remember, was sent as the prophet who would foretell the arrival of the messiah and the new kingdom of heaven for which the Jews had longed for centuries. He had a following of his own. He had met Jesus at the river Jordan and baptized him, a sign of passing on his prophetic mantle to the new prophet of God. Surely he must have known who Jesus was and trusted him more than anyone else who ever met him. But John is in prison. His followers are being torn between faithfulness to John and curiosity about Jesus. John succumbs to doubt, uncertainty, wonder. He needs reassurance and asks for it.

In this sense, John is our stand-in. We too know prisons. Perhaps not with bars and guards, but we know the cold, damp confinement of fear, uncertainty. Perhaps we are struggling with financial problems. Perhaps we are in a relationship that is eroding our self-worth. Perhaps we are battling some addictive behavior. Perhaps we are in the grip of a relentless disease that seems to have no cure. All these, and God knows how many more forms of prison can trap us and leave us feeling helpless and lost.

Do we wonder? Do we question? Do we face a black and empty sky, and ache for some security, some place to stand that will not let us down? Of course we do. We would scarcely be human if we did not. I’ve quoted him before, but he keeps coming back to mind: the poor young Jew who, in a time of devastation, having just been told he and his neighbors must leave their home village in three days, cries out to the rabbi, “We’ve been looking for the messiah all our lives. Wouldn’t now be a good time for him to come?” We may not be Jews, but we do look for a savior nonetheless. John thought he had found him. But had he? He did not know. And he had met Jesus, some accounts claim they were even related. Would not he - of all people - be certain?

My first word to you today: do not be dismayed that you have your moments of uncertainty. You are not failing your Christianity because you can’t see the clear road ahead. You are no less Christ’s friend because you find yourself in you own private prison. Send for help. Ask. See if God cannot give you help at a time you need it most.

But now notice the answer Jesus gives. Rather than reply, “Of course I am” as we might desperately want him to do, he says “Tell John what you see happening.” This is scarcely the kind of answer we were looking for - or John either, I imagine. Explanation, education, clarification, instruction - this is what we expect, what we want. Instead, Jesus says nothing about himself. He doesn’t even say explicitly “I am giving sight to the blind, I am curing leprosy, I am raising the dead.” He simply points to these miracles and - by implication - points us to a renewed trust in God who is doing these things. The Kingdom of God is that gathering of trusting folk who embody the presence of a very much alive and active and involved and caring and loving God, right here and right now.

This is a message too little heard or remembered. We are quick to look for someone to rescue us. I will be the first to confess this. Give me something to deal with, a strange ache or pain in my body, a new grief at the loss of a friend, a fear that overwhelms me as I face some new dilemma I can’t seem to unravel, and instinctively I begin wondering “Who can I call?” “Who can I turn to?” Where’s my messiah, now, when I so obviously need him?

We think that is Jesus’s job. He is the ultimate rescuer. I remember hearing a young girl remark, “When trouble knocks on my door, I tell Jesus to answer it.” I liked that idea. I even tried it. It didn’t work. I could just imagine Jesus saying “Answer it yourself, it’s your door.”

Today I think that may be pretty much what Jesus did say to John. What you need, John, is not my telling you who or what I am. What you need is to wonder, to puzzle over, and discern the signs of what God is doing in this situation - not what I am doing.

My second word for you is to depend on wonder, not on answers. Wonder prompts us to look for signs we have overlooked or forgotten, or failed to see the significance of. It may be a small point, but the very fact we ask is a sign of trust. We look for answers because we expect answers to be there, somewhere. What we don’t realize is that many times the signs point us in directions we either did not expect, or could not see the importance of.

We have often been told God never closes a door without opening a window. What I would like to suggest is that it isn’t always God who closes those doors. And the windows that open aren’t always the best choices either. Wondering about them both frees us to explore, to choose, to backtrack and examine again until we do find the key that opens our prison. But in order to do that, trust must come first. And Jesus remembers this by pointing toward the miracles that are taking place all around us.

You see, God is, and God is here. God is alive and he lives here in us. Even in our prisons, God is present. Theologians speak of this living, abiding God as both Emmanuel (meaning God with us) and the Holy Spirit. This living, present God gives the lie to the idea that we are somehow abandoned, on our own, left out, forgotten, lost.

I remember Helen. She once remarked - and quite possibly she was quoting someone else: so much of the wisdom that finds its way into our lives is borrowed from somewhere else - “I love you, not for what your are, but for what I become when I am with you.” I think Jesus would have smiled at that remark. He did not need to be the center of attraction. (May I tell you a secret? I am really uncomfortable with prayers that keep repeating Jesus’ name. I’m especially disturbed by all this emphasis on how “Precious” Jesus’ name is. I think he would be equally uncomfortable.) Instead, Jesus lived his life as a walking billboard of the presence of God, and he dedicated himself totally to making God more real. What he saw was transformed lives - not because of him, but because of the transforming love of God.

And that leads me to one final word: if Helen spoke truly, and she loved her friend - not for what her friend was, but for what she became when she was with her friend - is it not quite possible that you may well be “The One” through whom God is at work for someone you may not even know? “Look, the blind see, the lame walk, the leper is cleansed, the deaf hear, and even the dead are raised to life.”

Such miracles are the work of God - who’s to say they may not be works God is achieving through the use of you? Wonder, my friends, please wonder! Amen.