Sermon on Matthew 1:18-25

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We’re used to hearing the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke, whether on Christmas Eve or recited by Linus in the Charlie Brown Christmas special, which shares a lot of Mary’s story.

But today, we get the Christmas story from the Gospel of Matthew, which is more from Joseph’s point of view.

We’ve been talking this season about God’s dreams and visions for the world, and we’ll talk on Christmas Eve in a few days about Jesus being God’s dream for the world come true. But today’s reading talks about how close that dream came to not happening.

Joseph understandably had some misgivings about how his life circumstances were shaping up.

He was betrothed to a young woman, which at that time meant they were effectively married already, but it turned out that she was pregnant with a child who wasn’t his.

He would have been very much entitled under the law to have her stoned to death for that, but he was mercifuland wanted to end their relationship quietly and let that be that.

He was upstanding and trying to do the right thing, the humane thing, but he certainly wasn’t on board for raising someone else’s child.

And because of that, he almost missed out on what God was up to, not just in his own life, but in the story of God’s relationship with God’s people and the whole world.

We live in a practical world, a post-Enlightenment, seeing-is-believing world. We want peer reviewed studies and research and sound logic. We have to be careful these days or risk being scammed, cat-fished, ghosted, or trolled. I often find myself saying, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Instead, we try to be grounded, productive, and efficient. We optimize our time and try to be industrious and practical. Those are all good things.

But what if we, like Joseph, are missing out on something in our efforts to be responsible and industrious?

God had something different in mind for practical, upstanding Joseph, as God so often does. God has ways of communicating with us that sometimes surprise us.

Joseph drifted off to sleep one night and dreamed. He dreamed of God’s dream for the world. He dreamed of a baby who would grow up to save the world.

That dream changed the course of his life and enabled God’s dream for the world to become a reality.

Joseph had to rest in the dark long enough to hear God’s voice.

We often focus on light and dark this time of year. We light Advent candles and sing of the light of the world chasing away the darkness.

There is something in us that is still afraid of the dark.

But darkness can be generative. Seeds sprout in the dark. Babies, even the Christ Child, grow in the darkness of a womb.Darkness can help us slow down and gives us room for imagination. It’s hard to dream under harsh fluorescent lights.

Author Jeanette Winterson wrote this about what she loves about darkness: “I have noticed that when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing — their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling – their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses.

“To sit alone without any electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights — then I start thinking about projects, deadlines, demands, and the shadows and shapes of the house become objects, not suggestions, things that need to be done, not a background to thought.”

Maybe we need the darkness of this season to help us see God’s visions for this world. God’s visions usually don’t seem practical. They don’t come with business plans or a step-by-step to-do list. They push us beyond what we think we’re capable of.

We can only imagine the possibilities in the liminal space between sleep and waking. That is a way God speaks to us. The Holy Spirit whispers of God’s completely impractical and beautiful dreams. We can only adopt those dreams as our own if we rest in the dark long enough to recognize God’s call.

Sometimes we think it’s too late to answer God’s call. Joseph had already decided to call off the betrothal. Sometimes it seems like it’s too late for us to do something new. We’re set in our routines and habits. Too much time has passed for us to learn something new or to change our ways. We don’t have the energy we once did. Our bodies have changed. Our memories aren’t as sharp. Surely God can’t be calling us now. Our practical minds doubt. But maybe the darkness has gifts for that too.

Here is a poem by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer called

“Too Late?”

By the time we arrive at the cliffside

to watch the sunset, the darkness

has already come. But because

of the ink-ish sky, we see thousands

of yellow lights glitter across the harbor.

And moonlight on the water makes

the blackened surface shine. How often

do I think I’m too late, only to find I have

arrived at just the right moment,

the moment in which there is a beauty

beyond the one I knew to wish for.

Like how, when I thought it was too late

to forgive, forgiveness arrived with its

soft and generous hands. Like how when

I thought I was too late to love, love

bloomed like a sunset, radiant and blazing,

and stayed, the way sunsets never do.

Like how I believed I was here to adore the light,

I came to learn how exquisite, how

lavish, how astonishing, the dark.

It’s not too late for God to do something new in your life or in this world.

In a few days, we’ll be celebrating God’s dream come true, and we also know that this world isn’t yet what it will be. There’s still so much pain and suffering in this world. God is still creating and forming this world into God’s vision for it.

Maybe what we need is more darkness in which to dream of a better world. On this longest night of the year, let’s embrace the darkness. Let’s welcome the gifts of darkness before we rush to celebrate the lengthening days.

Beloved, rest in God’s creative darkness and see what grows.