Love

Love

Matthew 1:18-25

December 15, 2019 • Mount Pleasant UMC

There is a story I heard long ago and is usually popular this time of year. It was written in 1905 by William Sydney Porter, though you may know him better by his pen name, O. Henry. The story is “The Gift of the Magi,” and tells of a young couple who want to show each other how much they love the other. The challenge is that they don’t have any money, and so independently they decide they will show their love for each other by selling their more precious possession so they can purchase a loving gift. When they come together on Christmas Eve, it is revealed that she had her beautiful hair cut off to be able to buy a chain for his gold watch, while he sold the watch to buy a special comb for her beautiful hair (cf. Smith, The Magnificent Journey, pgs. 111-112). Now, I don’t know exactly what O. Henry intended to communicate with his story, though the title gives us a bit of a clue. The magi, or wise men, gave precious gifts for the sake of a newborn king, just as the couple each gave up something very precious to them. And while we might read it as a tragic story, I hope this morning to focus on what it, and the Gospel story, tells us about love. Because love involves sacrifice.

This morning, we’re continuing to unwrap “The Gifts of Christmas.” So, far, we’ve discovered two of the gifts that don’t wear out and don’t break. We talked the first week of Advent about hope, and last week Pastor Rick helped us unwrap joy. This week, we turn to love, but I have to say up front that this is not the kind of emotional love that we find in every single Hallmark movie. Love is not a feeling; as a bestselling book of a number of years ago reminded us: love is a decision. We were designed for love, created for love. From our first breath, we need love. Studies have been done which show that babies who are not held and nuzzled and hugged will literally stop growing and, even if they receive the proper nutrition, can die from lack of love. It has been said that our most pressing need as human beings is to receive love. We were also designed to give love. Again, the science proves it because when we do loving things, when we perform acts of kindness, the hormone, oxytocin, is released in the brain and throughout the body and that leads to better cardiovascular health. It also, the reports say, slows aging! Love is our calling, or as one ancient saint of the church said, “Love is our vocation” (cf. Smith 109). So why is the world so unloving? And maybe more to the point: why is the church very often so unloving? Could it be we’ve forgotten what love is, what love looks like?

On this third Sunday of Advent, we’re going to consider Joseph as an example of true, deep love. Joseph, as you are probably aware, is often called a “carpenter,” but that’s a bad translation of the word Matthew uses to describe him: tekton. A tekton might work with wood, but more likely, especially in Israel where wood is sparse, he would be a stone mason. He’s a builder; he makes stuff. That much we know. He has a good, reliable job. He’s not going to get rich doing it, but with the Romans building a lot of stuff in Palestine, especially around Jerusalem, he’s likely to keep working. And remember Joseph is from Bethlehem, not too far from Jerusalem, but quite a ways from Nazareth, where Mary lives. How he became betrothed to Mary is not something we really know. It was most likely an arranged marriage, and so any picture of Joseph pulling up outside Mary’s house on his donkey and taking her out on a date or sending her Valentine’s cards is putting way too much modern American stuff back into the Biblical story. It’s likely they would not have spent much time together during the betrothal. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that he is among the last, maybe the last, to know that Mary is expecting a baby (cf. Pilch, Cultural World, Cycle A, pg. 11).

According to Matthew, there is no birth announcement and there is no gender reveal party. Mary is “found” to be pregnant (1:18). Again, remember that this is a different world than ours, and whereas today babies born outside of marriage is a normal occurrence, in Mary’s day, it had a huge stigma attached to it. More than that, Mary was already “pledged” or betrothed to Joseph, so what she has seemingly done is considered adultery. She has broken her promise, her vow. Undoubtedly, Joseph was heartbroken, disappointed in Mary, but even more than that, being a “righteous” (1:19, NRSV) person, faithful (NIV) to the Jewish law, he had to decide how to handle the situation in a way that, in his understanding, would please God. So, the first thing he would naturally do is ask: what does the law say? What does it tell me to do? And the Law was clear. If an engaged woman were to cheat on her fiancé, she was to be brought to the door of her father’s house and stoned to death. If you could identify and catch the man, he was to be stoned as well. Moses had said, “You must purge the evil from among you” (cf. Deuteronomy 22:20-24; Hamilton, Faithful, pgs. 50-51).

Joseph knows all this. He knows what Mary appears to have done. He knows the story she has been telling: that the Holy Spirit has somehow made her pregnant, but he also knows that’s not how babies are made! He knows the requirements of the law, and he is a man who wants to be “faithful to the law” (1:19). So what happens next? Joseph fumes. Our modern translations are too nice, honestly. The NIV says he “considered” what to do, which brings up images of Joseph thinking about these things calmly while sipping tea. In an early Arabic translation dating to the eighth century, Joseph is described as “disturbed,” but I don’t think that’s even strong enough (cf. Bailey, Jesus Through Mediterranean Eyes, pgs. 45-46). The word Matthew uses there is much, much stronger than that. It means he got angry. It’s the same word Matthew uses to describe how angry Herod got when the wise men left without telling him where the baby is, and there it’s translated as being “furious” or in a rage (cf. 2:16). Put yourself in his position. Everything you’ve been planning for, counting on, looking forward to is now in jeopardy because, it seems, Mary couldn’t control herself. Anger is a fitting response. I’d probably throw some things or pound the wall, maybe say a few things I’d regret later. Joseph is angry, for at least the afternoon. Mary has put him in an impossible situation. He doesn’t want to kill her, but the community will demand a response. And he does want to follow the law. He wants to do what is right. And so here comes the question I’ve bugged you with off and on for the last year or so: what does love require? In this situation, with these people, what does love require?

People who face infidelity today struggle with that same question. How do you respond when vows are broken? It’s a painful subject to discuss, at least in part because everyone’s situation is different. How do you respond? And for people of faith, what is a Biblical, Christian response? The New Testament authors are in agreement that infidelity breaks the marriage covenant, that you are not required to stay in a marriage where infidelity has taken place. But neither are you required to end the marriage. Counseling can help, as can a renewed commitment to practicing your faith. Without both parties willing to work on the relationship, however, there is little hope that repairs can be made, but it is possible. Some research indicates that in about half of the cases where infidelity has taken place, the marriage has survived; some even report that it got stronger. Some choose to go separate ways. But no matter what direction your story takes, forgiveness has to happen. Certainly, that is a process, sometimes a long process, and as I heard one person say it’s not so much a destination as a place you live. Ultimately forgiveness is not about the other person so much as it is for our own health. “Forgiveness is the gift you give yourself,” as you choose being better over being bitter (cf. Hamilton 52-56).

So Joseph is angry. He fumes. He wrestles with the turn his life has taken, something he never saw coming, and with what love requires. Then he makes up his mind: he’s not going to follow the law. Instead, he’s going to opt for a non-violent alternative. He will divorce Mary. She will be shamed. She will probably never marry. But she will be alive and so will her child. He loves her enough he wants to see her live. And with that decision made, he slips into sleep, which is apparently the only time God can actually get through to him. In his sleep, an angel comes and tells Joseph what he needs to actually do: “Do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (1:20). Joseph is told that the story Mary has been telling is not a fable; it’s true! And what God wants him to do is something he didn’t think he could: accept the shame of giving his name to a child who is not his own. God is asking him to stand against the community and, more importantly, to reprocess his anger into grace (cf. Bailey 46). And when he wakes up, Joseph, the righteous rule-follower, does just that. He takes Mary as his wife. He denies himself by not consummating their marriage until after the baby is born. And he is the one to name Jesus; he accepts the baby as his own and whatever anyone else might say about him, let them say it. He will take the disgrace in order to be an agent of grace (cf. 1:24-25).

Joseph’s story, out of all of the pieces of the Christmas story, reminds us that love looks like self-sacrifice. I've shared this before, but it’s important to remember that, in New Testament times, there were four words for what we call “love.” Storge is affectionate love, like between a mother and a child. Phileo is friendship love, such as between two best friends. Eros is sexual love, best seen between husband and wife. But the kind of love that all of these pale next to is agape, self-sacrificing love. Agape “wills the good of another without need for reciprocation. Agape love is not dependent on the qualities of the beloved. Agape love even loves the unlovely. Agape love can even love an enemy” (Smith 110). Fascinatingly, in the first century world, that was a word that was known but not used very often until Christians picked it up and used it in this way: “God demonstrates his own agape for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

We sing that simple song from childhood: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” And we get such warm, fuzzy feelings when we sing it, thinking of how much Jesus just wants to hug us and hang out with us and take care of us by giving us things. But, if we really run that song through the Bible filter, if we really think about how it is the Bible tells us Jesus loves us, we might not want to sing that song at bedtime! Jesus loves us by giving his very life for us because love is seen in self-sacrifice. What does love require? For Jesus, it required his very life. Jesus loves us in this way: he is born into a human family and grows up in a small village. At about the age of 30, he begins teaching and healing and preaching across the Galilean countryside. He challenges those in power at the time, and he seems to care the most for the poor and the outcasts. But he makes the powerful ones mad enough that they make a deal with their enemies to get rid of him. And so Jesus, the teacher from the small, backwater town of Nazareth, gets the attention of the Roman Empire, the mightiest nation on earth, and they consider him enough of a threat that they put him to death by one of the cruelest methods imaginable. Jesus dies on a cross, and somehow on that tool of torture, the early Christians understood that Jesus was showing the extent of his love for humanity.

From the world’s standpoint, what Jesus did on the cross makes no sense. It looks like he lost, that that cross was a dead end. As Pastor Douglas Wilson wrote, “What could have been more of a dead end than to be flogged, crucified, speared, and laid in a grave for three days and nights? And yet, even there, God was demonstrating his love for us. He was not giving us one more tragedy in a long line of them so that we might be justified in our despair. Rather, He was conquering sin and death, lust and the devil—and not giving us a lesson in pointless heroism” (God Rest Ye Merry, pg. 20, Kindle edition). He gave his life because he loved us; the cross is the ultimate reminder of God’s love because love looks like self-sacrifice. That’s what love requires.

And while I know that Jesus is God and that the cross is what he came to do, I can’t help but think that, in his humanity, he learned at least a little bit about it from his earthly father, Joseph. When he heard the stories surrounding his birth, when he worked alongside Joseph, when he realized that Joseph had given up what could have been a good livelihood in Bethlehem and Jerusalem to move to nowhere Nazareth in order to protect Mary and the baby, when he watched how hard Joseph worked to provide for them, don’t you think there was something that stirred within him? I very clearly remember a moment, several years ago, when Christopher and I were in the kitchen at the parsonage. For some reason, he was sitting on the counter, and we were talking about preschool and what he had learned. They had been talking about big people jobs that day and who they wanted to be like. So I asked him, “What do you think you want to be when you grow up?” And without batting an eye, he said, “I want to be just like you, Daddy.” Now, I tell you, he could have asked for anything at that moment and I would have given it to him! And I don’t know if there were any moments like that between Joseph and little Jesus, but I do know that our heavenly Father longs for us to have that kind of love for him. “I want to be just like you, Daddy!” The same kind of self-sacrificial love God showed us through Jesus—I want to show that kind of love to those around me. I’m not there yet, but thank God I’m further along than I was.

There are so many ways we can show self-sacrificial love, following in the footsteps of Jesus and his earthly father, Joseph. Every day, we are surrounded by people who are in desperate need of someone to care about them, to love them as Jesus does. I believe that’s at least part of why our world is so negative, so angry, so combative—we are literally dying for a lack of love. And so we do small things, offer small gestures, to show great love. Remember the quote attributed to Mother Teresa: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Offering to pray for someone, giving them a ride, buying their coffee, reminding a struggling young mother that these days will go by so fast, offering a kind word of encouragement—all of these and more are ways we can practice self-sacrificial love because none of those benefit us directly. More ideas will come to mind in every situation as we approach people and days with that nagging question: what does love require? And we remember that agape looks like self-sacrifice.

So, for the past several months, we’ve been engaged in an experiment of agape love called Friendship House. You might remember that this ministry came about as a grant from the Center for Congregations, which is funded by the Lilly Foundation for Indiana congregations. Their question to us was this: in your community, what “gaps” are there in reaching the special needs population? In other words, how can you better love those who are often overlooked? The answers we got were not what we expected, but the greatest need among the special needs folks was a way to learn independent living, to transition from home to possibly their own place. So this past fall, we opened Friendship House—the first in the nation, by the way, to be sponsored by a local church and the only one in Indiana—and I wanted Jess to come and share for a few moments about what’s going on with the ministry there. So let’s welcome Jess Berryhill.

INTERVIEW: JESS FOR FRIENDSHIP HOUSE (look for the video on YouTube)

1. (1)Update us on what’s happening with Friendship House.
2. (2)How do you see sacrificial love playing out at Friendship House?
3. (3)How can we as a congregation be more involved with Friendship House?

So that’s one thing we can get involved in, one way we can show self-sacrificial love during this Advent season, but it’s not the only way. What other creative ways will you find to make a difference, to love those around you with a selfless heart? What will love require of you this Advent and beyond? Let’s walk in the footsteps and live in the spirit of Jesus’ gentle foster father and show love to this broken and harried world—because love is one of the gifts of Christmas. Let’s pray.