'A'   //   Advent 4   //   12-23-07   //   Celebration of Worship, Northside Presbyterian

 

Scriptures             Isaiah 7:10-16        Matthew 1:18-25

 

Paul Tillich was one of the greatest theologians of the Western world during the twentieth century. German-born, he fled his native land for America during the rise of the Third Reich. Although his English was barely intelligible at the time, Tillich’s reputation was such that he immediately landed a teaching position at one of the finest theological seminaries in the world – Union in New York City.

 

Regardless of his facility, or lack thereof, with his adopted tongue, Tillich’s remarkable ability with language in general allowed him to make observations on the English idiom that would escape most.

 

Take the instance one evening when the great professor was chewing the theological fat with a group of his students at a local restaurant. The waiter brought him his dessert: strawberries with cream on top.

 

Tillich sprang to life. “Vaiter!” he cried. “Vaiter! I ordered strawberries and cream, not strawberries with cream.”

 

Caught short, the waiter responded, “What’s the difference?”

 

“Young man!” Tillich counseled, professorial to a fault. “Young man: Surely you know the difference between mother and child and mother vith child?”

 

 

Today – in eight short gospel verses – Matthew spans the distance between mother with child and God with us.

 

 

And Isaiah said, “Therefore the Lord will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel."

 

And Matthew said, “All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us.’”

 

In communicating the gospel, Matthew – a Jewish-Christian to the core when there was such an animal – was obsessed with prophetic fulfillments. Trouble was, Matthew based the fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14 – “Look, the young woman is with child” – on a faulty Greek translation that rendered the Hebrew for young woman as virgin.

 

Of course, many ancient myths portray great figures being born of a virgin.  Virgin births symbolize purity ... divinity. So: Why not Jesus?

 

But in addressing the matter of parentage, let us tarry not over the virginity concern. Let us ask instead: Does Mary’s sexual status really matter here? Perhaps we modern-day prurients have allowed this hackneyed theological dilemma to obscure a more significant matter concerning Emmanuel’s parentage – and hence, his station at birth. For Virgin Mary or no Virgin Mary, it seems evident that Jesus was born – as we would say today in polite society – out-of-wedlock. Or in not-so-polite society … well … you know …

 

 

The circumstances of the conception regardless, there was always that stain over Jesus … and over Mary. Illegitimate. Not legal. Not recognizable by law. As tradition then held it, an illegality punishable by shaming the mother-to-be in the village court – perhaps, even by stoning her to death.

 

With this fate awaiting Mary, hear what her betrothed does. "Her husband Joseph" he is called in this passage – not because they were legally married yet; they were simply considered husband and wife in their betrothal, unlike engagements today. We hear that "Joseph being a righteous man and unwilling to expose [Mary] to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly."

 

Patriarchal yet merciful. Joseph. Acting not unlike a rural American father, sending a pregnant teenage daughter to have her baby in a distant town. There's still disgrace involved; it would just be hush-hush. And yet it would be Mary's reputation – not Joseph's – that would ultimately suffer the most.

 

Comes then the angel to dear old dopey dad. In a dreamy manner quite similar to his Hebrew namesake, the one with that technicolor dreamcoat, Joseph’s will and God's will are quickly aligned.

 

And yet: by ancient status as well as by contemporary metaphor, Jesus remained ... illegitimate.

 

 

It’s as if God is asking us: Are we to live within the bounds of societal comfort and control we set for ourselves – legal or otherwise? Or are we to step outside our carefully constructed boxes and welcome an illegitimate Lord whose irresistible grace trespasses everything?

 

First: When we welcome service freely given in the Church. For perhaps, in these days of fear for and idolatry of denominational unity – a most ironic mix – God comes to be with us in the illegal way some in the connectional church feel we ordain and install servant leaders at Northside. For in the eyes of some in our connectional church, many in our congregation illegitimately serve as elders because they are not heterosexual in their orientation.

Erstwhile allies, fearing for broader church unity, might counsel us “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Lest the illegitimacy of God-with-us become a contagion beyond temple control, they might even encourage that we and other More Light congregations, impregnated by the Spirit, be dismissed quietly and ashamedly from the denomination’s eye. And yet, when we install elders both openly heterosexual and homosexual, we legitimate the Body of Christ in all its fullness in the face of its illegitimacy to some.

 

Then again – as with Mary’s virginity – why should we even care about the sexual orientation of our servant leaders? Trouble is: Many still do. And the suffering goes on.

 

Second: When we welcome our sisters and brothers as neighbors – regardless of their legality. For in these days of great fear of the foreigner, God appears with us in the form of the so-called illegal alien. The one who, as Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once proclaimed, is neither illegal or alien. Certainly not to God – so why to us? Are we to consider Emmanuel an illegal alien because he eventually fled Herod's army to Egypt in his parents arms? But such he was classified: born illegitimately, and then without legal cache in a foreign land.

 

 

A third way -- the foundation of the first and the second: When we allow ourselves to be welcomed – regardless of our feelings of illegitimacy. God comes to be with each of us and all of us, as hurting human beings, as each of us and all of us struggle with inward monitors of esteem and outward dispensers of status that beg to remind us – over and over and over again – that we are not all that "legit".

 

 

Emmanuel – God-with-us. Recognizable only when we welcome the servant church leader dubbed illegitimate, the neighbor classified illegal, and even our own sense of suffering humanity.

 

For only when we welcome all into the radar of our lives in the resounding fullness of our shared humanity, are we able to welcome the One who the angel tells us today has come to save us from our sins. Our sins ... of our inhumanity.

 

 

 

 

Friends: Let us, this holy day season, come to appreciate the difference between God-and-us and God-with-us.

 

God-and-us? That’s the advent of understanding. God-with-us? That’s the advent of Christmas.

 

Illegitimately ours … to love and serve our neighbors as ourselves.

 

This Christmas season, let us go out into the world in peace – and do just that!