conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

sermon: what's in a name

Here is my offering on the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Enjoy. The Christmas Eve sermon will follow soon.

Today I have a great deal on my docket. I am doing a little pre-marital counseling at the church and then cleaning the parsonage. Trish is flying out this evening to Virginia. I'll follow on the 25th. I am still finalizing my Christmas Eve plans, but I may be in Syycamore for mass.

Silly post-modernism.

Sermon: Fourth Sunday of Advent Year A 2007
Community Church of Wilmette
December 23, 2007

What's in a Name?

J. Barrie Shepherd, poet and preacher, writes:
(Shepherd, J. Barrie. Faces at the Manger. Nashville: Upper Room Books, 1992.)

"The hardest task
The most difficult role of all
That of just being there
And Joseph, dearest Joseph, stands for that.
Don't you see?

It is important,
crucially important,
that he stand there by that manger,
as he does,
In all his silent misery
Of doubt concern and fear.
If Joseph were not there
There might be no place for us,
For those of us at least-
So many- who recognize and know-
That heartache, for our own,
Who share that helpless sense
Of lost-ness, of impotence
In our own lives, our families, our jobs
In our fearful threatened world this night.
Yes, in Joseph's look of anguish
We find our place;
We discover that we too
Belong beside the manger:
This manger in which are met
God's peace and all our wars and fears....
Let us be there,
Simply be there just as Joseph was,
With nothing we can do now,
Nothing we can bring-
It's far too late for that-
Nothing even to be said
Except, 'Behold- be blessed,
Be silent, be at peace.'

Joseph, son of David,
'Do not fear,' the angel said.
And Jim and Alice, Fred and Sue,
Bob and Tom and Jean and Betty too,
The word to you, to all of us
Here at the manger side,
The word is also, 'do not fear.'
Our God, the Lord and Sovereign,
Maker of heaven and earth,
Time and eternity,
Of life and death and all that is
And shall be,
Has joined us in this moment…,"

I have found again and again that the role of Joseph in the story we tell this time of year to be the most troublesome. One might think that I would have qualms about angels and three wise men. Or perhaps the fact that we proclaim a virgin birth would be enough to stump me. There is so much to get tripped up by in the story, but every year I find myself with Joseph.

I don't know as much about theater as I should. But it's as if Joseph is the straight man in a comedy of errors. Or he's the great "legitamizer" in an absurdist farce. Joseph seems to be the only one of the people in this nativity play who maintains a recognizable humanity. Everyone else becomes larger than life.

A virgin gives birth.
She gives birth to God no less!
Shepherds recognize the holy and stop everything.
Animals kneel.
Wise men trek across the desert following a star.
The whole tale is larger than life. The whole tale is untenable.

But those who remembered this story for us so long ago were wise. You see, they remembered Joseph. And they included him in the story.

Joseph…
Well Joseph was left with all of the mundane and real tasks that make up a life. We hear in this morning's scripture that Joseph is struggling with a choice. The young woman to whom he is betrothed is pregnant. He had several options before him and many of them were unkind. He could have exposed her. That would have been within his rights. There were legal and economic realities at stake. Not to mention reputation…and "righteousness." Some may have even understood sending Mary back to her parents as a righteous thing to do. Joseph was in quite a bind.

Joseph's concerns were ultimately practical. Almost everything (There is one very obvious exception here.), almost everything that was practical, earthy, about the birth of the boy child was in Joseph's hands. The ramifications of wedding a pregnant woman, providing for that child, dealing with social fall-out, and then having to flee the occupying powers…Joseph's lot was difficult. His challenges were unimaginable.

But he had a dream.

And in the dream he met an angel.

The angel reminded him of a Prophesy. The Prophesy we heard from Isaiah this morning was given voice in the dream. "[The] young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel."

The child that Mary carried within herself was God. And the angel asked Joseph to name the child. That's all. He was to name the child. He was to name him "Jesus, the savior of nations." And of all the monumental tasks that Joseph faced in this story, this is perhaps the greatest.

You see, there was another man in the scriptures given the task of naming. I don't know if you remember this or not, but Adam was given the very practical task of naming everything God had made in the Garden of Eden. And it was the defining work of Adam's life in the Garden. Adam named.

Adam named the trees and their fruit. He named the animals. The sky he named "sky." Adam, the creature created in God's own image, named creation. Naming, brothers and sisters, is the thing that God made us to do.

And so, in a dream, Joseph was given Adam's task. Joseph is asked to name. But this time the basic task was a little different. The basic task became the most profound task.

Through the aid of the angels, Joseph was to name God. The child in Mary's womb, the divine spark of the universe born into the world, was given a name.

    What was Nameless…
        …Unknowable,
                Unspeakable,
                    Is given a name.
                        Joseph named God!

And he named God, "Jesus" which means "salvation."

God has such a dream for all of us. God has such a dream for this church. Angels descend upon us. It is Christmas.

Thus was the place of Joseph. And thus is the power of a dream. The ancient writers wanted us to remember Joseph. They wanted us to remember the practical, hands-on realities of bringing God into the world. They wanted us to remember what it means to do the hard things…the things that have no immediate reward, the things that might cause us to be shunned, to be run out of town, or to be lost to the others we know…They wanted us to know that by proclaiming salvation, the truth, by bringing God into the world, our fate might be that of Joseph's.

This is what it means to dream. This is what it means to hope.

To hope and to dream is to be given the task of naming God in the world.

To follow the leading of dreams like Joseph is to proclaim Salvation born in the world.

"The hardest task
The most difficult role of all
That of just being there
And Joseph, dearest Joseph, stands for that.
Don't you see?

Amen.