Your Choices Matter

Summary:

Despite Mary’s unexpected pregnancy, Joseph chose to protect her and Jesus, guided by divine dreams. The sermon highlights the often-overlooked importance of supporting characters in the Bible, such as Joseph, and analyzes the Magnificat from Luke 1, emphasizing Mary’s powerful expression of faith.  Emphasizing Jesus’ command to love one another, the sermon discusses NT Wright’s view on love enriching life and bettering the world. Ultimately, it calls for embracing love in our decisions, fostering stronger relationships and a more compassionate world.

Transcript:

Good morning everybody. My name is Jeremy, if we have not met, and I'm a pastor here at Journey and I get to talk on this fourth Sunday of Advent, also the fourth Sunday of the month, which means we have extra time here for prayer and a shortened sermon, and we can just be present together in the presence of the Holy Spirit. And so this is, like I said, the last week of Advent, which means in just a few days, Christmas is here. So what that really means is you have to really avoid the temptation to celebrate early. You cannot be like Buddy the Elf and just be super pumped up before we get to the last day. It's still a time of waiting. So some of you are Buddy.

I'm the guy in the vest on the right, waiting for Christmas to come. Buddy, this is very exciting, but we do still are waiting in anticipation in the last few days of this season. So, and I know we got a couple, you know, we're going to be decorating the church after this for the Christmas season, for Christmas Eve on Tuesday. I know we got families that are going to be celebrating on Christmas. We got families coming in and wrapping presents and all that. So my challenge to you the next few days, if you can, do your very, very best to just slow down. And as the people say, remember the reason for the season, which is not Christmas, it's waiting.

So there you go. So this song that David just sang called, It Came to Pass, is off this album, Behold the Lamb of God by Andrew Peterson. And so I think I shared this when I did my song, So Long Moses. But when I listened to the album the first time, when Jonathan said, hey, would you listen to this album and tell me your thoughts? I sat down, I carved out some space. I did something called active listening, which means a lot of different things for a lot of different reasons. But my goal listening to the album was to write down what I felt in every single song that came to pass.

So I listened to each song and I wrote down the thoughts that were coming to my mind as I did this. And this is kind of difficult to me, for me actually, because I am terrible, terrible at hearing lyrics in songs. You can ask how many song lyrics I know, and it's not very many. I know like one line of a lot of songs, but I do not know the whole songs of many songs. So lyrics are very difficult because I get the whole feeling of the song. But we know that a lot of the songs here come from scripture. I mean, the very first line, it came to pass, there'd be a census decree that's straight from the book of Luke.

So here's what I wrote for this song. And this is for the song that came to pass. And I said, I like this song. So this is straight, I didn't edit this at all. So this is like raw, sitting in my office, Jeremy thought. So I would argue, sorry. I like the song because it focused more on the struggle of a faithful person like Joseph may face when following the ways of God.

There might not always be a good feeling decision, but following God is good. Also the idea that supporting characters are important to the story. Joseph, I would argue probably isn't thought of as a main character. Sure, we mentioned him in all of the Bible stories, but mostly because he's there. However, I'm sure to Mary, he was the most important of men in her life. He was a main character to her, which allows the blessing of Jesus to be able to be born. So this song captured my attention because it wasn't about Mary.

It wasn't about Jesus. It was about a man in scripture, Joseph, who has no recorded lines in all of scripture and his story and his understanding of what was happening that day and the decisions that he had to make. So I took kind of a, a long look at who he was. And this is what I do when I'm sitting down to study scripture, whether it's for learning or preparing for a sermon, which is very different than just reading scripture to, to be read, to like have it shaped and for me to like actually study it. I, I start to look at it in different ways. I can break it down a little bit for you, but first thing I do is who are the obvious good people or who are the obvious main characters in scripture? You know, we all read scripture and we can say, this is a good person.

It's a bad person. This is who the hero is. This is who the antagonist and the protagonist star and all these, you know, literary devices you probably learned in high school and forgot to do because we don't do it regularly, but why are these people important in this story? And once I do that, once you get the obvious stuff out of the way, I myself personally have been called a contrarian. I like to look at why maybe they're not so good, or maybe I can understand the other characters point of view. There's a book, we all know the story of the three little pigs, right? There's a house of, they built these houses and the big bad wolf came and huffed and puffed and blew them down.

There's another book out there, which I really like. It's from the wolf's point of view about how he wasn't such a bad guy. He was just looking for a cup of sugar and these pigs kept freaking out and all he really wanted was some sugar. That's from his point of view. So I like to sometimes study scripture in this way. And then once I identify the characters, especially the non quote unquote important characters, I start to ask questions. Who are they?

Are they important to the plot or they just happened to randomly be standing around when Jesus performed a miracle and they just got to be put in the Bible for all of eternity? You know, are they important to the plot? Why did I not really think about them before? Like, why did I just gloss over who these people are? And again, why are they included in this piece of scripture? Because if scripture is from God and the word of God is, and the written word of God, and it's good for teaching and learning and formation, then it's probably no accident. Most of the times they're included in scripture.

So why are we talking about Joseph then? Because today's lectionary, so if you follow along the lectionary, so the lectionary is a three year cycle of scripture. You go through different passages every three years, you get to read the whole Bible. And so we have not been following the lectionary per se during the season because we've been going along with this album. But I think it's interesting to note that today's lectionary reading of the gospel is from Luke chapter 1, 46 through 55, which is also called the Magnificat. And I'm going to read it here. This is a very important piece of scripture, Luke 1, 46 through 55.

And so just to set up, Mary is visiting Elizabeth. So Mary's pregnant with Jesus. She's going to visit Elizabeth and John the Baptist is, you know, that's who Elizabeth has in her womb. This is what Mary says after meeting. My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed for the mighty one has done great things for me. Holy is his name.

His mercy extends to those who fear him from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm. He has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but he has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever just as he promised our ancestors. So the Magnificat, the hymn of Mary, my soul magnifies the Lord, is very, very, very, very important.

It's actually one of the eight ancient hymns of the Christian church. So this follows along with the Psalms. We've been reading a lot of Psalms the past few weeks because those are the hymns and the stories and the poems of the ancient church. And so this is one of the first hymns written with Christ in mind. So it's been used basically since the beginning as a worshiping song for the church. And so you know Mary in certain denominations and traditions is venerated. She's a saint or above a saint.

She's very, very, very important to people. She is certainly a main character in the story of Jesus. And so we have a whole long hymn written by her that's supposed to be today's reading. We got tons of words, you know, written by her, decisions made by her. And we are today talking about Joseph who again has no words recorded in scripture and basing it off a song written and released by a guy in 2004. Very different than what we would normally find. And again, it's because what I wrote, I think Joseph's story is one of a faithful person who had to make some very difficult decisions based on faith and trust, love, some dreams, and belief.

And so I was thinking about Joseph, like what are the struggles that Joseph had to go through? And the first struggle, obviously, besides like all the normal day-to-day stuff of a tradesman of sorts and getting a wife and family and all that stuff is his engaged fiance, Mary, gets pregnant. And in scripture, it's not by him. So that is a pretty large struggle that Joseph has to overcome. And so if you know the Old Testament, which can be a little fiery sometimes, if you were caught in adultery, which a baby would signify that it's probably an adulterous relationship most of the time, you're supposed to be killed. I mean, that was the punishment for both people involved. But Joseph, it says, well, I'll read it right from scripture.

This is Matthew 1. So we're going to read through Matthew's stories here a little bit. Matthew 1, 18 through 21 says this, and the title I have in my Bible is Joseph accepts Jesus as his son. This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about. His mother, Mary, was pledged to be married to Joseph. But before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit, because Joseph, her husband, was faithful to the law and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace. He had in mind to divorce her quietly.

But after he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. So Joseph was faithful and righteous. Sometimes I say he was righteous. He observed the law, which is you can get divorced in this instance, the law of Moses. But he also did not want to shame her and publicly humiliate her. So he's going to do it quietly.

But the angel came and said, hey, don't do that, because this is a very important thing that's happening right here. And Joseph, being a faithful man, I would assume, interpreted that dream correctly and said, okay, I will not divorce her. So that's the first struggle he has to overcome. And then of course, after that, you know, he has to explain it or live with it or just trust in God that people are going to talk and not because they're not married yet. So they know people are going to know somebody is pregnant, and they have not had the wedding yet. So I mean, so they've got this path that he is walking. And because of a prophecy, right, this is supposed to happen.

The next is Joseph has to travel with his pregnant wife. And while they're on the road, they have a baby. That's having a baby is stressful. I mean, I was not in the active part of delivery, but I was around it. And it is a stressful time. And when you are supposed to be the able bodied one in that instance of taking care of and arranging and providing a safe space. And you can't do that as Joseph had to find the inn.

It had to be very stressful and all because he was a faithful or a man of the law and was going to go to where a census was happening in his hometown because somebody, Caesar, said we should have a census, which was the first one in a long time, right, just kind of out of the blue. And again, this was so they could fulfill a prophecy so Jesus could come and be born in Bethlehem. The next stressor that Joseph had to deal with is he had to take his family to Egypt. He had to get up because Herod the king had tried to get some wise men who were coming to visit Jesus and said, tell me where this baby is so I can kill him because he's a threat to me. And so in a dream, Joseph said, go to Egypt so you can survive and escape there. And you're not killed and your baby is protected and your wife is protected. And again, it came because of a dream and it came to fulfill prophecy so I can call my son out of Egypt.

But the next one is Joseph returns to Judea, but not really because he can't go back there because he had a dream that says Herod's dead. Come on back. But then he's going back and he says, actually, there's a really bad man still there that wants to kill you. So he moves to, uh, right from scriptures and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So it was fulfilled what was said through this prophecy that he would be called a Nazarene. So there you go. That's why we're called Nazarenes because we, uh, identify with Jesus, but, but really he went there because prophecy had to be fulfilled.

So he went to Nazareth. I don't think, and I cannot imagine that for one moment that Joseph did all of these things and made any of these decisions because he was fulfilling prophecy and he was doing it on his own. I think that he was running and doing the best that he could because he was choosing his family that he loved very much. I don't think Joseph was concerned that, Oh, the Messiah has to come out of Egypt. So I'm going to go there and then come back or, Oh, I have to go to Nazareth. I'm going to move there. He didn't make those decisions.

He wasn't going to make those decisions because he had to be visited by an angel of the Lord to go to these places. He was forewarned about these things, but he interpreted them correctly and identified them correctly because he was a faithful person. And he understood that that was a thing from God. So I don't think that, you know, Joseph is an important person, but again, not because he knew scripture this well to, to be like, I'm going to make the prophecies happen, but it's because he loved his family and wanted to protect them and to keep them safe. And the stories we reflect on during this Advent period, you know, it's very condensed, obviously Jesus didn't start his ministry until he was 30. So this is all of, all of Jesus' early childhood when he was very young, having to run from place to place, to place, to be protected. And we can sometimes take those, these stories for granted.

And I was thinking about it, like we live pretty privileged lives that we can celebrate every year, the cycle of Advent in a relatively safe environment, at least in my context, I can do that. But the stories I'm reading is these, these decisions people have to make that are full of anxiety and running and death and fear and worry, and just trying to be faithful to the word of God. Those stories are happening right now, today to people, and they aren't making decisions based on prophecy that might or might not be written about them. They're not making decisions based on like end times prophecy or the coming back of Jesus. They're making decisions based on loving their family and trying to survive. People are living like this today. And so I was thinking our decisions matter very much, how we, in the moment, our decisions matter so much.

And, you know, God, God chose people, God created people. So God chose creation. And then God chose Mary and this family to have Jesus be born into the world. And Mary said, yes, I don't know. We're not seeing that. She went back to Joseph and said, Hey, I had this crazy idea. And God came to me and said, I should have a baby.

You know, she said, yes, she was faithful to what God was saying to her. And then Joseph was faithful to Mary and respected her and loved her. But then he was faithful even more to the Lord when he said, I will do what you have commanded me to do. He provided the path. God and the Holy Spirit helped provide the paths necessary to protect his family. Even if Joseph wasn't aware, I mean, he could have always disregarded these dreams. You know, you have a crazy dream and you're like, okay, that was a weird dream and then not do anything about it.

But Joseph chose to interpret and understand, or at least set himself up to be able to do that. When it happened, Jesus himself chose his disciples, pick them, invited them each to come to teach and to love them. And right before his death, Jesus calls them his friends. And so the scripture we read today, John 15, I'm going to go back a little bit.

I'm going to read 12 through 17. So from the book of John, this is right before he's about to be betrayed. Actually, he's already promised the Holy Spirit to come to them. And he's given like these last teachings. And this is what Jesus says in John, starting in chapter 15, verse 12. My command is this, love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one, greater love has no one than, goodness gracious, greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.

You are my friends. If you do what I command, I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends for everything that I learned from my father. I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. And so that whatever you ask in my name, the father will give you. This is my command, love each other.

The command is to love each other, which reflects the greatest command, love the Lord God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. And likewise, love your neighbor as yourself. The command is to love. When we come together as a body of believers, we are to do so in the pursuit of loving one another as Jesus loves us. We love because Jesus loves us and we give ourselves to one another and we give ourselves over to one another as Jesus himself gave himself to us.

And so N. T. Wright writes this, I was reading, N. T. Wright's an Anglican pastor in Church of England, a very big thinker. He writes that Jesus though issues the command of love that we are to love one another and so to remain in his love because he has acted out and will act out, talking about going to the cross, the greatest thing that love can do. He has come to make us more human, not less.

He has given, he has come to give us freedom and joy, not slavery and a semi-human stupor. He has come so that we can bear fruit that will last, whether in terms of a single life changed because we love somebody as Jesus loved us or in terms of a single decision that we had to take, a single task that we had to perform through which, though we couldn't see it at the time, the world became a different place. Love makes the lover and the beloved more truly human. Our decisions that we make can be based in love or they can be based in not love. It's kind of the duality of it, but when you make a decision, it could be the smallest thing in the world, the simplest decision, but when you do it out of love, it can have lasting effects on the world around you and lasting effects, not just currently in this time, but as Joseph made decisions in that time for the all of humanity through all of creation. When you feel what it means to give your life to someone else willingly and to do it fully, you will know what it is like to fully experience humanity, and when you run from that call, you will remember what it's like to live in a broken world full of walls of defensiveness, rejection, and hurt. You will experience and pass on rejection, which is the opposite of love, but when you give yourself over, that could be through marriage, your kids.

You know what I will gladly give my life for. When our kid was born, this baby, I will protect it with everything I have. I know what it means to be something greater than myself, or when you get married, you take those vows. You will start to experience this, and every day is a choice. I learn this more and more every single day, but every decision you make is a choice. Your choices matter, and your choices, as Jesus did, should be and are and can be out of love.