December 19, 2010 "THE SIGN OF THE ORDINARY BEING SET APART"

Isaiah 7:10-25
Matthew 1: 18- 25
One of my favorite amusements on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, is to listen to the Radio on NPR, to a Broadcast called “What Do You Know?” Amid all the trivia of the past week's news, they play a game, of offering some obscure word no one has ever heard, and asking not only for definitions, but then to choose among these for what is right. “Poplollies” & “Bellibones”, Barlafumbles” and “Lubber-wort”.

What a marvelous word for our time!
Because the word is not what we thought it meant, the Word of God is Sign of the Ordinary Set Apart!

For like King Ahaz, we have sought to create the best and brightest of human culture, to create miracles, to surpass anything and everything anyone has ever known. We look to our military, to technology, to science, to human will, and to our Government to resolve all the world's dilemma. It is as if we believed, that if we worked harder and applied ourselves more, we could fix ourselves, having no need for troubling God with the ordinary.

Like Joseph, we try to do what is right, integrating faith and life. We follow the law, we obey the commandments, we attend Church on Sunday and go about our lives, when suddenly there are insurmountable circumstances which we cannot fix.

Perhaps our circumstance is as huge as replacing Social Security and Health Care, resolving the International Debt Crisis, preparing for a Referendum of Secession and creation of a New Nation, with the shadow of impending war; or it is as intimate and personal, as the serious illness of a child, the closing of a business you have worked at a lifetime, being unable to pay for your children to go to college, confronting family about old issues, confronting depression, coping with an unplanned pregnancy, the death of a loved one. Each of which, are enormous and insurmountable, in our reality.

The answer is not in ignoring the reality of God, taking everything upon ourselves, as if kings;
nor in making so many concessions, in our faith and reality, so many accommodations to what we know to be true that we create belief in half truths. But instead, the SIGN that comes from the Prophet Isaiah, taken up and fulfilled in the time of Joseph the Carpenter, is that the Ordinary can be Set Apart as miraculous.

We have to be careful in appropriating the Word of God. For the Old Testament had an independent and full heritage as the Scriptures of the Community of Faith before the first Christians were baptized. When the Prophet Isaiah confronted King Ahaz in the 8th Century BC, some 720 years before the Census of Quirinius of Syria, Isaiah was not saying:
“Behold, Centuries from now, none of this will matter because a young girl will give birth to a Savior!” NO, Isaiah was speaking of their time, pointing to a young girl already pregnant and stating that within the intervening years of this child being born, nursing and growing to eat solid foods (curds and honey), God will intervene changing the circumstance of the world.

The point of this prophecy from Isaiah was not about the Virginity of Mary.
The point Isaiah was making was that the girl they both could see was already pregnant, was already showing, soon to deliver. How long, between the time a child is born and eating solid foods, a year, 3? We have neatly excised these words from long ago, removing them from their context, ignoring as Ahaz did the Prophecy of Isaiah. “On that Day, The Lord God will whistle for flies and bees to come up from Egypt, for the Promised land to become a wilderness of thorns and briars and brambles again.” King Ahaz was so distracted by the affairs of State, by wars and rumors of wars, he could not see what was going on eroding the culture from within.

We live in a world of 30 Seconds of Fame. Fifty years ago, in December 1960, two commercial airplanes collided over New York City. It was the worst disaster since the Hindenburg, similar to the circumstance of 9-11. And Yet, the day after, the news cycle had already moved on, there was another local fire, new events in the world. What Isaiah tried to say was that all the political maneuvering, all the Government had spent lifetimes creating would be forgot within 3 years.

As much as any of us have lost in the recent Recession, we look for signs of the return of The Boom. Headlines this week read: Airlines coping with excess baggage! A clear indication that the National Economy is soaring anew, because people flying home for the holidays had purchased presents and were willing to pay the airlines' charge for excess baggage. What is it going to take for us to realize we are already part of a new economy? The former times are not going to return. There are already new times upon us. How long does it take to acclimate to a new normal?

But that was Joseph's dilemma, caught between being Righteous and being in Love, what was he to do? To have have fallen in love (there is no evidence here that this was an arranged marriage of their parents), to have publicly celebrated the union of these families, exchanged the Dowry, in essence answered the “I Do” questions of Intent without yet having stated the vows and exchanged rings, what was he to do with a Woman who was already pregnant? The issue for Joseph was not that his Property had been violated. Not that Mary had been with someone else, or had loved another. What is described here, is that Joseph so believed in Marriage, that finding her to be with child would profane God. Joseph resolved to divorce her quietly, to forsake his dowry, because he was caught between shaming God, or shaming the woman he loved?

The Bible is different from the culture in which the Gospels and Epistles were written. The Greeks and Romans believed in merging the Divine and the Human, as if to say that the Gods are a little profane, and humanity as sinful as we are is also divine. Matthew's Gospel is choosing to make a different point, that Jesus as Son of God, is not HALF-HUMAN and HALF-GOD, not God masquerading as a man, but rather Fully Human and Fully Divine. So rather than choose, between Righteousness and Love, or making an accommodation between the two, God reveals to Joseph in a dream another interpretation. Ironically, according to matthew, it is only because Joseph claimed the child that Jesus is descended from David.

Throughout the Scriptures, the Birth of Isaac, the birth of Moses, the birth of Samuel, the birth of John the Baptist, all were also considered Miraculous Births, Interventions by God visiting a woman. The point in each, is not about promiscuity, but that the Birth of a Child, the Ordinary being Set Apart as Miraculous is somehow a sign of a new possibility.

Years ago, in another parish, there was a family with an only child. They had come to the Church after the child was already a few years of age, so when Confirmation took place, we were looking forward to her baptism as a Believer, rather than affirmation of her parents' faith commitment. During that year, of preparation and study, the fourteen year old was found to be with child. SO, what was the Church to do? Without question, the Church claimed her, baptizing her and her baby and the Church claimed responsibility of standing beside this family in all that was to come.

How often, we make accommodations, we acquiesce, we acclimate to a middle ground, or we stand principles. What if there were another option, of understanding that possibly God is using this circumstance as a sign for others. I am continually amazed how often, after a child graduates, or marries, or a family goes through a crisis, people come forward declaring “We were watching what you would do, not to judge, but as a sign for what we might do when faced with the same circumstance, trying to make the Ordinary, set apart.”