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The Challenge to let God lead us
The opening line of the Gospel for the fourth Sunday of Advent fits well into the time of the season, ‘This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.’ Christmas is around the corner! Matthew’s narrative is very realistic about the uncertainty, doubts and the near break-up of the planned marriage of Joseph and Mary. Then he tells us about the Dream of Joseph. The mention of dream and the name Joseph reminds us about the great Joseph, the dreamer of the Old Testament. That story too, was about the intervention of God in tragic times. In the present story, Joseph is given the privilege of naming the child, an accepted norm in those days of becoming a legal parent. The name of the child focuses our attention on this child’s role in the history of God’s acting to save his people: Jesus, which the Evangelist glosses as “the one who is to save his people from their sins”; and Emmanuel, which, echoing Isaiah’s prophecy, we are told means “God-is-with-us”.God is with us; God comes to us in a manner long expected and hoped for yet, in a manner that could scarcely have been anticipated. The God who makes things new begins His salvation of humankind from its self-inflicted shipwreck in an entirely unforeseen way. Joseph follows through with the plans proposed by the angel, despite his fears, his injured pride, his entirely reasonable suspicion, in human terms, that his betrothed had betrayed him.
It is useful to compare Joseph’s response to God’s creative act with the example in Isaiah’s prophecy in our first reading. At first glance, we might assume that Ahaz is acting out of piety, for it was a long tradition in Israel that one should not put the Lord to the test. But this was a confrontation between prophet and king; a confrontation which demonstrates where the hearts of each sought salvation. Isaiah, as the prophet of God, has given an assurance to the king that faith in God will save, even in a political crisis. Ahaz has been warned that only this will save his kingdom of Judah from his enemies in the North, the kingdom of Israel and the far more threatening power of the Assyrians. Now, in a defiant challenge to the king, the prophet invites him to ask for a sign, to test whether the prophet speaks God’s truth. Ahaz evades the issue, because he does not want to subject his policies and stratagems to the claims of faith, of belief in God and God’s commandments, because he wants to preserve his autonomy and not be influenced by reliance on faith. And that brings him to disaster, signaled by the oracle he is given; the oracle spoken by the prophet of “my God”, no longer the God of Ahaz, for he has in effect rejected God, abandoned God’s ways. Ahaz’s example can be uncomfortably close to our manner of living in the present. Do we listen for God’s voice and respond, as Joseph did, even when it seems extraordinarily challenging, even foolish; or do we cling to our own ‘clever plans’, which will likely bring us, eventually, to disaster?
Matthew assures us that God is with us, the Emmanuel; and closes it with the promise of the Risen Lord to his disciples just before he in his humanity ascends fully to God’s presence “know that I am with you always, yes, to the close of the age”. As we come closer to the celebration of God gifting His son to the world, we have added reason to let ourselves be guided by Jesus who comes to us as a babe in Bethlehem, as wisdom in the Scripture and as Bread at every Eucharist. Fr Tom Kunnel, C.O.