God Took a Risk

Well, what would you have done? What would you have done if you were Joseph? He was betrothed to Mary. He didn’t know her well, but their families had arranged it all. First there was the engagement, then there was the betrothal ceremony that sealed the promises made in the engagement. She was now the right age, fourteen or so. Even though he and Mary were still living with their own families – they would start living together a year after the betrothal -- they were truly promised to each other, really they were as good as already married. Now what? Mary is pregnant for Pete’s sake! And by whom? She can’t say. The baby isn’t Joseph’s, that’s for sure.

What do you suppose Joseph felt? What would you have felt? Wouldn’t Joseph have been outraged? At Mary for doing this to him? At whoever did it with her? Wouldn’t he have been embarrassed? My God, the shame! People would think that either Joseph couldn’t control himself until the actual wedding, or that he’d let himself be betrayed. And how could he raise a child that everyone knew wasn’t his? And then mixed in with the rage and embarrassment, wouldn’t Joseph also have felt deep grief? Grief for the life with Mary that he had been so joyfully expecting? Grief for Mary, for what would await her as an unmarried mother? Why had she done this? And, my God, what was she feeling? Wasn’t she embarrassed too? Was she sorry about what she’d done? Knowing her, most probably she was terrified about what would happen next.

O Mary! O God, what should he do? The law about pregnancy before marriage was harsh. If Joseph remembered correctly, it said something like, “If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death…” (Deut. 22:23-24). Should he tell people what she had done? But then what? What would happen to her? Maybe he should just divorce her quietly and let her go to her cousin Elizabeth’s house? Wouldn’t that be the right thing to do? As Joseph lay in bed that night, tossing and turning, all his thoughts and feelings swirled around in his head. What should he do? What should he do?

O.K. Let’s stop right there. Let’s think about this. [Turning to the right side of the church] You people, on this side, I want you to think about all the options that Mary had in this situation. Here she was pregnant before marriage, and her fiancé wasn’t the father. What might she have done? [Turning to the left side of the church] Now you folks, on this side, I want you to think about the options that Joseph had in this situation. What could he have done? And both groups: is there anything either of them could have done, or the two of them together, that the Gospel story doesn’t mention? Take a minute or two to think about the various possibilities. [Then query each side as to what they came up with.]

Well, there were some other possibilities, weren’t there? However, we know how Scripture tells us the story came out. In the midst of his tossing and turning, Joseph had a vivid sensation of a visit from a presence. Maybe it was dream, who knows? The presence told him not to do any of the things he’d initially considered, or that were perhaps possible, but to go through with the marriage, and adopt this child as his own. And he did just that. And more. Some months after the child was born, and after those strange eastern politicians had come and gone, Joseph took Mary and the child to safety in Egypt and then later on even brought them safely back home to Nazareth. Was he there for the totally unexpected end to this strange child’s life thirty-three years later? We don’t know. Mary was there, but we don’t know about Joseph. We do know that Joseph followed through on what God had asked of him in this part of the story, and that he played his part with faith, mercy, and courage.

It didn’t have to be that way. God took a risk. God has always taken risks with creation and with human beings, with us unstable and undependable creatures. Think of some of the major players in the Old Testament stories: stuttering Moses, fleeing Jonah, too-young Jeremiah, Rahab the prostitute, Ruth the Moabite Gentile. In making the choice take our flesh, to become one of us, to be Emmanuel, God-with-us, God really took a risk. From first to last, this story is God’s story, but the fulfillment of the story needed the human actors. And God took the risk of depending on human beings to do their part. Scripture makes it look easy for them, but it wasn’t. These aren’t fairy stories. I’d bet there was plenty of tossing and turning for all these people. Fortunately, for God, and, more importantly, for us, the human actors in this story and the others did what God might have hoped they would: they let the Holy Spirit work through them, they accepted God’s plan, and they faithfully carried it out.

Does God still want to work through us risky and undependable human beings to accomplish God’s saving will in the world? Absolutely! Consider this. In about 1350 a group of Jews living in Barcelona had a haggadah made. The haggadah is the book of the liturgy for the Passover Seder, the ritual meal. This particular haggadah was beautifully illustrated with thirty-four scenes from Scripture, and it was lovingly bound in fine calfskin. By God’s grace, and with human cooperation, it also survived many close calls with destruction. When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, someone managed to smuggle it out. Some marginal notes show that it was in Italy in the 16th century. Again to save it, someone then smuggled it into the Ottoman Empire, where Jews were welcome. Then a man named Joseph Kohen sold it to the National Museum in Sarajevo in 1894. During World War II, the chief librarian of the museum, a Muslim named Dervis Korkut, risked his own life and saved the haggadah from the Nazis by smuggling it out of Sarajevo. Korkut gave it to a Muslim cleric who hid it under the floorboards of a mosque. When Serb forces broke into the museum during the war in Bosnia in the early ‘90s, the haggadah was nearly trashed. However, a local Muslim police inspector, Fahrudin Cebo, made sure it survived by hiding it in an underground bank vault. The haggadah was finally restored in 2001, and has been on permanent display at the museum since December, 2002. But it didn’t have to work out that way, did it? By God’s grace, undependable human beings, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, helped to keep alive a service book for the liturgy that defines the Jews as a people, and for that reason alone, is also important to us as Jesus’ disciples.

Can we think of similar examples from our own lives? Can we think of examples of God’s taking the risk to work God’s will through human beings, perhaps even through people who at first glance might not even seem up to doing anything at all for God? I invite you thinki of people that you know. [Pause.] As I look around this church, at the windows and the memorial plaques, I know for a fact that God has been working through risky, undependable human beings, people who could done anything else with their resources but invest them here, in keeping this parish alive. And somehow those people rose to the challenge and generously supported this church. Do we know their stories? Do we appreciate how God worked through them? Will we let God work through us as well?

It’s not a sure thing, is it? God acted marvelously in taking human flesh and coming among us. But the human actors in God’s story also had to show faith, mercy, and courage. As do we, when God shows up in our lives. Make no mistake, God may ask us to do something unexpected. Perhaps we’ll be resistant, angry, embarrassed, sorrowful, perplexed, or all of the above. Perhaps we’ll toss and turn and wonder what we should do. But perhaps when we ponder the story of Mary and Joseph, we can imagine ourselves also acting courageously, even when we really feel like cowards inside. We can trust God’s promises and take the first step forward in faith. When we do respond to God’s requests with faith and trust, even if we’re not sure what’s coming next, God will be with us, God will do the rest, and God will be able to accomplish God’s will through us. Thanks be to God!