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Sunday, December 29, 2013

Making It Work

Below is the message given in the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, December 29, 2013.  The Bible verses are Matthew 2:13-15.
            On Christmas Eve, we talked about how a lot of times, we’d like to just leave the Christmas story where our Nativity scenes leave it, with the baby Jesus in the manger with Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the wise men.  The thing is that the people who were actually involved in the story, including Jesus and Mary and Joseph, did not have the option of leaving the story there.  They had to go on living their lives.  And today we heard what came next for them.  They had to leave their native country and escape to Egypt, so King Herod would not kill Jesus.
            In telling us about this, Matthew does not seem to make a big deal out of it.  He tells us that an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream to tell him to take his family to Egypt, and so they went.  A little later, in verses we did not read, we’re told that after Herod died the angel appeared one more time and said it was safe for them to go back to Israel.  And we’re told that all this happened to fulfill the words of the prophet Hosea, who said, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
            That’s all well and good, but it kind of minimizes the reality of it, don’t you think?  I mean, imagine you’re Joseph or Mary.  You’re already a long way from home in Bethlehem.  Now, you’re told you cannot go back home.  You have to go to a foreign country.  You have nothing but whatever you brought with you when you came to Bethlehem.  You have no idea whether you’ll be welcome there.  You don’t even know how many people will speak your language.  But like parents today, you’d do almost anything to protect your baby.  So, if that means you have to go to Egypt, then you go to Egypt.  And you hope to figure out what you’ll do when you get there.
            But the thing is, you don’t really get to know why.  I mean, yes, we’re told this is to fulfill the words of the prophet, but that’s an explanation that really does not explain.  The prophecy was the word of God, spoken through Hosea, but there was nothing that said God had to tell Hosea that the son would be called out of Egypt.  God could’ve said “the son will be called out of Bethlehem.”  God could’ve said “the son will be called out of Nazareth”.  We assume God had a reason for telling Hosea “Egypt”, but we have no idea what that reason was.  And neither did Joseph or Mary.  All they could do was trust that, if God was behind it, then God must know what God was doing and that there was a reason for it.  Maybe some day they’d find out what it was, or maybe they never would.  But for now, all they could do was to do what God was telling them to do, go where God was leading them to go, and trust that it would all work out somehow.
            And it seems to me that this is how it works for us in our lives, too.  We don’t have an angel come and tell us what to do, of course.  And our lives are not lived to fulfill the words of any Old Testament prophets.  But even so, I think it happens this way for us an awful lot of the time.  Things happen, and we have no idea why they’ve happened.  Sometimes they seem to happen for the good.  Sometimes they seem to happen for the bad.  But either way, they happen.  And maybe there’s a reason for it, but we don’t know what that reason is.  All we can do is trust that, if God is behind it, then God know must know what God is doing and that there must be a reason for it.  Maybe some day we’ll find out what that reason is, or maybe we never will.  But for now, all we can do is to do what God is telling us to do, go where God is leading us to go, and trust that it will all work out somehow.
            And that’s really hard to do.  I’m sure it was hard for Mary and Joseph to do, too.  Even with the angel saying what it did, there must have been a part of them that said, “You know, maybe we could just go back to Nazareth and hide out for a while.  Nobody’d have to know we were there.  If any Roman soldiers came, we could always just hide Jesus somewhere.  We have lots of friends there.  We know lots of hiding places.  They’d never find us.  It’d be okay.  It’d sure be a lot easier than going to Egypt.”  They had to be tempted to take what must’ve seemed to them to be the easy way out.
            And we’re tempted to do that, too.  We can tell that God is leading us in a certain direction, but we don’t really want to go in that direction, just as I’m sure Mary and Joseph really did not want to go to Egypt.  And we’re tempted to think, “You know, maybe we could just go in this other direction instead.  It’d probably be all right.  It’d be a lot more comfortable.  It’d be a lot more familiar.  It’d be okay.  It’d sure be a lot easier than going in the direction God seems to want us to go.”  And sometimes we do just that.
            Could Mary and Joseph have chosen to stay in Bethlehem, or to go back to Nazareth, rather than going to Egypt?  Well, yeah, I suppose they could have.  I mean, they had free will, just like we do.  But God did not choose Joseph and Mary by accident.  God chose them precisely because God knew they had it in them to do what God had told them to do.  Not because they had no choice, but because they had faith.  God knew they had enough faith in God to go where God told them to go, even if it was to a foreign country, and trust that God would make it all work out for the best.
            And God does not choose you and me by accident, either.  God chooses us because God knows we have it in us to do what God tells us to do.  God gives us the choice, but God asks us to have faith.  God asks us to have enough faith in God to go where God tells us to go, and to do what God tells us to do, and to trust that God will make it all work out for the best.
            God knows we’d like to know why, but most of the time, God does not tell us.  Not only does God usually not tell us why, God usually does not tell us why God is not telling us why.  Maybe it’s because we would not understand it anyway, because God’s purposes can be so far beyond our understanding.  Maybe it’s because if we knew why, we would not have the courage to obey.  Maybe it’s because if we knew why, we’d start arguing about it with God.  I don’t know why we don’t get to know why.  But most of the time we don’t, and even if we do, it’s usually a long time after the fact, when we can look back and see the reasons for what happened.  At the time, all we can do is what Joseph and Mary did:  go where God is leading us to go, do what God is leading us to do, and trust God that it will all work out.
            It cannot have been easy for Joseph and Mary in Egypt.  We’re not told anything about their life there, but we know they went there with very little, and without any real plan for what they were going to do when they got there.  But with God’s help, they figured it out.  We assume Joseph must have used his skills as a carpenter to provide for the family.  Maybe he got a job, maybe he went into business for himself.  Somehow, they made it.  They did what they had to do.  And God saw them through all their hard times.  They made it through, and things did work out for them.
            It’s not easy for us sometimes, either.  Sometimes we don’t have any real plan for what we’re going to do.  But with God’s help, we figure it out.  Somehow, we make it.  We do what we have to do.  God will see us through all our hard times.  We’ll make it through, and things will work out for us.
           We’d like to leave the story of Christmas with the baby Jesus in the safety of the manger.  And we’d like to leave our lives in places where we’re safe, too.  But we don’t have that option, any more than Joseph and Mary and Jesus did.  We have to go on with our lives, just as they did.  But if we can trust God the way they did, if we can go where God is leading us to do and do what God is leading us to do and trust God, God will see us through.  We won’t always be safe.  But we can trust that somehow, God will make things work out for us.

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