Step by Step

This is the message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, July 12, 2015.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 2:13-23.

            Last week, as we continue our sermon series on Mary, the mother of Jesus, we looked at the birth of Jesus.  We don’t know how long Mary and Joseph had to stay in Bethlehem after Jesus was born.  Long enough for the wise men to come, but we have no way of knowing how long that actually was.

            However long it was, though, I’m sure both Mary and Joseph reached a point where they just wanted to go home.  Get back to Nazareth, get started on their life together, start raising Jesus the way good Jewish parents should.  But, as we heard in our Bible reading for today, it was not that simple.

            An angel appears to Joseph.  The angel could’ve appeared to Mary, or to both of them, but the angel just appears to Joseph.  And the angel says that they cannot go home.  They’ve got to go to Egypt instead, because King Herod is out to kill Jesus.  They’ve got to stay in Egypt until Herod is dead, and of course they have no idea how long that will be.

            The Bible does not tell us how Mary and Joseph felt, but we can imagine it, right?  To have been through all this, to have gotten through the long trip and the difficult birth of Jesus, and then not be able to go home again?  And not only were they not able to go home, they had to go to a foreign country, a country where people spoke a different language and where people worshipped different gods.  It had to be so disappointing and discouraging for them.

            You know, when the angel Gabriel told Mary about giving birth to the savior, Gabriel somehow left out a whole bunch of stuff.  Not only did Gabriel leave out the part about having to travel eighty miles to Bethlehem for the birth, Gabriel somehow forgot to mention that when they left, it would be quite some time before they were able to come home again.

            I wonder if Mary kind of felt like she’d been tricked.  I mean, I can imagine her thinking, “So, Gabriel, when you told me about Jesus, you did not think all this stuff was important?  You did not think I’d be interested?  It did not cross your mind to tell me that I’d have to travel eighty miles while I was nine months pregnant?  It never occurred to you that it would be helpful for me to know that I would not be able to go home again afterward?  Somehow, that all just slipped your mind?”

            I mean, think of what Mary and Joseph are facing.  They’ve got to go to a foreign country.  We don’t know if they spoke the language there.  And they probably have very little but the clothes on their backs.  After all, they were planning to go back home to Nazareth when all this was over.  They probably left a lot of stuff behind.  They’re having to start from scratch, having to try to find a way to start life over again in Egypt. 

And, by the way, they have to do this with a baby, a baby who incidentally is supposed to grow up to be the savior of the world.  They’ve got to teach him about Jewish law and Jewish customs.  They’ve got to teach him about God.  And they’ve got to do that in a place where there’s no temple, no synagogue, no rabbis, no nothing.

Can you and I relate to any of this?  Well, not directly.  I mean, none of us was asked to be the parent to the savior of the world.  But I’ll bet there’s a way some of us can relate to it.

Have you ever been faced with a situation that was not really of your making, a situation that you did not ask to be in, but it just kind of got dropped on you?  And you figured, well, okay, I’ll take care of this and do my best, and then as you got into it you found out there was a bunch more stuff involved, stuff that the people who put you into that situation had to know about, but did not tell you?

I’ll give you an example from my life.  My first United Methodist appointment was in North Sioux City.  Now, I knew that this was a church that was struggling.  And I was told, before I went there, that the church building they had was far too big for their needs, that they could not afford it, and that they’d eventually need to move out.  But somehow, everybody forgot to mention to me that they’d need to move out one month after we got there.  That we had one month to try to find a place to have worship services and to try to figure out what we were going to do with all our stuff.

Now, I’m not at all comparing what I faced with what Mary and Joseph faced.  I’m just saying that a lot of us can think times where we got into a situation and found out that there were things about that situation that people just kind of conveniently forgot to tell us.  And when something like that happens, we feel a little bit betrayed, right?  We feel like, how come you could not just be honest with me?  Why could you not just tell me all the stuff I needed to know right away, instead of waiting until I was committed and could not turn back and then telling me all this stuff?  Were you afraid I would refuse to do it, and so you thought you had to trick me into it?

So, was God dishonest with Mary?  Did God trick Mary into this?  Did God betray Mary’s trust by not telling her everything she was going to have to face if she agreed to this?

Well, I can understand why someone might look at it that way.  But before we do, let’s think about it a little more.

Think again of that time when people conveniently forgot to tell you some things about a situation.  How’d it turn out?  Were you able to succeed anyway?  And even if you did not succeed, did you feel good that you at least tried?  Did you get some satisfaction out of doing the best you could to help, even if everything did not go the way you wanted it to?  Did you learn some things—and maybe even learn some things about yourself—that helped you later in life?  Were you glad for the experience, even if you might not have gotten into it in the first place if you’d known everything about it?

That’s how it was for me.  I might not have taken that first appointment if I’d known everything.  I might have been too scared of it, too intimidated by the situation.  Whether we succeeded depends on your definition of success, but we felt good about the things we did.  We got satisfaction about doing our best.  We learned some things about ministry and we learned some things about ourselves.  And we’re glad we had that experience.  It made us better able to serve you and to serve this parish.

And maybe that how it was with Mary.  Mary was not told everything she would’ve liked to know before she agreed to give birth to Jesus.  And maybe, if the angel Gabriel had been directed by God to tell Mary everything, to tell her about the trip to Bethlehem and the shepherds and the wise men, to tell her about how they were going to have to go to Egypt after the birth of Jesus, maybe she’d have said no.  But I think she’d have been sorry if she had.  The Bible does not give us even a hint that Mary ever regretted her decision to be the mother of the savior.  In fact, it tells us that she saw it as an incredible honor from God.

God never shows us the whole future.  In fact, sometimes God shows us very little of the future.  I’ve said that sometimes I wonder how my life would’ve turned out if I’d known what I was doing.  The fact is that it might’ve turned out a lot worse.  Because while there have been and still are many times when I don’t know what I’m doing, God always knows what I’m doing.  And God knows what you’re doing, too. 

Martin Luther King defined faith as being able to take the first step even when we don’t see the whole staircase.  We might like to see the whole staircase, but it seems to me there are reasons God does not show it to us.  It might be too long.  It might be really winding.  It might not have handrails.  If we saw the whole staircase, we might never have the courage to take the first step.

  God very rarely shows us the whole staircase.  God does not tell us everything that our future holds.  God asks us to take that first step, and to have enough faith in God to believe that God will guide us for the second step, and the third step, and the fourth step, and all the other steps after that.  And, step by step, God will guide us through life.

Mary took the first step when she agreed to do as the angel Gabriel said.  She did not see what the other steps were going to be.  She may have been scared.  She may have felt like God was not being fair to her.  But in the end, Mary did what she needed to do.  And as far as we can tell, Mary thought it was all worth it.

Mary trusted God every step of the way.  If we trust God, God will lead us, step by step by step.  And eventually, we’ll get where God wants us to go.  And we’ll find out that it’s all worth it.