This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her fiancé, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.
As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:
“Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel,
which means ‘God is with us.’”When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife.
Matthew 1:18-24
I love surprises. I love surprise parties, and surprise love notes and surprise Christmas gifts. In the months since we were married and moved in together, my husband Justin has figured out that an unexpected bouquet of flowers—even one of those inexpensive bunches from Trader Joe’s—can make a really positive impact in my disposition at home. I just love those kinds of spontaneous, bighearted surprises.
Not all surprises are so wonderful. I’m certain everyone in this chapel has experienced the unexpected shock of the death of a loved one, or the end of a cherished relationship, or a lost job or academic opportunity. These feel impossible to accept, given the loss they bring. There are also other kinds of surprises that are also difficult for us to shoulder, and those are the ones that require us to reconsider our assumptions about the way the world works, and about the way we are to live in it. Today’s scripture confronts us with such a surprise.
On Sunday began the season of Advent, that time of year in which we express our deep longing for Jesus’ coming into our world, and setting it right. We lament to Jesus that we live in a country in which there have been more mass shootings there have been days in this calendar year. We beg God to break in and end systemic racialized violence. In desperation, we plead to the Spirit to bring healing to our friends and loved ones who struggle with addiction and loneliness. We need Jesus to return. I need Jesus to return. Tell me if you need Jesus to return.
And so, in this first week of Advent, while it may seem like jumping the gun to have read a nativity text, weeks before Christmas, there is a wisdom in it. I think it’s only reasonable, as we express our deep yearning that Jesus would come to us again, to think about the way he arrived in this world the first time around, two thousand years ago. It’s a pretty big surprise. I don’t know about you, but if, in around 3 BC, I was looking for the King, promised by God, I probably would head to, I don’t know, a palace—some lovely estate owned by royals that could be able to parent someone who could be, you know, a future king. That would be my bet. Pretty low on my list of expectations would be a dark cave in the countryside, where an unwed teenage Galilean would birth the promised King. Guess which version God chooses?
It’s important here that we disabuse ourselves of the cuteness of such a scene. I know we like to dress up kids with angel wings and sheep costumes this time of year, but nothing about Jesus’ birth would have been cute. It would have been dark—psalm 23 dark—and, as first century stables were not constructed of wood, as the nativity scenes would have it, but were rather held in rural caves, Jesus’ birthplace was likely filled with the stench of dank air and of animal excrement. This baffles me, and I dare to say almost offends me. I’m inclined to say that Jesus, the Lord of the Universe, deserves better.
But God is sovereign, and Jesus chooses how to reveal himself to us. He chooses to surprise us. It almost seems like he takes the very place we’re expecting him to arrive, and he figures out what the opposite would be, and chooses to meet us there.
As we continue in this advent season, and wonder together how Jesus might appear to us again, I think the nativity story invites us to open our hearts to surprise; to confound our expectations of where the promised King wants to meet us; to imagine the place we think we might find Jesus, and go in the exact opposite direction. If, this Advent season, we’re expecting to find Jesus at church, and only at church, maybe we need to turn around and find him down the road at the Rescue Mission of Trenton. Or maybe, if we expect God is only to be found in inner-city mission work, maybe we need to go to the suburbs and do the good work of youth ministry with those upper-middle class teenagers who also yearn for the light of Christ.
Or: perhaps we needn’t go that far. Perhaps Jesus is inviting us to open our hearts to surprise here on this very campus. Such surprise will only made possible when we renounce our predictable seating patterns in Mackay, when we refuse to pigeonhole our Christian brothers and sisters in our precepts and seminars.
There’s no doubt that the kind of surprise Jesus wants us to open ourselves to requires hard work, the hard work of reconsidering much about the way we perceive our world. But, no matter how uncomfortable or unintuitive, the surprise of Jesus’ advent in the world is, above all, one of those happy surprises—though far better than some surprise party or bouquet of flowers. In the midst of darkness, Jesus offers us the most blessed gift of life itself.
As we enter that time of studying for final exams, composing applications to academic programs and jobs, spending time with family, and enjoying some much needed Sabbath, let us also dare to be surprised by the ways Jesus might appear in our lives. Amen.