The
holy gospel according to Matthew.
18Now
the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.
When
his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph,
but
before they lived together,
she
was found to be with child from the Holy
Spirit.
19Her
husband Joseph,
being
a righteous man and unwilling to expose
her to public disgrace,
planned
to dismiss her quietly.
20But
just when he had resolved to do this,
an
angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said,
“Joseph,
son of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary as your
wife,
for
the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
21She
will bear a son,
and
you are to name him Jesus,
for
he will save his people from their sins.”
22All
this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord
through
the prophet:
23“Look,
the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and
they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which
means, “God is with us.”
24When
Joseph awoke from sleep,
he
did as the angel of God commanded him;
he
took Mary home as his wife,
25but
had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son;
and
he named him Jesus.
The
Gospel of the Lord.
------
One
of my favorite TV shows is Joan of
Arcadia. In the show God, in
various personifications, show up and talks to a high schooler named Joan. In one episode God asks Joan to keep
her friend Adam’s art piece out of the art show. When Joan doesn’t, Adam wins the art show, sells his
sculpture, and decides to use the money to quit school.
Joan
is distraught. Realizing why God
didn’t want the piece in the show, she does the only thing she can think of in
that moment: she smashes Adam’s sculpture.
Joan
encounters God again toward the end of the episode and lists all the ways she
tried to stop things—talking Adam into not entering the show, buying the piece
herself, stealing it. Nothing else
worked and as she gets ready to blame God for “making her” destroy the
sculpture, God says, “Don’t blame me for your failure of imagination.”
Joan
and Joseph are in similar situations.
He is as good as married to Mary according to custom and law, only to
find out that she is pregnant and it’s not his kid.
What’s
a guy to do? Divorce is the only
option he can imagine. It’s just a
matter of doing it quietly or publicly.
He can bring her to the public square, which would bring shame to her
and her whole family, or he can “dismiss her quietly”—get a quick
divorce and send her back to live with her family and raise her child, if her family will have her back, that
is. With any luck—which she’d need
a lot of—she will survive all of this, the child will as well, and they can all
move on with their separate lives.
Joan
and Joseph both have a failure of imagination. In fact, we as humans quite frequently suffer from failures
of imagination. We can only imagine
two less than ideal, and usually mutually exclusive options. We have created an either/or
world.
Joan
can either brake Adam’s sculpture or let him quit high school. Joseph can either quietly divorce Mary
or make it into a public scene. We
can either provide military support to the Syrian government besieging Aleppo
or provide military support to the rebel forces fighting back.
We can either get into arguments or
talk only about neutral topics and to people with whom we agree. We can either be upset about the new
school or support our students. We
can either want justice or forgive someone who has wronged us. We can either be sinners or saints. We can either be sick or whole. Jesus can either be human or divine. God can either be three or one.
And
then God steps in, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived
in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will bear a son, and you are
to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
God’s
imagination is bigger than ours.
Joan
could have asked the woman who bought the sculpture to make her purchase
contingent on Adam staying in school.
Joseph can remain faithful to Mary and help raise Jesus, who is Immanuel,
God-with-us. We can support
Doctors without Borders and the White Helmets who are rescuing those left
behind in Aleppo. We can seek to
understand each other’s perspectives when we disagree and have conversations
about how we care differently for the most vulnerable.
We
can volunteer at the new school to show our care for the students, and
appreciation of the staff. We can
forgive others for harm and hold them accountable for helping restore the community
that was fractured by the wrong they committed. We can be both sinners who do wrong and saints, made righteous
by God through our baptism. We can
struggle with illness and be so full of love that we draw a community together
in support and care. Jesus is both
fully human and fully divine. God
is both three and one, the holy Trinity.
God’s
imagination is greater by far than ours and God’s embrace, despite our best
efforts, is wider. God in Jesus is
both fully human and fully divine.
Jesus does experience the ups and downs, twists and turns of human life with us. God-with-us, Immanuel, is also big enough to embrace the
whole cosmos, to bring all of life and love into being.
When we are struck with a failure of imagination, it only
takes a brief search in the Bible to find our imaginative God who brings both
light and dark into the world, who advocates for justice and peace, who
restores wholeness to individuals in communities. Who comes as human and divine, who acknowledges the reality
of human institutions of authority and God’s reign, which holds ultimate
authority. Jesus brings an
alternative to violence—renewed opportunities for relationship and resistance
to evil that does not require violence.
When we are faced with a failure of imagination, God-with-us,
Immanuel, fills the world with endless imagination.
Thanks be to God.
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