Sermon Advent 4 2013

Sermon:

Text: Matthew 1:18-25

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who is coming and has come to us.

I love names. I’m not usually the best at remembering them, so what really interests me is what’s behind the name. Where did it come from? What does it mean? My name is not a family name, but it is of Norwegian origins like my dad’s side of the family. It means one ruler, eternal ruler, or ever powerful. I think it fits me. My sister is Marie, after a great grandmother on my mom’s side, Maria. My dad is Kent after his uncle Kenneth, and my mom Linda was the most popular girls name when my mom was born, I don’t think it had a specific family background.

I read a story this week about unusual baby names from this year, and one of them was cheese. Yes, multiple babies were named cheese this year, not a specific kind of cheese, but just cheese. I really don’t know what those people were thinking. 

Because the task of choosing a name for a baby is a rather important one. It’s not only what you are called by others, but many people think that your name defines to some extent who you are. I don’t really think about that myself, but if I did, I wonder if I would act differently.

All of this thought comes from out of our gospel text for today. We follow Joseph in the Matthew version of the annunciation. He goes through a number of huge descions in this text. He is engaged to marry Mary, and essentially in that culture they would be already thought of as married, they just haven’t moved in together or consummated the relationship. It’s a contract situation vs. our thoughts of love being involved in marriage. And as he is traveling to Bethlehem with his soon to be official wife, he finds something out about her. She’s pregnant. And he’s not the father. According to the law, which our text tells us he follows very well, it says, he is a righteous man, Joseph could have broken the engagement and thrown Mary out. He had every right at that time to send her away. That is one hard decision to make. He decides he’s going to, but quietly so she’s not kicked out of society as well.

But then, as he is sleeping, an angel appears to him. And solves a bunch of problems for him. Tells him, don’t worry about Mary being pregnant, God is at work here, and you don’t even have to decide what to call him. And the angel gives him two names, Jesus and Emmanuel. Joseph wakes up, and does as the angel commands, keeps Mary as his wife, and names the child Jesus.

Those two names the angel gives really have meaning though. It’s not just the most popular name of the time, or the name great uncle Frank had. Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua, which means the one who saves. And Emmanuel, as we know from the name of our church, means God with us.

Different than other names, where you hope to live into,  Jesus does exactly as his names say. As the Son of God, he is Emmanuel, God with us. And as Joshua or Jesus he saves the people from their sins.

I really like that these things are brought forward in this text, especially two days before Christmas Eve. We concentrate so much on Christmas that Christ’s actions on the cross seem to get set aside for a bit. But, today we remember who Christ is, and why he comes to us.

The baby who will be born for us in two days is the same man who goes to the cross for us in 4 months. In two days God comes to us, and is with us, and in 4 months, he saves us through his death.

And it’s so much more than that. These names here are more powerful than we imagine. Jesus – Joshua is not he who has saved, but he who saves, he who is saving now. As we look forward to Christ’s birth, life and death, it’s not something that happened well before us, not something way in the past. But, it’s still God completely active in the world, actively forgiving our sins, actively keeping us safe from the forces that seek to tempt us and devour us. And I find great comfort in that, because if it was all based on something that happened so long ago, I would find that hard. But to know that God continues to watch out for us, even as we wait and watch for God to come to us, that is so very freeing.

And as we walk through the last two days of advent, waiting for our lord to be born, we remember his name Emmanuel, not just God with us, but really God is with us. It’s not that God came to us 2000 years ago, but that God continues to be with us in every moment of our day. And it’s not just Christ as baby, it’s not just Christ as teacher, but Christ as one who gives himself for us. 

We’ve spent this advent season looking at how we move way to fast in advent, how we miss God at work in the world, we forget to look out the window into God’s tremendous world. We looked at how God is coming to us in every situation of our lives, especially to us when we feel the weight of the world upon us in a season that is supposed to be full of light and life. And we looked at how in Christ coming God is righting the world. We have broken it, but in Christ God comes to redeem us and make us highly favored.

Today as we walk the last few days of advent we finally prepare ourselves knowing that in our preparation for Christ coming, he is already here. He has already saved us, he continues to save us, and will always save us. He walked with us, walks with us, and will always walk with us.

Advent is this season where we work to prepare ourselves for Christ’s coming, and realize that it is Christ who prepares us.

And so with two days left, I say, Happy Advent, May Christ prepare you for his coming. May you know that the one who is and has come, does and will save you, may you know God is with us, here, then and always.