The Fourth Sunday of Advent (Year A, RCL)
December 23, 2007
The Reverend Paul R. Abernathy, Rector
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“Now the birth of the Messiah took place in this way.”[1]
I’m almost tempted to say, “Oh, you know what happened!” and then, sit down, which would make this the shortest sermon on record or, at least, my
thirty-year record of preaching. Yes, I’m tempted. For many of us, I will guess, could have recalled Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth. And most, if not
all of us, I have little fear of refutation, know how babies are born. So, we know the way – whether biblically or biologically – by which the
birth of Jesus took place. I’m tempted simply to say that and be done. Almost!
For the point of Matthew’s story isn’t about the mechanics of Jesus’ birth. Nor is it about the logistics – who, where, when, and how – despite the
evangelist’s details about Mary and Joseph, their betrothal, a cosmic intervention and spiritual impregnation, Joseph’s determination to divorce Mary,
which prompted the angelic declaration: “Not so fast, Joseph!”
No. The point of Matthew’s story is what the birth of Jesus means – the sense about our human existence to which this birth points. For if this
birth doesn’t connect to this life, our human life, then, truly, we can say that we don’t know what happened, and, therefore, we
can ask, should ask what does it matter?
Matthew sums up the meaning with six words about the child Mary would bear, spoken to Joseph in a dream: “You are to name him Jesus.”
Jesus. From the Hebrew Yešűa or Joshua, which literally mean declaratively, Yahweh (God) helps, or prayerfully, O God, help!
For Matthew, the birth of Jesus was a sign that God’s help had come, entering earthly time and space. That God’s healing – from the Latin, salvus,
which is the same root from which we derive the word, salvation – had taken flesh in human history to save us from our sins, our brokenness.
This, for Matthew, is the meaning of this birth.
This, I believe, is the meaning of every birth, which is why I believe it blessedly fortuitous that on this day we read this gospel passage,
we celebrate Holy Baptism.
Every baby born is a sign of help, of hope for healing of the human race. Every baby born is an incarnation of a new generation. And as a new generation,
one that might learn – from the hard won wisdom and the heartbreaking mistakes of the current and past generations – how to be more freely loving, more
faithfully just, verily, more fully human.
This – help, hope, healing, salvation – is the meaning of the birth of Jesus, the meaning of the births of Chase, Miles, and
Tucker,[2] the meaning of their baptisms.
If this is at all true, then, this is the meaning of our lives. To be, as Jesus, embodiments of love and justice. So to be living, daily demonstrations
for these children of what unconditional benevolence and justice look like, are like. So that they, as a new generation, might do it, might be
it far better than we.
[1] Matthew 1.18. The gospel passage appointed for the day is Matthew 1.18-25.
[2] Miles Yee Bickart, Chase David Dettman, and Tucker Dominic Dondlinger Trissell were baptized at this morning’s service of Holy Baptism and Holy Eucharist.
