“Journey to Bethlehem”
A
Sermon Preached by the
Rev.
Jean Niven Lenk
Sunday,
December 16, 2012
First
Congregational Church of Stoughton, United Church of Christ
Text:
Luke 2:1-7
Let me ask you – when you were
young – really young – did you dream about what your life would be like when
you grew up – what kind of career you would have, who you would marry, how many
children you’d have? I can’t tell you
how many hours I spent as a young girl daydreaming about the beautiful wedding
and the handsome husband and the wonderful children I would someday have. And psychologists[i]
tell us that this is all perfectly normal -- it is a universal human instinct
when we are young to dream about what we will become and how our lives will
unfold.
Psychologists[ii]
also tell us that we humans want control over the things that happen in our
lives. And it can take quite a few years
– perhaps a whole lifetime – for us to realize just how little control we have
over our circumstances. How many of us,
now older and wiser, can look back and see how our journeys of life have taken
twists and turns we never could have imagined or anticipated? I could never have imagined the path my life
would take – and how circumstances would lead me to have several beautiful weddings and several
handsome husbands!
We have seen over the first two
Sundays of Advent how Mary and Joseph, too, found their lives veering in
unimaginable ways off the paths they expected their journeys would take. Mary is just a young teenager when we first
meet her in the Gospel of Luke, and surely – despite her impoverished
circumstances and the shadow of Roman occupation -- she had hopes and dreams
about the route her life would take: marriage to Joseph, a home, a family.
And then: an unexpected fork in the road: a visit from an angel and a
divine assignment beyond comprehension, one that would alter her life and the
course of human history. In an instant
evaporate the carefully-thought out plans for the wedding feast, all her
girlish hopes of a quiet life as a wife and mother. The path of Mary’s life changes direction, and
she instead says yes to being a vessel for the Holy and a conduit for God’s
extraordinary love.
And Joseph -- surely he too had
dreams for the road his life with Mary would take – of the little home he would
build, the quiet contentment of family life in Nazareth, of children who would
join him in his carpenter’s shop. But the
path so carefully laid out in his dreams takes a sudden bend, detoured by an
unexpected pregnancy and a cloud of suspicion.
And rather than traveling down the road of anger, retribution, and
abandonment, he follows the path of compassion, love, and divine grace,
surrendering to holy mystery and accepting God’s higher calling and more noble
way, taking Mary’s destiny as his own.
On this Third Sunday of Advent, we
go with Mary and Joseph on a journey from Nazareth to Joseph’s ancestral town
of Bethlehem. Perhaps given the
unexpected twists and turns their lives had taken up to this point, the couple may
not have been surprised by the curves they encountered on that road to
Bethlehem.
First was the need to go to
Bethlehem at all. The citizens of
Palestine were already burdened by the onerous taxation system of their Roman occupiers,
and the census decreed by
Caesar Augustus was a money-grab for additional revenue. And the timing could not have been worse. The 70 mile journey from Nazareth to
Bethlehem would have been slow and wearying for a pregnant woman, requiring
frequent stops. And on their long and dangerous
trip, Mary and Joseph faced the delay of very real roadblocks and checkpoints along
with the threat of spies and bandits. Not
the way Mary may have hoped to spend those last few weeks of her
pregnancy.
And the road was not much smoother
once they reached their destination. Contrary
to the carol we sang as we lit our Advent candles this morning, the little town
of Bethlehem was probably not lying still that night; rather it was teeming
with people who had come, like Mary and Joseph, for the census and had made
better time on the road. And this
resulted in another detour on their journey: once they finally arrived, there was
no room at the inn; the very circumstances that had forced
them down from Nazareth in the first place had also left them out in the cold.
And so, they
end up with only a stable for shelter and a cattle feeding-trough for the
baby's bed. And in those humble
circumstances, away from friends and family and far from the familiar comforts
of home, God enters the world in human form.
As much as painters have
sentimentalized Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem, even the 21st
artists in our Bible Top 40 handout, a realistic picture would show an
exhausted and irritable couple, dusty and disheveled from a long day of
travelling. And as much as tradition has
filled in the minimal information provided in Luke’s Gospel, softening the hard
edges of reality with visions of a devout and serene expectant Mary and a
humble and righteous Joseph, we may wonder if they were perhaps questioning God
under their breaths: Surely this is not the way you intended, Lord? Surely this special baby is to be born in the
comfort of home, with the help of familiar midwives, and laid in the crib so
lovingly fashioned by Joseph – right, Lord?
These new parents were faithful and obedient, but they were also real
flesh-and-blood human beings, and we can imagine them struggling with doubt and
misgivings in the midst of their circumstances.
Because despite their heavenly
visitors and divine dreams and holy callings, Mary and Joseph aren’t that much
different than you or me. Despite the
straight path we might envision before us when we are just starting out, our
journey through life, like the holy couple’s journey to Bethlehem, will take
its unexpected twist and turns: a sudden accident; an unexpected diagnosis; a
job or relationship that doesn’t work out; disappointments and dysfunction;
change and transitions; deaths and losses.
And just as it was for Mary and Joseph, it may be that the things that
keep coming up and getting in our way turn out to be the very place where we
can find God. It may be that when nothing
seems to be working out as we had hoped or planned, when we find our lives
veering off in directions we would never have chosen, when we find ourselves in
wholly unexpected circumstances and situations, when we find that we are not in
control, when we find ourselves disheartened, discouraged, distressed,
demoralized -- that is precisely the place we will meet God.
And so let us go
to Bethlehem this Christmas. Because no
matter what twists and turns we might face on our way, at that manger Christ
can and will be born in us over and over again, bringing us the hope and the healing,
the love and the grace we need to travel on this journey of life. Amen.
