Matthew 1:18-25 18 Now 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. 19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20 But 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. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. 22 All 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. 24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, 25 but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus. 1
2016 12.18 Beyond Our Wildest Dreams I don t think it s well known within this church or even within the English ministry, but every Friday a small team from the English ministry usually just two or three of us meets with a few students from Heavenly Dream School. Heavenly Dream School is a special high school for young North Korean defectors. It s located just outside of Seoul, in Seongnam. For the last two and a half years we ve been meeting with a handful of students usually five to ten, the number varies from week to week. Initially we met every other week, but starting this year we decided to meet weekly. Meeting every week has definitely helped us to grow closer [SLIDES 1-4]. Typically, we have dinner together in the school cafeteria. The school also has a small café, which is where we go after dinner. Over coffee and dessert I lead an English lesson that s geared toward getting the students to converse in English. Or sometimes we have an informal discussion on a random topic. This is what they ve asked for. They get plenty of English grammar in their English class at school. They look to us to help them with conversation. A few weeks ago we did something different. We assigned them an essay to write. Now, they have plenty of their own schoolwork to do, and writing an essay in a language that they re still learning doesn t sound like much fun. So as an incentive, we offered scholarships. The best essays would receive a cash scholarship, the money for which came from outside donors. They don t know it yet, but we ve arranged for all of them to receive the scholarship. There were six in total. The topic for the essay was What is your dream? An appropriate topic, given that the name of the school is Heavenly Dream School. Still, writing an essay in a foreign language is a daunting task. So to make it easier, I suggested that they think about 2
the essay in three paragraphs: (1) Where did you come from? (2) Where are you now? and (3) Where do you want to go? Three paragraphs: past, present, and future. I want to share with you a little bit about one of the students and what he wrote. His name is Tae-Yong, which he proudly told me when I met him the first time, means dragon. But he also has an English name Frank which, sadly, doesn t mean anything cool like dragon. He s the first Korean Frank I ever met, either here or back in America. I don t know why he chose the name. I doubt he s ever heard of Frank Sinatra. Don t get me wrong. Frank is a fine name, but it s no dragon. Anyway, like a lot of kids at the school, Frank has a complicated family background, which is to be expected. It s rare for families to defect together. It s too risky. Many come with just one parent or sibling. Others come by themselves, sent by their parents in the hope that they will build a better life for themselves. Many defectors live in hiding in China for several years before eventually making it to South Korea. That was the case with Frank and his mother. After living in China for a time they eventually made it to South Korea. Frank s mother is the only family that he has here. Frank s dream is to be a designer of what exactly he s not sure maybe furniture or jewelry. One glance at him and you can tell that he leans artistic. He has purple hair and pierced ears and, I suspect, a tattoo hidden somewhere. In addition to his dream job, Frank has another dream. He wants to be rich, but not rich for its own sake. Frank wants to make enough money to buy his mother not a house but an island. His dream is to one day live with his future wife and children together with his mother on this island. I imagine that the island represents to him not only peace and tranquility, but also a sense of safety, security, and stability all things that he lacked when he was growing up. I don t know whether Frank s dream will become a reality I don t imagine that there are many islands for sale. In al likelihood, Frank s dream won t come true, at least not in the way that he envisions. But our dreams often don t turn out as we 3
would like. And that s not necessarily a bad thing. What God dreams for us is far greater than anything we could imagine. That s what Joseph learns, as we see in today s passage from Matthew. Today marks our entrance into the Gospel of Matthew. For much of the next twelve months we will work our way through Matthew. As each of the Gospels does, Matthew has its own unique themes and points of emphasis. Each Gospel tells the story of the meaning of Jesus life, death, and resurrection in its own way [SLIDE]. Matthew begins with a genealogy that traces Jesus ancestry from Abraham through forty-two generations, eventually leading to Joseph and finally Jesus. Interestingly, Luke s Gospel, which we read this year, also contains a genealogy, but it goes in reverse. It starts with Jesus and then traces his ancestry all the way back not to Abraham but to Adam. That fits the general theme of Luke s Gospel. More than the other Gospels, Luke is concerned with outsiders, with non-jews. He often shows non-jews as more merciful and faithful than the Jewish authorities. Think of the Good Samaritan who shows mercy to the wounded traveler, and the Roman centurion who asks Jesus to heal his servant. It s fitting, then, that Luke traces Jesus lineage to Adam, who represents not the first Jew but the first human. But Matthew begins his genealogy with Abraham the patriarch of the Jewish faith. If Luke is concerned with outsiders, Matthew is concerned with insiders. Whereas Luke emphasizes that the Gospel is good news for all people, Matthew emphasizes that the Gospel is good news for Jews. Matthew presents us with a very Jewish Jesus, a Jesus who is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. Throughout the Gospel we will hear Matthew say again and again that some event took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophets. We hear it today in chapter one. That Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit is not some random event. Rather, All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet (Mt. 1:22). 4
Matthew lets us know straight away that Jesus is the Messiah the fulfillment of Israel s hope for deliverance. How does he know this? Because of the unique nature of how Jesus was conceived [SLIDE]: 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 (Mt. 1:18). Now, this is where we need to step back and picture the situation. We ve heard this story so many times that perhaps we take it for granted. As readers of Matthew s Gospel we learn of the Spirit s role in Jesus conception, but Joseph doesn t yet know this. So let s step back, or rather, let s step into Joseph s shoes (or sandals, if you want to be precise). All he knows is that Mary, the woman that he s engaged to, is very much pregnant, and the child is not his because they have not yet shared a bed. By the standards of first-century Judaism, this is scandalous. It s so scandalous that, by law, Joseph could accuse Mary publicly, and if found guilty, she could be stoned to death. That seems harsh to us, and it was. But we need to set aside our modern notions of fairness and think like Jews of the first century and even before that. There was a logic behind the law s severity. It was designed to protect a man s family name, to ensure that any children from the marriage would be his so that his family name would live on. Joseph is undoubtedly crushed by what he thinks has been Mary s infidelity. He had plans, dreams for his life, as we all do. He was engaged to be married. He envisioned himself settling down with Mary and having children. Then he sees that Mary is pregnant but not with his child. Suddenly his dream of a life together with her is destroyed. He believes that she has been unfaithful. Does he talk to her? What would the conversation have been like? Could he accept her denials? Would he even believe her when she told him the truth? As I said a moment ago, Joseph could accuse Mary publicly but he doesn t. And this is where it gets interesting [SLIDE]. Joseph is described as a righteous man 5
because he is unwilling to expose Mary to public disgrace. Instead, he plans to dismiss her quietly (Mt. 1:19). Did you catch that? Joseph is described as righteous for not obeying the law. To obey the law would be to seek to have Mary stoned for her supposed adultery. But Joseph is instead planning to show mercy to Mary by quietly dismissing her. And it is for this that Joseph is considered righteous. Beyond adhering to the strict letter of the law, Joseph values mercy. It s interesting to think that many years later Jesus will lift up the same principle when the scribes and the Pharisees bring to him a woman who had been caught in the very act of committing adultery. But rather than condemning her, Jesus confronts her accusers with their own sin, telling them that whoever among them who has not sinned can throw the first stone. One by one, they drop the stones with which they planned to kill her. Jesus teaches them the lesson that mercy is greater than strict adherence to the law. Is it a stretch to think that Jesus may have learned that lesson from Joseph? Joseph intends to quietly leave Mary. However, before he follows through, he has a dream, much like that other famous Joseph in the Bible. Now, I don t know about you, but I am an active dreamer. I have intense, vivid dreams (sometimes nightmares as well). But I ve never experienced a dream like Joseph s. Picture this: in his dream an angel visits him and tells him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife because the child that she carries is not from another man but from the Holy Spirit. That s just for starters. There s more. This child, this son, will save the people from their sins. He will be God with us. In fact, all of this was prophesied long ago. It s right there in Isaiah. Suddenly Joseph wakes. He s in that post-dream haze. His mind is still clouded in half sleep. He thinks to himself, Was that real? Did that just happen? Does Joseph understand what God is about to do through this child and the role that he Joseph will play in it? Joseph s dream was God s way of saying to him: Joseph, your dreams are too small. I will teach you how to dream big. I am going to make you a part of something 6
you would not even dare imagine, something beyond your wildest dreams. I will make you a part of my plan for the salvation of the world. All this will begin with the birth of the child that Mary is carrying in her womb. Begin is the right word [SLIDE]. In verse 18, the Greek word for birth is genesis. Genesis, as in, the beginning. Or as the book of Genesis begins, In the beginning. In the first genesis, God created the world, bringing order to chaos. In the second genesis, Jesus Christ, God brings about a new beginning. God begins to reorder the chaos that we have made of the world. How? By sending a Savior who will save us from our worst enemies ourselves. He will save us from our tendency to create chaos in our lives, in our relationships, and in our societies. Chaos brought about by our indifference to suffering, by our reckless consumption, by our stubborn pride that refuses to forgive or to seek forgiveness, and by our justification of selfishness. And that s just the tip of the iceberg. We have countless ways of creating chaos. He will save us from the oppression of sin and death the two forces that, until he came, had always had the last word. But no more. From now on the last word belongs to Jesus, the Word who became flesh, who became flesh for us so that we might better know who God is and who God has made us to be. In Jesus, God has made us his beloved, his witnesses, his community set apart from the world and at the same time set in the world to shine his light to the world. He will save us, not from afar, not from heaven; he will save us by coming down from heaven and becoming Emmanuel God with us [SLIDE]. God with us. This is one of the principle themes of the Gospel of Matthew. It s here in chapter one at the beginning of the Gospel, and it s there in chapter twenty-eight at the end. Matthew begins his Gospel by telling us that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. He ends it with the risen Jesus commissioning the disciples to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing and teaching his commandments. His final words the last words in the Gospel are to remind the disciples of an essential truth: And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Mt. 28:20). 7
Have you ever had a dream so wonderful that you didn t want to wake up? And when you did wake up you tried to close your eyes and fall back to sleep, hoping that you could return to the dream? Well, the truth of Emmanuel is better than that. The truth of God-with-us is no dream. It s not a dream because it s true. Or I guess you could say it s a dream come true literally. In Jesus, born of Mary, Joseph s dream of the Savior coming into the world has become a reality. Joseph woke from his dream into that new reality, the new beginning that God gave to the world in Jesus. I don t know what your dreams are, or whether they ve been fulfilled. But I do know that in Jesus Christ, God has done something beyond our wildest dreams. God has stirred us from our spiritual sleep and called us to become a part of God s plan for salvation. It s time to wake up and make that dream a reality. 8