Christmas Day sermon: "I Am Because You Are"

Matthew 1:18-25

18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about[a]: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
20 But after he had considered 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 home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,[b] because he will save his people from their sins.”

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”[c] (which means “God with us”).

24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. (TNIV)

Last night, at the midnight Mass in Vatican City, Pope Benedict XVI spoke these words in his sermon—he said: “Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God's humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity. Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light." If my ego were truly the size of this sanctuary, I would follow this up with—“Church! Church! Look what we did! The Pope is preaching our Advent Conspiracy material!” But since my ego is only slightly smaller, I will instead say this—it means so much to me that the work we are doing in this church, the message we have been trying to spread to our community, is the exact same one that was preached in the Vatican at the stroke of Christmas midnight. And it is a more important theme than we know—because while the simplicity will begin in earnest soon—the trees will be taken down and the decorations will be put in storage for another eleven months—the Christmas story we just heard from the Gospel of Matthew is, surprisingly, one of true simplicity.

You see, almost all of the theatrics of the Christmas birth story are in fact found in the Gospel of Luke. Matthew has the visit of the wise men, in chapter two, which we will visit two weeks from now. Almost everything else is in Luke—Gabriel’s appearance to Mary, John the Baptist leaping in the womb, the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the stable birth, the manger and swaddling clothes, the angels singing, the shepherds, none of that is in Matthew’s accounting of the birth story. In fact, aside from a cameo appearance from God’s favorite supporting actor, Gabriel, it is a story of something that is still very much popular—a home birth—and a story that is without any external drama whatsoever—all the drama happens inside the dilemma of Joseph.

And it is a dilemma that hopefully makes the earthly father of God more human to each of us—the girl he is to marry, the girl he will spend his life with, whom he loves, is pregnant, he is not the father, and Joseph does not cause a scene, nor does he want to—just like Mary in Luke’s Gospel, Joseph’s first thoughts are never of himself. Perhaps it would be easier for us to understand if Joseph did make a scene, if he did rage and huff and puff and demand Mary’s ejection from his family. He could have gotten it, too, had he wanted it. But he didn’t. It is difficult for me to describe, but I have this hunch that Joseph didn’t do this because he respected Mary as an individual—though he clearly did. No, it was because Joseph understood how intertwined he was to her already, brought together not only by God, fate, chance, or mystery, but also simply because the visit by the angel Gabriel communicates one extremely powerful, extremely simple, but extremely difficult-to-grasp truth—Joseph is who he is because Mary is who she is.

In sub-Saharan Africa, there is an ethical philosophy called ubuntu—there is no good English translation of the word because what it conveys is so directly opposite the philosophy of individualism that reigns here in the West. Roughly translated, it means, “I am because you are.” I am who I am because you are who you are. It is the courage and willingness to let yourself be defined by the people and the community surrounding you. It is the courage that brings you to church to begin with, to even dare to allow yourself to be called, even if only by association, a Christian, rather than as Bob, or Ted, or Stan. As Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes it, “You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality, you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.”

But if this philosophy of “I am because you are” turns our own philosophy on its head, then the Bible turns both on their heads. Because it is not enough in church to say that I am because each of you are. I am because Christ was, and because Christ is. Only because Christ came to earth, that he walked, and talked, and broke bread, and sang songs and in the midst of that ministry saved the world entire, only because Christ did that, can I be who I am. Joseph saw it. In Luke’s Gospel, Mary saw it. Only because this child was who he was could they in turn be who they were. And in Matthew’s Gospel, here, what Joseph is told by Gabriel is not, “Please see Mary as a person, don’t do this,” because Joseph already did. No, it’s “You are who you are because Mary is who she is, the mother of God.”

So, in the end, perhaps Matthew’s telling of the Christmas story is not as simple as it appears on the surface. After all, we have not yet gotten into the story of the wise men, or of the descent into Egypt, or any of those other stories of Christ’s infancy that only are told to us by Matthew. And before any of that dramatic action, we are still given the immense, profound privilege of seeing into the heart of an ordinary man, a carpenter, a blue-collar nobody, and see how who he was meant that the entire world would be changed forever. It is not shepherds in the field. It is not angels singing hallelujahs. It is not a long and dramatic journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. But it will do. In delivering to us our Lord and Savior, it will surely do. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Eric Atcheson
Longview, Washington
December 25, 2011