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This Changes
Everything: The Birth
Message from Ben Gregory in December, 2004
Matthew
1:18-24
Ruthie
and I have our first child on the way -- he’s due to arrive early
in March -- and people keep telling me, “It’s going to change your whole
life,” as if I’d never thought of that. We’ve been married nine years
this past Thursday, and have, I think, had Life, just the two of us,
pretty well figured out. I guess it was time to add a variable.
I’m also aware that it’s not just our two lives -- Ruthie’s and mine --
that are going to change. My sister hannaH and her husband Dale had our
family’s first grandchild a couple years ago and, while it has obviously
changed their lives the most dramatically, it’s also changed, to varying
degrees, Ruthie’s life and mine, the lives of our parents, of friends; it
even reaches to Ruthie’s brother and his wife, and may already include
the lives of people whom Dale and hannaH have never (and may never) meet.
It’ll be the same for Ruthie and me in March.
A
new baby changes things. No question. Because a new baby isn’t just a
new baby. It’s a person. A Life. And when Life shows up, nothing’s ever
quite the same again.
And
here before us this morning is the familiar story of a baby who
showed up and changed…very nearly everything.
Off
the bat you can tell that this is not Business as Usual. We have an
almost-husband who finds his young bride-to-be pregnant before they’re
married; before they’ve been together. In fact, before she’d been with
anyone. And because that just doesn’t happen, he doesn’t believe her
story, and in an extraordinary demonstration of compassion he plans to,
very quietly, call off the wedding and sweep the whole thing under the
rug. He and his intended would part company and go their own ways and
that would be the end of it. A reasonable thing to do. Unfortunate, but
understandable.
But
this isn’t your average story of betrayal and separation. In fact
it’s just the opposite, and when this man Joseph is visited in a dream by
a messenger, it’s not quite Jacob Marley, but the result is similarly
dramatic. Joseph marries his pregnant bride and keeps himself from her
sexually until after she delivers this baby who is not his. And again he
shows himself to be a remarkably compassionate man of faith. And I wonder
what sort of hint this might be at the kind of character God is into.
And here’s this baby, born under such unheard of circumstances. This baby
shows up and everything changes, not just because there’s a new baby, but
because this baby is Life itself. And not just for a select few. Not just
for his mother and her husband, and not just for the immediate or
extended family. Not just for their community or for the members of their
religion or political orientation. Not even just for those who would
accept this baby and his message. The world -- the world -- had
fundamentally changed forever. With the coming of this baby and the Life
that follows comes the Kingdom of God, and it’s a different world.
In this new world, compassion is valued, and not seen as weakness.
Love means sacrifice and is extended even (especially) to enemies.
Barriers of race, gender and economic status are torn down.
The oppressed find freedom.
Debts,
both financial and emotional, are forgiven.
Life is finally held higher than the death that the Law brings.
Hospitality is offered to strangers.
Beauty
presents itself in even the most Ordinary bits of Living.
Orphans and widows aren’t left to their own.
The
poor find not just charity, but true inclusion.
The
tools of violence are beaten into something useful.
Political
borders are subjugated to a new Kingdom.
People
are valued as people, and not perceived as pawns in power
struggles.
And
glory to God in the highest looks an awful lot like peace on Earth
among men on whom his favor rests.
It’s
a world in which humanity has been delivered from their sin, not
because we’ve finally managed to get our hands and hearts clean enough,
but because this baby came to make (and be) a better Way.
I
haven’t said much this morning, and I haven’t said anything at all that
hasn’t been said a thousand times before. But maybe that’s not the point.
Maybe the point isn’t verbiage as much as it’s to make sure that we’re
participating in the new world together.
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