Fourth Sunday of Advent

What would happen if I dropped this ball? For those who can't see, it is a green, fuzzy tennis ball. If I dropped it, either on purpose or quite by accident, it would bounce. It would bounce and then roll around until it stopped or someone picked it up and brought it to me or until I went to get it.

What about this ball? What would happen if I dropped this ball? Again, for those who can't see, this is a fragile ornament from our Christmas tree. If I dropped it, either on purpose or by accident, it would not bounce. It would shatter all over the floor in tiny pieces. And if someone tried to bring it to me or if I tried to retrieve it, it would not matter because the beautiful ball would be broken. I could try all the new fancy glues I wanted, but it would still be a broken ball and even if I put it together again it would not look the same or be the same.

The tennis ball, on the other hand, may be dropped numerous times and it just bounces back, though perhaps a bit slower over time. The substance of the tennis ball is different from the substance of the fragile ornament. The tennis ball is made to bounce and in fact would make a lousy ornament. It is too heavy for the tree, not particularly shiny and doesn't have an easy way to hang on the tree. It would just fall off.

And the ornament, though very pretty on the Christmas tree, would make a lousy tennis ball. In fact, the first time a racket connected with the ornament it would most likely shatter, never to hit the ground before breaking into tiny pieces of useless glass.

You might rightfully ask why I'm delivering an exposé on tennis balls and ornaments this fourth Sunday of Advent. Couldn't I think of anything better to preach about on this busy, "one and a half shopping days left till Christmas" day? I probably could have if I would have tried to, but I like to preach the Gospel. And in today's Gospel, Joseph drops the ball. That's right, he drops the ball.

So it becomes important to know which ball he dropped. Did he drop the ornament or the tennis ball? I think he dropped the tennis ball. Here's why.

Joseph had a choice between righteousness and relationship - and he chose relationship. Mind you, an angel had to come to him in a dream and tell him that it was OK to choose the relationship, but he made the choice. Let's look at Joseph's options.

The scripture tells us that he was a righteous man, that is a man who kept the commandments and observed the law of God. That is why, although he loved Mary, he was about to end their betrothal and let her go to the one she loved. A righteous man, a man who kept God's law, could not marry a woman who was about to have a child that was not his. And this is certainly what Matthew would have us believe about Joseph. He was a good man who would treat Mary with respect out of his love for her, but would do as the law and custom dictated that a person should do to remain righteous.

He would end the relationship and keep his own righteousness intact while not hurting Mary. To do this he was prepared to pay whatever social cost there was to bear, because he didn't want Mary to pay it. He could have justly accused her of betrayal or adultery and she would have paid the price of breaking up the betrothal, perhaps being stoned to death.

How well one kept the Law and applied it to one's life was how people were judged in Joseph's time. To be righteous was very important, not only how one was seen by the neighbors, but how one was seen in the eyes of God, and so how one could be a part of the community of God's chosen. So now Joseph had to choose between being righteous, in the only terms he knew, or being in a relationship that endangered that righteousness, but left him with the woman he loved and a promise from an angel that the child would be his to name, and thus to raise.

Joseph chose to drop the ball of righteousness. That's the tennis ball in this example. But he chose to hold carefully the ornament of his marriage and relationship with Mary.

One might argue that Joseph held onto both righteousness and relationship. After all, being the earthly father to Jesus should hardly bring on a state of unrighteousness. But that is only hindsight, not foresight, and Joseph didn't possess any better foresight than you or I. At the time he listened to the angel, he knew only that God was somehow involved in asking him to break the rules - not that the rules had changed. Mary may have been pregnant with a special child, but Joseph still didn't know what all of this would mean.

What he did know, from the angel, is that he should not be afraid to take Mary as his wife. What he found out was that it was going to be all right to be in relationship with Mary. I might even go so far as to say that what Joseph found out was that his righteousness was intact, but even that would have been confusing to Joseph in his time. Righteousness, in his day, was about keeping the rules just so, not always about the consequences or results of keeping the rules.

Remember what Jesus was to say many years later about righteousness, "unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." The scribes and the Pharisees were more diligent about keeping all of the rules that went along with righteousness than anyone else in the society. They would never have dropped the ball that held the rules. They would sooner drop the ball that held relationships. Jesus was raised in a family that would have understood his statement because they chose to hold on to relationships knowing that relationships are what God is really asking of us anyway.

Therein lies the difference. The ball of rules bounces, changes with culture and time and place. Don't believe me? How many of you feasted on pork at our picnic? Neither Jesus, Joseph nor the Pharisees would have done that. And most of us sit with our families when we worship. A simple thing that would have been unheard of in Joseph's day. Yet, he chose family over rules. He chose relationships over righteousness. He chose to drop the ball that would bounce.

We have the same choices today. As we go about our preparation for the coming of the Christ child, God's greatest gift to the world, and we prepare to gather together with family and friends, we can choose to focus on what we will wear, what gifts we are giving, what gifts we are getting, how clean the house is, how beautifully set the table is and on and on ad infinitum until we have lost sight of the reason that we get together at all.

We can, even the youngest and most innocent among us, we can become so focused on getting things that we forget that what we are really getting out of all of this is each other. What we are really getting is love. But if we lose sight of the love, if we drop that ball so that we can hold on tight to the ball with the presents and dinners and parties and perfectly set table, then we will have broken the only thing that really matters; the relationships that all of the wonderful presents and dinners were supposed to represent.

Edward Hays writes that "an old abbot was fond of saying, 'The devil is always the most active on the highest feast days.' The supreme trick of Old Scratch (that's the Devil's name in this work) is to have us so busy decorating, preparing food, practicing music and cleaning in preparation for the feast of Christmas that we actually miss the coming of Christ. Hurt feelings, anger, impatience, injured egos - the list of clouds that busyness creates to blind us to the birth can be long, but it is familiar to us all."

In this very active time of last minute preparations, we must ask ourselves what we are preparing for. Are we preparing to love one another or to put up with one another for the sake of appearances? Are we preparing for a Christmas of joy in the trust that God has shown himself to us in the weakness of a baby and we may, therefore, be found righteous in God's eyes despite our weaknesses if we only turn toward Him in love? Are we preparing for a Christmas of all the right things or all the right relationships?

And what kind of Jesus are we preparing for this Advent? Is the Jesus that is coming into our lives a Jesus of things, a Jesus who is like Santa Claus bringing all the right rules of etiquette and all the right toys for our parties, or is the Jesus coming into our lives this Holy Day a Jesus who comes in love and shows the way to a newer and ever brighter relationship with God? It is Jesus who calls us to relationships, not just righteousness.

As we live our lives, we will have many chances to drop a couple of balls here and there. Some will be balls of work or school, some will be balls of relationships with friends, some relationships with family, some civic duty and societal rules and some are balls that carry our relationships with God and ourselves. There are many responsibilities we each carry, not the least of which are the responsibilities that go with being part of this community and caring for one another when we need to be cared for.

Some of those balls bounce. Some may even take a bit of chasing to catch again, but they can be caught. Others of them break, and although we are taught to forgive, we know how hard it is to rebuild trust that has been broken. Those are the balls that God sends his angels to tell us not to be afraid to hold on to. If we hold on to the balls that are fragile, God promises to be with us and show us where we will find righteousness in caring for each other.

But this means risk. It may mean that the rules we are sure of today will have to be viewed with new eyes that are focused through the lenses of being in right relationships. It may mean that a room doesn't get cleaned or the car doesn't get washed because a child needs to be held or a friend needs to cry on the phone or maybe, just maybe, you need to take a walk with someone you love more than you need to have everything perfectly ready for company. But those are the simple things.

It may mean that we have to use the phrase, "I don't have time" a little less often when it comes to spending time with people we love. It may mean that we have to look at the relationships we have made around the world and see how they are broken and what we need to "drop" in order to heal them. What do we have to "drop" and what do we have to hold on to in order to foster right relationships in Joseph's land, the land that bore Jesus?

It seems hard, to me at least, to focus on this way of looking at life. Nevertheless, in this season of Advent we have the opportunity to stop and look at what all of our busyness is for, asking why it is important and what we hope to accomplish with our work and worry. Then we are to remember the one who calls us to new life, a new life born of the Spirit of love, which God gives freely to all. That is when I remember what we are to accomplish. We are to accomplish relationships. We are to accomplish loving one another. It is not so hard when I remember who gave us the call. It is from Jesus, raised by a man who gave up righteousness for love, who calls us to love one another as we prepare for the coming of the kingdom. +