God Interrupts Our Regularly-Scheduled Program
Reflections on Matthew 1.18-25
RCL Advent 4A
22 December 2019
Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral
New Westminster BC
On Tuesday of this past week I had three appointments scheduled in Vancouver neatly arranged at 9.00, 12.00 and 17.00 and conveniently located within easy driving distance of the Synod Office, my final destination for the day. So I packed my backpack and went off to my first appointment at Broadway and Heather near VGH. Since I had some time between appointments, I went to the Synod Office to do some work.
There is a small unused work space at the Synod Office that I frequently use when I am between meetings in Vancouver for any extended period of time. I call it my ‘Niche of Necessity’. On Tuesday, however, someone had decided to use it to store a number of boxes, thus making it impossible for me to work there. So I set myself up at a table in the Trendle Lounge where I thought that I would be uninterrupted.
However, one of my colleagues, a private person of few words, saw me. He pulled up a chair and, for the next forty-five minutes or so, he and I chatted about a particular church matter and then his most recent medical experience. My planned work remained untouched.
My colleague had recently learned that his heart wasn’t as healthy as he thought it was. He had been brought to consider the fragility of our lives and to realize that the future, as he had imagined it, might be somewhat different. Since I’ve been a cardiac patient for thirteen years, I knew what he was experiencing. There is not a day that goes by when I am not reminded that my life depends upon a tiny piece of medical technology embedded in my left main coronary artery.
We all know how the ‘regularly-scheduled program’ of our lives can be interrupted by a ‘special announcement’. Perhaps, like my colleague, it is a message about our health. Perhaps, like me, you’ve planned out the day carefully and someone or something decides to demand your attention. I was reminded, after my colleague had left and I was packing up my things to go to my next appointment, that interruptions are not always what they seem to be to us at the moment.
Henri Nouwen, a well-known Roman Catholic writer and pastoral theologian, served for a while as a chaplain at Yale University. One day a friend walked by Henri’s open door and noticed he was holding his head in his hands. When his friend asked him if there were anything wrong, Henri said, ‘I keep getting interrupted and cannot do my ministry.’ ‘Henri,’ his friend responded, ‘did you ever consider that your interruptions are your ministry?’
Mary probably did not plan on becoming the mother of the Messiah, particularly since it involved bearing a child whose father was not the man to whom she was engaged. Her ‘regularly-scheduled program’ was most definitely interrupted by a ‘special message’ that cost her a great deal and put her on a road she could not have imagined.
Joseph had a plan to become a respectable family man, married to a young woman from a good family who would bear him sons to take up their father’s business. Even in first-century Palestine a skilled trade such as carpentry was the ticket to a good future. Discovering his fiancée was pregnant with someone else’s child must have been a shock, but imagine for a moment having a dream that tells you whose child it is and what your role is to be in shaping the future. Talk about an interruption!
And whether people believe Jesus to be the Messiah or not, we cannot deny that the story of his birth as well as his teaching and life come as a profound interruption to the ‘regularly-scheduled program’ of human history. That ‘regularly-scheduled program’ does not always turn out well, regardless of what century we’re looking at. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the American poet, wrote a poem as he was rushing to see his son who had been wounded in a battled during the American Civil War.
I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men. [1]
Longfellow, recently widowed and the single parent of six children, cannot help but write
And in despair I bowed my head:
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.” [2]
But then his melancholy is interrupted and God’s special message breaks through:
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.” [3]
Human history is interrupted by the special message of Emmanuel, ‘God is with us’. What an extraordinary interruption this is. It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not, Matthew simply claims that in Jesus, born of Mary, raised by Joseph, God is with us, even more importantly, God is for us.
As we draw near to the Christmas feast, who doesn’t want to believe this. Not do we only want to believe it, we want to experience it first-hand. We want to know that God is with us, God is for us, just as surely as we can see and touch each other gathered in the Cathedral this morning. We want to see God’s power at work in remedying the many ills of our world.
But we have to admit that God’s presence among us, within us and beyond us, is elusive. Sometimes I feel like saying to God, ‘Why do you give the sceptics so much ammunition? Would it be too much to ask for even a small sign, perhaps something dramatic? Peace in the Middle East would be nice. Nudging some local elected officials and developers to take the risk to build a few more non-market housing units wouldn’t be a bad idea?’
And then, as I am caught up in this ‘regularly-scheduled program’ of whinging, God does interrupt me with a ‘special message’: ‘Do you not realize that every human being whose life has been touched by Jesus of Nazareth now shares in his ministry. Remember when he said that his disciples would do greater things than he if they believed in him and committed themselves to the same ministry? [4] Well, kiddo, this is your moment! You’re my Emmanuel in this place and in this time.’
On Tuesday my colleague needed an Emmanuel and there I was. Our neighbours need an Emmanuel and here we are. God has this annoying habit of using flesh and blood such as ours to break into the ‘regularly-scheduled program’ of the world to bring a ‘special message’ of reconciliation and healing, of service and community, of peace and justice.
Be prepared to be interrupted by the needs and concerns of our everyday world. Be ready to interrupt our world’s ‘regularly-scheduled program’ with the good news that God is with us, that God is for us. That cute little Baby has escaped the manger, my friends, and has set us loose on an unsuspecting but desperately needy world.
[1] www.hymnary.org/text/i_heard_the_bells_on_christmas_day accessed on 20 December 2019.
[2] www.hymnary.org/text/i_heard_the_bells_on_christmas_day accessed on 20 December 2019.
[3] www.hymnary.org/text/i_heard_the_bells_on_christmas_day accessed on 20 December 2019.
[4] John 14.12.
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