Nicole's Riff on Matthew I
Morning All:
Ok, I'm not going to riff on Christ's genealogy here as I am more compelled to talk about the Mary and Joseph piece. Now, this is a familiar text to most of us who hear it all the time during the Christmas season in one Christmas pageant or another (smile). But to read THIS text on a muggy evening in July in Jacksonville had me a bit stumped. How does one even fathom such an encounter---much less figure out what it means to me TODAY?
Well, because God is faithful, he WILL drop a dime on a curious sister. And interestingly, the piece that jumped out at me was not the immaculate conception piece (I'll leave that to God as that was indeed his doing). However, the piece that rung out for me was the marriage piece.
Now, I got engaged on January 1, 2008 so you would imagine that marriage and all things marital would be all up in my dome, right? But with all the busy-ness I pack into my life around teaching, research/writing/publishing and travel, planning the wedding spectacle ebbs and flows in my mind somewhere between rage and terror...so this piece about Mary and Joseph caught me off guard.
For me, the text is a brilliant treatise for the engaged couple (and married couples too, right). Here, the two are---May and Jay---just chillin', minding their own, planning for the big day...and then---boo-yah---the Lord drops a divine assignment on them: Mary---carry my seed; Joseph---support her while she does it. Wow! What! Crazy, right?
So, Joseph, is like---Aw, straight, bet that, I'm up. And then, just when bruh is about to roll out, the Lord sends him angelic reinforcements to say: Slow ya, roll, Cuz. Hang on. This is the Lord's doing. And anyway: You love her. God loves you both. And y'all gon' make it through this TOGETHER. So, Joe, gets convicted and decided to hang out and do what the Lord said do.
So, for me, there are several lessons to peep here.
1.) Be clear: there will be issues that arise in your union that you can't expect or predict that will take you both by surprise. And it will throw you and mess with your equilibrium.
2.) However, the text also shows us that:
A.) THE LORD IS PRESENT IN THE UNION---HALLELUJAH, I'M ENCOURAGED RIGHT THERE.
B.) Each member of the union was in relationship with the Lord in order to hear what the Lord was going to require of them. Now, that is the piece---to be in relationship with the Lord so you know his voice when he's calling you...seems to require quiet, attentiveness, availability to God in the spirit and the physical... not sure you can get at that accurately with the Blue Tooth or Ipod or Cell on at all points. How many messages have I missed from the Lord fooling with Anderson Cooper, Y&R, or Project Runway...sigh...
C.) The Lord WILL work with each person in the union to equip them for what he is asking each of them to do.
3.) It seemed that God was trying to show Joseph that THE BLESSINGS COME FROM STAYING IN THE UNION AND TAKING CARE OF YOUR FAMILY not leaving the union. By staying in the union and working with his fiance, he had the opportunity to be intimately connected to the mother of the Savior and the Savior himself...and what a life they lived!
What blessings might we be missing by looking outside our homes and beyond Christ's reach for temporary feel-goods to fill the bottomless voids in us? Our society tells us to discard the old for the new, shiny, perky, mobile, ever-replaceable. However, the text tells us that our blessing comes from returning to that first love with a fresh perspective, a fresh vision for what the Lord would have us do together.
So in the end, the text is a meditation on marriage and commitment as much as it is a meditation on the birth of Christ. Matthew reminds us that this godly couple faced a tremendous challenge together--- a challenge where they had to risk the scorn and scrutiny of others to do what God called them to do--- and allowed themselves to be used to the Glory of God.
I was home ---which is Chicago's now infamous South Side---visiting family recently and was inundated with news about young married couples in our family and extended family. So, this scripture is a timely reminder of the challenges of marriage faced even by Christ's mama and daddy. But also, this story of Mary and Joseph reminds us of how the Lord used THE COUPLE BINDING THEM BOTH TOGETHER to bring forth his will.
And for the record, it does seem like the Lord is using another unlikely couple from Chicago's South Side to change a nation.
Let us pray for all of the couples in crisis, married couples, and soon-to-be-married couples, and dating couples ask that God maintain his seat at the head of their relationship and bind them together to do HIS will where he has planted them. Amen.
Be well ya'll and let me know what you think of this inaugural piece!
---Nicole
