A Fork in the Road

Fourth Advent. The final Sunday in the Advent Season before Christmas Day. Waiting is almost over. Celebration is near. Our theme for this morning is the sense of hesitation and uncertainty that goes with our long wait for the Messiah. We have looked at the dark side of waiting: Frustration; Impatience; Despair; Hesitancy (or Anxiety and the necessity of choosing). These parallel the usual four candles in the light side of waiting: Hope; Peace: Joy; Love. Both the light and the dark are normally present.

In the children’s time, I described my sister’s experience of waiting for me to be born. A five-year old’s understanding could not grasp what was happening, as she waited in the African night for her mother or “Aunt Verna” to return. When Verna Ginder did remember her and bring her into the hospital, she found out what she had been waiting for: Me.

I am quite sure that my parents had actually told her about the baby she was waiting for, so at one level she must have known. At another level, in the darkness and uncertainty of the night, waiting all alone in the 1948 Ford Pickup, she felt a real uncertainty as to what the future held. Who knows how all of that shaped our relationship over the years? (It’s a good relationship!)

Psalm 80

Our responsive reading earlier was based on Psalm 80. Verses 1 to 3 call on God to restore God’s people. They are in trouble – probably during the time of the divided kingdoms and possibly written in the northern kingdom of Israel. (Of course, the historical context of the Psalms is often difficult to assess.) They are oppressed. They see little or no hope except for God, so they call on God to save them and restore their own country. Verses 4 to 7 locate the source of Israel’s trouble in their rebellion against God and thus also in God’s judgment on their rebellion. The Psalmist asks again for mercy and God’s salvation.

There is much here and in the rest of the Psalm that we do not consider today. For the moment, we note only that life is hard and dangerous. We all experience that, if only in the physical weakness that we experience as we get older. Like the Psalmist, we recognize that our only hope for eternity lies in God’s saving action, which is then described in the Gospel reading.

Matthew 1

The story of Joseph is brief. Joseph has no lines. He comes on the scene as a young man with a woman “pledged to be married” to him. We are given no details, but we can assume that their families had more to do with the choice than they did. Evidently, they did have the choice to reject the families’ decision – so we may assume that they could also accept the families’ choice of a mate. But their marriage set-up is quite different than how we do things today.

Joseph is looking forward to joining his bride-to-be. He imagines their wedding night and the children that would follow. Instead, he discovers that Mary was pregnant. He knows he is not the father, so he could conclude only that she had another lover. As an honourable man, he does not want to disgrace her, but he also cannot marry her, so “he had in mind to divorce her quietly.”

Then the angel shows up. We’re not told which angel. Luke tells us that Gabriel came to Mary to announce her impending pregnancy. Luke gives much more detail in the announcement than Matthew does. One senses that Joseph was almost an afterthought; he just wasn’t as important in this whole process as Mary.

Yet he was important. His decision to “divorce her quietly”, however honourable and kind, is a problem, so the angel came to him and said, “Marry her.” The angel adds that Mary was carrying a baby from God, however improbable that seemed to him, and that the baby would be named Jesus, which means “he saves”. He would also be called Immanuel, which means “God with us.”

So the baby in Mary’s womb would save Israel – indeed, the whole world, because in this baby Jesus God invades our world for our sake. All Joseph had to do was wait.

Waiting

Joseph agrees, just as Mary agrees. They both say, “Okay. I’m in.” Mary says it eloquently, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:37) Joseph says it silently; he just does it. We never do hear Joseph speak; we just see what he does.

They agree to take part in God’s action, and then they wait. We have used different words for that time of waiting: frustration; impatience; despair; and hesitancy. Waiting is hard work. I know this to be true from own personal experience.

Lois and I lived in Pennsylvania for five years, when I was pastor of a small church in Lancaster County. From there we went to Kentucky to the ESJ School at Asbury Seminary, where I trained for an advanced degree in mission studies. My dream was to continue to work with the mission of the church and to teach missionaries-in-training in a seminary setting. My dream was in fact exactly what I have done for the past 22 years at Providence.

We also spent four years in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Then the day came that I finished my mission studies. May 1993. I started looking for a teaching position where I could apply what I had learned at the ESJ School. I sent out applications. I had some responses and made some telephone calls. In 1995, I was invited to teach a missions theology course at the MB seminary in Fresno, which I did. The trouble is, they weren’t hiring. I taught a few courses at AMBS, but they weren’t hiring either. I took a church in Indiana as a half-time pastor from 1993 to 1997.

We learned a lot about waiting, and I can tell you that it is hard work. We experienced frustration, wondering why I had done three years of difficult advanced study, just to return to pastoral ministry. I already had my training for pastoral work from AMBS. I could have kept on working within the church. Why had we worked so hard, just to wait?

We experienced impatience. It’s time for God to open a door for us to go forward! I don’t think I felt despair – God provided us with jobs and a place to minister and a home in which to live – but I know what despair looks like! Hesitancy? I wondered if I was on the right path. I had joined in missions in response to God’s call on our lives, and I had trained as a missiologist as part of that call. Had I been wrong? Should I give up and do something else completely? We knew what anxiety feels like, and we were at a fork in the road of our lives, forced to choose.

Look at Joseph

Joseph had it worse than I ever did, and I notice two simple things in his example.

1) God always had the initiative. Sure, the Saviour of the world was coming, but God did it. God did the work of bringing the Messiah.

2) Joseph’s part was to play along, to cooperate. All Joseph had to do was accept God’s control and live his life waiting for God to act.

Both of these are useful models for us to imitate. We cannot save ourselves – in any sense of the word “save”. Only God can save us – physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally. We wait for God to act in our lives. We invite God to come in. We prepare ourselves as well as we can, and we wait.

When God acts, we have a choice: We can go along with God’s movement in our lives, or we can chart our own path and do what we want to do.

I remember a crisis point early in 1997, after three and a half years of waiting at Christian Union BIC Church. I had not had any real offers, and I saw no real way forward to find a teaching position. I remember wrestling with God in prayer, asking why I could not find a place to use the gifts and training God had given me.

I had the opportunity to go to Zimbabwe that January and spend three weeks there working with the church. I remember agreeing with God that I could continue as a pastor, with occasional trips to work with the church in Zimbabwe, and that it was okay if I did not find a teaching job. Giving up my dream was hard [or giving up my version of what I thought God's call meant], but I was agreeing to walk the path God had for me.

Three months later, I got a call from the Dean of Providence Seminary. A month after that, I interviewed for the position of missions professor, and three months later we moved to Steinbach. The door that had been locked against us was suddenly open. The long wait was over. We had a new home, a new job, and all the opportunities that followed.

Hesitancy and Choice

This morning’s word is “hesitancy”. In the uncertainty that we experience in life, we hesitate between living God’s way and charting our own course. Like the Psalmist, we may be aware that only God can help us, but we are a self-reliant people. We want to find the right way forward ourselves, rather than waiting for the path God sends. So we hesitate between God’s way and our own way. In the problems around us, we begin to doubt God’s guidance, and we wonder if we are on the right path or should do something else. The story of Joseph shows him hesitating between divorcing Mary quietly or embracing her disgrace as his own.

Joseph’s example reminds us of that God is the only one who can save us. Our part is to wait for the Lord and to cooperate with what God does. 

Are you worried about the politics of the country? Maybe your party’s leader has just resigned, and you wonder if you should take strong steps to save the country. Remember that you cannot save the country; only God can. God gives you a task to do, a place to be. Sit there. Cooperate with God.

Are you worried about the future of the planet? Maybe you have heard about the melting ice in the Arctic and you wonder if you should take action against the worst polluters. Remember that you cannot save the planet; only God can. God tells you how to live. Live God’s way. Cooperate with God.

Are you worried about the future of this church? Maybe you have looked at the growth chart, and you wonder if you should try to fill the pews with some dramatic action. Remember that you cannot save the church; only God can. God calls you to come together with your sisters and brothers and to worship here – to take communion together; to sing our praise together; to pray together and to love each other; to do your part. Live God’s way. Cooperate with God.

I can tell you from my own experience that waiting is hard, but God is waiting with us: “Emmanuel” – God is with us. I can tell you also that Jesus comes in God’s time, and when Jesus moves, our job is to join in and move with him. When Jesus comes, we receive a gift far better than the gift my sister received that cool dark African night as she waited in the Ford Pickup. She got a baby brother, which is pretty special. We get even more; we receive God’s presence and God’s life both here in our lives today and forever in God’s eternity.

Steinbach Mennonite Church

22 December 2019

Texts

Psalm 80

¹ Hear us, Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. You who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth ² before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh.
Awaken your might; come and save us. ³ Restore us, O God; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.

⁴ How long, Lord God Almighty, will your anger smolder against the prayers of your people? ⁵ You have fed them with the bread of tears; you have made them drink tears by the bowlful. ⁶ You have made us an object of derision to our neighbors, and our enemies mock us. ⁷ Restore us, God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.

Matthew 1

Joseph Accepts Jesus as His Son

¹⁸ This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: 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 faithful to the law, and yet 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, 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” (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 did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Focus: What am I waiting for? When I call out to God, God hears me and restores my soul. I am a child of God, called beloved, and redeemed by grace.

Thought-provoking Question: Why is it so hard for us to trust God to take care of us in every situation of life? Why do we want to choose our own response to life’s crises?

Going Deeper Questions:

1. Joseph had a choice and accepted the path that made less sense on the face of it. What kinds of choices do we face? Are they at all like his? At one level, I don’t think they are, but the text implies that we are to do as Joseph did. Why?

2. What kind of control do we have when we face a crisis? Loss of control is a fact of life for all of us, and we don’t like it. What is left for us to do?

3. What is the social dimension of these questions? It is easy to personalize them and deal with our own individual crises, but Joseph’s choice was made on behalf of the world. How do our choices affect the larger society around us?

An African Memory: Waiting in the Dark

I remember Carol Concerts in Bulawayo’s Central Park. I remember the wonderful descant to “O Come all Ye Faithful” on “Glory to God, all glory in the highest” – sung in the small city hall at a combined choirs carol concert. I remember candles and music that shaped my heart as a child.

Advent is a different time than Christmas, even though it is the time was always had our Christmas concerts. Advent is for waiting, and my African memory is of a time I don’t remember, although I was there. An African memory of waiting in the dark for someone to be born.

[The pictures are from Google images -- of the Central Park, but not of the amphitheatre where we had carols by candlelight, and of the City Hall where we also had carol concerts.

My older sister tells me the story. Our mother was waiting for a child, expecting her third baby. The life of her second was short – eight months long, before Dorothy died of malaria and was buried at our home in Sikalongo. [The picture below was taken in 2003, as Lois and I and our sons visited Sikalongo and reconnected with the memory of my sister, Dorothy.]

Perhaps as a result, mother went to the nearest hospital well before the birth of her next child. Livingstone was the nearest city with a hospital, so she and my sister Donna and another missionary, Verna Ginder, went down to Livingstone in a 1948 Ford Pickup.

I have wondered what they talked about. Verna had lost her husband to a tropical fever a few years before. Mother had lost her daughter to malaria. They may have identified closely with each other. They stayed in some government rondavels (a nice hut with a thatched roof) beside the Zambezi River, just above Victoria Falls. After several days by the river, mother announced that her labour begun.

[Pictures taken from Google images: the rondavel was probably not quite this nice, and this hospital -- in Livingstone, Zambia -- may be newer. But you get the idea.]

They drove to the nearby hospital in the 1948 Ford and hurried inside. I don’t know anything about the labour (although I am told I was the cause), but I gather that during labour the mother delivering the baby does not think about anything else. So Donna remained in the Pickup, momentarily forgotten.

I don’t remember what time I was born, but finally the time came, with the night well spent. Donna spent that same night in the dark of the African night, wondering where her mother and Aunt Verna were as she sat in the 1948 Ford Pickup. After I was born, someone thought of Donna. Maybe mother asked, “Where is Donna?” And maybe Verna Ginder rushed out horrified to make sure Donna was safe. Maybe Donna had fallen asleep; maybe she was just glad to see someone she knew.

In any case, they hurried back into the hospital so that Donna could find out what had kept mother so occupied. As a five-year old child, she was maybe less than impressed with the discovery of her baby brother. “That was why you left me alone in the dark?”

She has been a good sister, for which I am grateful, and mother was a good mother, for which I am doubly grateful. Her experience of waiting in the dark is a paradigm or model of the way we all are waiting for the night to end, trusting that God brings us this Christmas the joy of new birth and new life. Maranatha!

A Matopo Christmas

December 1958. It may have been December 22 – I am not sure. We lived then at Matopo Mission, 25 miles from the end of the tar on the Old Gwanda Road south ofBulawayo. In Manitoba, where we live now, Christmas comes with cold, up to minus 30 Celsius, but Matopo is in Zimbabwe, and Christmas means time for a picnic!

Every year the missionary family gathered a few days before Christmas for a picnic. We came from Matopo, Mtshabezi, Wanezi, and Bulawayo, 30 or so adults and children. In December 1958, we met at Matopo Mission, from where we drove to one of the “outschools” nearby, a place called Dopi.

At Dopi we unpacked the picnic, enjoyed our food and gifts and volleyball. Always volleyball when the missionaries played together. Then came the clouds and the rain. December in Zimbabwe is the rainy season, and we had a good tropical thunderstorm. With the rain pouring down, there was no choice but to head back to the mission, where we had enough room to finish our party inside, but there was a problem! A little spruit that we had crossed easily in our VW Kombis when we arrived was now a raging torrent, perhaps 100 feet across. [My childhood mind remembers 100 feet. Adult reflection suggests 20 feet is more realistic.]

The flood was too deep and swift and wide to drive across in our Kombis, so we went back to the school to make a plan. The adults decided that Frank Kipe and Al Book would walk back to the mission, hiking through the rocks of the Matopo Hills around the flash flood, get the Massey Ferguson diesel tractor there, and drive back to Dopi. [If other people remember differently about who hiked back to the mission, I defer to their memory.]

Meanwhile we waited in the school house. My Dad later recalled Elwood Hershey getting anxious about the long wait and piling wood on a fire we had built on the earthen floor of the school, until the sparks almost reached the thatched roof. When Dad pointed out that he might burn the school building down around us, Elwood hurriedly removed some of the logs.

My sister and Alvera sang a duet, “Deck the halls with boughs of holly.” We played games, sang carols, passed the time as well as we could while we waited for the men on a tractor.

Finally, Al and Frank arrived. We drove down to the river, which had sunk somewhat, but Frank still got wet driving through it, sitting on the tractor seat. The men took the spark plugs out of the VWs and then Frank towed us across. I remember lifting up my feet as the water ran across the floorboards of the Kombi. On the other side, the men dried off all the engines and reinserted the spark plugs. We finally got back to Matopo Mission about 1 a.m. [Again, the time is the memory of an eight-year old speaking 61 years later.]

The families from Wanezi still had a four-hour drive home. I suspect they put a long-distance call through to one of their number, who had not been able to join us. It might have been from Elwood to Dorothy Hershey, which would explain his frustration with the long wait and thus piling logs on the fire in the school house.

I probably went to 12 Christmas picnics, growing up in Africa. This is the only one I remember. A truly memorable Christmas Picnic.