Pastor Darren: So I'm curious doing sort of an informal poll in this uh season of gift getting and gift uh giving?
Pastor Darren: I'm wondering how people feel about surprises.
Pastor Darren: How many of you like a really good surprise at Christmas?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: How many of you can give or take a surprise at Christmas?
Pastor Darren: How many of you just really don't like to be surprised?
Pastor Darren: Don't you?
Pastor Darren: I just saw the tech guys, I saw Paul's hand go up and don't give me a surprise.
Pastor Darren: You know, in in in uh in my house, my wife and my daughter really like the surprises, right?
Pastor Darren: They're gonna work over, you know, bending over backwards to make sure nobody knows.
Pastor Darren: I mean, they purposefully don't tell me or my son that certain things are happening because we just have sort of a blind spot.
Pastor Darren: We'll just start talking about it.
Pastor Darren: Not to reveal the surprise, but just because it's in our brain and needs to get out.
Pastor Darren: I don't know if anybody else lives lives in in that uh in that world.
Pastor Darren: But yeah, they get all fussy about making sure everything is wrapped and it's hidden, right?
Pastor Darren: So that surprise is is kept authentic.
Pastor Darren: And I'm over there going, all right, here's what I want to get you, but I don't want to get you the wrong thing.
Pastor Darren: Blink once if you want this.
Pastor Darren: Blink twice if you don't, and then I'll surprise you at Christmas, right?
Pastor Darren: And anybody in that boat, or is that just me?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: I I you know I hate getting the thing, and then it's all the work, and maybe it's even a big thing with a little bit of money, and I'm like, I want to make sure it's the right thing.
Pastor Darren: That's kind of how I uh kind of how I operate.
Pastor Darren: You know who uh who really doesn't like surprises?
Pastor Darren: The leader or the project manager of anything.
Pastor Darren: Those people do not like surprises.
Pastor Darren: We hate surprises like that.
Pastor Darren: You know who likes to surprise me?
Pastor Darren: Vinnya in the church office.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: The boiler's broken, you're not gonna have heat for three Sundays.
Pastor Darren: Surprise.
Pastor Darren: No, surprises, right?
Pastor Darren: But that's what Joseph gets, right?
Pastor Darren: He gets this big surprise.
Pastor Darren: And we know who he is.
Pastor Darren: He's the earthly father to Jesus, presumably the man who raised him.
Pastor Darren: We don't have very many stories about Jesus being raised.
Pastor Darren: Uh, but it's one of the interesting things about Joseph is that we don't know a whole lot about him.
Pastor Darren: In our four Gospels, right?
Pastor Darren: The the stories of Jesus, the Gospels, Mark doesn't mention him.
Pastor Darren: In fact, Mark doesn't even have the birth story.
Pastor Darren: Mark gets started when the ministry gets started with the baptism, right?
Pastor Darren: And then John, John only mentions him two times and kind of lightly, just a throwback to, you know, Jesus' father.
Pastor Darren: Luke doesn't do much more than that either.
Pastor Darren: Just reminds us that he had a father and his name is Joseph.
Pastor Darren: Matthew is really where we learn most of what we know about Joseph.
Pastor Darren: And what you just heard is kind of it.
Pastor Darren: That's who Joseph is.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: And Matthew, it's important to him.
Pastor Darren: He's the guy who wrote the gospel that had the value for connecting to the older faith.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: And Joseph was the connection to that life, that bloodline that went through David all the way back to the forefathers.
Pastor Darren: So Joseph's important to Matthew because that connection is important to Matthew.
Pastor Darren: But pretty much what we learn about Joseph can be summed up pretty quickly.
Pastor Darren: He set to marry Mary, probably as much as a financial agreement as anything else, right?
Pastor Darren: As a lot of marriages were arranged back then, and it was an arrangement that relied a lot on what was being transacted and what who was going to take care of who and what values were going to be enhanced by that particular marriage.
Pastor Darren: But then she becomes pregnant by the Holy Spirit, right?
Pastor Darren: And what uh we learn is that he's going to dismiss her because, as far as the world outside understands, the Holy Spirit isn't making babies, and Mary just showed up pregnant, and it was a bad thing back then, because that would suggest that she'd been unfaithful, and not only unfaithful, but unfaithful before she was even going to get married, on her way to getting married.
Pastor Darren: So he was going to dismiss her quietly.
Pastor Darren: But then the angel of the Lord comes and lets Joseph know who exactly this is that is coming and who's behind all of this, who is Jesus' divine father.
Pastor Darren: And at that point, uh Jesus, uh Joseph wakes, he agrees to marry, uh to marry Mary.
Pastor Darren: They go with uh to Bethlehem for the birth, and that's pretty much it.
Pastor Darren: That's Joseph's thing in a nutshell.
Pastor Darren: It's kind of interesting that you feel like you got a pretty important role in the movie, and yet that's your little blip in the whole story.
Pastor Darren: I guess I figure, you know, when you're when your other dad is God, you know, when you're just the second dad, you're gonna get second billing.
Pastor Darren: You know, that's just how it's gonna you're gonna move into a support role and not necessarily a starring role anymore.
Pastor Darren: But what we do know is Joseph gets this big surprise.
Pastor Darren: And it's a surprise that's way worse than the boiler going out.
Pastor Darren: It's a surprise that his betrothed is pregnant before they are getting married.
Pastor Darren: Our United Methodist Materials, they develop materials for us to help us get started and thinking about sermons on Sundays, and uh they lay it out pretty good.
Pastor Darren: They lay this whole dilemma out pretty good.
Pastor Darren: Joseph has a plan A, they're gonna get married, and then plan A gets all messed up with that pregnancy.
Pastor Darren: So then plan B, he will dismiss her quietly, which actually is a kind move on Joseph's part in those days and times.
Pastor Darren: He was um, well, it was open to him to actually punish her, and some would say it's even mandated that she be punished for this crime of lack of fidelity.
Pastor Darren: So his dismissing her quietly would have been a kind thing in that context.
Pastor Darren: So then we move to a plan C, right?
Pastor Darren: And uh um that kind of gets set up by the angel visiting Joseph and letting Joseph know who exactly is on his way.
Pastor Darren: Jesus Emmanuel, which means God with us.
Pastor Darren: Jesus is going to be here.
Pastor Darren: He will be the embodiment of God's presence here with us.
Pastor Darren: And he will save us from our sins.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: Save us from our sins.
Pastor Darren: I know that's a big phrase and it feels really heavy.
Pastor Darren: For many people, that's just a different way of saying we know a God of grace.
Pastor Darren: We know a God of forgiveness, we know a God of love.
Pastor Darren: We're not gonna be defined by the sins that we do, or at least only by those sins.
Pastor Darren: We're gonna be grounded in grace and forgiveness.
Pastor Darren: This is what Jesus is going to mean.
Pastor Darren: This is what Jesus is gonna bring to humanity.
Pastor Darren: And so when Joseph hears that, he gets back into this plan C, which is really plan A, to marry Mary, and they head off to Bethlehem.
Pastor Darren: To me, the point of the story for us, or at least the message that we might pull today, is that Joseph sees the signs of God's presence.
Pastor Darren: In this case, he gets he gets a dream where an angel appears to him, right, in this dream and actually tells him what God wants him to hear.
Pastor Darren: It's a sign for him that points to God's presence, points to God's uh uh omniscience and omnipotence.
Pastor Darren: And then he does maybe the most important thing Joseph responds with faith, with trust.
Pastor Darren: The angel came to him, he didn't have to do what the angel said, he didn't have to trust something that happened while he was asleep, but he did.
Pastor Darren: He recognized God's presence and he responded in faith.
Pastor Darren: It sounds pretty simple and straightforward, but how good are we at doing that same thing?
Pastor Darren: We get signs too, don't we?
Pastor Darren: We get signs of God's presence in our world.
Pastor Darren: They may not come as angels in our dreams, but they come.
Pastor Darren: If we're talking about evidence of the presence of God in the world, for us Christians, we recognize that presence when we see kindness, when we see justice, when we see comfort, when we see peace.
Pastor Darren: For we Christians, that's largely how we experience God.
Pastor Darren: Is when those those the the those uh entities, those feelings, those experiences become real.
Pastor Darren: That's how we know God's presence.
Pastor Darren: We know it because it feels like kindness, it feels like justice, it feels like comfort and peace.
Pastor Darren: Maybe the bigger question, the challenging question, especially here at Advent, the final Sunday before the big day, the final Sunday before the big day is how good are we at responding to that evidence with faith?
Pastor Darren: Are we even looking for that presence?
Pastor Darren: Have we trained our eyes to be able to see when it happens in the world around us?
Pastor Darren: Have we trained our eyes to look for that evidence, that inspiration, that God is here and God is living and breathing through God's world and the people in God's world?
Pastor Darren: Are we vigilant about looking out for that?
Pastor Darren: Finding the strength that comes from that.
Pastor Darren: I find that even when we have God's presence made evident right in front of us, we can even kind of divert ourselves from it.
Pastor Darren: We might see acts of faith right in front of us.
Pastor Darren: And what are some of the things that we say to divert ourselves from actually responding in faith to that presence?
Pastor Darren: Here's one right here.
Pastor Darren: Wow.
Pastor Darren: She really has a kind heart for others.
Pastor Darren: I wish I had that.
Pastor Darren: Why can't you have that?
Pastor Darren: Why can't you respond in kindness as well?
Pastor Darren: God's given that capacity to you.
Pastor Darren: But you hear that diversion that we do?
Pastor Darren: Oh, I'm just not built like that.
Pastor Darren: That's not what the gift that God gave me.
Pastor Darren: Presence, inspiration, hope diverted.
Pastor Darren: Here's another one.
Pastor Darren: I know it's the right thing to do.
Pastor Darren: But A, B, C, D.
Pastor Darren: Have we been there?
Pastor Darren: We know it's the right thing to do, but there's all kinds of good reasons not to do it.
Pastor Darren: We see the presence of God, that evidence that's supposed to shape our faith, that's supposed to inspire us not only to live a life of abundance in our own selves, but to be able to share that life and be the blessing to others.
Pastor Darren: And yet, we've got this reason and that reason.
Pastor Darren: And you know, Christian, you know, sometimes it's hard.
Pastor Darren: Sometimes, even as bodies of faith, institution, groups of people, it gets even easier to say things like, well, we just can't afford to follow Christ here.
Pastor Darren: The rest of the world's doing it this way, and if we do the Christ way, there could be dangers.
Pastor Darren: Way, way too risky.
Pastor Darren: Presence, inspiration, hope, peace, divert.
Pastor Darren: Turned away from.
Pastor Darren: This is where the weight of the story of Joseph, at least to me, needs to be acknowledged.
Pastor Darren: God doesn't promise to us an easy journey.
Pastor Darren: In fact, it's often not an easy journey.
Pastor Darren: Being Christian, living a life of abundance, living a life that we share what's been given to us.
Pastor Darren: But what God does promise is Emmanuel.
Pastor Darren: God is with us.
Pastor Darren: The journey might be difficult, but it will always be blessed.
Pastor Darren: Blessed with God's presence.
Pastor Darren: As we approach Christmas morning, a time where we acknowledge and we celebrate that we know a loving God, and that that God loved us enough to send his son to be with us that we might know how much God loves us.
Pastor Darren: I think in that season, the invitation to us is to sharpen our capacity to see God's presence, to see God's presence, to discern God's presence among us, and then to respond in faithfulness, to trust that we can live into that presence and live into those, into that, those entities, those feelings, those experiences that God has given us to experience.
Pastor Darren: We talk a lot about how we want to be changed by our faith.
Pastor Darren: We want to be transformed.
Pastor Darren: We come to church looking for something.
Pastor Darren: How much of it is just having that heart at peace, having that different attitude about the way the world works.
Pastor Darren: We want to be transformed, and we want to be transformed every year at Christmas in a way that brings us peace, that brings us a self-esteem, that brings us an inspiration to be part of making our world a better place.
Pastor Darren: Well, for Joseph, that journey started with seeing the signs of God's presence and responding in faith.
Pastor Darren: Go and do likewise.
Pastor Darren: Amen.