The Promise Survives

Collect for Tuesday in the First Week of Lent

Grant to your people, Lord, grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow you, the only True God; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.




The Promise Survives

Reflection on Matthew 2:13-23

Matthew 2:13-23 builds upon the narrative found in the previous chapter. In this passage, Joseph is communicated with, via a dream and the angel of the Lord, and told to do something he might otherwise not do. He is asked to do something extraordinary in an extraordinary manner, and he doesn’t back down from the challenge. We never hear a verbal response from Joseph to these supernatural requests. We only get his response in action. Yet, his action is critical. The survival of God’s promise depends upon it.

If a story about a character named Joseph whose life is changed because of dreams seems familiar, there is a very good reason. Just the way that Melville wants you to know something about Captain Ahab just from his name, the gospel writer leverages associations with an ancient and earlier Joseph (Genesis 37-50) — a Joseph that also provided a means of survival for God’s promise. But this association is only one of many collective memories conjured by this passage. Egypt is the place Joseph brings his family to survive a famine, but it is also the place that the ancient Hebrews will emerge from the Pharaoh’s rule by signs and wonders.

As in those Old Testament narratives, the gospel writer tells us of a clear danger to the persistence of God’s promise. We learn of Herod’s rage and paranoia as he attempts to snuff out any perceived threat to his throne. Evil is present in this story, and it is no small theological feat to explain why such a horrific act takes place in a story about one named “God with us,” other than to say in the midst of great evil and the possible extinction of God’s promise, a faithful person acts and the promise survives.

This is the elemental plot that flows through those Hebrew tales: God has promised to bless all people. In the face of certain extinction of this promise, God finds a way to fulfill the promise. In this plot, a key element is the faithful person without whom the plan would fail. In this gospel story, Joseph is that faithful person. He believes in the promise, and acts on it. In this way, he foreshadows the faithfulness of Jesus, who will ultimately be faced with the final threat to God’s promise and will be asked to do the unthinkable. He will be asked to die.

 The Rev. Don Fleischman
St. Barnabas Episcopal Church
Richland Center, WI

It's About Faith

The Collect for Monday in the First Week of Lent

Almighty and everlasting God, mercifully increase in us your gifts of holy discipline, in almsgiving, prayer and fasting; that our lives may be directed to the fulfilling of your most gracious will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


It’s All About Faith
Reflection on Matthew 1:18-2:12
Joseph and the aristocratic scholars from the East were individuals who paid attention and who were risk takers. To me paying attention means close listening. The prologue of St. Benedict’s Rule, a book of instructions written for monks and abbots living in community, speaks of “listening with the ear of your heart”. Listening is an attitude of openness and vulnerability. In our spiritual journey, it is being open to hearing the voice of the Spirit and being vulnerable to hearing something other than we expect to hear and then doing it.

Joseph was “a righteous man” who learning of Mary’s pregnancy “planned to dismiss her quietly.” But Joseph had a dream. “When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.” One website said that Joseph was noted “for his willingness to immediately get up and do what God told him.” He answered with action. Risking the judgment of the Jewish law, he took Mary as his wife, offering her love and lineage. When the Child was born, he named him Jesus, surrendering his right to choose the name for his child. Joseph listened and entered into the mystery of Christ.

The scholars from the East, known as the three wisemen, also embarked on a risky journey attending the events of the night sky and learning from the special revelations of God’s words to them. Unlike Herod who feared the risk to his power, the wise men willing took risks to follow God and gain wisdom. They found the Child “who was to be born King of the Jews,” were caught up in the presence of God and paid Him homage. Then, warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they listened and again took action as they went home another way.

Our spiritual journey is about learning to listen and taking risks as well as action. As with Joseph and the wise men, keen listening will take us to some surprising places into and beyond the mystery of Christ.

The Rev. Margaret M. Kiss
Deacon
Cathedral of All Saints