Advent 4A (Matthew 1:18-25)

We all have experiences of being in crisis and we wish situations like that wouldn’t happen. We don’t need to look further for an example. Our global world of which we are a part is still struggling through the pandemic crisis, impacting all of us personally. Thankfully, it is getting better with the vaccines available yet this doesn’t undo all the suffering that this pandemic has caused. No crisis each person experiences is small or any lesser. Every single crisis is heavy, difficult, and challenging in its own context, which is why no one can say others’ suffering is less than their own. What makes one’s critical moment better is compassion. We are willing to join where they are with our actions and prayers. This compassion can be the sole reason for building and maintaining a community of love in the name of Christ. It’s to lessen one another’s suffering by being together. 

In the gospel lesson this morning, both Joseph and Mary are in crisis. Their crisis starts with Mary’s unexpected pregnancy. Mary shouldn’t have been pregnant before she marries Joseph according to their cultural norm. Something goes clearly wrong. For Joseph, the fact that Mary is suddenly pregnant and he’s not the biological father is a crisis. It’s a type of crisis that can damage his reputation in his community. He might have felt betrayed, and we can imagine him being resentful of Mary. Yet he doesn’t play a victim role. Instead, he does his best not to harm Mary’s future. He’s aptly described as “being a righteous man”. For Mary, on the other hand, Joseph’s resolve to not expose her to public disgrace may have helped her only a little bit. She would still be pregnant regardless of what he does. In the time of Mary, social prejudice against women who become pregnant before marriage would be worse than in our time. 

Contrasted to a commercialized image of the nativity scene in which everything seems calm and peaceful, the coming of Jesus of Nazareth narrated in the gospel story this morning is first and foremost perceived as the crisis of Joseph and Mary, not as Christ. This child the Crisis shakes the world of Joseph and Mary upside down. Because of this Christly crisis, their lives will never be the same. Mary is about to become a single parent, and Joseph is looking for a new wife. Whether we like it or not, all sorts of crises somehow affect us. Some may impact us more than others. Just when Joseph decides to pull himself out of this crisis by cutting his ties with Mary, God intervenes and stops his plan from annulling his engagement with Mary. What we see in parallel between Joseph and Mary is then their response of fiat (“let it be done” in Latin) to God’s mission of the incarnation which first comes as a crisis that shatters their plans. 

What kind of crisis has impacted you? What crisis have you recently gone through? While I want to acknowledge with compassion how hard that crisis has been for you, I would like to empower you not to lose heart. God is present even when we don’t feel God’s presence, and our desire, longing, and anticipation for that very presence keep us going in difficult times. In the crisis each one of us is personally going through, I would like us to ardently yearn for the coming of Christ and to experience the presence of Emmanuel, God with us. Amid the crisis, Christ comes as Emmanuel. This experience of God with us is the very source of our strength and resilience to go through our crisis. Rather than asking to remove or change a challenging situation, we learn to rely more on God’s presence in that crisis and trust in God’s faithfulness that keeps us carrying on and moving forward. Whenever we discover God’s very presence in ourselves as well as in the midst of our crisis, Christ is born to us. In the eyes of God, we are found and born to Christ. 

As a faith community of love in Christ, it is our Christian duty to be present and to be representatives of Christ to those in crisis. St. Teresa of Avila summarizes this Christian obligation, “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours.” While we personally contemplate the presence of God with us, Emmanuel, we as God’s beloved community materialize and incarnate Emmanuel so that we can shift from crisis to Christ. 
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