“What Child is This?” - A Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Advent, Year A

“What Child is This?”
A Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Advent, Year A

• Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19 -- 'Let your face shine, that we may be saved.'
• Romans 1:1-7 -- Called to mission by the gospel of Christ
• Matthew 1:18-25 -- Joseph is told that Mary will bear a son, a savior

By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, Illinois
December 23, 2007

Now, I’ve titled this sermon “What Child is This?”, but something tells me that was probably not Joseph’s first question. Just because Matthew is rather brief and to the point in telling this story, that shouldn’t let us miss the real scandal and drama here.

“When Mary … had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” So, imagine yourself in Joseph’s place here. You’re engaged to this young woman, and you haven’t quote “lived together”—and now, all of a sudden, she’s quote “found to be with child”. In other words, the two of you have not had sex and yet somehow Mary’s pregnant. I myself have never been in this position, but I’m inclined to think that Joseph’s first question was probably less “what child is this” and more “who’s child is this”? I mean, if we think this situation would be a little scandalous today, how much more so in a society 2,000 years ago where not simply your relationship, but your entire honor and status as a man, could be ruined by such a turn of events.

As if life weren’t already getting complicated and strange enough for Joseph, pretty quickly—while Joseph is figuring out how to minimize the damage—this angel shows up. The angel seems to have the answer, though, to the question of whose this child is: “The child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” Huh? Now it seems like we’ve moved from the realm of daytime soap-opera drama into an episode of Dr. Who. The Holy Spirit? God has made her pregnant?

As Stanley Hauerwas, one of Pastor Mike’s favorite teachers, points out though, this shouldn’t be so surprising to us. If we affirm that God created the whole world, the whole universe, without needing our involvement—and we do affirm this as Christians, even if we don’t all agree on how God creates—then creating a single new baby certainly is not outside the realm of possibility. (Hauwerwas, 34)

Hauerwas goes on, though, to say to us “What should startle us, what should stun us, is not that Mary is a virgin, but that God refuses to abandon us.” (Ibid.) Like the angel speaking to Joseph in the story, Hauerwas’s observation moves us from the question of who’s this child this to who this child is. This child is God coming to us in human flesh. This squirming little embryo in Mary’s uterus is the clear statement in cells and blood, flesh and bone that ‘God refuses to abandon us.’


I will admit that I have been at the mall and in other stores a number of times recently—and, no, I’m still not entirely done with my Christmas shopping yet. Of course, in some of these places they have been playing holiday music since well before Thanksgiving. Some of these songs are, shall we say, more annoying than others. While there are many candidates to pick on, the song “A Holly, Jolly Christmas” struck me yesterday as both fairly annoying and so utterly disconnected from this story in Matthew, or really anything else biblical about Jesus’ coming. I mean, imagine this scene in a movie: Joseph finds out his supposedly-virgin fiancé is pregnant, starts making plans to break off the engagement, and then this angel shows up, saying that the child is God’s. Then maybe some other hosts of heaven show up in the background and break into song: [singing] “oh by golly have a holly, jolly Christmas this year”.

Obviously, that is not the scene Matthew paints. No, the angel shows up to tell Joseph that this child is from the Holy Spirit. And then the angel goes on, not to some maudlin, sentimental “holly jolly Christmas”, but to say not only that this is a sign, a proof, that ‘God refuses to abandon us’, but that this child will save his people from their sins. As one commentator puts it, “If Jesus is Immanuel [—God with us—] then we realize we don't have to go anywhere to meet him other than the hurly-burly reality of our Monday mornings and our Thursday afternoons. We don't have to go find him in some other realm because he has already found us in exactly this realm and this world. Immanuel is God-with-us in the cancer clinic and in the Alzheimer’s ward at the local nursing home. Immanuel is God-with-us when the pink slip comes and when the beloved child sneers, "I hate you!" Immanuel is God-with-us when you pack the Christmas decorations away and, with an aching heart, you realize afresh that your one children never did call over the holidays. Not once. Immanuel is God-with-us when your dear wife or mother stares at you with an Alzheimer's glaze and absently asks, "What was your name again?"”(Calvin CEP, n.pg.) And I say, there’s a reason these angels that appear to announce Jesus’ birth keep having to say “do not be afraid”. This is big stuff, stuff of life and death, hope and salvation, fear and redemption.

I suspect Joseph was still a bit perplexed. Perhaps he was even more confused after this angel had shown up than before. Maybe he was satisfied with this apparent answer to whose this child was. Or at least he dared to trust the angel dream enough that he didn’t follow through on his plans to dismiss Mary quietly. But, even with that, I bet he was still wondering about this other question, ‘what child is this?’ It’s like the contemporary gospel song by Mark Lowry, recorded by dozens of others, that asks of Joseph’s counterpart “Mary, did you know?”

Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy would one day walk on water?
Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy would save our sons and daughters?
Did you know
that your Baby Boy has come to make you new?
This Child that you delivered will soon deliver you.

Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy will give sight to a blind man?
Mary, did you know
that your Baby Boy will calm the storm with His hand?
Did you know
that your Baby Boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little Baby you kissed the face of God?

Joseph and Mary may not have known all these things, but as Christians, we do know the rest of the story. We have been invited in to the whole story of Jesus the Christ, that same gospel of God that Paul wrote about to the Romans: God’s promises through the prophets, Jesus’s as truly human as a son of David and truly God as shown in his resurrection, the gifts of grace and discipleship that is offered to each of us and all of us as we people called to belong to Christ. We get to follow one who gave sight to the blind and water to the thirsty. We get to know the inside scoop on the One who came that we may have life, the One who came—and still comes—to save us from our sin. We hear the psalmist cry to God “let your face shine upon us and we shall be saved” , and then we get to give our witness, our testimony, back in response, “we have seen his glory … full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

Indeed, we do get to know the rest of the story. We do get to bear witness to the world to something more, something life-giving, something about what child this is that we celebrate. Knowing the story, we trust in the One who welcomed the outcast and advocated for the poor. Knowing the story, we have the privilege of being the ones who long for and await Christ’s coming again, the ones who have hope in the promise that God’s reign is in fact coming to transform and renew this world.

And yet, even we ourselves are invited to learn the story ever and ever again. We are called to be one standing with Joseph asking ‘what child is this?’. Even knowing the story, we can join in yet another Christmas song—we are still the voice that sings:

(singing)I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,
how Jesus, the Savior, did come for to die:
for poor ord’n’ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander, out under the sky.

Citations: [1] Stanley Hauwerwas, Matthew, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2006). [2] From the comments on Advent 4A, 23 December 2007, on the “Center for Excellence in Preaching” website of Calvin Theological Seminary: http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/index.php; accessed 22 December 2007.