No, Sir. That’s a Negative

Oh wisdom

Lord and ruler

Root of Jesse

Key of David

Rising sun

Emmanuel.

Come, Lord Jesus, Come.

And in the name of God, the father, the son, and the holy spirit.

Amen.

We drove by this housing development down by the subbase in Groton years ago.

After touring the Nautilus, we decided to drive around, see what the neighborhood was like.

My father pulled up to the gates of the main base entrance and asked the Military Police officer if we could maybe drive around the base, maybe check things out.

This was the height of the Cold War in the eighties.

This MP looked at my father through dark sunglasses.

Squinting I imagine, he paused to assess the situation for half a beat.

This gargantuan man, muscular, fit, 6 foot 4 at least in military fatigues looked us up and down, perhaps thinking, “what do you expect me to say here, buddy,” instead said, “No sir. That’s a negative.”

There would be no explanation we could not just tour a base filled with top secret technology.

“No sir, that’s a negative.”

For weeks after, we would quote that He-Man charged with protecting our shores, if the response called for a ‘No.”

If my mother asked, “Hey, Matthew. Did you pick up your clothes yet?”

“No sir, that’s a negative.”

“Did the Giants win, Dad?”

“No, sir, that’s a negative.”

And so on.

We turned around from the base entrance.

I remember the car was quiet, maybe because we were all chastened by the alpha-est of alpha males on the eastern seaboard or maybe we were just wondering where to go next.

My father got the idea of driving through that off base housing.

So, we did.

We drove down streets new to us, through neighborhoods of houses that were all built similarly, single story ranch homes filled with families and lawn mowers.

They were rectangular buildings built on rectangular plots of land.

Same shaped buildings on same shaped sized bits of green grass and black tarred driveway, one man washed his car while his neighbor trimmed a hedge.

This was the place for me.

Everything was so neat and in its proper place.

It all fit, it was Levittown for the Armed Forces, the Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday” without the snark.

This neighborhood, for a long time after that, represented the ideal for me, as it implied a series of steps, a certain typicality of how life was supposed to go for a suburban white male of a certain economic background.

At that young age, I saw life differently and, in that difference, I imagined life was a series of steps, A to B to C.

Do good in school.

Go to a good college.

Marry.

Settle down.

Wait, reverse that.

Settle down.

Marry.

Have kids.

And ultimately, find a rectangular piece of land upon which would be a rectangular home and grass to mow.

That was how things were supposed to be.

And for a long time, that was my expectation of how things would be.

And yet life is too organic for it to be stifled within the confines of the human imagination.

Life did not turn out to be a series of steps, B did not follow A and I am not sure if I ever reached C.

Folks, counting generously, me standing here before this morning means that I am now on somewhere near career number 7.

Also, our house is not quite rectangular and the little bit of land we own is more of a rhombus with cuticles than a rectangle.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Now, let’s talk about Joseph for a bit.

The way I read this morning’s story, I wonder if Joseph and I might not have had a bit in common, a certain expectation about how things are supposed to go.

Here’s Joseph, doing things as are perhaps expected of him?

This is Joseph, his family line is that of David’s.

Now, perhaps him being a carpenter doesn’t mean that he has the kingly power his ancestors did, but perhaps his family still has that special set of china they bring out when guests arrive.

And Joseph is a fine carpenter.

And Joseph fell in love with Mary.

And now that Joseph has a steady career and a steady source of income and he fell in love with Mary, they became betrothed.

And they were to soon to get married.

But then, God chooses Mary to bear the Christ child.

Now Joseph could have done some things here, some things that would embarrass Mary, things that could even cause Mary harm, but he did not.

Upon hearing this rather fantastical story that Mary became pregnant by the Holy Spirit, that she was to bear God’s son, Joseph did not react with anger.

Instead.

He acted with honor.

He would dismiss Mary.

They would go their separate ways.

There must have been heartbreak there, no?

There must have been some sense of betrayal, not only was Mary pregnant, but Joseph did all the right things.

He learned a trade, A.

He earned a living, B.

He fell in love, C.

And suddenly, plans D through Z fell away.

He lost his love, but he would not tell.

He would not shame.

He’d tell his friends round the pub that things just didn’t work out.

He would deal with the hurt.

Quietly.

But then he was visited in a dream by an angel.

“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

And Joseph woke from this dream.

His anger, betrayal, hurt was washed away.

He committed to raising this child as his own.

And he would protect the child.

When an angel of the Lord appeared once again to warn Joseph of Herod’s coming destruction, he took Jesus and his family to Egypt.

And there they lived in safety.

And when an angel of the Lord told Joseph to return Jesus to Israel, this time to a small town called Nazareth on the outskirts of empire in a land called Galilee.

And in Nazareth Joseph loved his son and taught him his trade.

And Jesus grew up in a loving household, born in a manger his home was now stable.

Friends, I very much know and believe that Jesus is the very incarnation of God on earth.

Fully God.

Fully human.

And as a human I wonder if Jesus’ ministry was not at least somewhat influenced by the fact that he was raised in such a way, that they fled to Egypt to protect him.

Did his own protected upbringing influence Jesus to protect all of us as would a mother hen keeping safe her brood?

And so, we see that life is not always a straight line, and admittedly, perhaps I am reading too much of my own life experience into Joseph’s experiences, but I think we can see in our own lives how things twist and change; we find ourselves miles away from where we ever thought we would be.

And sometimes those crooked paths that shift our lives away from the linear ways we envisioned for ourselves to the not so straight, are drawn by God.

Friends, I joked a bit earlier that I am on career number seven.

Aside from the joke though, was this constant wanting and a sense of being unfulfilled.

Perhaps realizing the dream of joining the Peace Corps would be fulfilling, it was not.

Perhaps working in politics would be fulfilling, it was not.

Maybe writing computer code would spark the mind and stop the wandering.

It did not.

Each job was great for a while, but the constant urge to try something new, something more was always there.

I worked for Disney World, the so-called happiest place on earth, and still I felt called to something different.

It wasn’t until I listened, it wasn’t until I truly heard that angel of the Lord calling that I finally found what God was perhaps asking me to consider all along.

To serve God, serve each other, and realize God’s love in community.

I do not think I am alone.

I wonder for all of you what God is calling you, you individually and you collectively, towards.

I wonder if along with all the blessings in your lives, do you hear God asking you to serve Christ?

And how to serve Christ?

Perhaps we serve as Joseph did.

By loving the gifts given to us by God.

Perhaps we serve as Joseph did.

By protecting those gifts by God.

Perhaps we serve as Joseph did.

By uprooting ourselves for God.

Perhaps we serve as Joseph did.

By shifting and adjusting our expectations of how life should be to reacting to what life truly is, we are listening to God’s call.

I will tell you, it was not always easy, in trying new things there is trepidation at the unknown and sadness as well.

Sadness that I just didn’t seem to fit into those places I worked at, but so much hope.

Hope that this next place would be the right fit, the place where I belonged.

And in that hopefulness was the clarity to, at least in retrospect, try on what God was asking me to do.

How wonderful to listen to God’s call!

So, let us find our truest paths, let us journey to Bethlehem, to Egypt, to Nazareth.

Let us hear God and let us listen.

God is calling, I promise you.

Amen.