Easy Answers Just Don't Work
Matthew 1:18 – 25
John 8:2 - 11
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church
Daniel T. Hans
December 24, 2007

Every year the graduating class of Washington State University's College of Pharmacy visits several major drug manufacturers.   On one visit the tour guide led the class to a glass-enclosed room where they could see several people in white lab coats.  With her back to the glass, the guide announced:  "In this room researchers are actively searching for a cure for cancer."  She stopped short as the students broke out into laughter.  Puzzled, the guide turned around to look.  Through the glass she saw three scientists in animated debate flipping through the Yellow Pages. (Reader's Digest, 2/96, p. 33)  If only the solutions to our problems were that easy!
 
In an Atlanta newspaper, the following classified ad appeared:  "For Sale - Golf clubs, full set with bag, and slightly bent putter.  $800.00 or trade for psychotherapy."  Again, if only the solutions to our problems were that easy!  Easy answers seldom work for the struggles of human life.

We dream of easy answers to life’s problems.  We dream of simple solutions to life’s complexities. Such dreams go unfulfilled for there are no easy answers.  If anyone knows this it is Joseph.  In Mary, Joseph finds someone with whom to share his love.  Eagerly, he anticipates their life together as husband and wife with the prospect of some day having a family.  But the smooth progression of their engagement comes to a jerking halt, when Mary announces that she is pregnant and Joseph knows he is not the father.

This discovery fills Joseph with raw emotion and all of it is pained and confused.  Fear is certainly a dominant emotion within Joseph, fear for Mary's life.  To be engaged to one man and at the same time to become pregnant by another is no mere breech of personal trust.  For a formally engaged couple in that day, this is a violation of holy law.  The legal response to such a violation is harsh and Joseph knows it.  More than losing Joseph's respect and love, Mary could lose her life!
         
I can imagine Joseph having the following conversation with one of his best friends in whom he confides about Mary’s pregnancy. “I’ll tell everyone it’s my child and take the criticism,” he says.  “You can’t do that!” his friend objects.  “Think of the dangerous precedent you would set!  Consider this scenario:  What would happen if a woman who gets caught in the act of adultery is dragged before the authorities?  But, instead of a leader saying to her stone-toting accusers, ‘Go ahead and stone her to death’, he says to the woman, ‘You are forgiven.  Go and sin no more.’  Can you imagine the mess we would be in if mercy won out over justice?  Think about it, Joseph!  This thing is bigger than just you and Mary!  You are a man of integrity and Mary has broken the holy law!”  Joseph counters, “Carrying out the law's requirement seems so simple until we put a face and a name on the accused.  This ‘accused woman’ is my Mary!  The answer isn’t as easy as you think!”

A man piously calls all homosexuality sinful.  "All homosexuals are choosing a lifestyle against God's will," he declares.  "It's as simple as that!"  Then he learns his son is gay.  The answer isn't as easy as he had thought.  A woman stridently condemns any form of assisted suicide.  "All euthanasia is murder," she intones.  "It's as simple as that!"  Then her mother enters the final stage of a painful death to cancer.  The answer isn't as easy as she had thought.  A politician opposes all free trade in order to protect jobs at home.  "Free trade hurts workers everywhere," he blasts out.  "It’s as simple as that!"  Then he learns that blocking production of goods abroad denies jobs to people who otherwise face hunger or must sell them selves into prostitution to survive.  The answer isn't as easy as he had thought.

In each of these scenarios, when truth and love are held together, life's complexity shows forth.  Journalist H.L. Mencken, from the early 1900s, wrote:  "For every complex problem there is a simple answer, and it's wrong!"  The world of Joseph in the 1st century, the world of H.L. Mencken in the early 20th century and the world into which we now step in the 21st century tries to retreat into simplicity.  This maneuver is a timeless human tactic: attempting to reduce the complexity of life into simplistic answers and shallow solutions.  The simple-answer approach to life and faith is often presented as an either/or question.  Do you believe in science or in religion?  Do you affirm the sacredness of life or the freedom of choice?  Are you pro business or pro environment?  Do you believe actions are a result of nature or nurture?  And let's get really close to home: Do you like the new Christian music or the old church hymns? If only life and faith were that simple!

In our world of continual conflicts and enduring dilemmas, there is something far more important and far more essential than simple answers.  That something is love.  Returning to my imagined conversation between Joseph and his friend, imagine that friend giving Joseph every rational and religious argument for turning Mary over to the authorities to let them deal with her pregnancy.  Every reason he sets before Joseph is shot down with these words, “But, I love her.’  The faithfulness of his love to Mary proves greater than the pain and embarrassment he carries over Mary’s unfaithfulness to him.

In his love for this girl, Joseph decides to spare her life by quietly, unceremoniously, breaking off their engagement.  They will part company and go their separate ways.  While it seems a simple answer to a nasty problem, it is anything but simple.  She will have to move away to avoid the shameful condemnations and he will have to move away to avoid the painful reminders.

But, then, Joseph has a dream.  In that dream, God confirms the explanation Mary has been trying to give for her condition: Yes, she is pregnant and, yes, Joseph is not the father, but neither is anyone else on this earth.  After the dream, Joseph determines to go ahead and marry Mary and to name and raise her child as their child. 

Added to Joseph's fear that Mary's pregnancy can cost her life, is his nausea of betrayal by the one he has trusted.  When our deepest covenants are broken, trust cannot be restored with a snap of the fingers or with a simple explanation as to how and why it happened.  Joseph is called upon to do something that is not humanly possible: to trust when trust has been broken,
to remain faithful when unfaithfulness has occurred, and to move ahead through the problem when detouring around it or running from it is so much easier.

Joseph and Mary have a child, a son named Jesus.  Later, as a young man, Jesus shows extraordinary power to love and to forgive.  Where does he learn to forgive to the extent that he does?  Certainly, he learns from God, his eternal heavenly Father, but also from Joseph, his non-biological earthly father.  Nature and nurture cannot be separated.  Joseph shows that same great power to love and forgive.  Does the suggestion that Joseph forgives Mary seem to accuse her of wrongdoing?  Despite Mary's explanation and Joseph's dream, don’t we wonder just a little bit if Joseph does not go to his grave still wondering: how did Mary really get pregnant?  Both Mary's explanation and Joseph's dream suggest something pretty hard to swallow!

Nevertheless, Christmas is a time to confirm belief in some things that are pretty hard to swallow: the eternal Son of God coming into this world as one of us, born of a human mother but not of a human father; the powerful King of the universe lying helplessly in a cattle stall; and the Savior of humankind taking his first steps toward a cross of execution.  While this may seem very hard to swallow, consider the alternatives.

A psychologist was asked how to help children through the holidays if the family does not believe that Jesus is the savior and that he was born to set people free from their sin.  The response was: tell the children about your family traditions.  Tell them Christmas is about baking cookies, being nice to others, giving gifts, and being together as a family.  Tell them it is about your first sled and first Barbie doll.  You do not need the miraculous conception and the story about a manger and shepherds and wise men.  Just read the kids Twas the Night before Christmas and that will be enough for them to know what Christmas is. Talk about simple answers not being enough!  Such a banal explanation of Christmas for a world starving for meaning and love is like giving more water to a drowning person.

Christmas is not about setting our minds on easy answers and simple solutions.  Christmas is about opening our hearts to complex possibilities and confusing promises.  God is seldom, if ever, found in the easy answers. God resides in the complex possibilities and God reveals himself in the confusing promises.  This is best expressed when Matthew borrows words from the prophet Isaiah:   "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Immanuel which means 'God is with us'."

Throughout the Bible God does his best work in the chaos of our world and in the confusion of our lives.  Out of the swirling chaos of exploding erergy, God brings into being an ordered creation. In the confusion of Abraham's lack of a son to fulfill God's promise of many descendents, God gives Abraham a son when he is 100 years old.  Beyond the confusion of being sold by his brothers into slavery, another Joseph sees God's saving hand that elevates him to a position of power in Egypt from which he can save his family.  Out of the oppressive chaos of slavery in Egypt, God raises up Moses to lead his people to new life.  In the confusion of senseless suffering, God speaks to Job reminding him that despite it all God is still God.  Beyond the confusion of Mary's pregnancy, God brings into the world a child named Jesus, which means “salvation”.

God works in the chaos and confusion because God is love.  And despite how complex and troubling love is at times, love is what this world needs most.  So rather than spend our time and energy trying to tidy up the chaos and explain away the confusion, we will do better to look and listen for God's presence and let God speak to us wherever we are in life, as God does to Joseph.  Joseph could have resolved a nasty problem with a simple solution: Get rid of Mary.  But Joseph is determined to follow God into life's deepest mystery and complexity- into that thing called love. 

There is great wisdom in not settling for easy answers because they just don't work.  What might it mean to look and listen for the ways God wants us to love each other when we don’t have the answers we want?  We don't need simple answers for the problems we face.  We need God's loving presence in the problems we face.  That is why our faith drips with the mystery and complexity of a virgin conceiving and bearing a son whose name is Immanuel which means "God is with us".

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