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This Week's Sermon THE FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT 23 December 2007 "Dirty Jobs" Matthew 1:18-25 LSB Series A Pastor Philip G. Meyer Soli Deo Gloria!

The other week I referred to a program on the Discovery Channel called Man vs. Wild, drawing a connection to John the Baptizer as the original Survivor. Today I reference another program on the same channel called Dirty Jobs. On this program Mike Rowe takes on the world's dirtiest, most dangerous, and most disgusting jobs. In other words, the jobs nobody wants to do. For instance, in a recent episode he worked in a garbage processing plant in Las Vegas where they take all the garbage from restaurants and process it into food for hogs. On many of these episodes I am glad that the sense of smell is not possible through the medium of television! I am sure that the title of this program, Dirty Jobs, has been taken from the well-known phrase, "It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it." Indeed, some of these jobs are so disgusting that one wonders how anybody could be recruited to do them.

Today's Gospel describes the circumstances of Christ's birth into our world. Matthew's account differs markedly from Luke's more well-known account, while Mark doesn't even have a birth narrative. There is none of the quiet and peace of Luke's account. There is no sub-plot involving Caesar's tax plan for the Roman world; there is no inn, no shepherds, no heavenly army of angels singing "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!" All of that is missing in Matthew's account. Instead, Matthew focuses on the very human side of our Lord's conception and birth. He focuses on what we might call "Dirty Jobs." Let's look at them from the perspective of the three main characters, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus himself.

First Joseph. Little is known about Joseph apart from Matthew's account, but he plays an absolutely critical role in all of it. Joseph had been engaged to Mary, yet she was found to be pregnant. Joseph knew that he was not the father. In Israel adulterers could be stoned, and Mary certainly would have been stoned for her offense, but Joseph is characterized here as being "a just man" who still had Mary's best interests at heart. The situation cleared up a bit when the angel appeared to Joseph in a dream telling him specifically that the child she was carrying had been conceived by a word placed in Mary's ear by the Holy Spirit.

"Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 1:20, ESV)

Joseph had expected none of this! Now his life was interrupted with this job to be father to a child that was not biologically his own. He was also to be husband to Mary. He was to put on the face of normality to the world about this situation. It was a Dirty Job and God had chosen Joseph to do it. God would not let him run away from it and Joseph demonstrates himself to be a man of faith, that is, he believed what God told him about Mary and this child. This child was no ordinary child, but the Child promised through the prophet Isaiah. This Child would be Immanuel. This Child would be the incarnate Son of God. Joseph did exactly at God had commanded him. He took on this Dirty Job and did it in an exemplary way.

How many fathers act as did Joseph? He saw his vocation clearly and did it. He was husband to Mary and father to Jesus. He cared for them both as God wanted. So many biological fathers today bear no responsibility for their offspring. They do not marry the mothers because they don't want the constraints of marriage or the responsibility of caring for a child. Much of the social difficulty of our culture can be laid at the feet of such irresponsible fathers. For far too many of them, fatherhood coupled with being husband is a job too dirty for them to do. But not Joseph! What an exemplary saint! He fulfills his God-given vocation.

Then there is Mary. Matthew does not tell of the interaction between the angel Gabriel and Mary, but Luke does. Gabriel announces to Mary that she will be the mother of the Christ and that this conception will take place by the power of the Holy Spirit, namely, by a word placed into her ear. The amazing thing in all of this, says Luther, is not that Jesus is conceived in this way, but that Mary herself believed it!

Imagine now how Mary thinks. She was engaged to Joseph, a good and righteous man. She no doubt planned on a happy life with him, raising a family of children, normal in every way. But now all normality goes out the window. Her life is disrupted in a way that borders on the fantastic. She is pregnant but with no husband-yet. Her reputation will be more than tarnished should anyone ever find out that she and Joseph have not yet married. She could be stoned as an adulterer, but Mary accepts the angel's word, just as did Joseph. It was a Dirty Job, and Mary consented to do it.

With both Joseph and Mary we witness deep humility. Both bow to the will of God and accept what God is doing through them. Through this Child God himself will enter the world. All of their plans have now been changed-radically-not put on hold so that at some future time they can take them up again. Life will never be the same for them. Joseph and Mary are real human beings. They are humble servants of God. "It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it!" Praise God that Joseph and Mary did their jobs so that the Savior of the whole world would come into our flesh and blood to redeem us!

Perhaps the actions of a Joseph and Mary demonstrate why the world despises Christians so much, even hates them. Our culture has adopted celebrity standards. It has come to imitate celebrities more and more, and the more outrageous their behavior the more people adore them. In our celebrity-obsessed culture, there is no way to demonstrate your humanity except through outrageous behavior. The more vices you have, the more authentically "human" they consider you. Being married to the same person for decades, going to bed early enough to get up for work in the morning, taking care of children, honoring the laws of the land by obeying them, living out one's Christian vocation-these things will never get you celebrity status.

Or maybe it will. Last week we watched the NBC special on the McCaughey septuplets. The McCaugheys, an small-town Iowa couple, had seven children ten years ago. NBC has chronicled the years as these children have grown. At one point the interviewer asked the husband and wife how their marriage had been going with all the stresses and strains of having eight children, seven of them all the same age. They had remarked about the uncounted thousands of dirty diapers they had changed. Actually, he put it in the hundreds of thousands! Mrs. McCaughey remarked that life isn't always about "me," but about the others. One lives one's life for others, not for one's self. Her husband agreed. It was stunning to hear such a thing on network television when network television seems to undermine anything like this. Yes, raising eight children would be considered a Dirty Job, but they are happy to do it. They have tried to stay out of the limelight but have felt an obligation to show the world what their lives are like in order to demonstrate Christian love.

Finally, there is our Lord Jesus himself. Being conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary God came into our world, a real flesh and blood human being, a creature subject to his own laws. Think of the humility of his entrance! He wasn't born to a king and queen. He wasn't born to rich people who could provide him every opportunity that money could buy. He wasn't born with attending physicians and nurses. He is born of an obscure woman in an out of the way place in the world. No fanfare of trumpets announced his birth, save the praises of the angels in front of a bunch of shepherds. The Christ seems to slip in the back door of the world. The Christ has come to do THE Dirty Job, a job that no one else, no human being, no angel, could do. He came in order to lead the devil captive and to restore a lost and fallen humanity to God. He is called Immanuel, that is, God with us, God in the flesh, God come down into our vale of tears.

How dirty is this job? Consider that the world has been in rebellion against God from the days of Adam and Eve. The world cannot redeem itself. The world cannot get better. Luther once remarked that the world was like a drunken peasant trying to mount a horse. He manages to get himself up to the back of the horse but then falls off on to the other side. Because of his condition he simply cannot stay on top. That's what humanity is like. While there may be a highlight here or there, humanity pretty much lives in the sewer, swimming in its own filth and stench.

Into this sewer, if you will, Jesus has come, to rescue this stinking humanity. But he cannot simply reach down and pull humanity out. No, he must get down into the sewer himself, go under the putrid waters to push humanity above the waters. All of the filth and stench of sin sticks to Jesus, that is, he takes it upon himself, in his own body. He takes on himself all the dirt that belongs to us. He carries the dirt and destruction of our sin, our death, to the cross in order to make an end of it. We often say glibly, "Jesus died for me." True enough. But it does not convey the lengths to which Jesus went to effect our rescue. He took on the dirtiest job of all because only he could do it. No human being could ever rescue himself, but only this Christ, this God-Man, this Immanuel. Jesus is the Servant of the whole human race. Jesus is your Savior! The name Jesus means Savior. God humbled himself by entering our world as he did and by living and dying as he did. When we consider the Incarnation of Jesus we see a God who was not afraid to get himself dirty with the filth of our sin and death. We see a God who loves us enough to do it and not consider the cost.

Joseph and Mary exhibit humility in accepting the jobs that God assigned them. They become models for husbands and fathers, wives and mothers. They did their Dirty Jobs as God empowered them. But saving the world is THE Dirty Job par excellence! Jesus did that work for you, for every other person in this world. He came into our flesh, suffered our pain and sorrow so that he would one day take us from this valley of sorrow to the splendor of his eternal kingdom. That has been accomplished by our Immanuel, our Lord Jesus Christ. By his humble service, may you also learn to serve humbly in whatever Dirty Jobs God may give you!