This Is How

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1.18-21)

Some things are hard to explain. Joseph found himself in that situation when the young girl he was to marry comes up pregnant, and he knows he isn’t the father. Still loving Mary, he decides to  divorce her quietly, sparing her shame and–were the wrong people to learn of the situation–death by stoning. “Such was his intention,” the evangelist Matthew tells us, as he puts before us the bad day Joseph is having.

But, it was not the way that God intended things to go, so, dispatching an angel, this one appearing in a dream, which is a good way for an angel to show itself, the divine will is told to Joseph, informing him there was little to nothing to fear–always the message of angels–even if the situation didn’t look stellar, at least from Joseph’s perspective.

Wanting to make sense of things to Joseph and to us, the thing we all want when nothing suddenly makes sense, Matthew slowly begins to arrange the pieces of the puzzle, showing the Most High God at work, piece after piece falling into place, until, finally the full picture emerges and, at least for now, things start to make sense again.

“This is how,” the evangelist writes, expectation building in his words, hope building in our hearts, as we, with Joseph representing all of us who have had bad days, are shown the way that God works with the broken bits and jagged pieces of our lives to bring us a better day, lifting the darkness and the doom, giving us enough light to see the next step, which will have to do until we make it to the end of the tunnel.

In a real way, those few words–this is how–begin, not only the story of the birth of the Savior of the world, but the long, continuous story of the ways God will reveal himself to us through his son, sent to us because we all need a break from the bad days we’re having, troubles and difficulties drowning us before the day even gets started. 

A leper, a left-for-dead child, a blind man, a woman with a past, a woman with a bad back, a paralyzed man, a lunatic or two, all of them finding their bad days taking a turn for the better because, well because, God revealed himself in his son to each and every one of them, showing he intended something very different for them, not sickness, but health; not shame, but esteem; not despair, but delight. Every one of their stories is a miracle in the making, every one of their stories showing how God works in mysterious ways, every one of their stories starting with a divine answer to the very human question “How”, the answer laid out in three simple words, This is how.

This is how the leper was healed, as he limped through his days, bandaged and bedraggled, shunned and despised, his hope for anything better all but gone, his life now misery piled upon misery. But it was not what God intended, as the man of Galilee made clear, seeing the leper, touching his sores, and making his skin as new as a baby’s behind. 

This is how the blind man Bartimaeus had his eyes opened, stumbling through a dark world, the sound of his stick tapping on the stone pavement. Crying out, as he did most every day, he begged someone to hear and to heed, and someone did, on a day like any other day, except it ended up being a day unlike any day he had known. “I do will it,” the voice spoke to him, his words so commanding and so certain that the blind man felt chills creep down his arms and saw specks of light out of his clouded eyes for the first time in a very long time.

This is how Jairus had his faith restored, shattered by his daughter’s sickness that had left her good as dead, his grief paralyzing, when the man who was called a miracle worker stepped into the dark space where his daughter’s lifeless body slept the sleep of death. “Little girl,” the man said, “get up.” And, somehow, the words broke down the wall between the living and the dead, grasping the girl from clutches of death, giving her back to her father, shocked and stupefied and ecstatic, and Jairus’ very bad day suddenly turned into the best day of his life.

This is how a woman, her name not remembered in the neighborhood so much as her sinful past, found a reason to crawl out of bed, even though every other day she heard tongues wagging and fingers pointing, her bad choices and past lovers the talk of the town, because one day she saw a man who looked at her soul, not at her body, and seeing the beauty inside her, told her that her sins were forgiven and, hearing those few, kind words, she vowed never to hold her head in shame again, knowing God loved her more and better than any man ever had, and her past didn’t matter to him as much as her future.

This is how a man too weak to move found the strength to stand on his legs, his days spent on his back near the hot, healing waters, but never strong enough to move himself into the spring water, others never interested enough to give him a hand, until a different sort of man walked past one day and saw him, helpless, hopeless, hapless, and helped him, somehow the man’s words energizing his useless, spent, shrunken legs, and, trembling, the new man walked on his new legs for the first time, his bad days behind him as he kicked up his heels.

This is how a woman bent and stooped and beat down by life stood tall again, so many bad days she lost count of them, only knowing it had been eighteen miserable years of them, when, one day, everything changed, after she reached out to touch the shirt sleeve of man whom others called a prophet, suddenly feeling her back shift and her bones creak as they snapped back into place, and struck dumb, she stared at the prophet, who turned to face her, asking if she had touched him, and, speechless, she only nodded, a smile coming to his face, assuring her it was alright and she’d be alright because God had visited his people.

This is how a man possessed and dispossessed, the dark thoughts tormenting his mind and having him pull his hair out, every day a bad, very bad day for him, was able to repossess his sanity and sanitation, because, out of the blue, all the craziness and cursing and coarseness stopped on a dime when a man, gentle and kind and unafraid, freed him of his demons, telling him that God intended him to live freely, wholly, and fearlessly, and, because he took the man at his word, the next day was a much better day, freed finally from those visible and invisible chains that had made his life a prison.

This is how a man who hadn’t heard a word in years heard, not only a word, but a string of words, spoken by a Galilean preacher, who said to his clogged and closed ears, “Be opened,” and whether it was the words or the prayer or both, he heard them, and what was supposed to be a bad day in a string of bad days, turned out to be a great day, totally unexpected, totally changing everything, words making sense again, his life making sense at last.

 It all begins today with a miracle birth that turned Joseph’s plans upside down and Mary’s plans inside out, as angels assure the couple that, all evidence to the contrary, is isn’t going to be a bad day after all, because the Most High God, the ultimate fixer-upper, is going to make things right again, maybe not right away, but right soon.

You ask, how in the world, knowing quite well what a bad day looks like in our dilapidated, deranged, almost destroyed, if not despaired of, world, and the answer is told us today when a baby was born in Bethlehem, so listen close as Matthew tells us this is how.

–-Jeremy Myers