Doing God's Will

​My sermon this morning is inspired in part by a challenging question posed by an old Christian theologian. He asks, “Has your religion any difficulty in it, or is it in all respects easy to you? Are you simply taking your own pleasure in your mode of living, or do you find pleasure in submitting yourself to God’s pleasure? In a word, is your religion a work? For if it be not, it is not religion at all.”[1]
 
It is a sobering question. Another way of asking it is, are we willing to take up our crosses, whatever form those crosses might take, when God presents them to us?
 
In the Christmas story, we see that both Mary and Joseph could answer, yes. In their different ways, both submitted themselves to God’s will even when God’s will was hard.
 
The one who usually gets the most attention around Christmas is the Virgin Mary, and that is as it should be. Mary was an unmarried teenager when the angel Gabriel announced to her that she would give birth to the Son of God. And without hesitation, Mary responded, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). That is an astonishing act of faith and courage, and it committed her to a lifetime of service and suffering.
 
But in Matthew’s version of the story, Joseph gets top billing, and Joseph is another really good example for us.
 
Joseph wasn’t with Mary when Gabriel appeared to her, and Mary appears to have said nothing to him about her startling news. As a result, Joseph was distressed to discover that his young fiancé was pregnant before they lived together.
 
Joseph would have been within his rights, at least as understood in first-century Israel, if he had publicly denounced Mary for adultery and had had her executed. But, Matthew tells us, “Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” That is already a generous position to take, given Joseph’s range of options and the feelings he presumably had about Mary’s apparent infidelity.
 
But before Joseph could dismiss Mary, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, assured Joseph that Mary’s child was from God, and told Joseph to raise the boy as his own.
 
Then comes the key line in our reading. “When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.”
 
In that single sentence, two things are happening, both important. Josph submitted himself to God’s pleasure, and then did what God commanded him to do.
 
Now, discerning God’s will in the first place can be challenging. But even when we know God’s will for us, which is often the case, even then challenge remains. That is the challenge Joseph faced, and that is the challenge I am focused on this morning. What do we do when we know God’s will, but it isn’t what we want?
 
I like planning ahead. You can be pretty sure at any given moment that I have a theory about what I will be doing in the near future.
 
And I can be willful about my plans. Once I have made a plan, I don’t welcome disruptions to my plan. So, if I had resolved to put Mary away quietly, it would take more than a dream to change my mind, even, I fear, a dream about an angel that felt like it came from God.
 
But not Joseph. Joseph allows God to change his plans. Joseph had resolved to put Mary away. Now Joseph resolves to take Mary as his wife after all, just because he understood God to have told him to do that.
 
Even more importantly, Joseph then acts on his new resolution, in obedience to God’s will. “Joseph did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.” Joseph took Mary as his wife and accepted full responsibility for her child, even when it proved hard, for example when the holy family had to flee their home for fear of King Herod and live for a time as refugees in Egypt.
 
We get other examples of this in Scripture. In the Old Testament, both Moses and the prophet Jeremiah initially resisted God’s call. Moses reminded God that he didn’t speak well. Jeremiah argued he was too young to prophesy. God insisted, Moses and Jeremiah obeyed, and they became great heroes of faith.
 
But the best and most dramatic example of a biblical character doing what Joseph does in our passage is Jesus himself.
 
On the night before he was arrested, Jesus prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39).
 
People read this passage differently, but I see it as a genuine struggle.
 
Jesus knew that crucifixion was God’s will. Jesus had said as much to his disciples several times. But when the time came, the human Jesus very understandably did NOT want to get crucified. It was a struggle of wills: Jesus’ human will and the will of God the Father.
 
Over the course of several hours of prayer, Jesus gradually brought his will into line with the Father’s will for him, to the point that Jesus could pray, “if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done” (Matthew 26:42).
 
And when the mob showed up to arrest him, Jesus was ready. Like Joseph, and with even higher stakes, Jesus submitted his will to God’s, and Jesus did what God wanted him to do.
 
What did it take for Mary to agree to carry God’s child when she was so young? Or for Joseph to take Mary as his wife and raise Jesus as his own, despite his desire to avoid scandal? Or for Jesus to accept crucifixion, with all its horror? What did it take for Mary and Joseph and even Jesus to set aside their own desires, and live obedient to God’s calling?
 
All three had their own particular hopes and plans, but all three had at least one thing in common. They wanted, above all else, to do God’s will. They may sometimes have struggled when God’s will for them was hard. But they never wavered from their deepest desire, which was to obey God.
 
I invite you to take some time this week to reflect on your own life. Have you done what Mary and Joseph and Jesus did? Can you think of a time when you chose a different path than you otherwise would have taken because you came to understand that God wanted you to do it?
 
I struggled to come up with examples in my life. I’m hoping some of you have an easier time of it than I!!
 
What we see in this season is how much God loves us. God was willing to do anything, even take flesh to live and die among us, in order to draw us back into right relationship with God.
 
The question for us is, do we love God back? Do we love God enough to obey, to do God’s will, when our strong inclination is to do something else?
 
If your answer, like mine, is ambiguous, ponder about the example of Mary and Joseph. Then do what Jesus did. Pray. Ask God to help you. Ask God to change your will. Ask God to give you a deep desire for God’s will to be done. Ask God to help you truly be ready for Christmas this year.
 
May God be with us all. In Christ’s name. Amen.
 
 


[1] John Henry Newman, Discourses to Mixed Congregations, 1899, page 119.