"When The Lord Wants to Borrow"

A judge asks a defendant to please rise. When he and his lawyer stand, His Honor says, "You are charged with killing a paperboy with a shovel." From out in the audience a man shouts, "You lying jerk!

The judge bangs his gavel and says, "Silence in the court," then turns to the defendant again and says, "You are also charged with killing a mailman with an electric drill."

"Quiet!" yells the judge after a few more bangs of his gavel, and then continues,

"Finally, you are charged with murdering a school teacher with a chainsaw." At this, the unruly spectator leaps to his feet and screams, "You cheap moron!"

The guy calms down only ever so slightly and answers, "I've lived next to this skinflint for ten years now, but do you think he ever had any tools when I needed to borrow one?!"

Why do so many people have a thing about lending and borrowing? Let's say you are baking a cake; you realize you're about a cup of sugar shy of a full recipe and the store is closed. Show up on the neighbor's doorstep with a humble request for a cup of sugar and I think most, if not all, neighbors would gladly oblige. I don't know about you, but if my neighbor was in the same boat and did NOT ask to borrow a cup of sugar from me, I might be a little miffed.

But what I've discovered through the years is that most people aren't equally magnanimous with what they are willing to lend. The eminent psychologist Abraham Maslow developed a chart of what he called a person's Hierarchy of Needs. I think most people also have a slightly less-developed chart called a "Hierarchy of Things Willing To Lend."

I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but is there anyone here who would NOT lend a neighbor a cup of flour? How about a can of gasoline? Let's move a little further up the hierarchy. Ladies, let's say the neighbor high school girl is going to the Prom and wants to borrow that diamond pendent bracelet that your grandmother gave you? Gentlemen, let's say you have approximately 49 Phillips Head screwdrivers. If your neighbor wants to borrow one, you can probably get along with your remaining 48. But what if your neighbor wants to borrow your one and only drill press?

Now, allow me to get a little personal here. Throughout my life, if anyone has ever asked to borrow anything from me, I can't recall ever turning anyone down. I've lent my lawnmowers; I've lent my cars. I've got a few thousand books in my library and I've lent hundreds of them. I've lent my computer. But a couple of weeks ago, someone asked to borrow something and for the first time, at least the first time I could ever remember, I had to say, "No." Someone asked to borrow my guitar. And I realized that you don't ask to borrow a cook's saucepans; you don't ask to borrow a soldier's rifle; you don't ask to borrow Mario Andretti's car; you don't ask to borrow a musician's instrument, and you don't ask to borrow a carpenter's tools.

We all have limits. I will lend this, this and this. But when it gets to something close to me, something precious to me, something that DEFINES me, you can't have it. But what if the one standing at the door asking to borrow something is none other than God Himself?

That's the dilemma facing Joseph, the carpenter, in this morning's passage. God shows up in Joseph's toolshed with His palms extended and says, "Joseph, I need to borrow a few things from you.." Joseph says, "Like what?"

"Well, Joseph, I've got a list right here."

"Okay, Lord, let's hear it."

"Well, don't take this the wrong way, but the first thing I need to borrow is your fiancée's womb."

Now, marriage was a very complicated matter in biblical times. In most places in the world today, boy meets girl, woman meets man, boy and girl fall in love, man and woman get engaged, the two are joined together in marriage. What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.

But in biblical times, families got together, on behalf of their children, and entered into covenants together. This was called the engagement. More often than not, the boy and girl did not know each other at this point. The girl may have been in diapers, the boy may have been playing sandlot Samsonball, but it didn't matter. Engagement was in effect at the point the families agreed.

When the girl was anywhere from 12 to 16, she and the boy were introduced. For one year they lived together as man and wife. They cooked together, cleaned together, and did everything a married couple does save one very important component: they did not, to put it in the vernacular, sleep together. This was called betrothal. After a period of one year there was a big wedding ceremony and the union was finally consummated. This was called marriage.

So, Joseph is betrothed. He and Mary are living in the same house, cooking, cleaning, arguing over what color the living room drapes should be. Things are going well until he discovers that his betrothed is pregnant. He doesn't know what to do. So he does what every self-respecting guy would do: he goes out to his garage. He goes out to the toolshed to think. And there among the saws, chisels, hammers and whatnots, he plops himself down, buries his head in his hands and says, "What am I going to do? This is a bigger problem than I could ever imagine."

Here's the deal, Joseph. It would be enough if God asked a carpenter if He could borrow a few tools. This is much larger: God wants to borrow your wife for a few months. God wants your wife to bear the Son of God. You are to stand back and watch Mary's belly grow large with child, but the child is not yours. Mary will be several weeks along before you tie the knot. And people do talk in Nazareth. They know how to use the abacus in the head.

"What's your wife's due date, Joseph?"

"And you've been married HOW long?"

"And you said the child's father is who? The Holy Spirit?"

If this weren't a problem enough, Joseph has to deal with one that is equally scary. Having your betrothed suddenly turn up in the kitchen with one in the oven without the husband contributing his cup of sugar was no yawning matter back them. In biblical times, the penalty for someone caught in having relations outside of marriage was death by stoning.

Now, Joseph has every right to be angry. He has every right to take his betrothed out to the public square, let everyone have a look at her in her condition and let mob behavior take over. But the Lord, by means of His messenger the angel, shows up at the door of Joseph's heart and says, "Joseph."

"Yes, Lord."

"The world needs to borrow something."

"What's that, Lord?"

"You've got two minds about this thing. You've got your sense of justice; you've got your sense of mercy. I need you to show that sense of mercy and gentleness. I need you to err on the side of grace. I need you to not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, Joseph. For that which is conceived in her is not the act of a man but by the Holy Spirit of God Himself. And she'll give birth to a Son, and you'll call him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins."

Joseph wakes from his dream. He walks back into the house and does as God asked. For the next nine months he goes on about his business, all the while the town gossips go crazy and tongues wag. When the time comes, they head off to Bethlehem and there on a deep, mysterious night, a child is born.

We know so much about the birth. That story is told year after year. But we don't hear is what happened all those years in between. Here's this old guy, a carpenter. The Lord wants to borrow your skills, Joseph. He wants you to teach Him how to build things, how to fix things, how to mend things. Teach Him how to take lives that are scattered and spread all over the place, to put them back together again.

That's the deal, Joseph. The Lord wants to borrow your wife; the Lord wants to borrow your compassion; the Lord wants to borrow your tools to teach the Son of God how to mend and to build.

Two friends were having coffee one day when one looks at the other and says, "Jack, if you had three lawnmowers and I needed to borrow one, would you lend it?" "Of course I would, Dave."

Dave continues. "What if you had three kidneys and I needed one for a transplant, would you lend it?"

"I'd be on the gurney before you could say 'kidney bean,'" grinned Jack.

"Well, okay, let me ask you one more question: If you had two pickup trucks and I needed to borrow one, would you lend it?

Jack pauses, bites his lip and says not a word.

"Why aren't you saying anything?" asks Dave.

"Because I don't really have three lawnmowers and I for sure don't have three kidneys. But the fact of the matter is that I DO have two pickup trucks."

The Lord wants to borrow from all of us. He wants to borrow your tools, your skills. He wants to borrow your gifts and your talents. Sometimes He wants to borrow even things relating to our physiology. And yet, just as we place limits on what we are willing to lend to even those closest to us, we do the same with God.

Why do we hold onto these things? One of the greatest Christmas gifts you could ever give back to God is the realization that none of the things we allegedly loan Him are ours in the first place. Whatever we have, from the shirt on our backs to our precious automobiles to every last piece of jewelry to our bank accounts to the things we do best in the world belong to Him anyway.

So the next time God shows up at your front door asking to borrow something, even if it's your guitar, what are you going to tell Him?

© Rev. Duane Brown, 2003