Fully Filled, Brimming Over

December 10th 

Fully Filled, Brimming Over

 

There are days when life can feel like one big heaving mess. Like a game where happiness, hope and meaning stand unprotected in the Russian roulette line of fire. Aching days when sudden news cuts gaping holes in hearts, when a head spinning diagnoses alters the direction of a life, when sure plans sand-through-fingers fail, when hopes die and this world spins dizzyingly fast in directions we just didn’t see coming. It can make your head hurt and your chest cavity ache empty. Like the thud of your heart is echoing distant in a world of unexpected loss. Is there a rhyme and reason to all this pain? A plan? Or is it all just roll-of-the-dice arbitrary? 

 

‘Arbitrary’ was the last word the author of Matthew’s Gospel might have used to describe our human existence. He used a different word more often. Fulfill. This word ‘fulfill’… “All this took place to fulfil”… it doesn’t just mean ‘to happen’. It’s meaning is much fatter and rounder than that. It means to ‘fully fill’, to fill to the spilling brim with abundant completion. 

Matthew saw this moment in time as the brim-full completion of something promised in another time. 

When the author of the book of Matthew wrote his Gospel down, he began with the words..“This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham” And though these words to us might sound like a history lesson or lines in a historical archive, they are pulsing with a life which non-jewish eyes and ears might miss. 

With his first careful words Matthew placed Jesus’ life in the circulatory system of an ancient story, in the beating heart centre of ancient promises fulfilled. God’s long History with ancient Israel had created in them an expectation. A hope. For a promise fulfilled. 

‘“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will fulfil the good promise I made to the people of Israel and Judah.

‘“In those days and at that time
I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line;
he will do what is just and right in the land.”

Jeremiah 33:14-15

Jesus came into an old and long story that had been holding its breath in anticipation for  a King and Messiah, a Saviour and a ruler. Every story, every song, every prophecy and every event in the life of this people had been forging this expectation, pointing to this person. 

So when Matthew penned these words into time, these words that are not just his own, but also Isaiah’s… 

“All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means ‘God with us’).” Matthew 1:22-25

… He earnestly wants us to comprehend: this is not the retelling of some nice family tale to entertain the children. 

This story, this moment, is the fulfilment of a promise. This is simultaneously the completion and the commencement of a plan. A moment foretold and foreshadowed as long as God’s long story had been unfolding. A moment that is a line in the sand that will change every other moment from then on. 

Twelve times throughout his Gospel Matthew writes that events unfolding in Jesus’ life are in some way a specific fulfillments of prophecy or the fulfillment of the story of Scripture (foreshadowing). He quotes old testament scripture close to 50 times throughout his gospel. 

Matthew links five old testament stories or prophecies specifically with the Christmas story. 

“All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet” Matthew 1:22-23

‘for this is what the prophet has written” Matthew 2:5-6

“And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet:”Matthew 2:14-15

“Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:” Matthew 2:17-18

“So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets” Matthew 2:23

Matthew saw the events taking place in the Christmas story as the spilling-brim fulfilment of a promise, and the abundant completion of a story.

There are always two authors in Scripture. The human author and the Holy Spirit. And the Holy spirit doesn’t always elucidate all His plans and purposes to the authors He works through. Prophets and Biblical writers of the past sometimes wrote words they didn’t fully understand. Like the timelessness of God (the second author they were partnering with) their words, were simultaneously steeped in their past story, grounded in their present reality, and pointing to the future of all that God was planning.

Our God is a God who makes promises, and then keeps them. Who writes stories and then inhabits them. Who creates peoples, and then joins them. God with us. 

“All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means ‘God with us’).” Matthew 1:22-25

‘God with us’ doesn’t mean life will always be easy, or that we’ll always see how He is weaving things together for our good. But ‘God with us’ does mean we can trust that He is actively at work in our lives and circumstances, fully filling the story of our existence with His healing grace and strengthening presence. 

This life and this world can look as though it is unravelling, as though the pain and chaos has our lives by the throat and arbitrary roll-of-the-dice circumstance decides our fate.

But this has never been the case. 

There is a deep story unfolding and a deeper promise fulfilling itself all around us. No moment is unforeseen, no circumstance un-held. 

Faith is choosing, in the dark and hard moments to trust in the the long and good story of God, to let ourselves rest on His chest, letting our heartbeat slow, timing itself to His, this endless thrumming of hope.

God is with us.