The Story of Joseph and us.
It is the 4. Sunday in Advent. We have lit the last candle in our Advent Wreath, and we are almost there…. it sounds as if we are already there with the reading of the Gospel today. That is the Christmas Gospel of Matthew. And it focused not on Mary, nor the long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. It does not mention any sheep or shepherds, any star or manger. It tells us the story of Joseph.
I have been attending a Zoom Seminar here in Advent hosted by Homebrewed Christianity. Monday Mornings in Advent listening to insightful and profound lectures by theologian and author John Dominic Crossan. In 2007 Dominic Crossan co-wrote with fellow theologian Marcus Borg, both leading scholars of the historical Jesus, the book called “The First Christmas.” What the gospels really teach about Jesus’ birth.
In the lectures and the book, it was pointed out that the Gospel of Luke, which contains the “real” Christmas Gospel with manger, star, and Shepherds is all about the women, the women are in focus. We heard about Mary and her meeting with the angel, her pregnancy, and her faith but also about Elizabeth who carries John the Baptist into life. We hear about how Mary bears the child under her heart and gives birth in the night – and how she ponders on the words of the shepherds, the wise men, and the angels. And later, in the Gospel according to Luke, the emphasis on women through the stories only found in Luke: the mother in Nain, the woman whose sins are forgiven, Mary and Martha, the crippled woman, the woman with the lost coin and the insistent widow… and finally only Luke has all the women named who followed Jesus: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and many others. And in the last chapter of Luke, the women once again are in focus as on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb. The women were perplexed and terrified but returned to the disciples to tell what they saw and believed.
In Matthew however, it is all about the men.
The Gospel according to Matthew begins with listening to the long genealogy of Jesus, all the way from Abraham, to David, to Joseph, a lineage of male importance.
And then we hear about the birth of Jesus, but stripped from any female feelings or tender thoughts, - as a description of Joseph and his struggles as a very devout and righteous man to find many meanings, any salvation in all that mess that Mary’s pregnancy got him into…. Or to put it better: all the mess that God placed him in.
So, it is all about Joseph today. The reluctant father. The righteous man. The struggling husband. The poor carpenter who dreamt dreams and his entire life and religion was turned upside down. What a mess!
Matthew describes Joseph as a righteous man: a devoted man who was concerned about morality and ethics. We can only assume that Mary’s fiancé wasn’t a young man who liked to make waves or to call attention to himself. Or walk right into the controversial mess. Joseph was like most of us we want to live an orderly life, a planned life: living quietly a good decent life without too much messiness or surprises.
Well, wake up Joseph. Well, wake us all of us.
Life is all about messiness and surprises. And the messiness of life or the presence of God, calls poor Joseph out of his safe well planned religious righteousness and into the mess called life. With choices and challenges, with heartache and surrender.
The God-fearing man, carrying all the baggage of all the God-fearing men from Abraham to David, wakes up one fine morning to find his entire world shattered and changed. His finance is pregnant, he knows that he is NOT the father, and suddenly he has no good options to choose from. If he calls attention to Mary’s pregnancy, she might be punished, yes stoned to death: if he divorces her quietly as he plans to do, - she will be reduced to be a poor begging teenager on the streets or a prostitute to support herself and the child. If he marries her, her son will be his heir, and Joseph will be tainted by the scandal and her ridiculous claim that the baby’s dad is somehow God.
So, poor Joseph, what should he do? He does not believe the amazing story that Mary tells him, why should he / would we?
This righteous man is thrown into a mess of doubt, shame, scandal, and controversy. He becomes the talk of the town, the laughingstock of the righteous. He, the righteous man, must embrace his new reality and live in a mess that he did not create, try to love a woman whose story he doesn’t understand, protect a baby whose father he is not and accept him as his heir.
The turning point in his story and his life is when he meets an angel. And when that angel of glory tells him: Don’t be afraid. God is with you. Trust, believe, and love.
Joseph and his humanity, his vulnerability, his fear, and his need for certainty and answers, - speak to us as we know that man. Joseph is the man in the mirror, as Michael Jackson sang, who is asking us to change our ways….” If you want to make this world a better place, look at yourself and change….”
As theologian Debbie Thomas writes:
“In other words, God’s messy plan of salvation requires Joseph; a quiet, cautious, status-quo kind of guy, to choose precisely what he fears and dreads the most. The fraught, the complicated, the suspicious, and the inexplicable. So, much for living a well-ordered life. “
And then she writes: “Joseph’s story gives me hope. I can’t relate to a person who leads headlong into obedience. I can relate, however, to a person who struggles, a person shoe accepts God will be cautious and ambivalent. I’m grateful that Joseph’s choice is a hard one. I’m glad he struggles because I struggle too.”
Poor Joseph. Poor us. Thrown into the messiness of life. But not left alone. So do not be afraid. God is with us. Emmanuel. God is with us in all the messiness, and unexpected challenges that this life is and always will be.
Matthew is all about the men. The history, the righteousness, and the law. But if we read the genealogy more closely, we do realize that all of Jesus’ ancestors are flawed and messed up.
Abraham, the proud patriarch, abandons his son Ishmael; Jacob the cheater humiliates his brother, father and father-in-law. David sleeps with another man’s wife and then orders the husband to be killed.
So, Joseph is in the equal company by messed up, complicated, scandalous, imperfect men, and how they were chosen any way to show the way to restoration, healing, hope, and grace.
I am quite sure that Joseph also hid the words of the angel in his heart and pondered. I am quite sure that through his life, he returned to that dream, to that divine meeting, to that glowing angel and soothing words of Fear Not!
We should not be afraid. Of the mess. Of the unexpected, the unplanned, the scandalous, the complicated, and the shameful, for God is with us. Emmanuel. God is with us even when we think we are alone.
So do not be afraid. Do not be afraid of the mess. Embrace it. Live in it. Because in the mess is where God enters the world. In the mess of a small child in the darkest night, born by a young girl and cared for by a dreaming good man.
Let us celebrate Christmas and the birth of hope into our messy lives and times.