Matthew 1:18-25
18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20 But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." 22 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us." 24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, 25 but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
My sixth grade teacher, Ms. Royals, had gotten the class’s attention and called out a list of names to come speak with her at the front of the class. Now, I don’t remember every name she called, but I remember two: a girl names Shawn Howell and my name. While the rest of the class went back to work writing sentences with spelling words or something, Ms. Royals proceeded to tell us that we were going to be a part of the Christmas program that year. We would be doing a nativity on the stage, and Shawn would be playing Mary and I would be Joseph. It wasn’t difficult; I just sat on a haybale in a flimsy, brown robe for about twenty minutes, but that may have been the beginning of what has grown into a sort of soft spot for Joseph.
You see, we Protestant Christians tend to keep Mary at arm’s length (after all, we don’t want folks to confuse us with our Catholic brothers and sisters who we incorrectly claim worship Mary). We give her a nod, though, once a year about this time, singing songs like “Mary Did You know?” (which, by the way, of course she knew—she was the first one who knew!), and we put her out on the lawn or on an ornament on the Christmas tree. We pay a little more attention to Mary at Christmas time, but if we pay little attention to Mary, we pay no attention to Joseph.
We tend to view Joseph as a superfluous addition to the nativity scene, as if he were our appendix—not really necessary for anything, but he came with the set. We don’t really sing songs about Joseph; when we put our nativity sets out he can often be easily lost among the shepherds (while Mary clearly stands out in her usual blue and white robes); you can even buy nativity sets where the Christ child is attached to Mary, so Joseph can be left out altogether! Why, Joseph is even ignored in most of New Testament, only appearing in the nativity stories and mentioned only a few other times in reference to Jesus’ local identity. He gets about as much “screen time” as the disciple Philip (some of you are wondering right now if Philip really is one of the twelve disciples—he is). For most Christians, it seems that Joseph is really a non-essential character, only worth mentioning once a year and only in order to explain who he is and why he’s next to the baby Jesus and not one of the three blinged-out wise men (who weren’t at Christ’s birth anyway, but that’s a sermon for another day…).
Despite how we may feel about Joseph, the truth is he is one of the most important players in the nativity story—really he’s one of the most important figures in the whole of God’s story, because without Joseph, without his devotion to his betrothed Mary, the nativity story—Christ’s story—could have gone very differently. Joseph is so important to the story, that Matthew connects Jesus back to David and Abraham through Joseph in his genealogy of chapter one. Then, Matthew goes on to tell us the rest of the nativity story—short as it is for him—in the text before us this morning.
We’re told in verse 18, “When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” Now, how do you think that went over with Joseph the first time he heard that? Who do you think he heard it from? He didn’t hear it from an angel as Mary did. Did Mary come over to the shop while Joseph was on his lunch break? “Sit down, Jo. I’ve got something to tell you and you’re not going to believe this…” Did Mary run to tell him after she found out, or was she so frightened of what might happen that she sent a friend, a relative to tell him? Did she hide it from him until she couldn’t anymore? I don’t know. After all, the text just says, “she was found to be with child;” it’s not very descript. It’s not very descript, but I can imagine it was a very troubling conversation, one filled with tension and overrun with emotion.
I suppose some folks might think we’ve grown somewhat immune to the reality of unwed, teenage mothers, that we almost celebrate it with shows like 16 and Pregnant, but take a walk down the hall of any high school. It won’t take you long to find out which girl or girls are expecting—they’re usually at their lockers alone, at the lunch tables alone, in the back of the class alone. Even the teachers and parents tend to give them sideways glances as they walk down the halls, as they try to soak up as much education as they can before inevitably disappearing from school, perhaps eventually dropping out to take a minimum-wage job and endure a lifetime of criticism for their choices. If it’s that hard for such a mother now, you can imagine what it must have been like for Mary, so I wonder how she told Joseph.
In the end, I suppose it doesn’t matter how she told him, because we have his response outlined for us in this morning’s text: “Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” I suppose, if I were cynical about the whole thing, I’d say this is just another example of a man walking away from a life made difficult by an unexpected pregnancy while the woman is left to pick up the pieces, but really, for Joseph’s context, it’s not. You see, Matthew only uses one word to describe Joseph, the Greek word diakaios translated (in the NRSV) as “righteous.” Joseph is a righteous man, a man grounded in the Law, the teachings of the scriptures, a man who sought to live justly, to do the right thing. He had every right under the Law to cast Mary out, to reveal her condition to the community and shame her. It would have been the right thing for him; after all, he wouldn’t want word getting out that he had married a woman carrying another man’s baby. Can’t you just hear the fellas at the jobsite where Joseph would have worked: “There’s Joseph; you know he’s raising another man’s baby. Sure is. Wife got pregnant before they got married, said it’s ‘God’s baby.’ Can you believe that? Poor sap, probably believes the moon is made out of cheese. I bet she’s playing him for all he’s worth too.” It would have been the right thing for Joseph, to bring Mary’s apparent sins light in the midst of the community, to call her out for her apparent shortcomings and infidelity. It would have protected Joseph’s reputation as a righteous man, as a man who lived “by the book.”
Of course, if he had a been a literal fundamentalist, Joseph could have had Mary dragged out before the men of the community and stoned to death![1] I suppose there might be some folks who’d think that was alright. I can hear their reasoning: “You see, Joseph, the Bible says in Deuteronomy 22, ‘If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death.’ It’s in the Bible Joseph, so you gotta do it! You can’t have a woman getting off scot-free from an obvious adulterous encounter. If you don’t make a stand, before too long you’ll have women sleeping around all over and when they turn up pregnant, they’ll claim it’s God’s baby too! You gotta put an end to it now, Joseph. That’s what the Bible says.” Of course, there are a lot of folks who like to read the Scriptures like that, cherry-picking this or that passage in order to justify their own comfort, their own selfishness, bigotry, and ignorance. It’s shameful really; it misses the whole point.
But Joseph, he apparently didn’t read the scriptures that way, because he doesn’t do any of that. No, Joseph decides to dismiss Mary quietly, to give her the option of packing her things, the chance to start life over somewhere else, the opportunity to lay low for a little while. Maybe Mary could pass the child off as her mother’s, as the child of a late sibling or cousin; maybe she’d get away with it if Joseph just let her slip away quietly and pretend none of this every happened. That was his plan…but then he went to sleep.
Matthew tells us, “just when [Joseph] had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’ When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.” The angel tells Joseph to not be afraid to take the pregnant Mary as his wife, and then the angel says to Joseph “you are to name him Jesus.” Joseph has to name him Jesus; there won’t be some sky-splitting announcement from heaven, no angelic presence by the manger writing the child’s name down on the birth certificate, and it’s not up to Mary to give the child his name. Joseph is told to do it.
Now, it’s easy to get caught up in the meaning of the name Jesus (from the Hebrew “Joshua” which mean “YHWH saves”) and lose sight of just what it means for Joseph to name the child. You see, if Joseph gives the child a name, that means Joseph claims responsibility for the child, that he claims the child as his own to raise, nurture, and look after. This may be the most radical things put forth by the angel Joseph’s dream! Really. Joseph is told to claim the child as his own, to give him the name Jesus, to step in where so many others would have bowed out. It’s radical not only because of the immense responsibility that comes with caring for a child, not only because of the nature of the child in Mary’s womb, but because it goes so strongly against what Joseph had been taught through the scriptures! He was supposed to expose an engaged woman pregnant with someone else’s child—not marry her! He was supposed to have such a woman stoned to death or at least have her and her unborn child removed from the community—not take her in, care for her, and name her child as if he was his very own! That’s not in the book! It’s not in the book…
You know, sometimes we get so caught up in what we think is in the book, that we overlook what the whole book is really about. Sometimes we get so caught up in trying to find a text here or a verse there to get out of a difficult situation that we ignore the voice of God calling us deeper into it. Sometimes we get so caught up in trying to justify our positions and convictions with the words of scripture that we miss out on what the very Word of God is calling us to do.
You see, I know some folks who, had they been in Joseph’s place, would have argued with the angel in his dream. Really. They’d have said, “Whoa now. Hang on a minute. You’re telling me to go on and marry her, to name the baby too?! You must not read your Bible like I do, because the Bible is clearly against such a thing.” You know, I bet there’s some folks, when heaven gets to them, are going to pull Jesus to the side in an attempt to set him straight on all this “love your neighbor” business! Why, I bet there are folks today (just as there were then) who, if Jesus walked through the front door of this sanctuary and stood in the pulpit to declare the arrival of God’s kingdom, would argue—with Jesus!—that the Bible says it wasn’t time for it! Would you believe that there are even folks who would deny food to a hungry man because they believe the Bible says if a person doesn’t work, they shouldn’t eat?![2] It’s true. There are people who call themselves “Bible-believing Christians” who use the Bible to justify all manner of things from a denial of proven medical procedures to ignorance surrounding issues of the environment and even their own discomfort and hatred of those different from themselves. And they’ll do it such things all the while saying “It’s in the book!”
Imagine if Joseph had done that. I’m certainly glad he didn’t. I for one am glad that Joseph—a righteous man—believed most in the love that is foundational to understanding the very nature of God, a love that does not cast a young woman and her unborn child into the spotlight of shame, a love that does not hold so tightly to the conveniently contrived proof-texts of the Bible that grace and redemption cannot find their way through, a love that shows the way to God more fully than any string of chapter and verse citations used in defense of one’s own discrimination and ignorance. It is that great love of God we celebrate this season, a love that says to all of us that in spite of our sins, in spite of our selfishness, in spite of our repeated rejection, in spite of everything we do that stands in direct opposition to what God calls us to be, God still longs to be with us. God is with us! That’s what the angel said, isn’t it? “They shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us." God is with us, in spite of every well-meaning way we try to keep God from others and ourselves, God is still with us. Amen.
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