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| Joseph Comforting Mary by Suzy O Photography |
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.
Sermon: “Do Not Be Afraid: Joseph”
“Still waters run deep…”
isn’t that how your old saying goes? I
suppose there’s some truth in that. I’ve
always, it seems, been associated with quietness and stillness; even before the
baby. You know me as Joseph, husband to
Mary, father (well, sort-of, we’ll get there later) to Jesus. I’ve been remembered, for good or ill, as the
strong, silent type. The manger
character just slightly more essential than the second sheep. Good ol’ carpenter Joe, doesn’t ever make a
fuss, does he?
Well, I’m here today to set
the record straight. Yes, I, Joseph, am
a man of quiet disposition and deep soul, slow to speak, more apt to listen and
observe. But there’s an even more
important aspect of my personality you must understand if you truly want to
know me and my family: I never do anything by accident. Every choice I make is carefully thought out,
meticulously considered, and purposefully acted upon.
You also need to understand
the world in which I lived, the faith woven throughout every moment. Your scriptures say that Mary and I were
“engaged” when she was “found to be with child.” They also say we were married. A bit
confused, are you? Let me clear things up: First of all, we weren’t engaged, at
least not in your understanding of that.
In my time, marriage was a contract between families that involved
several stages:
Stage 1: When a young woman
reached puberty, she was contracted to her husband by her father. Vows were
taken.
Stage 2: Though already
married in terms of vows, she remained with her family while her new husband
made arrangements for their livelihood and home.
Stage 3: When all was ready,
the young bride came to live with her husband (or him and his parents), the
marriage was consummated, and children usually came into the picture.
Mary and I were at stage 2:
already married, but not yet living together.
So any complications at this point did mean divorce, not a simple “breaking
it off.”
Now, onto the next key part
of our story, described by your scriptures as “Mary was found to be with
child.” Found?! Well isn’t that cute. This wasn’t some fertility hide-and-seek
game. She was pregnant. In my time, this meant one of two things:
either she had been unfaithful to me, the punishment for which was death, or
she had been attacked. She was pregnant,
that much was plain, but she was either guilty or innocent of the circumstances
of that pregnancy. Normally, a public
trial would take place to determine Mary’s culpability in her pregnancy. Your Bible says I was unwilling to expose her
to public disgrace. In my language, I
was saving her from being made a spectacle of.
I had no option but to
divorce her; the Law was clear. But I
did get a say in the manner in which
that divorce happened: public and dramatic, or as quiet as possible (of course
everyone would still know). As I said, I
never made any decision lightly, and I did love Mary, so I wanted to spare her
some shame, even if she was guilty.
That was my plan. I’d thought it through; consulted the Law;
began to put things in motion. But then
an angel showed up, and ruined those plans, thanks be to God.
“Joseph, son of
David,” he
said, “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.”
I
found it funny he told me not to be afraid.
Truth be told, I hadn’t even realized how terrified I was. I thought I was acting out of duty and custom
– the Law was clear. I had to choose
between the lesser of two evils. There
was no third choice, or that’s what my fear wanted me to think. Of course, there was. I know that now. The angel told me not to be afraid to take
Mary as my wife, because this child was from God, a child who would save people
from their sins. I remember finding it
ironic that the child who was an emblem of the sin of unmarried relations in my
understanding of the Law, was to be himself the intercessor, the forgiver, the
undoing of the power of sin. It’s almost like God did that on purpose!
The
angel’s message wasn’t just about remaining married to Mary, moving on to stage
3. I was also told to name that child. Again, you need to know a bit about what this
meant in my world. Naming a child wasn’t
picking the least terrible among the family names, or the cutest in the latest
name book. On the whole, mothers did the
naming in those days[1]. But for a father to name a child was to say,
“This child is mine.” It’s something like adoption in your day. Put simply, it settles the question of
paternity for good. This doesn’t of course mean the gossip dies down entirely,
but it gives that child all the rights of inheritance and identity of the
father’s line.
As
you know, my line had special prophetic significance. My bloodline was no stranger to strange
pregnancies: the beginning of your book of Matthew shows that. I like the way
one fellow, Raymond Brown, describes my genealogy:
“Among Matthew's forty-two fathers (his count) were
listed four Old Testament women, all of them with a history before marriage or
childbirth that made their situation either strange or scandalous. In particular,
Tamar, the widow of Judah's son, was found to be pregnant indecently long after
her husband's death; Judah denounced her ‘til he realized that he was the
father. Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, became pregnant not by her husband but by
David. Yet in all these instances the woman was God's instrument in preserving
Israel and/or the lineage of the Messiah. So also, the fifth woman of the
genealogy, Mary, is in a seemingly scandalous pregnancy.”[2]
And scandalous it was, this
pregnancy of my wife, Mary. I tell you, for a man accustomed to stillness,
quietness, and careful calculations of each choice, the unexpected scandal of a
child was about as terrifying as it gets.
It turns out, my still waters did run deeper than my fear, though. Because
that angel taught me that sometimes the right thing to do can’t be contained by
the constraints of how things have always been done. Sometimes, God interrupts our careful plans
and what matters most is not dogma, or ritual, or even belief, but grace.
I’ll
not pretend to you it was an easy life being the adoptive father of such a
child. The stares and the camel milkman
jokes never stopped. There were even a
couple of teenage tantrums of “you’re not my real dad” that were pretty painful.
But I wouldn’t trade anything for the honor of being Jesus’ earthly
father. It very nearly didn’t happen.
I
tell you my story, partly to finally set the record straight, but also because
when I look out today, I recognize many of you.
Some of you sure look an awfully lot like me: the strong, silent
type. And I just want to remind you how
very deep those waters within you go, that you don’t have to let your life be
dictated by convention and rules all the time.
Sometimes, you can do the unexpected thing: silence your fear with a public
act of grace; bear the brunt of others’ scrutiny to protect those you love;
recognize that we’re all of us adoptive children of God, hoping our life isn’t
some sort of cosmic accident.
Take
it from me, Joseph, the choice to belong
to each other, (knowing it will cost us much in terms of our rightness, our
carefully laid plans, and our pride), this
will never, ever be the wrong choice.
Do you have the courage to make that choice, and to stand by it? How deep will your waters go? Amen.
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