Matthew
1:18-25
Advent
4
December
22, 2019
William G. Carter
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. Her
husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public
disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 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. 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; he took her as his wife, but had no marital
relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
Christmas
is a couple of days away, so we know a baby is on the way. For most people, the
go-to Gospel is the Gospel of Luke. Luke tells us about the women who will give
birth.
There
is an old woman, Elizabeth, representing the traditions of Israel Elizabeth
By
contrast, there is a young woman, Mary, who reveals a brand-new day. The angel
of God announces to Mary she will be bear a son without the benefit of a man.
After asking how this can be, she accepts her future and says, “Let it be
according to your word.”
Luke
says the two women are related somehow. One day they meet. Elizabeth Elizabeth
But
this month, we are in the Gospel of Matthew. There isn’t any singing in the
Gospel of Matthew. Maybe that’s because Matthew’s story is about the men. As we
will hear on Christmas Eve and the Sunday that follows, he tells about a king.
In the palace, the king has men who are his advisors. The king receives guests
from a far-off land who are men. The king sends out male solders after the
guest depart.
Before
all that happens, Matthew shines his spotlight on a very special man: Joseph,
who had claimed young Mary as his future bride. We discover more about him today
than anywhere else. He disappears from the story after chapter two.
The
first detail we learn is Joseph is a just man. He is righteous. This is the way
the Bible describes someone who is right with God. He lives according to God’s instruction.
He keeps all the commandments. In the Jewish village, he is highly respected.
There is nothing he has said nor done that stands between him and God and
neighbor.
As it happens with many righteous
people, Joseph has an unexpected problem on his hands. Mary is pregnant. They have
not yet been married. She has been living in her parents’ small house, so they
have not been together. The news is stated as a non-debatable matter of fact: “she
was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” And what is Joseph to do?
On the one hand, the Bible is clear.
There is a law that says, “If an already-promised maiden hooks up with another
man in the city, the two of them are to be put to death.” (Deuteronomy 22:23).
But on the other hand, there’s no evidence of another man.
What should he do? On the one hand,
he had chosen Mary. In a real sense, the whole village has chosen the two of
them. They are intended for one another. But on the other hand, there is some
evidence of outside intrusion.
What should he do? On the one hand,
she is his intended. He is ready to promise away his life to her. But on the
other hand, he didn’t sign up for this. When her pregnancy is disclosed, which
will not take long in a small Jewish village, the news will be explosive.
Everybody will talk. All the righteous people in town will nod their heads in
shame.
For Joseph, as we have heard, is a
righteous man. He lives by the Word of God. And yet, on the other hand, he
lives in a spiritual tradition that knows the Word of God must be interpreted
in the way we live. Yes, there’s that old verse from Deuteronomy staring him in
the face. But the Bible has a lot of other verses about showing mercy. He
resolves to live his righteousness through kindness. As hard as it will be, he
will break it off and tell her to remain with her parents. Mary may be “full of
grace,” but he will not submit her to dis-grace.
Figuring this out has been hard work
for him. He is emotionally spent and mentally exhausted. He goes to sleep. We
hear what happens then. Yet according to the Bible scholar Ken Bailey, we have
jumped ahead a little too fast.
Our Bible translation says, “just
when he resolved to do this.” Actually, he hadn’t quite resolved it; the original
Greek word says he was “considering” it, “pondering” it. And that might sound
like Mary’s story, over in the Gospel of Luke. When the angel appears, she “ponders”
it. When the shepherds show up, she “ponders” what they say. But that’s a
different word.
The word for Joseph is “enthumemai,”
which comes from “thumos,” a word for anger. It’s the kind of anger that
produces smoke. So Joseph is not merely pondering the situation. He fumes. He
fusses. He can’t do much about it, and this annoys him.
And why not? The Bible tells us
about real people, flesh and blood people, people with honest emotions. As Ken
Bailey says,
Isn’t
anger the natural emotion for him to have felt? Perhaps long generations of
veneration for “Saint Joseph
Before we rush ahead and say, “Yes,
but in the end, Joseph did what the angel told him; he went ahead and took Mary
and her child as his own,” let’s dwell for a bit on his very human reaction to
the news of an unexpected child. Joseph was fuming and fussing.
Life doesn’t always go as we
planned. Ever notice that? There are twists and turns, no matter how smoothly
we plan the journey to be. The job is going well. The career is at the peak of
productivity. The co-workers are getting along. Then comes the summons to the
front office: “We are going to make a change.” And it does not unfold as
expected. Anybody here know what that’s like?
The son comes home for the holidays.
His wife does not come along. She hasn’t been coming for a few years. Always had
a reason – too much work, can’t get away, other demands on her time. Late at
night, after a couple of glasses of wine, the son confesses, “I have some news.
She won’t be coming. Not ever. We are splitting in different directions.”
Mother blurts out, “But we are scheduled for a family portrait in the morning.”
That night, she tosses and turns, can’t get any sleep. She’s fuming.
We know what it's like to have our very
ordered plans disrupted. This week is typically the test case. You plan the
Christmas dinner for 5 o'clock, and the phone call comes that they won't get
there till 7:00 and it is already 4:45. Some dinner planners have a complete
meltdown over that one.
Or what about the complexities of
travel? When my kids were little, they used to bust my chops when I would put
the GPS unit on my dashboard and set it for my parents’ home. A little voice
from the back seat would inquire, “Don't you know how to get to your mom and
dad’s house?” Well, it had nothing to do with directions and everything to do
with timing. I could know precisely by satellite accuracy when we would arrive.
The truth is that's rarely when we arrived. There would be some detour, some
traffic snafu, some kind of disruption.
I can understand my old Joseph is
fussing, even in the best of circumstances. His pristine village marriage is
going to be tarnished. His righteous reputation will be in tatters. There will
be snickers behind his back as he walks down the street. Behold the righteous
man who can't even control his own circumstances.
But who among us really can control
much at all? I know a woman, an engineer, who had her babies planned on
schedule. Her daughter showed up right on time. It fit perfectly with a brief
pause in her career. She listens to the child psychologist who says, “three and
a half years are a perfect interval,” so Number Two is planned. Nobody told
them their son would show up six weeks early, and they would have him baptized
in the neonatal ICU. In time, he would turn out just fine. But it was on God's
time, not anybody else’s.
So back to Joseph. As he fusses
about his dilemma, he goes to sleep. You may have noticed that, when we go to
sleep, we can't really defend ourselves from whatever pops up. Somewhere past
our conscious defenses, the messages can get in. The ancients believed, and
some still hold, that dreams are a way for God to speak to us, through all the
unfinished business of the day still stirring in our brains. That's what
happens to Joseph.
Now it's Joseph turn to hear the
whisper of an angel. “Joseph, Joseph, don't be afraid to take Mary as your
wife. The child within her is a gift of the Holy Spirit.” You didn't produce
this baby because you're not in charge.
This is a most disruptive dream. And
I'm sure in his first conscious response, Joseph fussed again. The gospel of
Matthew doesn't say that, but I must believe it. No matter how fearsome an
angel or a dream might be, it still takes some time to work things through.
Real change doesn’t happen until we say so. There must come a point when we
must give in and surrender. The ultimate test of righteousness is setting aside
our personal agendas and accepting what God is doing right here and now, even
if it demands a great deal of us.
Joseph is a righteous man. A just
man. He chooses kindness even if it was an initial struggle. He chooses to trust
that God is at work even if his life will be perpetually disrupted. He chooses
to believe there is a fiercer grace at work even if he cannot control it. God
is coming to save us through the unexpected child born to Mary. This is the
hope at the heart of Christmas.
I
hope you have a wonderful holiday, with whatever that means for you. Maybe it
will be safe travel, or gatherings of loved ones, or celebrations worthy of the
holy day. I hope it is spectacular.
But
may I suggest that we also welcome the unexpected gift, whatever that might be?
There may be something you weren’t seeking, something you couldn’t plan,
something that invites you beyond comfort into the future God is setting before
you. If such a gift should come, ask if it is the way God is calling you to trust,
to believe, to hope that the world is in better hands than yours. For Christ,
the Unexpected Child, is born to save us all.
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[1] Ken Bailey, Jesus Through Middle
Eastern Eyes (Downers Grove ,
IL
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