Sermons

READING ~ Totenberg, Nina. Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships (p. 94). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
“There is, of course, a lesson in all of this besides friendship and family. It is a lesson that involves a rather old-fashioned word. Duty. When you come to a crisis in life, I think you will find that doing your duty will serve you rather well, whether it is your crisis or someone else’s. The path is clear, the choices few, and there are no regrets afterwards. Indeed, there are rewards. You are a better person… for want of a better word, a deeper person… and able to accept life’s blessings, too.”
 

READING ~ Gospel According to Matthew 1:18-25
1:18 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.

1:19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

1:20 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.

1:21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

1:22 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

1:23 “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.”

1:24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife,

1:25 but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
 

SERMON

This is the second of Advent in the Christian Liturgical Year.  It is often called the Sunday of Hope and sometimes it is the Sunday of Peace.

Advent is the four Sundays before Christmas.  When we get to Christmas Eve, the birth story will have been told again – as it is each year.

The version of the story changes from year to year as different Scriptures are read.  One year features the writing of Luke. Luke tells the story with Mary as the central figure. One year tells the story from Mark and John with a bit of Luke. This year, the scriptures are from Matthew.  Matthew tells the story of Joseph, husband of Mary and the earthly father of Jesus.

Matthew pays quite a bit of attention to Joseph and his role in the story of Jesus birth and early life.

For those of you who grew up in churches or families where the story of the birth of Jesus is told every year and is an important part of the Christian faith tradition – what do you remember about Joseph?

He was betrothed to Mary but not yet married when she became pregnant.

He did not send her away in shame.

Joseph took Mary to Bethlehem.

The baby is born and laid in a manger.

Do you remember anything else about Joseph?

He is often overlooked and his role in bringing Jesus the Christ into the world and into adulthood is nearly forgotten – or not remembered at all.

It’s Mary who gets all the attention.

Now, I do not in any way begrudge Mary her glory and veneration.

But, what about Joseph?  Is his part in all this not important?

Luke doesn’t tell us much at all about Joseph other than the need to go to Bethlehem to be registered in the census and taxed.  And the other two Gospel writers, Mark and John, – – – nothing.

From Matthew we learn the essential details about Joseph.

Joseph was betrothed to Mary, but not yet married and he had not yet taken her from her father’s house into his house.

Matthew learned that Mary was already pregnant though the two of them had not enjoyed sexual intimacy.

Mary would have been guilty of adultery and Joseph would have been deeply and publicly shamed.  We learn that the typical response to adultery was – at best – a breaking of the betrothal and sending the disgraced woman into familial and social exile.

Joseph was an honest and kind man.

Rather than shame Mary in public, he determined that he would find a place for her and then he would break off their relationship quietly and with no public ritual or attention.

An angel visited Joseph in a dream.  The angel told Joseph – called here Joseph, Son of David –to take Mary as his wife and to accept the pregnancy as being of a supernatural origin.

He was to name the child Jesus – or Joshua/Yeshua in Hebrew – which means God is deliverance or God is salvation.

Joseph actually did all this.

Later in the gospel story, we learn that the Jewish King, Herod, (being very afraid this baby boy everyone was talking about would mean trouble for him) put out a death order for all male children of two years and younger. Jesus was in this age group.

Again, an angel came to Joseph and told Joseph to take Mary and the child and flee to Egypt to seek asylum there until it might be safe to return to Israel.

So, Joseph picked up everything and migrated to Egypt where he and his family were complete strangers and had no family or means of support.

When Herod died, the death order died. Joseph brought his family home – to Nazareth.

It is the Gospel writer, Luke, who tells the story of Jesus at 12 years old – the age of responsibility for a male child – going with his parents to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover – a holy obligation for Jews who can manage the trip.  He would have traveled in a caravan with many families all together for the week-long festival.  On the return journey home, Jesus is missing from the huge entourage.  Mary and Joseph search diligently for their child – three days later, they find him in the temple …. teaching the grown-ups.  After a brief scolding from Mary, Jesus leaves with his parents for home.

That is the very last mention of Joseph.

Joseph never speaks.

The angel is the only one who speaks to him.

Then, after getting Jesus home from the Temple – Joseph is gone and does not return.

Joseph seems to be a minor character in the story of Jesus as the Christ.

At best, Mary has the lead role and Joseph has a rather minor supporting actor role.

Why then, you might ask, does Matthew feature Joseph when the other Gospel writers do not?

Elementary, dear Watson, elementary.

Without Joseph, Jesus is not the heir to the king of the Jews, he is not the Jewish Messiah, not the Prince of Peace, not the light of the world, not Emmanuel – God with us.

Without Joseph, Jesus is just another kid with a Jewish mother.

Matthew was a practicing Jew, and his audience was Jews.  It was essential to Matthew that Jesus is born into the house and lineage of King David as the prophets of old had foretold.

It is through the genealogy of Joseph that Jesus is tied to David.

Recall that when the angel addressed Joseph, he called him “Joseph, son of David.” For Jesus to have credibility within the Jewish, this connection is essential.

Without Joseph, there is no fulfillment of the prophecies of ancient Israel.

So, for that reason alone, we ought to give Joseph a bit more respect and honor than many of us typically do.

Now I want to talk about two other characteristics of Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, that make him essential to the coherence of the story and life of Jesus.  Joseph is a faithful and good man.

Two characteristics that make Joseph the right husband for Mary, the right father for Jesus and a role model for us are Trust and Duty.

Samuel Wells, the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, writes in the current issue of The Christian Century about the better part of faith – trust.  One kind of faith is based in belief.  He says that “belief is fundamentally a form of escape. It’s a magic carpet that lifts you out of the ordinariness and jeopardy of your life and transports you to a realm of miracle, mystery, and cosmic purpose. The more you can get yourself into a holy reverie to match this grand drama, the more you can be free of your own limitations and the threats of others and thus find something called salvation.”

Trust is different. Trust does not gloss over the trials and difficulties of life or of being faithful. Trust does not expect supernatural interventions and does not say things like “Everything happens for a reason in God’s will and providence.”  This how he describes trust ….

“Trust doesn’t assume life is about overcoming limitations. It’s about finding truth, beauty, and friendship in the midst of those limitations. Trust doesn’t think that if you wave a magic wand, things will change overnight. It finds companionship among the community of the waiting. Trust doesn’t pretend that if you hold tight to the right things, nothing will ever go wrong. It inhabits the exercises and patience required to rebuild after matters have been strained or broken. Trust doesn’t use people as a means of getting things but places all its energies in making relationships that transcend adverse and depleting circumstances. Trust, rather than belief, is the better part of faith.”

What about Joseph?  Joseph’s faith was based in trust.  He trusted the truth and wisdom that came to him – whether by the words of an angel, a dream full of imagery and information, or the strength of the still small voice within his own heart and spirit, he trusted the message and its meaning for his life.

Trust did not mean that things would be easy for Joseph – not at all.

Imagine the difficulty of explaining to everyone that he would take Mary as his wife and that he would accept, love and raise her child as his own.  That decision and the life that resulted from that decision went against current Jewish practice and culture, if not specifically Jewish law.

Sometimes wisdom comes to us in ways that are not what we expect, not convenient and not socially acceptable.  Can we, do we, trust our own wisdom when it comes from deep within? Joseph did – and it made all the difference.

The other characteristic Joseph demonstrated is duty.  Let’s recall the way Nina Totenburg talks about duty.  An old-fashioned concept … maybe, but one that can help us discern the course of action we will take – especially when it is the right way and not the easy way.

She says “when you come to a crisis in life, I think you will find that doing your duty will serve you rather well, whether it is your crisis or someone else’s. The path is clear, the choices few, and there are no regrets afterwards. ..You are a better person …… able to accept life’s blessings…”

Wow. Ok, so what about Joseph?

Joseph could have taken the easy way out at any step of the long journey with Mary and Jesus.  He would have been within his rights as a Jewish man to leave Mary immediately upon learning of her pregnancy.   He could have rejected the denial of his right to choose a name for the son he would claim.  How about Joseph, son of Joseph?  Nice, …. but not what he did. Joseph did his duty – his duty as a man of his faith and his word – and stayed with Mary and accepted the child she bore – giving him the name he had been instructed to confer on this special child. The name Jesus.

Surely, Joseph could have dismissed the rumors of a killing decree and stayed put in Nazareth. Afterall, that little town tucked on the edge of Galilee was not even on the map of Herod’s murderous army operating far to the south in Judea.

Joseph understood that the child under his care was somehow a special child, and his duty was not only to love and raise this boy, but to protect him and his mother.  He closed up his carpentry shop, packed a bag for he knew not how long and set out on an extremely long journey to outrun Herod’s army.  He had to travel in secret right through Herod’s main territory on the way to Egypt where he hoped, but could not know for certain, that his family could get asylum and live as refugees there for as long as necessary to guarantee the life and safety of Mary and Jesus.

Duty.  Sometimes when the right thing to do is also the hard thing to do, a commitment to duty can get us through to the other side. The path is clear, the choices few.  You can do this hard thing and you do it.  No regrets afterwards. When doing our duty, we accept the path and we also accept the blessings that often come later.  And, friends, duty is its own reward.

You may not think that talking about trust and duty and the life of an almost invisible Joseph is a spectacular Advent message.  But, maybe, just maybe, it is exactly what Advent is all about.

While we wait for the blessed child to come to us, may our faith lead us along the path of trust and duty – – – when things are spectacular and when things are difficult or murky – – –  for ourselves or for those who are within the circle of our care.

May you find that you trust the wisdom you carry in faith and follow the path of duty when called to make a choice between doing the right thing or doing the easy thing.  Friends, the way is rarely clear.  The stakes are often high.  Trust your wisdom.   Follow your duty.  Take courage.  And above all, know that you are never alone.

May your Advent, the time when we wait for Wonder and Love to come to us, be full of Faith, Hope, Peace and Joy.

Blessed Be.   I Love You.   Amen.