Transcription
Good morning, this morning’s Old Testament reading is from Isaiah 7, verses 10-16 on page 552 in your pew bible. Isaiah gives to Ahaz the sign of Immanuel. Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz saying, ask a sign of the Lord your God, let it be deep as shoal or high as heaven.
But Ahaz said, I will not ask, I will not put the Lord to the test. Then Isaiah said, hear then, O house of David, it is too little for you to weary mortals that you weary my God also. Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign, look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.
He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. This is the word of the Lord.
And our New Testament reading from Matthew chapter 1, verses 18-25 on page 777 in your pew bible. Let us hear God’s word today. 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 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 born a son and he named him Jesus. This is the good news.
This is the word of our Lord. Let us pray. Gracious God, we thank you in this Christmas season.
We thank you for all you did, all you have done and all that you are still doing. Gracious God, listen to us as we come, as we pray prayers for the world that you envision to become a reality. As we pray for your kingdom to come.
But Lord, help us in the days ahead to prepare ourselves for the coming of our Lord. To prepare our hearts for the four things of Advent, hope, peace, joy, and love. May they be ours and may they bring we bring them to all people in your name.
And we pray, amen. As I sat this week and read our scriptures for today, and as I read again and again, that opening section of Matthew, where it leans so heavily into Joseph’s genealogy, there was a part of me that said, okay, Matthew, I want to tap the brakes right now. I want to tap the brakes, because Jesus is not directly related in our 21st century world to all of these guys.
You have the entire genealogy of Jesus, of, well, Joseph, lined up for you, seven generations and then seven generations. But where is Jesus in this line? Because His Father is the Holy Spirit. So it’s one of those things that I think we need to unpack what all Joseph’s role in this is.
Because in many ways, Joseph plays a larger role in this story than we often notice and give him credit for. Because not only is Mary shouldering a heavy burden, but Joseph shoulders a burden as well. Now, the first thing we have to do is take of all of what we know about adoption and marriage in the 21st century, take it into a box, pack it up, put it on the shelf for today, and enter into more of a conversation about what it was like back with Mary and Joseph.
Because that’s often the problem we have, because we don’t look at things as they were, we look at them as they are for us. Now, engagement, marriage, and betrothal are all much different than what we experience. Now, somebody gets engaged, they wait a period of time, some really long, some of us probably are thinking about that couple we knew who were engaged for six years, and then finally, or we’re thinking of that couple we know who, after a few weeks, then got engaged.
Marriage and engagement and betrothal were all kind of weaved together. So let me kind of unpack this. The engagement was the formal agreement between family one and family two that the son of one of the families and the daughter of the other family were going to get married.
That’s the engagement. Really nice, there’s no dropping on the knee, there’s no real nice dinner. It’s kind of mom and dad or grandpa and grandpa get together and plan it out.
Different time, different place. Many of us, as we hear this, are thinking, I really don’t want my grandfather picking out anything. Then, after this is now started, the betrothal would happen.
And that’s the you’re married, but you’re not married, you’re married, but you’re not married engagement type deal for an entire calendar year. And it’s during that time that we’re kind of sitting in. So they’re almost married, but they are considered married, if that makes any sense in at all.
The fact of the matter is they’re supposed to get married, and then baby Jesus kind of throws a big wrench into things. And Joseph is trying to be a righteous man. He’s trying to be a good man.
And his concern in this moment is for Mary. He wants to do something where he says, I can’t marry you because of the baby. So we’ll call it quits.
We’ll call it an end to this entire conversation. No harm, no foul. And he’s trying to do it in a sensitive, quiet way.
And then an angel happens. Everything is great in his plan until the angel shows up. And in his world, he’s doing more than what he has to do.
Traditionally, he would have cast Mary out. She would have had her scarlet letter and been ostracized by the community. That was tradition.
That was normal. But Joseph is a righteous man, and the law allows him to quietly send Mary away. And that’s his plan.
He is trying to live into what the law allows him, and what a righteous man is allowed to do. It’s awful, honestly. It’s awful for the child.
It’s awful for the mother. But it’s what is allowed by the law. And so as we read further, we see a little something change within Joseph.
Now, the word righteous that describes Joseph is diakos, which is a way in which you live out your faith, the way you live out how you believe in God. It’s about living God and living into that law of God. It’s in many ways like when my great-grandfather would, you would ask him, so what’s that person like? And the highest form of praise great-grandpa Crider would give, they’re a very good Christian.
Highest praise, that’s his high bar. He would use that even if somebody wasn’t a Christian, because the highest bar was to be a good Christian. Not a lot of people got that.
But Joseph is trying to be righteous. He’s trying to live as the law tells him he can. And then he’s at an inflection point of his faith, because this angel comes and says to him, this is righteousness in your world, but this is the righteousness I’m asking you to participate in.
You see, God’s plan requires a little more righteousness from him. He’s called on to be a greater follower of God, because he’s asked to have the conversation about the letter of the law as the scribes and the Pharisees had set it out. And the law that we hear God say, when God says, love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind and with all of your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
You see, the law said there were certain limits and guidelines you could follow and avoid loving your neighbor, yourself. And if you gave the scribes time, they could have come up with a way in which you could not love God. The fact of the matter is, Joseph is forced to grow his faith.
He’s forced to change between the law as the Pharisees and scribes live it, and the law and the righteousness as God has called him to and commanded him to. It’s the law that his son will preach. The love of one another, the love of God.
That’s what Christ does. Christ loves this way. Christ lives out the gospel in this way.
This is what Christ will show. Not a legalist set of practices that say, you can’t do this, but you can release your donkey and let him wander the field because that compassion is fine. But helping somebody on the way to the synagogue, that’s work and you can’t do it.
Instead, Joseph is forced to move past. He’s being asked to take on ridicule and pain. He’s asked to father a child that is not his own and love that child, adopt that child as his own.
He’s being asked to do much in the honor and shame world in which he lives in that will have him wearing a burden and a mark for his life. He’s willing to do the difficult thing, the right thing, even though there is going to be heavy consequences to him personally. But he’s a righteous man and he will follow what God says.
And that means he is going to do what is right in God’s eyes. He’s willing to do the right thing and to heck with the consequences. You see, that’s the hard part of a righteous person’s life, doing the unpopular and godly right thing.
Joseph will be ostracized in some measure because I can’t believe you married that woman and things like that. He’s going to hear those comments and yet he’s called on to love Mary. He’s going to have to raise the son of God.
Let’s talk about that for a degree of difficulty, for that as a burden, a weight on his shoulders, being the stepfather, the adoptive father to the son of God. Any of the dads in here willing to sign up for that burden? Put my hand down before somebody thinks. The fact of the matter is Joseph takes this on in the same manner that Mary takes on carrying Christ.
We see the struggle that he’s going through. The emotional and mental struggle that begins here. Because he is an integral part in what God is doing.
Because God has promised that this child from the Holy Spirit will come through the line of David. And guess how that happens? Through Joseph adopting Jesus. And now here’s where things get a little weird for us because adoption is not what adoption was then.
Adoption means that your son is your son whether he was adopted or not. The moment he is adopted, he is fully blooded no matter what 23andMe would say or Ancestry.com would say he is 100% the son of Joseph and the son of God because of that adoption. And that adoption means that God’s promise has come to fruition.
God’s promise is going to happen. God’s promise of love and compassion for his people is happening. The reality is that here we have an unimportant man who has all the importance in the world.
A man whose lineage sure ties into David. And that’s not always a good thing if you look at the line of some of the kings. But it’s also a line that fulfills the promise of God.
Good kings, good men, bad kings and bad men. All of them lie in that lineage of Joseph. But the lineage matters because of the promise.
And that’s the beautiful part. Is that God chooses this man. And this man accepts what God has called him to do.
Even though there are problems aplenty for him. And even though history for the most part has forgotten him. Let’s talk about how Joseph disappears after the temple.
When Jesus goes back to the temple, we don’t hear about Joseph. We might wonder about him, but we don’t hear about him. We don’t hear about the questions he answered for Jesus.
We don’t hear about the trade he taught him. We don’t hear about how Jesus was formed by experiencing and knowing Joseph. But any child is known, is blessed because they have a father like Joseph.
When I was younger, much, much younger, I would look at Joseph in one light. Okay, he’s Joseph. But then after losing my dad at 13, I realized the important role that other people played in my life.
My uncles, my grandfathers, eventually my father-in-law, my coaches, all of them helped to shape and make me who I am. And to think that Joseph did not have some measure of influence on Jesus. Showing him how human parents are, how loving a father.
How do you think Jesus came to know human love in the very, very beginning? Because he experienced it through two people, Mary and Joseph. It is through those two that Jesus learned the love, the human love that he shows to all of us. Over the last few weeks, we’ve talked about one person symbolizing something.
Peace saw us look at John the Baptist. Mary showed us joy. Isaiah would have shown us all the way with hope.
And Joseph shows us a love. A radical love. Because we know what even a good man seeks to do.
And in that plan that Joseph has, God comes to him and says, we’re gonna do something a little bit different. I’m gonna ask you to love a lot more, Joseph. I’m gonna ask you to raise this little boy.
I’m gonna ask you to take on whatever ridicule comes your way. Whatever shame comes on you because of this. I am going to ask you to raise my son for me.
Think about that. Think about the question that God is placing before Joseph. Please raise my son for me.
My little boy. Please move beyond the legalism of the Pharisees and scribes. Embrace this new love that I am calling you to do.
And Joseph doesn’t have a here I am servant of the Lord moment. But his actions speak. His actions speak as he takes Mary to Bethlehem.
As he takes her and Jesus to Egypt to protect them from Herod. As we watch Jesus form and grow. Joseph will be there.
Showing him. Helping him. And this shows us the challenge that love can be.
Love is not easy. Think about it. What is the love that Joseph is asked to do? A love that cares deeply beyond normal.
To love in spite of shame. In spite of attacks. To love and difficulty in that love.
Love is not an easy thing. The world is full of moments where we don’t love. Be it with somebody we don’t agree with politically.
With somebody we don’t agree with socially. However you want to frame it. There are times and places where we struggle to love.
And in this moment, I think we can look at Joseph. Look at Joseph and how he’s looked at afterwards. The shame he’s willing to take on in order to love this child.
The shame that he shoulders. The love he shows. The love that Jesus will show.
The righteousness that Joseph is willing to live into. The righteousness that Christ lives out. All of that begins in the love that God has for us in sending this child.
But we have an example of how we can meet these challenges of everything in our world and push back with love. Joseph is not a minor player. He is just as major as Mary.
And his challenge for us is will we love God, one another, and ourselves? As he loved that child, as that child then loved the world. Will we love?