Click here for printable/downloadable version.

Matthew 1:18-25
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.

Today's sermon is about Joseph. He doesn't get many sermons. He doesn't get much of anything, in fact. How many cantatas or Christmas carols have been written about Joseph? How many of you, if asked to name your favorite figure from the Christmas story, would answer Joseph? I bet the innkeeper's wife, a character who does not appear in the biblical text, would get more votes.

In the great paintings of the nativity, Joseph is barely present. Mary is the star of these portraits, the one chosen to bring love into the world. Joseph is there too, hovering in the background, necessary I suppose the way that a great opera needs those nameless people dressed all in black to scurry onto the stage to move the scenery.

The Gospel of Luke understands all this. Joseph appears in that Gospel as little more than a chauffeur for Mary and the precious child. Luke's birth narrative takes up 113 verses and Joseph gets not one single line of dialogue.

Why should he? Do any of us admire Joseph? We're glad that he did his part, but don't we secretly think that he was a bit of a fool? W.H. Auden perfectly captured our mixed feelings about Joseph in his Christmas Oratorio:

Joseph, have you heard
What Mary says occurred;
Yes, it may be so.
Is it likely? No.

Mary may be pure,
But Joseph, are you sure?
How is one to tell?
Suppose, for instance…Well….

Maybe, maybe not.
But, Joseph, you know what
Your world, of course, will say
About you anyway. 1

Yeah. We have mixed feelings about Joseph. Luke is smart to keep him in the background.

The Gospel of Matthew makes a different decision. In Matthew's Gospel, Joseph is front and center. He begins the story and plays an important role in it. Matthew insists that Joseph matters.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph is a man facing a terrible situation. His fiancée is pregnant and he's not the father. Joseph doesn't want to hurt Mary. He is willing to give her a divorce and say nothing of her circumstances to the rest of the community. The quietness of the divorce shows that he is more than a just man, he is a merciful one. By keeping the reason quiet, Mary might be protected from prosecution as an adulteress.

But then Joseph has a dream. It must have been quite a dream. I'm someone who dreams quite regularly and I often remember my dreams, and they are interesting and fun to think about, but I don't make important life decisions based solely on their content.

It must have been quite a dream. In it, an angel of the Lord 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." That is the grand total of what the angel said to Joseph. In a dream. While Joseph was sleeping.

Where is the miracle in this story? It's usually thought of as the virgin birth. Really, what's so amazing about that? We are talking about God after all, and the God who created all of this from nothing; would God even break a sweat for a virgin birth? But, Joseph was a regular old human being like you and me. Joseph did what the angel said. That is remarkable. That is amazing. That is nothing short of a miracle.

Joseph woke up one day to find himself in the middle of a mess that he had done nothing to create. He should have walked away. Washed his hands of it all. Stuck to the rules. But instead, he chose to believe that God was present in the mess.

Joseph claimed the scandal and gave it his name. Thanks to Joseph, Jesus was a part of a great tradition, going all the way back to Abraham, not through blood, but by adoption. Thanks to Joseph, Jesus had a father, a home, a place in the world.

The writer Anne Lamott writes of a pastor who once said, "when God was going to do something wonderful, it started with something hard, and when God was going to do something exquisite, [God] started with an impossibility." 2

In the birth of Jesus, God was up to something exquisite. It had to start with an impossibility.

It was an impossible situation-an unwed pregnant peasant girl in a culture with no tolerance for unwed pregnant peasant girls. A confused fiancé who just wanted to do the right thing. It's no way to begin a gospel. It reeks of scandal. You know that you are in for a wild ride when the phrases "public disgrace" and "marital relations" appear in the first two paragraphs of the story.

What is Matthew up to, beginning the story in this way? Do we really need to know all of this? Can't we just have some pretty poetry like John or skip the whole birth as in Mark or spruce it up as Luke does with some catchy songs and a colorful cast of characters?

I think Matthew is preparing us for the rest of the story. He begins the story with adult themes. Have you ever seen a children's pageant that included the scene between Joseph and the angel? No, of course not, because we don't want our children saying "marital relations" in church. This is an adult story with an adult beginning because the gospel is all about the adult Jesus. The gospel is all about his life and what God did with that life and the themes are serious-sin, redemption, healing, judgment, salvation, grace.

I think Matthew is preparing us for the rest of the story. It's not going to be pretty. It's going to get messy. And, yes, God will be in the middle of it. God is going to be found in this story the way God is found in no other story.

The implications go beyond the story of Jesus and spill over into our own lives. Joseph is the one who is most like us, presented day by day with circumstances beyond our control, with lives we would never have chosen for ourselves. Sometimes it's hard to imagine that God is in all of that.

Joseph says yes-it is in the mess of real life that God is mostly likely to appear.

This is good news for those among us who are imperfect-whose lives are messy and complicated. This is good news for our world which-this year more than ever-seems to be in a bit of a mess. If it is in messes that God finds a home, then there just might be some hope for us and for our world.

I was taught to believe that the birth of Jesus was part of God's grand master plan. That God knew from the beginning of time exactly how all of this would play out. But lately I've been wondering. I've been wondering if God didn't have it all worked out but just knew that something had to be done. God had tried so many different ways to show the world how much He loved it and nothing worked. So God decided to do something extraordinary and totally unexpected. God looked around and-go figure-took a pass on all of the easy situations-the uncomplicated scenarios and somehow fixed on Mary and Joseph-fixed on something messy and broken and said-yeah, that's where I'm going to make a home-that's where love will be born-I choose this path to be with you.

How are the next few days to be for you? Meaningful and joyful time spent with your dearest loved ones? If that is the case, God bless you. But maybe it's going to be a little more complicated than that. Maybe you love your family, but gosh they're kind of hard to be around. Or maybe Christmas-when we are all supposed to be so happy and loving reveals the broken places in you and your family. Or maybe someone dear to you has died in this past year and the next few days will be filled with the pain of their absence. Or maybe your Christmas is going to be a quiet and lonely one.

If so, you won't be alone. Where life is complicated and painful and broken and lonely, that is where God makes a home. That is God where chooses to come into the world.

If you are unconvinced, fast forward to the end of the story. It ends in crucifixion and death-a broken body and broken dreams-it's really quite a mess…. But that is not the end of the story. God wades into that point of pain and suffering and death and declares, "This is where I will make my stand. This is where I will make my boldest statement. This is where I will redeem the whole wide world." God raised Jesus from the dead. God reached into the tomb of death and brought out life. God took an impossibility and turned it into something exquisite.

One of the mysteries of the gospels is what happened to Joseph. Was he present at the crucifixion? Did he live to hear of the empty tomb? There is no mention of Joseph after the stories that deal with Jesus' childhood. If he was there at the end, I bet he wasn't all that surprised at how things turned out. He knew just how hard and painful life could be. And he knew that's where God is most likely to show up and do God's most powerful work. No, Joseph wouldn't have been surprised by resurrection.

It's appropriate that we end with a mention of resurrection, because this Fourth Sunday in Advent is filled with good news. We worship a God who is in the business of transforming messiness into holiness. We worship a God who can redeem the most painful of situations. Our God just loves to take that which is broken and turn it into something that looks and feels and smells like new life.

Don't take my word for it.

Just ask Joseph….

Amen.

Endnotes:
1. W.H. Auden, Christmas Oratorio.
2. Anne Lamott, Blue Shoe, p. 41.