Chris Taylor’s Sermon – 12/23/07

God Comes to Joseph

Isaiah 7:10-15

Matthew 1:18-25

Tough times for Joseph. His betrothed is pregnant, and he knows he isn’t the father. He must have wondered what she had been up to during her three month visit to her cousin Elizabeth. There must have been all kinds of thoughts, all kinds of feelings, swirling through his mind when he first found out. Try to picture their conversation; the sheer absurdity of what had taken place:

“Joseph, there is something I need to tell you. You better sit down.”

Sudden concern filling his features, Joseph leans towards her; “What is it, Mary?”

“I’m pregnant.” Joseph pulls back, his eyes wide in shock, his mouth falling open but no words come out. Mary hurries on, “It’s not what you think. An angel came to me. He told me the Spirit would be coming upon me, and that I would conceive without ever having known a man…”

You can almost feel sorry for her, can’t you? How do you explain something like this? You can almost see Joseph shaking his head, a mixture of anger and bitterness clearly apparent, “What do you take me for, Mary? Do you think I’m some kind of idiot?”

It is clear from scripture that whatever she told him, he didn’t believe it. We know that because instead of embracing her and supporting her, his initial reaction is to break off the relationship. That was huge, because no matter how gently it might have been done, it would have doomed Mary and her son to a life of alienation and shame in that community. Jesus wouldn’t even have been allowed in the synagogue, let alone in the great Temple of Jerusalem.

Being betrothed in that time and in that culture was more than just being engaged. Betrothal was far more binding. It involved formal words of consent. The groom would usually make a formal declaration to the prospective bride accompanied by a small gift in the presence of two witnesses. From that point forward she would be considered his wife. Though they wouldn’t be living together in this first stage, they would still be married, and the only way to break the relationship would be through a formal letter of divorce.

It is clear that Joseph thought she had betrayed him. Not just hurt him or embarrassed him, but actually betrayed him – that has to be one of the most devastating experiences in all of life. To trust someone, to open yourself to them, to place your welfare or your sense of well-being into their hands, and then have them throw it away; discard it as having no value, no worth – the experience, depending on the circumstances, can leave us crushed. Make it tough to ever trust anyone again.

Which makes Joseph’s response here all the more remarkable. When someone hurts us our first instinct is usually to strike right back. But betrayal goes even deeper. Great narratives are made out of the search for revenge; think Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, or Melville’s Moby Dick, or even J.K. Rowling’s Voldemort in the recently completed Harry Potter series. What we see in each is an all-consuming passion to destroy the other. Given the circumstances here, it wouldn’t surprise us to see that same drive in Joseph himself.

Scripture describes him as a righteous man. What does that mean? It means he was devout; not just recognizing the existence of God but actually making the choice to worship him. And it means he took God’s law very seriously.

What does the Law require in this situation? The Law is actually very clear: Deut. 22:21, “they shall bring the young woman out to the entrance of her father’s house and the men of her town shall stone her to death…”

Well here it is, right in front of him. Joseph believes he has been betrayed and he has the perfect opportunity to strike right back. He has the right, even the obligation, to drag Mary out into the middle of the town, publicly denounce and humiliate her, and then demand that she be stoned. He would be perfectly justified in doing it. People would actually applaud his righteousness.

But remarkably, that is not the course that Joseph chooses to follow.

The first thing we notice about Joseph is his compassion. He makes a choice not to respond in anger. He consciously chose not to seek revenge.

Isn’t that where we so often miss it? We get hurt or frightened or disappointed, and our first reaction is to lash out in anger. But anger is a secondary response; it comes after the hurt, or after the fear. Anger, then, is actually a choice we make – a choice that pushes others further away; a choice that increases the chasms instead of bridging them; a choice that by very definition excludes the possibility of any sense of peace or of contentment in our lives. You can’t be angry and be content at the same time.

This is the great irony of our anger: it is the poison we consume thinking that by doing so we are somehow going to hurt the other person.

Joseph knew better. He had every right to be angry, but he chose not to go there. The Law itself gave him permission to seek revenge, but he followed a very different course. Joseph chose the way of compassion. And isn’t that God’s mandate to every one of us: to love others? To forgive our debtors as we have been forgiven? To love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us?

But if his compassion is the first thing that strikes us, the second is that he actually made a choice. Think about what he is facing here. The fact is there were all kinds of options available to him at this point, and every one of them had their own supporting arguments.

Joseph could have chosen to ignore what had happened and pretend to all the world that the child was his. That option certainly would have spared both him and Mary all kinds of shame and embarrassment. He could have drawn her into his home and proceeded to punish her for the rest of their life together – that, at least, might have offered some salve to his wounded pride. He could have chosen to humiliate and divorce her. He also could have chosen to have her killed.

All those options and more were facing him at that moment. Which course was he supposed to follow? The second thing that strikes us here is that in the midst of all the ambiguity, Joseph found his own way. He chose a path that was both righteous – fulfilling the minimum requirements of the Law – and yet compassionate; sensitive to the needs of Mary herself.

Nineteen hundred years later this is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer would call responsible Christian action. There are going to be times in our lives when we can’t be sure what is best and right, but that is no excuse not to act. Speaking out of the moral morass of pre-war Germany, Bonhoeffer wrote that we are called to act on our best understanding. We do so knowing that we might be wrong; knowing that even our best understanding is going to be imperfect. But we step forward anyway, dependent on God’s grace, because there are times when the far greater sin is to stand back and do nothing at all.

Joseph stepped into the emptiness of that ambiguity. He did the best he could. And here is the third and final piece that strikes us in this text: it is only after he made his choice that God finally intervened.

We usually want it the other way around. We want God to make everything clear and then we will act. This text holds up a different principle: act, do your best, and then trust God to redirect you if you have somehow misunderstood. To put it simply: it is a whole lot easier to steer a boat that is already moving.

The truth is, you can’t steer a boat that’s standing still. It is going to be pushed and pulled by whatever winds or currents might happen to grab it. If you want to steer, it has to be underway. It can even be moving backwards, but it has to be moving in order to give the rudder some purchase.

So there are going to be those times when God asks us to take the first step. Try to figure it out, do the best you can, and then God intervenes. What seems like a great opportunity right in front of us shuts down. A few days later, a very different and unexpected opportunity opens up to the side.

Confronted with the unexpected news of Mary’s pregnancy, Joseph’s first reaction is driven by compassion. He faces the options before him and makes his choice, doing the best he can to fulfill God’s intent. And then God intervenes.

The message here for us is clear. Whatever you might be facing, choose compassion instead of anger. Choose to step forward instead of making no choice at all. And take that step, finally, trusting that if you’ve somehow got it wrong, the God of all creation has the capacity and the will to redirect your steps once more as you commit it all to him.