Advent 4, 2007 Isaiah 7:10-16
Twente Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25
Joseph the Faithful Stepfather#114054
A yes, it’s nearly Christmas time. Time when extended families gather together to enjoy each other’s company: a time of coziness and patience and peace and harmony. Well, one hopes! Christmas is the time of peace on earth and goodwill towards relatives. Or should be! Actually, it turns out that for many families, Christmas is a stressful time. It is not uncommon that families, thrust together at this time of year, end up having disagreements about such petty things as what to watch on television. Stress about serving the right food at the major meals. Worries about getting all the right gifts for our loved ones, and then anxieties about whether they will be well received. Then there’s the difficulty of how to respond when you receive to your loved one when you don’t actually like what you’ve been given! (Why dear, what a lovely pink and green and orange tie!) These are relatively minor tensions we can laugh about, perhaps. But sometimes holiday times together as family can be times when old irritations flare up. Lack of forgiveness and unresolved conflict have been medically proved to be major causes of stress and illness in people’s lives.At this time of year we Christians pause and look back to the ancient story of Mary and Joseph, the earthly Father and Mother of the baby Jesus, and think wistfully how perfect they all were.But it is just not so. Christmas is not about some unearthly holy event. It is about God coming into our world to be mixed up in our everyday problems and joys, even out family worries and delights.The Holy Family should not be put up on a pedestal so conveniently far above us mere mortals that we have no lessons to learn from each other. The Holy Family had many of the same problems that a lot of families have, and they had some extraordinary challenges beyond that.Think about Joseph. He was, according to Matt 1:19 ‘a righteous man’. He was engaged to a young woman Mary. In those days, engagement was much more binding than today. Marriage was not often based on romantic love; instead, but on a contract worked out between families in which social status and economics usually played a role. Girls were usually contracted to their future husbands as early as their teen years. Engagement had legal force, and women whose fiancés died before the wedding received the full benefits of being widows. There was Joseph, in this legally binding contract. And he found that his fiancée was pregnant by some other person. And he was, according to Matthew 1:19 ‘a righteous man’. According to Jewish law, any man who was engaged to a woman who turned out not to be a virgin, was entitled to bring evidence against her and she would tried publicly and possibly stoned to death (Deut 22:20-21).Joseph was a righteous man, which meant he kept the Jewish Law. But as a foretaste of the new kind of righteousness in Christ – a righteousness based on love – Joseph does something incredibly significant: he decides not to make a big deal of the problem. Who among us males of the species would not have been be irate to discover our partner was apparently unfaithful, worse yet, pregnant, but not by us? This must have really have really hit Joseph hard, yet he did not take public revenge on the girl and her family. He was unwilling to expose her to public disgrace. Instead, he planned to dismiss her quietly.He had just resolved to do so, when an angel of the Lord approached Joseph in a dream to say, ‘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. 21She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ 22All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet (Isaiah): 23‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us.’Joseph is a righteous man, but a righteous man who is not inhumane about righteousness. His soon to be son, Jesus, has the nickname, ‘God with us’. If that has any meaning to us at all, it should mean that there is no such thing as Christian righteousness that is inhumane. God became human so that humans could be godly, by loving God as he loves us AND by loving one another. The two loves are inseparable. Joseph loves God, and he learns that loving God is about loving the woman he thought was unfaithful, and about being willing to change his own view about what is the right thing to do in life. Not just follow the Law, but follow the law of love.Joseph is a righteous man who is opened up to God, God’s love and God’s purposes, even though Joseph probably didn’t understand them fully anymore than we always do. But Joseph was willing to go with God, and that meant going with Mary, and the birth that was about to take place.Sure, not every human father is faced with the prospect of having the Saviour of the world in the family. But actually, the Holy Family faced problems like many families today. There were tensions early on of the deepest kind. But what Joseph shows is how far just a bit of loyalty, just a bit of a desire to do the right thing, and also to learn something new about the loving way to do the right thing, is absolutely crucial. Joseph is dedicated to God, but he’s not so sure of himself that he is not open to being changed by God, made more loving, more patient, more kind. There is a Chinese proverb that says ‘Nobody’s family can hand out the sign, “Nothing’s the matter here.”’ Surprisingly, perhaps, we can seek comfort in the fact that that is probably also true of Mary and Joseph’s family. But what Joseph’s story teaches him and us is that faithfulness and openness to the more loving way are things that any family can benefit from, at Christmas time or any other. Amen.
Any questions? Contact:
The Chaplain, Revd Sam Van Leer, 026 495 0620,
