The Rev’d Virginia Holleman
Christmas 2, Year C – 01/02/2022
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 84:1-8
Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a
Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
In the Name of God, Father, Son & Holy Spirit. AMEN.
My father was a West Pointer, a career military officer. He was always fair but as a child I did not always think of him as being warm or loving. I think he was but it wasn’t always apparent to me as a small child. He was very strict, and he could be stern when we didn’t live up to his standards; what was apparent though was that his word was as good as gold, and if he thought we had been wronged he set out to make it right, and he could be as protective and defensive as any mother bear with her cubs. Today we call that integrity, but to me as a little girl it meant I could count on him to do or be what he said he would. He was reliable. And probably of all the characteristics I look for in other people, these are the ones that I admire the most – integrity and reliability.
As a kid I suspect that – without really thinking about it – my picture of what God was like was somewhat colored by what I thought my father was like. If Daddy was strict or demanding or generous or funny, then that probably wasn’t too far off from what God was like in a similar situation. I daresay this might also have been true with Jesus when he was a small child. If he had an image of his heavenly Father as being loving and just, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that he very well may have learned that at the knee of Joseph, that Joseph himself was more than likely loving and just.
We don’t know much about Joseph – Scripture tells us very little – but what it does say is very telling. Matthew tells us that Joseph was a carpenter – “Is this not the carpenter’s son?” the people of Nazareth ask when the adult Jesus starts teaching in the synagogue (13:55). Mark describes the same scenario, and we learn from him that Joseph taught his trade to Jesus – “Is this not the carpenter, Mary’s son?” those same people ask (6:3). We know from Matthew and Luke both that Joseph was a descendent of the House of David. Matthew also tells us when Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant before they had lived together, that he was a righteous man and unwilling to publicly disgrace his young bride-to-be. In ancient times, girls were betrothed when they were about twelve years old though they generally were not married until the girl had reached maturity at the age of thirteen. But the engagement was legally binding and in essence the girl became the legal property of her future husband or his family. For Mary to have become pregnant before she and Joseph lived together was an affront to him and his family, and literally damaged his property. He was legally entitled to have her killed, stoned to death. But, “being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, [Joseph] planned to dismiss her quietly” (Matthew 1:19). This is not someone hung up on what his legal rights are or what other people think but someone who is obviously compassionate and kind, someone who is merciful and not given to vindictive behavior. It’s not hard to see why God would have entrusted his son to the care of this man Joseph.
But more important than any of this to the Christian story, Matthew tells us that Joseph listened to God and responded to God’s message. Before Joseph can take any legal action to divorce Mary, God sends his angel to Joseph in a dream – a very common way in Scripture for God to speak to human beings – “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She is to bear a son and you are to name Him Jesus” (1:20). Does Joseph argue that he has been wronged and the girl needs to be put away? No, Joseph consents – he takes Mary as his wife and, by naming the baby, he adopts him, thus providing the child with the ancestors from the House of David that are necessary for the Messiah – just as if the child Jesus had been Joseph’s own biological son.
But this is only the first time in this story that Joseph listens and responds to God. After the Wise Men had visited Herod proclaiming the birth of the Messiah, Herod sets out to destroy the young child. Again the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph and warns him to flee with the child and his mother. Again Joseph listens and consents, and again the child is saved by God’s initiative and Joseph’s willingness to do what God is asking of him. When it’s safe, the scene is repeated and Joseph returns from Egypt with his family and settles in Nazareth – we have again the dream, the message, Joseph listening and obeying – four accounts in all in Matthew in which the young child is saved by Joseph because he listens to God’s messenger and does what God expects of him. In other words, Joseph is reliable.
To digress a moment from Joseph – it’s very important for Matthew to establish for his audience that Jesus fulfills the Messianic expectations for the Jewish people. The coming of the Messiah is foretold in Scripture, and Matthew makes sure that his Jewish Christian readers realize how each step of the journey that brings this baby to save the world is in fact a fulfillment of Scripture. Think back to the first Joseph you encountered when you first began Bible study, possibly when you were very young – Joseph and his coat of many colors. The first Joseph did not escape to Egypt but was actually sold into slavery and taken there. But because God was also with this Joseph, he was able to save God’s Chosen People by later bringing them into Egypt to escape a terrible famine. Egypt becomes a place of refuge, not just for the infant Jesus and his parents, but also for the earlier Hebrew people before them. But Egypt is not the Promised Land, and it’s Moses that leads the Children of God up out of Egypt and slavery and into the land that God had promised them. It’s with Moses as their leader that the Hebrew slaves become a free people, become God’s people. And so it is with Jesus that he too comes up out of Egypt – “Out of Egypt I have called my son” Matthew writes – so that God’s people who have become enslaved to sin can once again become God’s own. Matthew sees Jesus not just as the Messiah or the Son of God, but also as the new Moses who will lead his people once again out of slavery – this time slavery to sin – and into the Promised Land of redemption.
What do we suppose it would have done to the story if at any point along the way Joseph had refused to listen to God’s angelic messenger? If, instead of doing as God had asked, Joseph had said: Nope, sorry, I’m not going to Egypt; I don’t like the climate and I don’t speak the language – we’ll just take our chances here! Or if once he had settled his family in Egypt he had balked at moving them once again, this time to Nazareth, some tiny insignificant village in Galilee. Where would we be if Joseph had refused to listen to the Angel who came to tell him about Mary’s expected baby and the role God expected Joseph to play? Where would we be if Joseph had not been a righteous and just man, a man who was merciful and compassionate and willing to listen to God and do what was asked of him? A man upon whom God could rely to help God fulfill the promises God had made to the Chosen People?
The miracle of Christmas is not only that God loved us enough to give his only Son to redeem the world but that God also trusted two perfectly ordinary, normal people – unexceptional except in their faith – two ordinary people – just like you and me – to raise this extraordinary Child-God as their own. God singled out Mary, not just because she was obedient and good, but also because she was strong and courageous and faithful. And God singled out Joseph for exactly the reasons Scripture give us – because Joseph was righteous and merciful and could give this extraordinary Child the guidance and knowledge that he would need in following the plan that God had for him. And Joseph could do this, not because he was exceptional, but because he listened to God and allowed God to use him to do God’s will. And this is probably the single most important thing that Joseph taught this Child-God Jesus – to listen to God his Heavenly Father and to allow God to use him to do God’s will. Joseph becomes for us the model for our own discipleship, a man of compassion rather than strict adherence to the letter of the law, a man of integrity and reliability, a man who has no higher will than to do the will of God. AMEN.
