God Is With Us: The Rev. Canon Rosemarie Logan Duncan
Let us pray. Holy God, open our eyes to your presence. Open our ears to your call. Open our hearts to your love. Amen. Please be seated.
Today on this fourth Sunday of Advent, we are a week away from Christmas Day. Our journey through this Advent season of preparation has focused on the anticipation of the coming Messiah when John preaching a message of repentance and baptizing and the beginning of Jesus in his adult ministry. But on this fourth Sunday, we are presented with the birth narrative from the gospel of Matthew. Of the four Gospels, only Matthew and Luke provide stories of Jesus’ birth. Admittedly, if we were to take a vote on which is more familiar or best liked, I’d bet that Luke’s version would win by a large margin. Luke’s words made immortal by Linus in A Charlie Brown Christmas are full of drama and awe.
It would hardly be Christmas for many without hearing Luke’s story. But today it is Matthew’s words we hear, and his story is quite different. While Luke focuses on Mary, today through the lens of Matthew’s gospel the spotlight falls on Joseph. Our gospel reading picks up after Matthew has finished his genealogy of Jesus with these simple words, “Now, the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, took place in this way” and rather nonchalantly continues, “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.” When we hear that statement, we don’t want to skip over so quickly. There is a lot packed into that one sentence. But Matthew presses on.
The gospel describes Joseph as a righteous man, which is to say he is a law abiding man, devoted to God. But as it relates to Mary, Joseph is left with a very clear problem with no good options to choose from. For the most part, he is looking at death or divorce. He could humiliate her, report her to the synagogue, possibly see her stoned to death, or he could divorce her. What a colossal mess. Joseph has every right to be angry and hurt at what seems to be an obvious betrayal. But to be righteous also means to be merciful. So we find Joseph wanting to do the right thing in breaking the engagement with the least amount of hurt, public disgrace, or harm to Mary.
As I try to put myself in Joseph’s place, I can imagine the burden of being handed something you had nothing to do with. The burden of something you try to manage and to do the right thing with, all the while knowing you can’t. And the burden of something you must nevertheless accept. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had difficult and painful situations where there was no good option. It seemed no way out. And the experience felt as though any hope was being drained from my spirit. So weighing the options, Joseph decides to dismiss Mary quietly. With his mind settled and his decision made, he likely sought the peace of sleep. It is in this moment, something extraordinary happens to the ordinary righteous man. Joseph has a dream. And an angel of the Lord appeared to him 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.”
Joseph on his own could not have imagined how God could be present in such a difficult, embarrassing, and dangerous situation as Mary’s pregnancy. Yet, out of a lifetime of devotion to God and following God’s law, Joseph knew that he had been given a message from that same God. And he needed no extra words, no more detailed explanations. Joseph accepts the invitation to participate in God’s plan of salvation, just as Mary had already done. This is truly his annunciation. But unlike Mary who responds with joyful exuberance saying, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior”, Joseph speaks no great words. In fact, Joseph doesn’t utter a single word anywhere in the New Testament. He simply does what is asked of him. And upon the birth of the child, Joseph does as the angel said and names him Jesus. God saves. For he shall save his people from their sins. God’s call to Joseph required him to accept a mess he had not created, to struggle and to adjust everything he thought he knew about God, about fairness, about love, even about himself.
Joseph is not crushed by the events in his life. Instead, he receives a message that challenges everything. But that divine message would have been useless except for one thing. Joseph is willing to hear it and to act on it. Indeed, this dream that Joseph experienced is only the first in a series of important dreams that will come. While Joseph is usually overshadowed by the attention we give to Mary, today he is the unsung hero of our gospel. While God may not invite you and me to so great a mission as Joseph through an angelic message, God regularly invites us to take part in God’s hopes and dreams for our lives, our families, and our world. Joseph’s story gives me hope and my dear siblings, may it do the same for you. We need to know that God is with us and for us in this nitty gritty world that we live in. However difficult and messy things may look to us now, God is working. God is healing. God is saving. God is loving.
God is with us through the struggles and defeats, through the tough moments when life just doesn’t seem fair. God is with us in the messiness of our lives to offer a lifeline of hope. And on the days when it feels like nothing is going as we’d hoped or planned, and we struggle to barely hold it together, God is with us. That’s the way of faith. The life of Joseph drifts into mystery.
But I invite you to consider Joseph as more than an afterthought, but as one who had a pivotal role in God’s plan. Joseph’s story has much to tell us about the way that God comes among us. Along with Joseph, we too are called to hear God’s message to us, in the midst of complicated situations and to be faithful even when we don’t know where it all leads. So when our lives are messy, full of tough decisions and awkward moments, we take heart in knowing that God has been there before. God is with us. That’s the way of faith, and that is the message of the season. Amen.