The Journey: Joseph
Matthew 1:18-25
December 6, 2015
Mark S. Bollwinkel
The four weeks of the Advent
Season before Christmas are to remind us of Israel’s faithful waiting for a new
Messiah. The people of Israel yearned
for the fulfillment of God’s promises for the future, a world governed by
peace, justice and love. A new Messiah
would usher in such a history and restore humanity’s relationship to God and to
each other. (Isaiah 2:2-4, 9:2-6)
More than the four weeks of
Christmas celebrations, during Advent we prepare ourselves for the coming of
the Christ. We open our hearts and minds
to dreams for the future and God’s dreams for our world. All we need to do that is to commit ourselves
to the journey.
During worship these weeks we’ll
concentrate on the journey to Bethlehem by the characters of the New Testament
nativity story. Today we’ll consider
Joseph, a righteous and compassionate man who will defy social convention and
dutifully play his role in the salvation drama.
Whether we understand the drama
of Jesus’ birth as history or poem, it’s an opportunity for each of us to
evaluate where we are in the journey of life, the faith that we bring and our
dedication to the things most important in life along the way.
An angel comes to Joseph in a
dream.
It
doesn’t appear that Joseph is afraid being woken up in the middle of the night
by a spiritual being. Rather he may be
afraid of what to do with his wedding.
Joseph is a just man, a “righteous”
man. The original term suggests that the
community recognized such a person as someone who did things right by his faith
and by his neighbors.
Joseph was
a compassionate man. In his society it
was a disgrace for one’s betrothed to be pregnant before the official marriage
was consummated. He had every right to
divorce Mary without any questions asked but he was “unwilling to put her to
shame”.
We all know people whose compassion
defines their living, even to their own detriment. Joseph was such a person. In modern terms, these might be the most
unlikely pair to start a family. A
mature and respected man publicly recognized for his faith; a juvenile girl,
unknown, unwed. Consider the courage it
took for them to go ahead with this marriage.
What would others think, after all?
In the end, Joseph would risk his own reputation out of compassion. He would not put Mary to shame.
Joseph was
a faithful man. Twice more he will receive
heavenly visitors. An angel comes to
warn him of Herod’s threat to kill the Christ child and directs the family to
flee to Egypt (Matthew 2:13-15). Then an angel tells him it is safe to return
to Nazareth (Matthew 2:19). Joseph
listens to and obeys the commands of angels even in his dreams.
It was
very important for the gospel writers to point to the fulfillment of Hebrew prophecies
that the Messiah would come from the “house of David” in order to prove Jesus’
divinity. Both Matthew (1:1-17) and Luke
(3:23-28) include long genealogies to show Jesus’ lineage back to the greatest
king of Israel’s history. David is the
ideal for what a Messiah was supposed to be.
Joseph is of the “house of David”.
But Jesus
is born divine and of a woman.
Modern logic might find contradiction in a text that argues that Jesus
had human and heavenly fathers at the same time but the gospel writers and
listeners didn’t. Such drama was very
common in the religious heritage of the Ancient Near East.
When Joseph
is listed in Luke’s genealogy the writer puts in parentheses, “Jesus…the son
(as was supposed) of Joseph” (3:23 ). Jesus is the Son of God after all, and Joseph
is but a bystander.
Luke will
mention Joseph only once more when the hometown crowd at Nazareth 4:22 ).
The gospel of Mark doesn’t mention Joseph at all. In all of his preaching neither does the
apostle Paul. The gospel writer John
cites his name only twice.
Only our
gospel lesson this morning from Matthew gives a description of the man. He was a man of love.
I am blessed
to be the son of Calvin Arthur Bollwinkel.
My grandfather named my dad after his favorite President, Calvin
Coolidge. My father was a successful
radio and TV professional working from disk jockey to operations manager when
he finally retired from the work he loved.
Gifted with a beautiful baritone voice, every church we were ever a part
of asked him to read the Christmas scriptures each year. He was an active community volunteer
throughout his life. He chaired the
Sacramento Area American Cancer Society.
Even toward the end of his 88 years, he volunteered for Books for the
Blind, reading books on to disk for those who cannot see.
In fact,
one of the things I most admired about my Dad was his history of
volunteerism. Since my earliest memories
and in spite of the demands of work and home, my father served volunteer
organizations where ever he lived.
A World War
II veteran in the Pacific war, a cancer survivor himself, he was most proud of
his four children and his 64 years of marriage with my mom, Julia.
When I
think of Joseph in our story from Matthew…righteous, faithful, compassionate…I
think of my Dad and how blessed I have been because of his steadfast love.
If you had
or have a loving father, or if you have the chance to be one, thank God for the
privilege. Not everyone does.
According
to the US Census Bureau, 26% of all of the children in America grow up in a
single parent household, about 21 million children. Their parent is usually a women (84%),
employed outside of the home (79%) and is not poor (27.7%) nor living on public
assistance (31%) [“Single Parent Statistics”, Jennifer Wolf, about.com]. Such courageous and strong people!
Just because dad doesn’t live at
home doesn’t mean that children don’t have a loving father. Today we know that just having a mom and a dad
at home is not enough to make a successful family. Thank God that most families are places of
nurture and loving relationships, but they can also be the home for victims of
violence, neglect and abuse.
What makes
a family “good” isn’t just having a mom and a dad and kids. What makes a family is the love its members
share. Single parent families, blended
step-families, same gender households, adults without children, kids being
raised by grandparents, single unmarrieds adopting, elderly singles living
independently from their children, and the traditional two parent family, all
kinds of shapes and sized of families are good, when love rules their life
together.
By our culture’s standards, it took
real courage and faith for Mary to do what she was called to do. The same is true of Joseph. He was willing to go against the odds and the
expectations of his neighbors to love Mary and her son Jesus.
Shouldn’t
love be the only measure by which we judge some else’s family?
In W.H. Auden’s brilliant Advent
poem, For the Time Being (1944),
Joseph and the angel Gabriel have an intense dialogue about the dilemma in
which Joseph finds himself, having to decide to honor his commitment to Mary or
to leave her as he was entitled to do.
The angel explains that Joseph should stay with Mary because it’s all a
part of God’s plan:
Joseph: How then am I to know
Father,
that you are just?
Give
me one reason.
Gabriel: No.
Joseph: All I ask is one
Important
and elegant proof
That
what my Love had done
Was
really at your will
And
that your will is Love.
Gabriel: No, you must believe;
Be
silent, and sit still.
Sometimes all you have to go on is
faith. Because of Joseph’s faith and
dignity he put his own needs aside, loved his betrothed and refused to shame
her.
You see
when you are the kind of person that listens to angels…the kind of man for whom
God really matters and for whom love is a way of life…you stand out in the
world, you stand over and opposed to the popular culture of the day. And when the crises of life come to you, as
they inevitably do for us all, you have resources on which to draw. Resources that guide you through the tough
times to make the right decisions and do the right thing even if all you have
is faith to go on.
In spite of the theological
awkwardness of Jesus’ two distinct fathers, at the heart of the Christmas story
is the conviction that at a particular time and place…in a way that supersedes
the normal course of human events…God acted in history for our salvation.
God’s
steadfast love, his urgent willingness to forgive and love us, becomes flesh.
Our
Christmas story is full of such grace.
In Mary’s courage. In Elizabeth
May God make us men and women of
honor, who in all we do and say, let righteousness, compassion and faith guide
us.
And don’t
forget the carpenter Joseph, even though he is merely a footnote in the records
of history. He risked social scorn and
humiliation to follow the command of God, to love his wife to be, and stand by
her when he could have run away.
Joseph is a man of love. He is in our crèches scene because
righteousness, compassion and faith are never forgotten. And because he names the baby “Jesus”, which
means “God Saves”.
The story of Christmas is the story
of light breaking into the darkness of human fear and longing. And that light is the power of love.
After all isn’t that what we are
waiting for this Advent?
Amen.
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