Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Every three years, the lectionary makes our entry point into the Nativity story on this fourth Sunday of Advent to be not through Mary, or Elizabeth, or John the Baptist, but through Joseph. The Gospel of Matthew reminds us that in fact, Joseph’s role in Jesus's arrival is absolutely central and of crucial importance. For Matthew’s Gospel the Messiah must come from the house and lineage of David, and so it rests on Joseph to give his name and his legitimacy to Mary's child. It is his consent to lean into what seems impossible, to embrace the scandalous, and to let go of his notions of holiness in favor of God’s messy plan of salvation, that allows the miracle of Christmas to unfold. If Joseph refuses, the fulfillment of prophecy comes to a halt.
Matthew’s nativity story is not a detailed telling of Jesus’s birth, like the one we find in the Gospel according to Luke. Luke wants to tell us the story through the experiences of Mary, a young woman without status who carries the son of God in her womb, and the shepherds living in the fields who are the first to hear of the birth. Matthew, on the other hand, wants to tell us about Joseph. He is described as a “righteous man,” which is to say, a man of principle, devoted to God’s law, and ethical living. From any account it’s not hard to imagine Mary’s betrothed as someone who doesn’t like to venture too close to controversy. I imagine Saint Joseph as an honest and hardworking man who follows the rules, practices justice and fairness and desires to live an uncomplicated and orderly life.
We know that the anonymous writer we’ve come to name Saint Matthew was probably a Jewish Christian, possibly a scribe. He wrote between the years 80 and 90 CE and addressed his work to a community in conflict: Jewish Christians who were being pushed out of larger Jewish communities. So, it is important for this writer we call Matthew to place his own religious community right within its Jewish heritage and to portray a Jesus whose Jewish identity is beyond doubt. In fact, he begins his gospel by tracing Jesus’s genealogy, not just to King David, but all the way back to Abraham. What’s interesting is that the genealogy of the Son of God is a long line of dishonor and scandal.
The forty-two generations of Jesus’ genealogy according to the Gospel of Saint Matthew are a long list of the names of broken and imperfect men, sprinkled a few times with those of broken and imperfect women. There is the patriarch who abandoned his son and twice endangered his wife’s safety in order to save his own skin, the trickster usurper who humiliated his older brother, the king who slept with another man’s wife and then had the man killed to protect his own reputation, a woman who pretended to be a sex worker, and another who was one and then turned into a spy. These are just a few examples, and the backdrop for God’s works of restoration, healing, hope, and second chances. And thus, it is within this context that the focus on Joseph appears in Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth. Joseph embodies all that is best about the Jewish tradition of the time- keeping the law as a way to live with God. The law was a tried-and-true pattern of actions that expressed a Jew’s closeness to God and right relationship with others.
In today’s Gospel story we hear that during the time of Joseph’s engagement to Mary, he discovers that she is pregnant and he knows he is not the father. Because he is a righteous man he decides to dismiss her quietly, but an angel of God appears to him in a dream and tells him not to be afraid to marry her so he obeys and does what the angel tells him. Right… But, in the Gospel account neither Mary nor Joseph say a word. What I want to know is what they said to each other. What was that confrontation like? I want to know about Joseph’s anguish, anger, confusion, and fear. He really had no good options. If he calls attention to Mary’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy, according to Mosaic Law she could be stoned to death. I want to know how long it took this righteous man to arrive at what he also knows in his heart is another part of his Jewish heritage: that the law must always be tempered with mercy.
After what may have surely been an agonizing struggle, Joseph’s thoughts, will, feelings, in other words, his aware sense of self, his “I” comes up with a plan that is rational, practical, and righteous. He decides to dismiss Mary quietly, in a way that would reduce public inquiry into what has happened. The thing is, though, that if he does, Mary would be reduced to begging or prostitution to support herself and the child. So, mercy is not enough! What is demanded of Joseph is to go beyond that old pattern of actions he knows so well. God reaches out to him through the subterranean world of dreams. His deeper self, the depths of his soul closest to the Holy, reveals that something else needs to happen, which from the perspective of righteous Joseph, must have felt shocking, unsettling, and scary. In his dream, Joseph confronts a power greater than his sense of self. An angel appears to him and says: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid.” In other words, do not be afraid to do something that seems outrageous and that will take you way past what you can possibly ask or imagine in order to bring to fruition something that the law and the prophets have yearned for. So, Joseph acts upon a justice deeper than what is merely legal. It’s a theme Jesus will later expound at length in his preaching. Against the shadows of hateful violence dressed up as law, Joseph acts with merciful love, and the Good News of love begins. The Love made flesh, that came to dwell with us, and save us, and love us back to life.
Our faith depends on our awakening to the messages from God welling up through the unconscious, and trusting the non-rational elements of life. The Spirit God moves through every moment of life, providing gentle (and not so gentle) nudges, insights, and synchronicities. In the account of today’s Gospel story, the plan of salvation depends on Joseph’s openness to listening to the wisdom of God mediated through the unconscious. And in choosing Joseph, God leads this righteous and good man straight into doubt, confusion and struggle. He has to reorder everything he thinks he knows about fairness, justice, goodness, and purity. He has to embrace a mess he did not create.
It may not make for a warm fuzzy Nativity story, but it is the story I can live with. Seen from that angle, Joseph’s story gives me hope, because, while I like to think I usually arrive where I need to be, my obedience is anything but perfect and often involves a great deal of inner struggle. In fact, the first time I read Chapter 5 of the Rule of Saint Benedict as a postulant, which begins with: “The first step of humility is unhesitating obedience,” I thought to myself: “Say what? Unhesitating obedience?? Well, I guess I’m not humble and I’m just going to have to be an imperfect monk.” I can’t usually relate to or even trust people who leap headlong into obedience. I can, however, relate to a person who struggles, a person whose "yes" is cautious and ambivalent, but still a “yes”. I’m grateful that Joseph’s choice was a hard one and that he struggled, because I struggle, too.
God’s messy plan of salvation required quiet and cautious Joseph, to choose precisely what he feared and dreaded most- the inexplicable, the complicated, the suspicious. No wonder the angel Gabriel tells him not to fear! The reality is that a life in relationship with God requires this constant reminder- do not be afraid. Do not be afraid when God’s work in your life looks completely different to what you thought it should look like. Do not be afraid when God disrupts your certainties or cherished assumptions. Do not be afraid when God asks you to stand alongside those considered deplorable, the suspected, the shamed, the forgotten. Do not be afraid when God asks you to love more than your self-absorption or reputation.
May we all be open to more than we can ask or imagine. May we go beyond one-dimensional understandings of reality to embrace the unexpected divine revelations. And may we not fear our vulnerable, fragile, uncertain and messy hearts because that’s the place where Christ is born over and over again. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+
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