First Sunday after Christmas
December 30, 2007
Isaiah 7:10-14
Matthew 1:18-24
Matthew 2:13-23
First Congregational, UCC, Waterville

Joseph seems to be a neglected character in the Christmas story. Oh, he's there. In all of the many manger scenes Alice has collected, Joseph is there. But none of the over fifty show Joseph holding the baby Jesus; he's just standing there. Most have the baby Jesus in the manger; a few portray Mary holding her newborn son. It's the same in artwork. There are lots of portrayals of the Madonna and child. But Joseph and the child? I don't think I have ever seen one. Joseph is just a presence in the background.

Three weeks ago we heard Mary's Magnificat, a poem or song from Mary, in the words of scripture and through music. 'Gentle Joseph, Joseph Dear' is a nice carol that we sang on Christmas Eve but it's not one of the most familiar carols. Joseph has not inspired the kind of music Mary has. And Joseph hasn't received the same attention in popular devotion or in theological reflection.

I would like us to meditate a little this morning on what Joseph's example can teach us. An example of obedient inaction, and an example of decisive action.

There are times when we need to set our personal agendas and preferences and inclinations aside, to get out of the way, and let God act. Sometimes we need to stand aside and allow another person to do God's will. I have a vague recollection of a theologian having written an essay years ago with a title something like 'On the grace of doing nothing.' The context was world affairs when his country was poised to take a morally questionable action.

Now let's look at Joseph's story. We read the first part in recent weeks, and most of you know it. Joseph and Mary were, to use an old word, betrothed, or engaged. Engagement was considered a binding contract; Matthew even refers to Mary and Joseph as husband and wife. An engagement could only be broken by divorce or by the death of one of the people. And any unfaithfulness was considered to be adultery.

There is a problem here, which Matthew tells us about in the first verse of the story. Mary is pregnant, pregnant by the Holy Spirit. We, as hearers of the story, are privy to this information before Joseph is. Joseph only knows that Mary is pregnant. Joseph is a nice guy, and he doesn't want to embarrass Mary publicly. So he decides to divorce Mary quietly, without any fanfare or publicity.

Apparently Joseph decided to sleep on his decision before acting on it. Then he had a dream. In his dream, Joseph was visited by an angel of the Lord. A brief interruption here. I was interviewed a few weeks ago by a reporter from the Sentinel asking what our church taught about angels for a story that was in the paper last Sunday. One of the things I said was that angels are messengers from God. In the scriptures, we read of angels appearing in dreams and speaking in visions. And we also occasionally speak of other people as angels when they have done an unusually good thing. Back to Joseph.

Joseph was visited by an angel in a dream. Like all angels, Joseph's angel brought a message from God. Like most messages from angels, this one begins with the assurance not to be afraid. Being visited by an angel is a scary thing. For most people, if it happens at all, it is a rare occurrence. We don't go around hearing angel voices every day or every night in our dreams. When we do, it is natural to be afraid of what is happening to us.

The angel continues to speak, and this is when Joseph learns that the father of Mary's baby is the Holy Spirit. And there's more. Mary is carrying a son – this was unusual information in the days before ultrasound testing could reveal the sex of a baby before birth.

And the name. The angel tells Joseph that the baby's name is Jesus. Saves him the trouble of poring over all those name books and arguing with Mary about what to name the kid. When our Rachael was born, one woman who was in the hospital the same time as Alice hadn't decided on a name for her baby by the time they were discharged. Joseph doesn't have the problem of indecision about a name for the baby. The angel tells him to name the baby Jesus.

The name Jesus, in the Greek Matthew wrote in it is Yesua, is a short version of Yehosua, which in English could be Joshua. Joshua, Yeshua, Jesus are all forms of the same name. Matthew relates the name to the story of Joshua which has a repeated line: 'I (God) will be with you.' You will need to remember this in a minute to make another connection.

There's more to the message. The reason for the name is that Jesus will save people from their sins, just as Moses and his successor Joshua saved the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt and led them into the Promised Land. This tells Joseph, and us, a large part of the mission of Jesus.

The angel's message continues. This pregnancy for Mary is going to be the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy of a Messiah to come. Matthew even quotes Isaiah, one of the passages usually read before Christmas.

Two words from Isaiah need comment. The easiest first: Emmanuel means 'God with us.' This is why we use the word 'Emmanuel' at Christmastime. God is with us. Remember that repeated line from Joshua? 'I (God) will be with you.' We speak of Jesus as God with us on earth. Theologically, it's the doctrine of the incarnation.

Now the harder part, harder because it is controversial in some Christian circles. The early Christians, like Matthew, used a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures called the Septuagint. Septuagint comes from the Greek word for seventy, the size of the committee of scholars who made the translation from Hebrew to Greek. While both the Hebrew and Greek words could mean either a young woman or a virgin, the Greek word's primary meaning is virgin, which is what the Latin and early English translations became, leading to the idea of virgin birth.

This part of the story ends quickly. Joseph does what the angel said. He did what God wanted and abandoned his plans to divorce Mary. In short, Joseph's inaction was a form of obedience to God.

I hope you can understand now why I said that sometimes God's will is for us not to do particular actions. Joseph was a good and righteous man, as Matthew reiterates again and again. He was even willing to skate on the edge of the traditional law by divorcing Mary quietly because, although the death penalty no longer applied in such cases, the law required harsh punishment. So although Joseph, in his own decision-making, was being kind to Mary, it was not what God had in mind. By not taking the kind action he himself had in mind, Joseph followed God's will – with results we all are familiar with.

At times, even when we are inclined toward good actions, God sends angels to us with a message for an even kinder, better action.

I can't end here. Inaction is not always the message we have from God. Again Joseph can help us.

Joseph had two other dreams in which he was visited by angels, messengers from God. The both come after the story of the Magi coming to visit Jesus. Do you remember how it ends? After the Magi asked Herod for help in finding the new-born king, they are warned, would you believe through a dream?, to go home by a different route for their own safety. Then Joseph had the first of these two dreams. The angel warned Joseph to take Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt for their safety.

Herod, the secular political official, apparently understood some things about Jesus that we often miss at Christmas-time. This baby, born in a manger in the barn behind a full inn – this baby was a threat to unjust rulers. Herod didn't want another king around, no matter what the age of the king, so he killed all the children under two years of age. We don't like this violent part of the Christmas story. Matthew frames this as the fulfillment of a prophesy by the prophet Jeremiah.

After Herod died, Joseph had another dream with another angel with yet another message from God. This time the message was that it was safe to return home. So Joseph took Mary and Jesus back to his home in Nazareth, which Matthew again says fulfills a prophecy.

Joseph, the too often ignored person in the Christmas story, provides us with an example of faithfulness to God's will by refraining from a contemplated action and with examples of faithful action. His actions and his inactions were all in response to messages from God.

What we can learn from Joseph is to listen to God's angels, listen to the messages from the God who is still speaking to us. We may have our preconceived ideas about what God wants us to do that in actuality prevent us from doing God's will. And God says 'don't do that.'

Other times God's message is to take forceful actions. Only by listening carefully can we discern God's will in particular cases. Joseph's example can help us in this discernment process by helping bring to our awareness the different ways God speaks to us.