“What
Is Your ‘Joseph Place’?”
Matthew
1:18-25
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
Sunday
after Christmas Day
December
26, 2010
In my Christmas Eve sermon, I suggested
that an appropriate posture for Christians in light of the nativity of Jesus the
Christ is to engage in a defiant Christmas
that lasts all the year long. A
defiant Christmas means that we say no to all of the ways the principalities and
powers in the world try to get us to scuttle the
Joseph is the patron saint of a defiant
Christmas. Talk about a tough
stretch of time! He is betrothed to
Mary. That means he is married to
her in the eyes of Judaic law but not yet living with her.
And then Mary turns up pregnant and not by him.
Joseph was a good man, devout, and considered religious and righteous.
No doubt his mind was churning with questions and protests.
“How could she?” “Why
is this happening to me?” “What
did I do to deserve this?” “What
do I do now?”
But Joseph’s pain was more than personal. Jewish life required adherence to its tradition and law. Villages were governed by social approval and neighborhood gossip often was the court of correction. These small, tight societies had clear expectations of behavior and consequences. Deviation was seen as being dangerous for it could lead to the breakdown of the social fabric and thus anyone contravening its conventions was shunned. The shame of being ritually ostracized would taint forever the family name and lineage.
Joseph’s conundrum was whether he
should risk ruining the family name and his social standing by continuing to
walk down the matrimonial road with Mary or should he cut his ties to the woman
who had betrayed him and put him in such a bind?
Joseph at first gave into law and custom and social expectations but,
because he was a decent man and knowing that Mary’s pregnancy publicly known
could put her life in danger on charges of adultery, he resolved to divorce her
quietly.
But then, suddenly, an angel (biblical
code for “message from God coming”) came to Joseph in a dream and told him
not to cut his ties to Mary but to stay with her and to keep the child that is
from the Holy Spirit, raise it as his own, and to call the child Jesus.
What a place for Joseph to be.
He was a religious man, and he now had heard in his subconscious, perhaps
with no small incredulity, what he perceived to be instruction from God.
But, to obey the message likely would mean the collapse of his life as he
had known it and an uncertain future. What
to do? What to do?
Since we are familiar with the story,
we know that Joseph decided in favor of Mary.
By including this story in his gospel, Matthew intended to say to his
readers then and now – Stay open to the
inner messages you sense to be of God. Do
not let your fears close you off. Do
not let societal expectations trump God’s call on you.
Do not think you can have everything figured out in advance before saying
yes, because you can’t.
If we would read a little farther on in
Matthew’s Christmas story, we would find that Herod, threatened by the
announcement of the Christ-child’s birth, the Messiah, ordered that all little
boys aged two and younger be killed, thus, presumably, wiping out the threat to
Herod’s reign.
But, again, an angel came to Joseph
telling him to take Mary and their newborn baby away from the comfort of their
home into
I told you it was a tough patch for
Joseph. Again, what a place for
Joseph to find himself. We are
talking
Again, Matthew is saying to his readers
– Stay open to the inner messages you
sense to be of God. Do not let your
fears close you off. Do not let
societal expectations trump God’s call on you.
Do not think you can have everything figured out in advance before saying
yes, because you can’t.
Well, the Bible is a living document
through which God continues to speak to us.
What I hear us being asked is if there is a “Joseph place” in your
life that is asking you to face some kind of call that may require you to step
out or step beyond convention or tradition or family or societal or even your
own expectations, something beyond what other people might comprehend were you
to do it? Is there a calling, a
prompting, a restlessness that stirs in your heart that will not be stilled but
that could be costly if you were fully to wake to it and to say “yes”?
“Joseph places” – for
individuals, families, churches – are uneasy and uncomfortable.
How many times lives get stuck because we find it easier to retreat from
“Joseph places” in favor of the status quo, of taking the route of
non-decision which is, of course, in its own way to decide.
Oftentimes the “Joseph places” are irrational calls – they do not
make sense if we are trying to live standard issue lives.
So we try to figure things out logically. Yet
to go where God wants to lead us often requires us to walk more by faith than by
sight. I am reminded of Madeleine
L’Engle’s little Christmas verse about trying to reason out God’s
promptings:
This is the irrational season when
loves blooms bright and wild,
Had Mary been filled with reason,
there’d have been no room for the Child.
When we hold everything up to reason or
to social custom as the final arbiters, we sometimes close off other surprising
possibilities. It was not that
Joseph had reasoned out the results of following God’s call ahead of time that
caused him to choose that way. Mostly,
for Joseph, the future was unknowable. It
was that he trusted the “Still, Small Voice” speaking into his life more
than the concert hall of conventional voices that had their own reasons for
wanting Joseph to stay put in his settled life.
Make no mistake.
Joseph’s decision to trust the God-messages did not lead him into an
easier life. It led him into exile
and away from the life he had known. The
trajectory of his life was significantly and irrevocably altered.
But Joseph found God’s blessing in his newly construed and constructed
life and by it – for it gave Jesus a chance to live and thrive – many others
through many generations and centuries also have been blessed.
Do not finally fear the “Joseph places” when they come to your life. Do not close off or close down to the possibility that God may be calling you into something new or other or more than you had imagined or expected for your life, something good and life-giving both for you and others. But be aware as well that to follow God’s leading, as it did for Joseph, always exacts a price on the way to blessing. The question, then, is whether you are willing to trust God enough to pay it.
Amen.
Copyright © 2010 First
Presbyterian Church