Text: Matthew 1: 18-25.

Joseph and Mary would have to be two of the most amazing people in
the biblical record – not merely because of what happened to them, but
in their responses to those events.

Luke says Mary was astonished, perplexed, afraid, incredulous. She
was probably not, as the Church has depicted her – at least initially –
passively accepting her role as bearer of the Son of God.

Someone has suggested we imagine it this way. The angel Gabriel
comes to a teenage Palestinian girl and says she is to give birth to the
Lord, the King. ‘I think you must have the wrong Mary,’ she would have
replied. ‘I mean, you’ll need someone influential, important, of royal
descent, well off (you can’t have the Lord running around in rags, or
receiving a sub-standard education)… If the Lord is to be born into
poverty, well, you’d need an experienced mother who’s got several kids
already (who are healthy and well-adjusted)… I don’t even know how to
hold a baby, and you’re telling me that my first baby will be the Lord.
What if I drop him? And, by the way, what is Joseph going to say?’

Mary continues: ‘Then imagine the scene with Joseph. “Why Mary
you’re looking big… Why, Mary, you’re pregnant! Who with?” And I
answer, “With the Lord.” What’s his line after that?’

Doesn’t happen every day, eh?

But my point this morning is not about what happened to these two
Paelstinian peasants, but what they did with what happened. Here are two
human beings who are invited to collaborate with God in the most
dramatic event in history: God being clothed in human flesh.

Now the Gospels and the Church invite us to believe that Joseph was
not the physical father of Jesus. He was ‘born of a virgin’. I for one
have never doubted that. If Jesus the Christ was God-with-us it seems to
me to be a lesser thing to believe that he entered and left the world in
miraculous ways…

What do we know about Joseph? He was a descendant of David, a
carpenter, maybe older than Mary (and maybe a widower with children) who
was alive when Jesus was twelve, but may have died before Jesus’ public
ministry (why, perhaps, was he not at the wedding in Cana?). That’s it.

Oh no it isn’t. When he learned Mary was pregnant – presumably to
someone else – Matthew gives us some interesting insights into this
amazing man. This must have been a staggering blow to him. His
bride-to-be had betrayed him. She’d been ‘sleeping around.’ Most
fiancees would have exploded in vindictive rage. His gut reaction might
have been to humiliate Mary as well as drop her. But he didn’t.

How should a God-fearer respond to a situation like this? There are
six very helpful clues in the Joseph-story.

First, Joseph was a thoughtful person. (Matthew 1:19,20). So the
first thing he did was to do nothing. He ‘considered’ the situation. For
days, weeks, months… who knows? No doubt he prayed fervently as well.
The moral for us: when you have to make a difficult decision, don’t be
in a hurry: more mistakes are made by hasted than by delay.

Second, Joseph was a ‘just’ man (verse 19). That is, he lived under
the law of God. His obvious question here would have been, ‘What does
the law of God say?’ Answer: (see Deuteronomyt 24:1): he had to put Mary
away. According to Jewish custom, a betrothal could only be terminated
by ‘divorce’. Indeed, Mary should have been stoned. So the moral for us:
Always ask ‘What does the Word of God in Scripture say about this?’
Nothing is ever right if it contradicts God’s will for us.

Third, Joseph was a tender, compassionate man (verse 19). He
believed that justice must be tempered by love. He had to obey the law
of God, that was clear. But how to do it in Mary’s interests? How could
he avoid embarrassing her? Joseph did not want to put Mary to shame. We
know the sequel: it was revealed to Joseph that Mary was not guilty of
adultery at all, but was highly favoured by God, impregnated by the
Spirit of God. The lesson here for us: Always ask, not only what God’s
law requires, but how to apply that law in love. Not even Joseph’s hurt
feelings or his religion’s legal requirements could overrule something
more important: his compassion for someone who was ‘down’. ‘In spite of
the terible thing he thought Mary had done to him and to their dreams,
Joseph still had deep feelings for Mary the person and could not find it
in his heart to add to her burden, or to use the modern phrase, “to
stomp on her while she was down’.’ (John Claypool, in an unpublished
sermon).

Fourth, Joseph was open to mystery, to the incredible. Now he was a
male, and would have prided himself on his logical approach to things
(and carpenters have to think in those terms too!). Mary impregnated by
God? What? Is there a precedent for this? Ridiculous! But no, Joseph’s
response was not cicumscribed by his logic or his experience. What
Gabriel said to Mary, Joseph also obviously believed: ‘With God all
things are possible.’ That’s what faith is all about – letting God be
God, not restricting God within the limits of human experience…

(There are books of ‘bloopers’ which collect the statements of
people who have trouble here. Like what happened with the historic
flight of Wilbur and Orville Wright in 1903. When word got back to their
home town Dayton, North Carolina, about what happened in the Kitty Hawk
the editor of the newspaper there refused to believe it and scoffed: ‘I
do not think human beings will ever be able to fly; and if anyone ever
does, it won’t be anyone from Dayton!’. And my friend Doug Gresham –
stepson of C S Lewis – sent me this one: There’s a story about the man
who was offered a 50% stake in a new soft drink company at a very low
price, and very sensibly asked to taste the product before making up his
mind. After one sip he exclaimed “Nobody is every going to drink this
stuff” and refused to invest. The man was Harpo Marx, and the product
was Coca-Cola.)

Fifth, Joseph was humble enough to be willing to listen to the voice
of God, even in a dream. I have found that people in so-called ‘Third
World’ countries are more opening to hearing God in dreams and seeing
God in visions than better-educated Westerners are. I have asked
pastors’ conferences in Africa and India: ‘How many of you responded to
God’s call to ministry in a dream?’ and the majority have put up their
hands. It never happens like that in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., New
Zealand or Australia!

But sixth, Joseph was a man of action. With only the word of Mary
and words in a dream to guide him, he took Mary to be his wife, and took
her away from Nazareth (ostensibly to register in his home-town of
Bethlehem, but also, I have no doubt, to get Mary away from the wagging
tongues up north!). He later moved the little family to Egypt to get
away from the murderous Herod, then back to Nazareth rather than
Bethlehem to avoid the political climate.

John Claypool again: ‘Sam Keen defines a wise person as one who
knows what time it is in life, and Josephy eminently qualifies for that
title… He was profoundly aware of what was going on around him, and
just as importantly, had the courage to act on the sense of promise that
beckoned him to venture forth. This courage of course was the offspring
of trust – in Mary, in the angel, and in his own experience of truth,
and as we now know, Joseph was not disappointed. In fact, because he did
trust so courageously, look who came into the world – a Son who was
taught from the cradle, in Carlyle Marney’s term, to “faith it through
life”, and who was able, again and again, to recognize when his hour had
come and to venture forth in courage and purpose.’

Last week in Canberra I heard someone quote the Old Testament
scholar Walter Brueggeman’s response to the question ‘What is the Old
Testament all about?’ ‘It’s all about a God who gives us laws but who
then gives himself permission not to enforce them sometimes,’ (or words
to that effect). When Jesus was confronted with a woman who had
committed adultery, he first said ‘I do not condemn you’ before he said
‘Go and sin no more.’ Pharisees, ancient and modern, who only ask ‘What
does the law say?’ and not ‘How can I act like God, with compassion?’
could never say that. Jesus had learned some wonderful lessons from this
man Joseph

So this Christmas, I invite you to use Joseph as your guide when
confronted with a difficult moral situation. Let us do what Joseph did,
namely: reflect deeply, for as long as it takes; ask ‘How does the Word
of God instruct me here?’; act always with compassion; be open to
mystery; listen for the voice of God, in whatever medium God chooses to
speak; and then act.

Rowland Croucher

December 2000.