Matthew 1:18-25
Advent 4 Year A
December 22, 2013
First Presbyterian Church, Clarksville and
Harmony Presbyterian Church
The Reverend Dr. Robert Wm Lowry
In the Old Masters Gallery of the palace
museum in Kassel, Germany there is a painting that you have probably never
heard of before. It is a Rembrandt, but
unlike his self-portrait or the Storm on the Sea of Galilee famous for being
stolen from the Gardner Museum in Boston, this painting is relatively unknown
and so nondescript that it almost blends into the background.
The name of the
painting is The Holy Family with Painted Frame and Curtains. The left side of the painting shows a tired mother
holding a clinging child- Mary holding the Christ child. The mother and child are bathed in the bright
yellow light of a small fire in the fireplace.
A cat sits eating the crumbs from a bowl on the floor. A blanket in the cradle appears ready to
receive the child.
On the right side of
the painting, barely discernable in the shadows, sits a man- Joseph. He is sitting in the dark, his elbows on his
knees, leaning forward in thought seemingly ignorant of the peaceful maternal
scene just across the canvas.
It is, I think, perhaps
the most honest depiction of the Holy Family I have ever seen.
Mary looks tired. Jesus looks on the verge of tears like a real
baby. And Joseph, well Joseph looks
worried, pensive, a little panicked, you know, like a new dad.
Joseph does not get
much air time during the holiday season.
As we journey to and through the nativity of the Lord, we encounter
shepherds, angels, a reluctant young mother, an inhospitable innkeeper and
three wise men who bring gifts fit for a king if somewhat inappropriate for a
baby. Joseph is little more than an
extra filling out the cast for this holiday pageant.
As I was looking back
over old sermons on this passage and other Advent texts, I began to realize
that I have always treated Joseph as just that; a Christmas prop- an extra
filling out the cast in the show.
So after five trips
around the track on the preaching lectionary, I find myself curious about that
shadowy figure in the background of Rembrandt’s painting.
Scripture tells us
little about this man. He does not
appear in any of Pauls’ letters or in the early gospel of Mark. It is not until a generation after Jesus’
resurrection when the gospels of Luke and Matthew are written that we get any
mention of the man who was the earthly father of Jesus and even they are
conflicted on the details.
Other than his role in
the nativity, there are two things the scriptures agree about concerning
Joseph. He was a technon- a carpenter or woodworker and he was dikios- righteous.
Joseph was a righteous
man.
The text does not say
it, but it is probably a safe assumption that Mary and Joseph were young. In fact they were probably very young. While most young people their age today are
slogging through high school and studying for their driver’s exam, teenagers in
the first century were young adults and 20-somethings, while not exactly middle
aged, were far from just getting started with their lives.
As we enter the story
today, we encounter these two young people and we learn two facts:
1.
They are
engaged.
2.
Mary is pregnant
and the child is not Joseph’s.
Those
are the circumstances by which Joseph finds himself surrounded. He is acutely aware of his situation. Somehow I think that moment captured in
Rembrandt’s painting is not the first time that Joseph, the righteous
carpenter, sat alone in the dark contemplating his reality.
The
culturally popular thing to do would be for Joseph to publicly shame Mary and openly
reject her and their pending nuptials in favor of saving his own
reputation. The cultural expectation-
the popular reaction to this circumstance- was to kick Mary to the curb and be
done with it.
Joseph
takes a different tack. He determines to
leave her at the altar, so to speak, but to do it without a public
spectacle. As the text puts it, “Because
he didn’t want to humiliate her, he decided to call off their engagement
quietly.”
The
text does not tell us what his motivation was other than not humiliating
Mary. I like to think that Joseph was
aware of what would happen when it became widely known in the community that
Mary was pregnant before she was married and he did not want to pile on the
trouble she would already face. So he
quietly packs his bags, calls a cab and prepares to sneak quietly into the
night.
It
would be as if he was never there.
Mary
would have to face the cultural backlash of her pregnancy but Joseph would not
add to her plight.
Joseph
was a righteous man.
If
there is a central point to this text, an axle, around which the rest of the
text revolves, it is the next verse- or the first part of it at least. The English translation reads, “As he was
thinking about this…”
The
Greek word translated here as “he was thinking” is enthumathentos. Like so much
of Greek, the English translation does not quite capture the fullness of the
meaning. “Thinking” is accurate, but a
more illustrative and accurate way of saying what Joseph is doing might be “he
was sitting with this thought.”
Some
problems need a little sitting if a solution is ever to be found. Occasionally life presents us with a ready
exit from a problem, but more often than not we have to spend some time
searching around to find the best way forward.
The
idea of enthumathentos evokes less a
picture of intellectual mulling than a picture like the one Rembrandt
conceived; sitting in the dark with thoughts mulling- pondering- praying. It seems, from the text so far, that Joseph
has made up his mind about what to do with his relationship with Mary. However, here we have evidence that rather
than pack his bags and storm off in a huff, he decides to sleep on it. He decides to let the decision steep a while
before he walks away.
It
is in the midst of this pondering that Joseph evidently drifts off to sleep and
in his slumber he is visited by an angel of the Lord. The angel of the Lord spoke to Joseph and
told him not to be afraid, to marry Mary and to raise Jesus as his own. Now, on the surface that seems a pretty innocuous
encounter. In truth of course, this was
much much more. Because the child
growing in her was not any other child, it is the son of God. Joseph is called to care for the mother of
the son of God and the son of God himself.
And
that is exactly what he does. He takes
Mary as his wife. He also refrains from
sharing their marital bed before Jesus is born.
In addition to taking on the responsibility of raising a child that is
not his own, Joseph takes pains to ensure that there is no doubt in anyone’s
mind that the child does not belong to him.
Before
he drifted off that night, while he was in the midst of his pondering of this
major life decision to leave the woman he intended to marry, Joseph could not
have known what was going to happen. He
was trying to do the most right thing that he could and leave Mary
quietly. Then the angel visits and
everything changed.
Joseph
went to bed a righteous man.
Joseph
woke up the step-father of God.
What
happens in between those two realities is one of the great mysteries and
miracles of this season. You see, the
birth of Christ is not the only nativity that happens. There is also this oft ignored and little
understood nativity of Joseph.
What
we witness in these few verses is the rebirth of a man and the birth of a
father.
Matthew
does something very clever in the way he tells this story. He makes it clear that Joseph’s righteousness
does not depend on how he responds to the angel. Joseph is declared to be righteous before the
angel visits. It is pretty easy to read
into the text that this righteous label would have been ripped away if Joseph
woke up and ignored the angel’s invitation.
The problem is that is not in the text.
Joseph is righteous not because of what he does after the angel appears
but because of who he is before.
Joseph is a righteous man.
What
changed is that in his sleep- in the midst of his prayer and discernment-
Joseph found another way through his reality.
Faced with a seemingly inescapable problem, Joseph spends his time with
the decision he feels compelled to make and, as it turns out, it was time well
spent. After the angel visits in the
night, his choices were no longer stay and be humiliated or leave and humiliate
Mary. The angel, whispering in Joseph’s
ear, shows him another way forward; a way that will graft him into the
impossible truth of Messiah; a way he could not find alone.
In
so many ways, Joseph waking from his dream, gives a glimpse into what will be
expected of this child he is now called to raise a his own. It is as though the angel whispers to him;
“There is a place for you in this
story. This child, the one you will name
Emmanuel, will need a dad. He will need
someone to comfort him when he is scared at night. Someone to teach him a craft
in the world with which he will so long to truly connect. Joseph, if you do not walk this hard road to
Bethlehem, who will teach him how to climb the cruel hill to Calvary?”[i]
Far
from the reluctant groom of a pregnant young bride, Joseph is called to be the
one who will greed God into the world and be there while he grows up.
Sometimes
we forget that the nativity of the Lord is the birth of a baby. And the lost years between Jesus later
childhood and his adult ministry can leave us with the impression that the Christ
child went straight from swaddled infant to enigmatic adult, but somewhere in
between someone had to change his diapers and comfort him while teething, make
him eat his vegetables and teach him the stories of the faith, help him with his
homework and teach him to throw the Galilean version of a baseball. He would need someone who, when the work
ahead seemed too much to take, could look back on a dream and remind the child
that just when there seems to be no way out, a new way will be made clear; a
way defined not by the imposition of the customs of the world, but the
intrusion of the grace of God.
Jesus is not the only
one who needs an example like Joseph. We
all have moments when we yearn to know that God’s Good News is indeed
true. We all need, from time to time, to
hear from a seasoned voice that the hope we find in Christ is not misplaced or
mistaken.
We
all need a Joseph from time to time.
There
is no way of knowing the moment Rembrandt had in mind when he painted that
image of the holy family. I like to
think that it captures a moment in time so familiar from the hymn:
O Little Town
of Bethlehem how still we see thee lie
Above they deep and dreamless sleep the silent starts go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
Above they deep and dreamless sleep the silent starts go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
Sitting in the dark, his elbows on
his knees, his head bowed, Joseph knew what it is to sit at the junction of
hope and fear. He knew what it was to fall asleep in fear and
uncertainty only to be awakened by hope and promise.
May
we each and everyone know the truth that stirred Joseph from his sleep; in the
birth of an infant, when the hopes and fears of the world meet, hope emerges to
show us the way.
May
the angel of the Lord whisper to each of us in the stillness of our hearts and
when we wake from our dreaming may we all know the courage of Joseph; the
courage of the hope of a righteous man.
Amen.
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