Pastor Dan Mangler's Sunday Sermon

To Be Joseph at Christmas

Matthew 1:18-25

December 23, 2007

To Be Joseph at Christmas

The newspaper columnist Dave Barry writes, "My most vivid childhood memory of Christmas that does not involve opening presents, putting batteries in presents, playing with presents, and destroying presents before sundown, is the annual Nativity Pageant at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Armonk, New York. Mrs. Elson was the director and she would tell the children what role they would play based on their artistic abilities. For example, if you were short you would get a role as an angel, which involved being part of the Heavenly Host and gazing with adoration at the Christ Child.

Barry continues: "Shepherd was my favorite role because you got to carry a stick, plus you spent most of the pageant waiting back in the closet with a rope that led up to the church bell and about 750,000 bats. Many were the happy rehearsal hours we shepherds spent back there in the dark, whacking each other with sticks and climbing up the ladder so as to cause bat emission products to rain down upon us.

"After a couple of years as shepherd, you did a stint as a Three King. This was not nearly as good a role because you had to lug around the gold, frankincense and of course, the myrrh, which God forbid you should drop because they were played by valuable antique containers belonging to Mrs. Elson. Nevertheless, being a Three King was better than being Joseph, since Joseph had to hang around with Mary who was played by a girl. You had to wait backstage with this girl and walk in with this girl and stand on stage with this girl).. Needless to say, you felt like a total wonk, which was not helped by the fact that the shepherds and three kings were constantly suggesting that you really liked this girl. So during the pageant Joseph tended to maintain the maximum allowable distance from Mary as though she were carrying some kind of fatal bacteria."

Dave Barry is right. It doesn't look like much fun to be Joseph at Christmas; but not for the reasons that Barry lists. Of all the parts in the Christmas story, Joseph's seems the smallest. It is a contradiction. Joseph is on stage as much as Mary is but he is the least noticed, and seemingly the least important. Everyone else in the Christmas story has lines to say; Joseph only js silent. Mary speaks to the angel and praises God in the Magnificat. Elizabeth rejoices that she is allowed to meet "the mother of my Lord". The magi discuss the significance of the "star in the east", and the shepherds leave the manger "glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and scene." But throughout the Christmas story Joseph is silent. Even when the angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream, it is the angel who does all the talking. Nor does Joseph say anything after. It says in Matthew 1:24, "When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him..."

To be sure, Joseph has the least lines of all the Christmas participants, but that does not mean he has the least to contribute. There is much about Joseph that we can know without him ever speaking a word. And what we can come to know about Joseph may well convince us that his is a part worth playing.

We know from the Christmas story that Joseph was a man of compassionate righteousness, two words that do not often come together. He was too righteous to overlook Mary's supposed sin of conceiving a child out of wedlock by another man, which was the only conclusion Joseph could reach given the facts. But he was too compassionate to disgrace her publicly, so Matthew tells us that Joseph "planned to dismiss her quietly".

"Compassionate righteousness" are not two words often combined. More often we hear of self-righteousness, or righteous indignation. One who is righteous is considered stiff, cold, rigid, and unbending - one whose philosophy in life is "you get what you deserve", both in terms of punishment as well as reward.

One who is compassionate is thought to be warm, permissive, soft-hearted, for whom love and forgiveness permit and almost countenance sin and irresponsible behavior okay.

Even before the cause of Mary's pregnancy was made know to him Joseph's righteousness was tempered with compassion. Here is a quality of Joseph's character we might well make our own.

Joseph was a man of quiet and humble obedience. Joseph is at least as important as Mary in this story; his obedience as necessary as hers. Joseph, from the house and lineage of David, has to be part of the Christmas equation if Jesus is to fulfill God's promise as a Davidic king. Mary's words of submissive obedience "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word" are matched in Matthew's account that "When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him..." And yet throughout the Christmas story, and in fact, in all the gospels Joseph is silent, emerging only from the shadow of Mary and the baby Jesus. He is God's willing tool and is content to be that.

Joseph believed the unbelievable, obeyed without question, and, in the end, quietly departed. If biblical importance was measured by the number of words spoken, Joseph would be a zero. It was, however, Joseph's actions which commend him as our example. Joseph's example teaches us that the purpose of belief and obedience is not to gain recognition but rather to be an instrument of God's will. It is not the world's recognition and approval that our belief and obedience attract; it is God's.

And finally, Joseph was a man of patient expectancy. Matthew writes, "When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took (Mary) as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus." Joseph heard the promise and then contented himself with waiting for God to work it out.

Toward the end of WWI, the 308th Battalion was ordered to push an attack in a French offensive. The troops were battle-weary, low on supplies, and under strength from high casualties. As they advanced, however, they hit an undefended hole and broke through German lines. When the Germans closed the gap, the battalion found themselves inside German territory.

The first two attacks on the pinned-down American battalion failed. American support artillery, however, having been given the wrong grid coordinates, now threatened to finish off the battalion. The only method of getting a message back to the artillery unit was by carrier pigeon, and the pigeon handler lost one of his two birds just trying to hold the bird with shells exploding around him. A desperate message was attached to the last bird, and the bird flew into a tree and sat. Nothing seemed able to move the bird, so finally one soldier braved enemy fire to climb the tree and shoo her away. As the bird took off, all German riflemen fired at her. The pigeon lost a leg, lost an eye, and suffered a smashed breast-but delivered the message to stop the shelling.

The apparent hopelessness of that WW I battalion's position is not terribly different from the hopelessness of an Israel occupied by foreign forces at the time of Jesus' conception or the impossible ness of Joseph's position who hears unbelievable words from an angel in a dream. But the outcome is the same. God promises, through unlikely means, to rescue us from impossible circumstances, and we are called on only to believe. The Advent message is a message of hope addressed to hopelessness. We may be down to one pigeon who won't fly, but we are called on to trust that God knows and controls the outcome. Joseph was called on to believe, and he did. So are we. Joseph waited in patient expectation, and was rewarded. So shall we.

Once during the Civil War, when things were at their worst, the Governor of Illinois wrote Abraham Lincoln an utterly discouraged letter - everything was going to the dogs. Lincoln wrote back: "Dear Dick: Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord." The angel said to Joseph: "Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord" And it is in that way that we, too, wait for Christmas. Amen.

May the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.