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When the time had fully come and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
God sure chose a strange way to do it. It was enough to aggravate any righteous, upstanding person in
Nazareth or Bethlehem or Jerusalem, or in Colorado Springs.
The circumstances would confound a saint. To begin with, we find Mary and Joseph hiking sixty or
seventy miles from Nazareth during the last week of her pregnancy, but that was not the worst of it. An
angel had told Mary that her child would be the Son of the Most High God. That’s a lot of expectation to
lay on a young girl who has only the word of an angel to go on. No wonder she asked, “How can this be?”
and “What does this mean?”
And what about Joseph? Mary was pregnant, and she and Joseph weren’t yet married, and even back
then everybody knew what that meant. And Joseph knew he wasn’t the father.
When we think of the Annunciation, we usually imagine it the way artists have pictured it for us
from Luke's Gospel, with an angel standing beside Luke's serenely beautiful Virgin, whispering in her ear.
But few painters have given us any image of the angel's announcement to Joseph: Joseph bolting upright in
bed, waking up in a cold sweat after the nightmare of being told that his fiancee is pregnant, and not by
him, but that he should go ahead and marry her anyway, contrary to what the Bible said God expected of
righteous people.
And Joseph was a righteous man, Matthew tells us, righteous in the way religious people are
supposed to be righteous. And to a righteous man the circumstances were offensive. Joseph knew the
Bible, and the Bible, the Law, made a difference to him. He knew that in the Bible God laid the penalty
of death on adulterers, death by stoning. So caught in a bind, caught between the rock of loving the Law
and the hard place of loving Mary, what was Joseph to do? According to conventional righteousness, there
simply was no possibility that Joseph could marry Mary under the circumstances. Law and righteousness
pointed Joseph to two, and only two, choices short of capital punishment -- either a public divorce or a
quiet putting aside of Mary. And either alternative carried severe social penalties for Mary. The third
choice, according to the Law and justice, was death by stoning.
But this brings us to another side of Joseph, to a side that saved him from being simply another
run-of-the-mill righteous man, lost in history. Because Joseph, in the end, was something more than that.
Joseph had another side.
To begin with, the Bible throws several wild cards into the genealogy of Joseph. In the Gospel of
Matthew, the genealogy of Joseph, and of Jesus, begins with Abraham and works its way down through King
David to Joseph all right. So far, so good. But smack dab in the middle of it all we find three jokers,
three women -- Tamar, Ruth, and Bathsheba -- three wild cards listed as ancestors of Joseph, each of
whom, not to mention David, is linked in the Bible with some scandalous sexual irregularity: incestuous
rape, marriage to an infidel, and adultery. And if the Rahab in the genealogy is the Rahab of the Book of
Joshua, then we can add prostitution to the list as well. This, says Matthew, is the family into which
the Word made flesh is to be born.
Matthew's genealogy is reminding us that the fulfillment of God's covenant seldom runs the nice
way, never runs quite the way we learn it in Sunday School or the way we would like it to run. The Holy
Spirit seems to delight in surprise, to delight in working in ways that appear scandalous to the practical
and righteous of the world. And that, of course, is how the Spirit appeared to good old St. Joseph in the
scandal of his pregnant fiancee.
“Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel,” meaning
“God with us,” which is a scandalous thing in itself if you stop to think about it, which we should this
morning. Imagine it! Almighty God himself becoming part of a family of scandalous sinners in order to
take flesh among all us sinners, and urging Joseph to be party to it. It's absurd. Not at all the way we
would do it, if we were God!
But that's what the angel had told Joseph in the dream. And in obeying the Spirit's prompting and
trusting that Mary's child was divinely given, Joseph set out on a lonely, uncharted path of marrying a
pregnant fiancee and claiming and naming as his own a child and a future never conceived, or even
conceived of, by himself.
So here we find Joseph walking behind Mary on their way to Bethlehem, both of them stumbling along
on the strength of dreams no one else had experienced, not at all sure what lay ahead of them.
Hope, Vaclav Havel reminds us, is not the same as wishing that things will come out well. Hope
is, rather, a willingness to decide for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance
to succeed. Hope, Havel says, is not the same as optimism. Hope is not the conviction that something
will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. I
suspect that this was Joseph's hope and Mary’s hope as they walked their way to Bethlehem. Not that they
were optimistic that everything would turn out OK, but that it was of God and made sense, the right thing
to do, if not the righteous thing to do.
Later, long after he was born, the fruit of Mary’s womb would tell his disciples that their
righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the scribes and pharisees, or they will not enter the
kingdom of heaven.
According to Law, Joseph’s path pointed to divorce. But seen through the eyes of Mary, such an
action, even if done “privily,” even if accomplished quietly, though righteous in law, would have meant
her devastation and maybe her death and, of course, the death of the child and the Word she had been asked
by God to deliver to the world. But under the circumstances, marrying Mary and bringing the child to
birth would be bought at the cost of Joseph's own righteousness, and at the cost of his standing among the
good and just people of Nazareth.
Have you ever walked that lonely path with Joseph? Have you ever taken a road you thought was
right, and hoped was right, but with no clear sign to tell you for sure and with almost everyone you know
telling you not to take it?
We human beings wouldn't spend so much of our lives in restless uncertainty if only God's will for
us were better illuminated in the particular circumstances we find ourselves in, if only God’s will for us
were merely to walk the same path as our parents, if only being righteous meant simply to flip open the
Bible and go by the book, if only God would speak to us through crystal-clear messages in neon lights
across the evening sky, rather than in vague dreams that could be from God but might just as easily be
from an evening of hot Mexican food.
No wonder Mary and Joseph asked, and we ask: How can this be? And what does this mean? God had
asked them to bring forth his Word to the world, but he certainly had not made it easy for them to do so
with the circumstances he gave them.
Mary’s questions are questions we can relate to, aren’t they, as God calls us to bear his Word to
the world in circumstances we don’t understand any better than Mary and Joseph understood theirs. How can
this be? How can it be that God expects us to bear his Word to the world under the lousy circumstances we
find ourselves in, with half of us insisting that God is calling us one way and the other half just as
sure that God is calling us in another direction?
And I hasten specifically to add, lest I be misunderstood, that this is a question that all
corners of the Church need to ask. How can it be, on the one hand, that we in the Church in the United
States hear God speaking a word only to us when much of the rest of the God’s people with whom we are in
communion are hearing a different word? Are we alone wise, we alone the recipients of the Spirit’s
attention? On the other hand, how can it be that others of us do not hear what so many say they hear?
Are the Bible and tradition but a dead word to us? Can God no longer speak through the scandalous, but
only through the righteous?
These are questions that have been asked over and over again in the history of the Church,
beginning with Mary and Joseph. They were asked by those who believed the Roman Church needed reform in
the 16th century and who ended up splitting the Church in the name of righteousness. But in a matter of
only a few years the same questions were being asked among the reformers themselves, who found that even
among themselves they could not agree on what righteousness is, so that they divided again and again into
still smaller and smaller sects of those who saw only themselves as the elect of God.
It was the Anabaptists of Luther’s time who were the spiritual origin of the old joke told by
Baptists about themselves ever since -- that Baptists are Christians who multiply by dividing. Until
later, in America, in Rhode Island, Roger Williams reached the absurdity of believing that the only person
who was righteous enough for him to be in communion with was his wife. Maybe his wife, that is, because
he was suspicious of her as well! This is the final logical destination we ultimately arrive at when,
unlike Joseph, we insist that we should stand on our own righteousness rather than on the righteousness of
Christ.
To some Christians, it is always a great temptation to choose the option of multiplying by
dividing, the option of divorce. Those people at General Convention have done something that is wrong!
Or the rest of the Anglican Communion and of the Church catholic who do not hear the Spirit speaking to us
at General Convention are wrong! Therefore, those who disagree must stand with the righteous.
But where will you find them? Where, that is, if you take the Word of God seriously, the Word who
reminds us that there is none who is righteous, not one.
But schism, ecclesiastical divorce -- whether divorce of the larger Church from the Church in
this little part of God’s world, or divorce of this little part of God’s Church from the Church catholic
-- is really the work of the adversary, the work of him who would multiply the Body of Christ by dividing
it, and thereby destroying it, the work of the one who tempts us to stand on our own righteousness rather
than stand, with Mary and Joseph, on the righteousness of God, who, we know from his dealings with Mary
and Joseph, sows his Word in the most unlikely of circumstances. Unlikely, that is, from our point of
view.
I remember Terry Fullam telling the story about the woman in his parish who was forever
threatening to leave the church because there was always something wrong with it. And, of course, she was
herself one who seldom did much to help improve things. And one day she stormed into Father Fullam’s
office and threw down her ultimatum. “That’s it,” she said, “I have to find another church; this one is
just not walking the walk.” And Father Fullam said, “Mrs. Smith, if you ever do find the perfect church,
for heaven’s sake don’t go near the place. You’d spoil it.”
If you think about it, if you think beyond the laughter, there is great truth in what he said, as
there always is in good humor. For anytime any of us enters a church we spoil it, bringing with it our
own unrighteousness to add to the unrighteousness of those already there. That, friends, is Bible
101.
Is it possible that Mary and Joseph can be our guides in our present circumstance? Is it
possible that in Joseph, as in Jesus, we find the righteousness of God? Is it possible that in Joseph we
find that righteousness which exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and pharisees, the first instance
of a righteousness that was excessive in that it was blended with mercy?
We often think of righteousness as the anxious determination to act with impeccable behavior,
righteousness as stiff-backed goodness. But here in Joseph is righteousness as a willingness to bear the
burden of another, righteousness as a willingness to suffer ridicule for one you love.
Sounds a lot like Jesus, doesn't it? Sounds a lot like the Word whom Joseph's decision will help
to bring into the world and nurture as a child.
The old righteousness was defined as keeping one's nose clean, as obeying the law and staying out
of trouble. The righteousness Jesus was later to speak of was righteousness as willingness to sit beside
the troubled. The old righteousness was defined as keeping oneself undefiled, as staying clear of
outcasts and sinners . Later, Jesus was to sit with outcasts and sinners, welcoming tax-collectors and
harlots to his table. His is a new way of serving a righteous God. Perhaps Jesus learned it from his
fathers, from both of them, from God himself and from Joseph.
Another thing about Joseph. Another thing about Joseph that should make him the patron saint of
the noisy and the nosy in every quarter of life. Joseph's righteousness also exceeded that of the scribes
and pharisees in that it was so quiet. He didn't parade his righteousness at Mary's expense. The quietly
righteous, like Joseph, are not out to shame others, not out to call attention to themselves: “Lord, I
thank you that I'm not like that sinner over there.” How different the righteousness of Joseph from our
image of the street-corner prophet with nostrils flared and teeth exposed, denouncing, pronouncing,
publicly pointing to everyone else's materialism, sexism, and sin, the self-righteous prophet.
Joseph never pronounces or denounces. In fact, we never hear him say a single word. He never
left a song for us to sing, or even an eloquent saying to place on a Christmas card. Joseph's witness is
more in what he does. He marries Mary and nurtures the child and the Word she bears.
Through Joseph, Matthew introduces us to an example of a new righteousness, a willingness to do
what is good quietly, obediently, no matter the circumstance, no matter the embarrassment, no matter the
personal cost. As such, Joseph provokes a crisis in what it means to be righteous. Sounds like Jesus,
doesn't it? From the moment Jesus was but an embryo in Mary’s womb, he too had a way of causing
Torah-loving, righteous people to rethink what righteousness is.
“ The scandal of the Cross doesn't begin at the Cross,” Beverly Gaventa reminds us. “The scandal
of the Cross begins even before Jesus is born.” Even the fetus turning in Mary's womb before Jesus is
born provokes Joseph to struggle with the meaning of righteousness. Would Joseph commit himself to Mary,
or not? Would he commit himself to the circumstances God gave them, and to this unknown visitor in Mary’s
womb, or not? Or would Joseph say “no” to Mary and let the circumstances lead him to stand on his own
righteousness?
In the very first chapter of his Gospel, Matthew's picture of
righteous-Joseph-who-does-not-himself-keep-the-Law, has already set up the problem and the questions the
scribes and the pharisees, and you and I, have to deal with now, long after the unexpected child and
unknown visitor became a man and long after he died his own unrighteous death on a Cross: How can this
be? What does this mean? What is the righteousness that God loves? How, under the circumstances in
which we find ourselves, is our righteousness to exceed that of the scribes and pharisees?
The story of Mary and Joseph is the first miracle in the New Testament. The first miracle in
the New Testament was not something Jesus did, or something Peter or Paul did, but something the hidden
God did through an ordinary young woman and an ordinary man in the quietest, most extraordinary, most
scandalous kind of way. Even before the unknown visitor in Mary's womb was born, all values were turned
upside down, as we hear in Mary’s song. Everything had to be reconsidered, and Joseph knew before William
Temple said it, that “it is possible to be right repugnantly.” Joseph's righteousness lay in wanting to
do the right thing, but also in wanting to do it in the right way by not harming Mary.
The Word of God to us is the same as God’s Word to Mary and Joseph. It is the call for us to
allow God to work his righteousness through us, and maybe even in spite of us, rather than for us to
attempt to make righteousness an act of our own.
Twenty centuries after Jesus was born, in the Year of Our Lord 2003, everywhere Mary’s and
Joseph's story is told, even here this morning, their Child presents people with this same choice, this
same dilemma, this same challenge: How can this be? What does this mean?
“You are the body of the Word born of Mary,” St. Paul reminds us. “And each of us is part of his
body, which God has made in such fashion that when one part of the body suffers, all of us suffer, because
the whole body is suffering.” And that is the way it must be, because we belong to each other, because we
belong to Mary and Joseph, and to their Child. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I do not need you,’ or
the head to the feet, ‘I do not need you.’ ...So there may be no division in the body, because all its
parts must feel the same concern for one another.” The way Joseph felt concern for Mary, and the way
their Son is concerned for us all.
“Love never comes to an end.... When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child,
reasoned like a child; but when I grew up I put away childish things. At present we see only puzzling
reflections, as in a mirror.” Like Mary and Joseph. “But one day we shall see face to face. My
knowledge now is partial; then it will be whole, like God’s knowledge of me. There are three things that
last forever: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of the three is love.”
Circumstances, like conventions, which reflect our partial knowledge, come and go. The healing
power of Christ’s love -- and of our love when we love as Mary’s Child loves -- persists. So here in
this part of Christ’s Body, in Our Saviour Parish, we have both opportunity and work ahead of us, the same
opportunity and the same work we had before the circumstances changed: to pray for the Body of Christ as
it suffers, and to be the local agents of the healing power of Christ’s love toward one another.
In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |