Come, Dearest Child

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

December 23, 2007

Text: Matthew 1: 18-25

Let the story speak to you on its terms this morning. Pretend you are watching what happens.

The story begins with a terrible dilemma. Mary is betrothed to Joseph. Mary is “with child.” But the baby, Joseph knows, is not his, for they had not, in the delicate language of the King James Version, “come together.” (Betrothal was similar to engagement, but more binding, and had a ceremony all its own----the vestige of which is still carried in our wedding liturgy, called “The Declaration of Intention.”) In Hebrew understanding, they were already committed to marriage. An economic exchange had already occurred between families, which could be broken only by the death of a partner or by a form of divorce. (Stephen Farris, Lectionary Commentary, Gospels, 2001; pages 294-297)

If Mary was “blessed among women,” Joseph was one of the most embarrassed among men! He decides to “divorce” her, that is, have the marriage promise set aside quietly. He decided not to expose her to shame by bringing this all out into the open.

It was an “arranged” marriage agreement, made between two families. Mary and Joseph would have been young, perhaps as young as 14. The scandal which this would bring upon the two families would have been the talk of the town.

Joseph is not quoted in this story, though it written that he named the boy Jesus, as instructed. But we gather by his actions that he was a compassionate and just man.

The baby in Mary’s womb, we are told, was “of the Holy Spirit.” This was the “work of God, a fresh new divine act, startling and heretofore unheard of.” Don’t think of a sexual relationship here; the Holy Spirit was not male. (The word for Holy Spirit in Hebrew is feminine; neuter in Greek.) “The manner of begetting is creative rather than sexual.” We sometimes think of people of ancient times as credulous regarding these matters, not scientific like we are. But you do not have to be a scientists to know how babies come to be. First century people would have been as astonished and skeptical as we would be if someone today made such a claim. Nevertheless, the claim is made: the same God who had said, “Let there be light, and there was light,” creating something out of nothing, has again done a created ex nihilo. (See Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, page 124)

We may have trouble with this story because we are concerned that it makes Jesus sound too divine, not really human. But some scholars say that the opposite is true: that heretics called Docetists, had claimed from early days that the Son of God could not really be made of flesh and blood as mortals are. Matthew’s story was preserved and passed along because the early church wanted to make sure that people understood that Jesus was flesh and blood, that he was carried in the womb and birthed as any other baby. Mary went through labor!

The intent of Matthew is to do theology, not biology. (Biology is a modern term.)
“The stories about Jesus’ origin tell us clearly that he comes from the human race and that he comes from God. The unity of the divine and human in him, which faith was later to express in the terms used by the Council of Chalcedon is already given in the first pages of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John….” What was being affirmed was this: “There is nothing in the bosom of humankind, nothing in all human fruitfulness, that can procreate him, from whom all human fruitfulness, all the begetting of our race depend: for all things were made in him. Humankind has ultimately no one to thank but the Holy Spirit for the coming of this promised one.” (A New Catechism: Catholic Faith for Adults, Herder and Herder, 1971, pages 73 and 75) In the birth of Jesus, God has “moved into the neighborhood; for thirty plus years people saw God in speech and action in the entirely human person of Jesus.” (Source lost)

Who knows what was going on in Joseph’s mind as he went to bed. But as he sleeps, he dreams.

When we sleep, our guards are down. We are vulnerable. Stories unfold unbidden. We may wake with vague feelings of elation or distress. We may have nightmares or sweet dreams. I will not attempt to decipher such things. I do know that, when I am working on a project, in that twilight zone between sleep and waking, I will sometimes sit up and write things down on a pad I keep on the nightstand. Then in the morning I try to figure out what these scribblings mean!

In ancient times, at least, it was believed that God would inform, inspire and reveal things in dreams. Joseph’s ancestor, Joseph, son of Jacob/Israel, dreams about his eleven brothers bowing down to him---imagined in the form of sheaths of grain genuflecting to the central sheath. His brothers were angry enough with him to sell him off into slavery. As events turned out, Joseph did become the superior brother, and in a position to help them.

So teenager Joseph, betrothed to Mary and full of grief or confusion, we can imagine, dreams. He dreams of an angel, a messenger of God, who knows his name: “Joseph, Son of David.” It is not a “Hey, you” message, not a “Hey, kid” message. The angel knows his family of origin back many generations; he is from the lineage of David.

When you are around people who know your families going back generations, you are known differently. When they look at you, they see your uncles and aunts, cousins, grand- and great-grandparents. They know where you have come from. Recently, in visiting my mother in her retirement center, we strolled down the hallway to the apartment of Curtis, a family friend of long-standing. Curtis is over 90 now; his eyesight is just about gone. But when I call his name, he replied immediately, “Bobby! Come on in here.” Curtis knew me when I was known as Bobby, a long time ago. When he sees me, he sees my Dad, Bob, and my his parents, Gene and Della Lavelle, and Sam, Pete, Bill, and all their wives. He knows where I came from, and from whom I came.

Joseph is known by God in just this intimate way.

Much is made of Mary as the chosen mother of Jesus and rightly so. Not as much is known of Joseph, but consider: who would you want to be raising your child? In whose hands would you place the Son of God? Joseph is chosen, too. He was a carpenter, a craftsman. And he and Mary together, helped Jesus grow “in wisdom, in stature and in favor with God and mortals.” The angels first words are “Do not fear.”

What would he have been afraid of? What people would think? Authorities? Other principled,  righteous people? After all, God gave the law and one was supposed to keep the law, not set it aside.

No. Here he is in the presence of the Most High. It would be normal to be afraid! No one could look on God and survive! Even God’s name was holy and not to be pronounced. It was believed that, if you feared God and walked in his holy ways, you did not have to be afraid of anyone else. “Perfect love casts out fear.” The angel is telling him not be afraid of God. The angel voice was “announcing a whole new way of being, a being in the house of love, the house of the Lord.” (Henri Nouwen, “Have No Fear,” in The Lord is Near, and Advent Devotional Guide, 1982)

Where there was no way, no good option, God is making a way. “Do not fear to take Mary to be your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” This son is God’s gift. We could not have thought up a Messiah like this one! This one will “save God’s people from their sins.”

What will Joseph do next? He could have shrugged the dream off. No one would have known, for it was his dream, a private revelation. He could have attributed the dream to a little too much wine the night before. “You’ll never guess what I dreamed last night!” He would have been keeping the letter of the law to cancel the marriage.

But, in one sentence we are told that, when Joseph awoke, “he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.” This may be God’s doing, this child, but this one will need a home and Mary will need a husband!

God works through Joseph’s freely offered obedience. It does not say what he thought or how he felt. Sometimes our actions show what we believe. Perhaps all he knew was this: There is a connection between Joseph’s dream and the dreams of God for a redeemed world, a new creation. God works through persons who, even without knowing what comes next, get up and do what God asks of them.

So, Joseph took Mary to be his wife. In the movie, “The Nativity,” Joseph goes to Mary’s home, knocking loudly on the door. Her father shouts out to Joseph, “Go away; do not bring shame on us anymore.” But Joseph will not go away. They finally let him in and he tells them, and Mary, that he will take Mary to be his wife; he and Mary will raise the child as theirs. He names him Jesus (derived from Joshua) “He who saves.” Imagine Mary and Joseph together, astonishing all of their friends and family. Imagine Joseph, a soon-to-be father, strong as steel and warm-heartedly committed to Mary, turning aside the looks of pity or anger from his friends.

Along with Mary, Joseph is the first to see the human face of God.

“Like Joseph, we have clear, traditional notions of who God is and what God expects of us. At least we know how we want God to come into our lives. But our accustomed ways are often not God’s ways at all. What can seem to be right and normal can be an illusion. God’s way can be a shock….So we need to commune with God regularly. Otherwise we lose touch with our truth….” (From Father Patrick Collins in Praying, December 1, 1998, No. 89)

God uses ordinary people like Joseph and Mary to carry out his work on earth, people who are listening and watching for God in everyday life; people who, often silently and without fanfare---even risking humiliation---let their feet do their talking. Remember Paul’s words in I Corinthians chapter one” “Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many powerful, not many of noble birth…..God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in God’s presence.”

God sees deeper than we do.

God chooses to be human. This was no accident.

Our obedience makes a difference and this is shown more by what we do than by what we may say.

God reached us in many ways, and God is not limited by what we think is possible.

This child of Mary and Joseph is Emmanuel, God with us, Jesus, Son of God, son of Mary and Joseph, descendents of David, who was the apple of God’s eye.