This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’” When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home. (Matthew 1.18-24)
On this fourth and last Sunday of Advent, we can feel in our bones that Christmas finally is right around the corner. When the countdown began twenty-one days ago, we didn’t feel it. Nor did the Scriptures that paved the way for us like so many stepping stones. The First Sunday of the season had us look towards the second coming of the Lord at some unknown but seemingly far away point in the future. The Second and Third Sundays put on our plate John the Baptist, a doomsday prophet whose message carried none of the joyful or mirthful overtones that we considered part and parcel of Christmas.
But today the Scripture passage makes clear we are only a few short steps away from the celebration of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Thank goodness. It’s been a long wait. No doubt is left in our minds when the first sentence from the passage that we have before us today begins with a clear statement of fact. As we see, it states boldly, “This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.”
Of course, the reality is we are still in the season of Advent, even if at the tailend, so we are not going to get the Christmas story yet. But we are going to get the lead-up to that momentous event in human history. For Matthew, the evangelist that will be our companion on the way for the year ahead, the person in the spotlight in this lead-up is Joseph, a small-town carpenter called by God to serve as the foster father of Jesus.
Products of years of hearing the Christmas story with its large cast of characters, we don’t usually think of Joseph as the main character, but for Matthew he is. The opposite is the case in Luke’s telling of the nativity in which he puts Mary as the central figure. Of course, this is only one of any number of differences between these two evangelists who provide us with infancy narratives of Jesus.
Through no fault of our own, our collective Christmas story has conveniently combined both narratives into one story, epitomized in the creche that is set up each year on church lawns across the country, the stable always too small to hold shepherds and sheep, the magi and their camels, a celestial angel or two and the little drummer boy.
Trust me, the scene would look very different if we went all Matthew or all Luke in the Christmas pageant, without a blending of the two. Maybe we’ll have an opportunity on another occasion to point out these differences. For now, it suffices to say we have a mishmash of storylines that looks more like the serving table at a potluck dinner than it does a clear narrative with smooth lines and a flawless flow.
Back to Joseph, Matthew’s main character in the plot. Overall, it is a fascinating pick, especially given the fact that Joseph does not speak a single word in the story, something we’re not used to except in the silent films of a bygone era. Nevertheless, he stands at the center of the activity as the story unfolds, never saying anything, but his place essential to the careful story that Matthew wants to tell about the birth of Jesus.
In fact, Matthew makes clear the reason in the seventeen verses that precede the verses that we have today, providing us with a genealogy of Jesus, tracing his lineage all the way back to the patriarch Abraham, ending 42 generations later with these words, “Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Messiah.”
His intention for putting Joseph in the forefront becomes even clearer in our passage today when we hear the angel who appears to Joseph in a dream address him in this way, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home.” The key phrase, of course, is “son of David.” Our evangelist wants us to find an indisputable and direct line of descendancy from King David to Jesus, Joseph allowing that possibility, at least insofar as he is the foster father of Jesus.
Of course, for Matthew’s intended audience, that being Jewish-Christian listeners, it was critical that Jesus would be presented as the Son of David, in this way fulfilling the common belief that the Messiah would be a descendant of David, the greatest king in the history of Israel. The subsequent story that Matthew tells of Jesus and his ministry in Galilee will need this affirmation of Jesus’ lineage at the start if he expects his audience to believe that Jesus was the long-awaited, long-promised Messiah.
In fact, we will find Matthew regularly proving his point by doing much the same later on as he does here when he says, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet.” He will use the same phrase eleven times in his gospel, wanting to show that Jesus was the fulfillment of those promises made by the Hebrew prophets, interweaving words of the prophets with his words about Jesus, in this way allowing a continuity between the old and the new.
Since Joseph is the focal point in this passage (and later ones), we want to take a moment to look more closely at him. As noted, he says nothing, so we’re going to have to look at what is said about him, not at what he says. Matthew introduces Joseph to us in this way, “Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose Mary to shame, decided to divorce her quietly.”
Two things draw our attention in that verse. First, Matthew says that Joseph is a righteous man by which he implies Joseph follows faithfully the Law of God as found and as defined in the Jewish Torah. He lives rightly, his north star being the Mosaic Law. Again, this should appeal to the Jewish audience that Matthew addresses.
The second thing that stands out on the page is that Joseph acts quietly. While he has every right to bring an accusation against Mary and her unexpected pregnancy into the public square, he refuses to do so, opting instead to do it without notice and without putting her life into jeopardy. In so doing, he shows himself to be a man of compassion.
That may be factual, but it also plays well with Matthew’s subsequent efforts to show that while the Mosaic Law was important as Jesus makes clear later on when he says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them,” more important was compassion as Jesus also makes abundantly clear numerous times when he finds himself having to choose between the heavy hand of the law and the soft touch of compassion.
Always, he puts compassion ahead of heavy handedness, for example, insisting that healing the sick held a higher value than the law forbidding any work on the Sabbath. These trespasses against the Law would bring him the enmity of the religious leaders of the Jews, but he held strong to his belief that compassion was the greater good, telling the Pharisees at one point, “The Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.”
Another clear intention of the evangelist in his presentation of Joseph is to show how Joseph readily did as the Lord had commanded him. (Luke will do the same when he elevates Mary to the central role, having her say, “Be it done to me according to your word.”) Here in Matthew’s account, three times an angel appears to Joseph in a dream, each time delivering a message from the Most High God to Joseph, a command that requires Joseph to change his plans.
The first is found here when the angel directs Joseph to take Mary into his home rather than divorce her. The second happens after the visit of the Magi when an angel appears to Joseph again in a dream to tell him to “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you.” The third time occurs after the death of Herod when the angel instructs Joseph that he can return to Israel, “for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” In each instance, he did as instructed, or as the passage today tells us, “When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him.
In responding without second thought to the instructions that the angel gives him on each of these occasions, Joseph proves himself to be a man who is intent on doing the will of God, even when it is the opposite of what he might will or want. It should surprise us not a bit, then, that Matthew should also have Jesus say in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My Father, if it is not possible that this cup pass without my drinking it, your will be done.” In all likelihood, he has learned the lesson from his foster father Joseph who showed at every turn on the road that the faithful servant does the will of God, not one’s own will.
As Matthew tells this story, we should never underestimate the importance of Joseph, a character often overlooked but who proves himself, at least in this account, to be the first follower of the Word-Made-Flesh, the one who is able to put aside his own wishes to do the will of God, epitomizing the disciple who listens and obeys, who puts compassion over all else, and who allows the Kingdom of God to take root in the world through quiet deeds and righteous living.
It is no understatement that God’s plan for the salvation of humankind depends on Joseph, at least in this gospel, a man whose life is turned upside down at every turn and who apparently rarely gets a good night of sleep, all too often his rest interrupted by another command by God to put aside his fears and to go with a different plan than the one he had wanted.
As a result, Joseph, an altogether ordinary man in every other way, serves as a model of humble and obedient service to the will of God, urging us also to imitate his fearlessness in following God’s will wherever it takes us, asking us to allow for that quiet space in which God’s voice can speak to us, urging us to bring his compassion into the world in ways we never imagined.
–Jeremy Myers
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