Advent 4
Matthew 1:12-25

Christmas is the season of signs—of stars and portents, of dreams and whispered words of courage; of the mingling of men and angels, of strange goings-on in the places we had least expected. Some of us love it–can’t–wait for the carols, the expectation, the Story, the tingle of renewed hope that Christmas brings. But not all of us…..

Because Christmas is also a Season of Transition, though, mostly, we do not choose to acknowledge it. If someone in the year just past has lost a loved one, sent a child off to college, divorced, retired, endured a life-changing illness or injury—if someone has moved away, metaphorically or really, from a place they long called “home”— the First Christmas After can be a painful reminder of all that has changed and is changing, not necessarily for the better.

Is it any wonder, then, that the character in the bible’s nativity stories whose own life most closely mirrors the experience of Christmas-After is mentioned only in one of the gospels and never speaks a word? Have you noticed Joseph, who in most nativities stands in the back of the manger scene, arms crossed, almost outside the circle of Light cast by the joyous glow of Mother and Child? Whose character, as a friend of mine pointed out, is so non-descript you can hardly tell him from the shepherds, leaving you to pick up first one and then another, wondering did I choose the right father? Which one is he? Which was, of course, precisely why Joseph is the sorry symbol for Christmas as Transition.

For what could be more devastating than, upon the eve of marriage, discovering your beloved is pregnant with someone else’s child? Instead of joyous anticipation, there are hard questions about fidelity and responsibility, and hope yields to an anguished season of betrayal and loss. The future dreamed of has vanished, leaving in its place uncertainty, confusion, and sleepless nights.

And then, when you are at your worst and weakest, tired and tossing and seemingly at a dead end, choices must be made.

Joseph had made his. He resolved to dismiss her quietly, and spare her public disgrace. And that might have been the end of it—for Joseph, at least, if not for the others in the story, whose lives, unfairly, depend on the choice Joseph is about to make. Choosing is hard enough when only our own future is at stake. How much harder when we know, because of who we are, that what we decide makes a difference to the lives of others?

And the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary for your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

In Steve Carrell’s summer movie take on the Noah’s Ark story, Evan Almighty, a newspaper reporter challenges the freshman U. S. Congressman who has left Capitol Hill to build an ark on the edge of an affluent housing development in Virginia. Are you trying to say God chose you? No, says Evan, what I am saying is that God chooses all of us, only usually, we don’t listen.

In the world of dreams, when Joseph was tired, weak and defenseless, God breached the barriers with a word of possibility, an alternative way to see the world. And
Joseph listened. Joseph, son of David…. not ben-Jakob, son of Jacob, his own father’s name—but rather, Joseph son of David, Israel’s hoped-for once and future king. Joseph is not merely a small-town carpenter, whose choices matter only to himself: he is a person with a heritage, a legacy. He is of the house and lineage of David, and his choices are not only personal privilege, they are of spiritual significance, matters of religious obligation. Joseph’s choice bears the additional weight of the needs of his neighbors, his community, and his faith.
Joseph, like the child he will soon agree to raise as his
own, is of the house and lineage of God’s chosen; he
may be a poor working man, but his soul, like his
son’s, cradles the Light of God. We are not the small
insignificant souls we secretly hoped to be. We have a
legacy and an heritage. We are in truth from the house and
lineage of Joseph, and the choices we make, however
personal, affect how God will—or won’t—
become incarnate in the world.

Sometimes when people learn what it is I do for a
living, they say, wow, that must be really hard, to
guide people and tell them what God wants in their
lives. But that’s not what pastoring is, I tell
them: pastoring is like midwifery: standing by in hope and
partnership while people I love make decisions about how
God will be born through them in the choices they make in
the world. Should I take that job? Should he have this
procedure? Is adopting the right decision for us? Shall we
marry? Or divorce? What college is best for me? Should I
play a sport, or an instrument?

It is like being of the house and lineage of Joseph:
being intentional and attentive, waking and sleeping:
believing that each of our small and private choices matter
to God, who continues to wait for a place to be born in
each of us so that God can do his work in the world.

Like Joseph, we can try to stand on the edge of the
story, remain quiet, become invisible . . . but when push
comes to shove, as it must in all birthing stories,
eventually we will have to choose. Will we be right, or
righteous? Despite our deep and understandable desire not
to matter that much, even in the midst of our own needful
tending of our own wounds; if we are of the house and
lineage of Joseph, we really only have one choice in the
end: to be, like Joseph, a stand-up person in a no-fault
world.

Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary.
. . isn’t that interesting? In all of the other
Christmas stories, when you hear the words fear not,
it is the angel of God who wishes us not to fear his
appearing, not to cower in terror before the vision, the
dream, the sign that the world is more than we had
supposed. Shh, it was only a dream. Thus we comfort
a child, or ourselves in the night when we awake, heart
pounding, disoriented, terrified….it was only a
dream, we say, and return to the world as it was.

But Joseph’s story gets it right. Do not be
afraid to take Mary as your wife. . .this angel said.
For fear in dreams is a passing, momentary
discomfort—but the choices we make, waking, are for
good, and forever. Joseph’s story reminds us that
dreams can’t harm us—but what we do when we
awake can change us, and others, forever.

Hold this possibility close, this Christmas or
Christmas-After: the choices you make because of who you
are and what you believe—whatever those choices may
be—are places where God wishes to be present in you,
and through you, in the world. The choices YOU make are the
places God wishes to be in you, for the world. We are of the house and lineage of Joseph. Do not be afraid. It is Christmastime, when the story we tell
reminds us that each of us are part of a greater
tale. We have places in the dream, we are characters in the
Nativity scene, we have an important part to play. On the
strength of what we choose, as once, long ago,
emmanuel: God will, God may be born in us
this day. Amen.