Disappointment But Not Despair
Reflections on Matthew 1.18-25
RCL Advent 4A
18 December 2016
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
1.18
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to
Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the
Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband
Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace,
planned to dismiss her quietly. 20
But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him
in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as
your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you are
to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill
what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 “Look, the virgin shall
conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God
is with us.” 24 When Joseph
awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as
his wife, 25 but had no marital relations with her until she had
borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
Last
week I spoke about John the Baptist as one of the more mysterious and
controversial characters in the New Testament.
This morning we encounter another mysterious and controversial
figure: Joseph the carpenter who agrees
to take on a role that he could not have imagined.
In
popular Christian imagination Joseph is frequently portrayed as an older man
who, after the miraculous birth of Jesus, has no marital relations with Mary
and devotes himself totally to caring for the nestling the divine cuckoo has
laid in his nest. After the child
reaches twelve, Joseph disappears entirely from the picture. This familiar image of Joseph has little to
no textual basis in the New Testament and is evidence of how later Christians,
after the New Testament period, sought to render Joseph a safer, a tamer, a
more impotent character.
The
Joseph of my imagination is neither old nor a voluntary marital celibate. He is a young man with a promising craft who
makes a good marriage. He comes from a
good family descended from King David and he is able to arrange a marriage to a
young woman whose own family has links to the Temple priesthood.
Matthew
the Evangelist describes Joseph as a ‘righteous’ man who tries to observe the
requirements of the Torah and who tries to do justice, to love kindness and to
walk humbly with God. When Joseph
discovers that he has been cuckolded, he has the right to demand that Mary be
stoned to death. Instead, he chooses
mercy and compassion rather than retribution, private shame rather than public
vengeance, the spirit of the Law rather than its letter. He does not allow his disappointment to lead
him into the black hole of despair where our reptilian brain can overpower our
higher mental functions, ‘the better angels of our nature’.
Into
the night of his disappointment an angel brings a dream. I think that the angel’s message has been
dolled up by Matthew, so let me give a more colloquial version of the dream.
“Yes,
you’ve been had, Joseph my lad,” said the angel. “But even God has recognized that you’ve
handled the disappointment well. So, God
wants to let you in on our little secret.
This is no ordinary pregnancy and the Child will be no ordinary
child. You’ve been given an opportunity
to play an important role in God’s plan to save humanity from itself. So, take a risk. Hang on to your blushing and very pregnant
fiancée. You’ll have some turbulent
times ahead, but God is with you, all three of you. So, wake up, keep calm and carry on.”
What
are you and I to make of this story? The
first thing we can say is that “God guides faithful decisions.” [i] Even though Joseph could not have ever imagined
the situation in which he found himself, the fact that he was a ‘righteous’ man
provided him with the spiritual resources to discern a courageous path of
compassion in the face of significant societal and cultural pressure to choose
a different path.
We
can also say that “God gives grace to scandalous situations.” [ii] As difficult as it may be to believe, there
is no human situation where God is absent.
Disappointment or shame or fear or danger do not have to give way to
despair. I am not suggesting some naïve
optimism that everything will turn out ‘all right’. I know the darknesses that can come upon us
and I do not underestimate their power to pull us deeper into the black
hole. What I am saying is this: for those who have eyes to see, ears to hear
and hearts to love, we can catch a life-restoring glimpse of God’s presence
even in the darkest night of our souls.
Life-altering tragedies occur and personal disappointments come to us
all, but they need not lead us to believe that we have been forgotten. “In a world where carpenters are raised from
the dead, anything is possible.” [iii]
And,
my friends, we can proclaim that “God is with us.” [iv] God is with us in the friend or stranger who
accompanies on our darker journeys. God
is with us when we must confront our personal failures and seek the forgiveness
of others. God is with us when the
future seems uncertain and we doubt whether we have the resources to do even
the least of what we believe God has asked us to do.
After
all, Jesus’ last words to his disciples in the Gospel according to Matthew are
these: “And remember, I am with you
always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew
28.20b) I am with you, says Jesus, when
you face difficult choices. I am with
you, says Jesus, when you face situations that tempt you to despair. I am with you, says Jesus, when your horizons
seem to shrink. Jesus, Joseph’s son,
said this and I think that he learned it from his father, both of them.
[i] Melissa J. Wagner in Sundays and Seasons: Preaching; Year A 2017 (2016), 33.
[ii] Melissa J. Wagner in Sundays and
Seasons: Preaching; Year A 2017 (2016),
34.
[iii] Eleanor of
Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter (1966) by James Goldman.
[iv] Melissa J.
Wagner in Sundays and Seasons:
Preaching; Year A 2017 (2016), 34.
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