HELLO!

This Sunday we hear Matthew’s Christmas story. The trip to Bethlehem, no room at the inn, the manger, the angels and shepherds – most of what we associate with Christmas pageants is found in Luke’s gospel. Mary is the focus. In Matthew’s gospel, the main character is Joseph. Elsewhere in Scripture, people refer to Jesus as Joseph’s son (John 6:42). This relationship is important to Matthew, who wrote his gospel primarily for Jewish Christians. It is through Joseph that Jesus is a descendent of King David. The way Matthew tells it, Joseph chooses to be Jesus’ father.

Mary and Joseph were betrothed, or engaged, or espoused, depending on your translation. Mary is pregnant. A contract has been violated; a law has been broken. The first century Mediterranean world was an “honour-shame culture.” Honour had to do with your value in the society, with your ability to do what you need to do to belong, to interact with others in a way that brings you and your group honour. Keeping your honour was like an ongoing contest. You could lose your honour in any social interaction. And to lose your honour was to be shamed.

If Joseph accepts Mary, that will cause him shame. If he pretends the child is his, that, too, is shameful because Mary is pregnant before the wedding. Mary’s news is a huge threat to Joseph’s honour. Matthew says Joseph is a righteous man, which means he is a man who follows Jewish law. Joseph decides to divorce Mary quietly rather than subject her to public humiliation. God’s whole daring plan is suddenly at risk.

Then Joseph has a dream. “Do not be afraid, Joseph, to take Mary for your wife, for the child is from the Holy Spirit.” William Willimon quips that while there’s a lot art depicting the angel announcing to a serene Mary that she is with child, there is little art focused on Joseph’s dream: “Joseph bolting upright in bed, in a cold sweat after being told his fiancée is pregnant, and not by him, and he should marry her anyway.”

“Do not be afraid to take Mary for your wife,” said the angel. I don’t think it’s possible not to be afraid in a situation like this. I think we make too little of this story and don’t give Joseph enough credit if we simply hold him up as a model of what faithful obedience looks like, as though there’s a simple formula: God speaks; humans are supposed to respond in faith the way Joseph did; now everything is fine. It just isn’t that simple. I don’t believe we’re supposed to think of Joseph and Mary as figures in a stained-glass window. The whole point of the Christmas story – that God is with us as one of us – is that God is with real people in their real, complicated, messy lives. One of the quiet miracles in the Christmas story is that on the basis of that dream, Joseph works through it all to make a decision. He lays aside his sense of right and wrong under the law and his offended pride, his shame, and chooses to marry his pregnant fiancée. Trust in God-given dreams is not a given here, it is a choice.

Dreaming with you. Peace, Kevin

PS I am not on facebook, I have not seen this video. But I was there when Kaitlin recorded it, I am the one in the donkey costume. Bethe, the angel, tells me it has 3,100+ views in 2 days. Perhaps you were one of them. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1HUT8GpkZy/