First Sunday of December. Second Sunday of Advent. Moving right along. Got your decorations up? Got them out? Remember where they are? We’re sort of halfway there at our house. Some things up, some things still in the basement. We keep thinking we should get to that. But then we ... don’t. Something else comes up. Some other crisis, some other need, some other responsibility, all important, or seemingly so.
This week it was Nashville. I was supposed to be gone most of the week, but then things happened up here that made it difficult for me to be gone. I was going to visit the parents for a few days and then go to a meeting at the Board of Discipleship offices in Nashville. But the timing of the funeral I had to do made it difficult to get down there in time. So, I contacted the folks in Nashville and explained my dilemma. They said let’s video conference you in! So, Wednesday night and Thursday morning I was in Nashville and in my home office at the same time. Technology! What an amazing thing. It wasn’t the same as being there, but it worked pretty well.
Except when first I logged in Wednesday night I could see them but I couldn’t hear anything. They could hear me and see me, but nothing was coming through from their end. They were sure it was my fault. I knew it was theirs. But we couldn’t figure it out. I thought I was going have to spend the evening just watching and practicing my lip-reading. Finally someone there thought of calling me and putting it on speaker phone. So, I had my tablet for the video and my cellphone for the audio and we made it work. The next morning they figured out the problem (it was them) and I didn’t have to do that two device thing.
Hearing is important. I couldn’t have participated, I wouldn’t have felt a part of the proceedings if I couldn’t hear. Even though I could speak, I could make input to the meeting but I couldn’t be a part of the dialog, couldn’t have been in conversation, couldn’t have been a member of the community. Relationships need hearing as well as speaking.
Just ask Joseph. Until he heard, he wasn’t a part of the event. Or until he heard the right Voice he wasn’t prepared to join in, to go with it. Until he heard.
Matthew 1:18-25 NRS 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.
Matthew’s version of the story is different from Luke’s version. Luke wants to tell Mary’s story, but Matthew is all about Joseph. Mary is background information. She was found to be with child. Some hear a hint of scandal in this. Did someone come and tell Joseph? Is that why he is in the midst of the debate when the story begins? She was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. Really? Who knew that? Who said that? Is that the village gossip that came to Joseph?
You can almost see them, can’t you? Running around whispering in the shadows with this latest bit of gossip. “Hey Joseph, I heard, you’ll never believe it, but I heard ... well, we heard ... I heard from her who told him who mentioned it to them who texted it to us, that Mary is with child .. get this .. of the ‘Holy Spirit!’” You can see their fingers crooked in the air quotes gesture as they say this with a smirk on their faces. Yeah, right. Found to be with child of the “Holy Spirit.” What in the world does that mean? And how did they hear? Did Mary tell them? Were they listening in on the annunciation? Did the house light up when Gabriel appeared in her living room? And all the neighbors slunk out to listen in? Or were these proclaimers of the gossip neighbors of Elizabeth, where Luke tells us Mary fled during her pregnancy?
Some commentators say there is no scandal, no common knowledge. This is a literary device Matthew employs to move the story along. It is just a fact that we know, but Joseph doesn’t. Or doesn’t know all of it. Or doesn’t believe all of it. Maybe it was a difficult conversation on the porch swing one night when Joseph came to call on Mary, on his fiancee. Maybe she laid it all out and he didn’t hear it. Or heard part of it. The painful part, the offending part. He wasn’t ready to hear it all. Couldn’t hear it all. Not from her lips.
He staggered off the porch and ran all the way to his house as though he had been kicked in the gut. As though his dreams had all come crashing down. He flew into the house in a rage. Or maybe out to the workshop where he took out his hurt on an innocent block of cedar he had saved for a special occasion. He cut and gouged and planed and drilled, until the hot angry tears splashed down, discoloring the grain under his hands.
We would have understood, don’t you think? Who could have heard a story like that? Matthew introduces Joseph not by telling us of his broken heart, but of his righteousness. But then Matthew introduces a different kind of dilemma. Joseph, Matthew tells us, is a righteous man AND unwilling to expose her to public disgrace. That’s a problem. Up till now righteous mean obedient to the law. And the law said she needs to be exposed, needs to be humiliated. That was the law. Actually the law said to kill her. But historians tell us that by this time they weren’t actually executing women for such transgressions, but they were making examples of them. Hauling them before a public court, exposing them. Otherwise Joseph could have been accused of breaking the covenant. He could have been seen as a deadbeat dad that impregnates his wife to be and then abandons her. Legally he had to expose her, or the shame could fall on him.
But he was unwilling to do so. Matthew writes a love story. Tragic love, certainly. Broken vows and severed relationships, but a love story nonetheless. Joseph redefined righteousness. Now it is not faithfulness to a written law, but faithful to relationships, faithful to people. Then Matthew says “just when he resolved to do this.” Just when he decided to break the law he should have upheld, just when he determined to be faithful to the one who was seemingly unfaithful to him, that’s when he heard the whole story.
An angel in a dream. Angel - aggelos in Greek - means messenger. Or even message. Maybe it wasn’t an angel. Maybe it was God speaking into the hearing of Joseph. Do you hear? How did he hear? A dream, yes, but an answer to prayer. See, he was unwilling, remember? He wanted the outlandish to be true. He wanted the unbelievable to be believed. He wanted the incredible to be the truth by which he was going to live his live from then on. So, he was listening, he was hoping, he was wanting. Wanting so hard for a reason to keep loving even in the face of an impossibility.
We’ve got to be heard this Christmas season, and always. The message of faithfulness and love needs to be heard. Especially in an era of messages of fear and hate, of vengeance and prejudice. We’ve got to listen harder and speak louder. The One who was conceived by the Holy Spirit said shout it from the rooftops. Proclaim it in the cities round about and around the world. Go and make disciples, He said, make disciples of the truth, disciples of love, disciples of righteousness.
Getting in the Spirit of the season takes the ability to hear, and then to be heard. Light the lights, but sing the songs too. Share the story. Give a greeting, a welcome, a blessing wherever you can. Then maybe you will be found to be with child too.
Shalom,
Derek
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