Sermons

---

The Strong, Silent Type
December 16, 2001
Third Sunday of Advent
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

Matthew 1:18-25

December 16 -- Christmas is close. Lights are on, trees are up. Yesterday, I walked by one of those amazing sights seen only in America. It's over on the east side of the hill. Big beautiful brick house, with a display in the front yard . . . Huge, lighted nativity scene on one side, Frosty the Snowman on the other with Snoopy and Woodstock, and up above on the roof . . . the whole thing being watched over by both Santa Claus -- and an angel. It's amazing!

Every December we pull out our own decorations, including this nativity scene from Mexico with figurines of Mary, Joseph andbaby. But after looking at this scripture passage this week, I decided I ought to modify one thing. It's about this man Joseph, the husband of Mary. I decided that Joseph ought to have a strip of tape across his mouth. It may be surprising to you, but if you pore over the scriptures, you will find that Joseph the husband of Mary, the adoptive father of Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth . . . never says ONE WORD in the Bible. Not a single word comes out of his mouth.

We see Joseph in this story. We see him again in chapter 2 taking his family to Egypt and back. We see him in the gospel of Luke going to Bethlehem with the very pregnant Mary, and we read of his presence at the stable. We see Joseph 12 years later, rushing with Mary back to find the 12-year-old Jesus they think they've lost, only to find him debating the scholars in the temple. But after that, Joseph seems to walk right out of the scriptures for good . . . never to be seen again, and we are not left with a single word that he spoke.

It's interesting, isn't it? All of the figures in this scene have a voice:

The angels bring the news of Christ, and their praises fill the skies. Mary (as we'll see next week) talks with the angel, and processes with her cousin Elizabeth -- she speaks what we have come to know as the Magnificat. The shepherds converse amongst themselves before going to Bethlehem, and mouth their praises on their way home. The wisemen talk with Herod as they seek the infant king. It's not hard to speculate that even the animals in the stable did a little mooing. But not Joseph. Joseph's mouth is silent.

But his actions are not.

Everywhere we see this man Joseph, we see only obedience. Joseph hears God, and responds by doing what he is asked. He listens, he acts.

If we're too hasty, it might seem as though Joseph shows us that living a life of faith is a simple thing. It isn't. And in fact, Joseph found himself in an extremely difficult situation. 

Joseph was "engaged" to Mary, we are told here. But that "engagement" was different from what we are familiar with. In Joseph's day, at an early age a couple would be "betrothed" to one another. The first step was a formal exchange of consent, made in front of witnesses. This was a binding, legal relationship, and they would be considered at that point to be husband and wife -- though they would not have sexual relations, and the woman would continue to live in her family home. Any sexual infidelity qualified as adultery. And a break in the relationship would necessitate a legal divorce. This first period would last for roughly one year. At that time, there would be a ceremony and celebration, and the bride would move to the home of the groom, and they would begin to live and sleep together. It seems that in this story, Mary and Joseph were towards the end of the first year of betrothal. They had not had sexual relations, were not living together -- yet were technically married.

The difficult situation arises, of course, when Mary was found to be pregnant. Now, as the readers of the story, we are told immediately that she was "with child from the Holy Spirit." But Joseph did not yet know that. And I imagine that Joseph was on the horns of quite a dilemma. He surely assumes that Mary has been unfaithful to him, and carries the child of another. According to the harshest interpretation of the Law, Mary could have been stoned to death. In a less severe interpretation, she would be divorced amidst a public trial and disgraced. 

But verse 19 tells us that Joseph was a "righteous man." Joseph desired to do what was right in the eyes of God, as given him in the Law. Yet he also seems to have been compassionate. He was "unwilling to expose her to public disgrace," and so decided to divorce her quietly, without the trial and public knowledge.

Mary would soon have a hard enough time on her own, as her pregnancy began to show. As far as I can tell, for that culture, Joseph made a very justified and compassionate decision to both honor the law AND treat Mary as best he could -- by quietly breaking the marriage and moving on with life. Joseph was a righteous man. But, as Dale Bruner, one of my favorite scholars says, "from the instant that Jesus appeared on the world scene, even at his conception, he caused righteous people to rethink what was righteous."

God speaks. Through an angel in a dream, God provided Joseph with options he never thought of. "Joseph, Son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife." This would be a radical step, to accept as his wife one who apparently had been unfaithful to him-- "for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit." 

That is the bombshell. So Mary had NOT been unfaithful, Mary was STILL a virgin, and the child in her had come directly from God. Surely, even in his dream, Joseph must have either laughed out loud, or been incredulous.

Now, this issue of the virgin birth has been a stumbling block for many people as they have looked at the Christian faith. And while I'·m not going to preach on the virgin birth today, I want to say a couple of things about it, just as an aside. First of all, I believe it. In my own life through the years, and certainly around me right now, I see God doing things in people's lives which are absolutely miraculous, physical or otherwise. I see people come into relationships with God, I see marriages healed -- things which, from a human point of view, I would not have given a 1-in-a-million chance of happening. Yet they happen.

The virgin birth also lines up with the theology of scripture in two important ways. First, the church has come to its best explanation of all the scriptures regarding the identity of Christ, by naming him "fully divine, and fully human,"in all the mystery that accepts. The birth of Jesus to a human mother, yet coming directly from God is a picture in miniature of the fully divine, fully human Jesus -- "true God and true man." Secondly, the virgin birth is a beautiful picture of God breaking into human life and history -- without human initiative. It was God's choice. We had nothing to do with it.

But I've left poor Joseph back with the angel. "Take Mary as your wife, the child in her is from the Holy Spirit" And the angel continues, "She will bear a son, and you are to name him JESUS (Hebrew, 'Jo-shua,' 'Yahweh saves'), for he will save his people from their sins." Now, if Joseph takes Mary as his wife instead of divorcing her, Joseph assumes public responsibility for both Mary and the baby. And more importantly, if Joseph names the child -- he acknowledges him as his own -- legally and morally. In a sense, he will finalize an adoption, though only he and Mary know it.

Matthew then ties the birth of Jesus to the prophecy of Isaiah, which reaffirms that Jesus is the awaited One. Immanuel. Hebrew names are great, because they actually carry meaning. Immanuel means (Hebrew: im=with, manu=us, el=god), the with-us-God. All of this has gone on in Joseph's sleep. And when he wakes up --he runs out to the marketplace to tell everyone he can find? No. He gathers a group of friends at the coffeeshop to ponder the theological implications? No. He finds an interpreter of dreams to tell him what this could mean? No. "·When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him." He took Mary as wife, had no marital relations with her, named the boy Jesus. Joseph hears -- and responds. He listens -- and he acts. Obedience.

Not as easy as it seems, is it? First of all, most of us love to talk more than act, don't we? I'm still learning this as a father . . . in fact, learning it much more now that my kids are older. There's so much parental wisdom that I want to articulate for my kids -- but I'm becoming more aware that verbal speaking is carrying less weight than action. My kids know more about my passion for basketball, for instance, from the fact that I still coach and play (sort of!) than from the eloquent lectures and teaching I can give them. Our kids learn about friendships and relationships and love for Christ much more by watching us pursue them than by merely talking about how to do it. I'm still learning, but as a parent the actions are speaking louder than words most the time.

Hear God, respond. That's Joseph. Joseph will do it again when God tells him to flee with Mary and Jesus to Egypt . . . and then again when it was time to go back to Israel . . . and then yet again in settling in Galilee instead of Judea. Hear God, respond. Seems so easy, but it isn't.  Sometimes it seems difficult to hear . . . and we often say "How do we KNOW that's God's voice?" But honestly, I think we hear more than we'll admit -- through God's voice inside of us, through the scriptures, through the community, through circumstances. It's often just hard to act. 

The Danish philospher Soren Kierkegaard tells another of his fabulous parables about this phenomenom. It's about a flock of domesticated geese. Every single week they would waddle out to hear a preacher gander expound on the wonders of flight. "We don't have to walk -- we can lift ourselves into the air and soar! We can fly!" And every week, the geese would quack out a loud and enthusiastic "Amen," and then file out . . . and waddle home on their legs. All they had to do was flap their wings . . . but somehow they just never got around to it! I'm like that too, sometimes. God, just tell me what you want. "Okay, Dan. Call this person. Apologize to someone. Trust me for something." And I'·ll just waddle home. And I can even convince myself on the way . . . that it probably wasn't God anyway.

Other times we don't want to obey because it is costly. For Joseph to obey God, he had to act regardless of the potential cost to himself. He could be duped, he could be the laughing-stock of the community -- believing some wild story about a virgin birth, being responsible for someone else's son -- what a fool! Joseph is like the Old Testament prophets in this way . . . they seemed to always need to obey, to speak the Word of God regardless of the cost to themselves -- ridicule, hunger, disagreement, violence. Obedience means hearing -- and responding. 

I read Joseph's story, and there is so much we don't know -- but I keep coming back to when God asked him to do something, he just did it. That much we know. When the Holy Spirit was ready to act, Joseph was available. He was ready to act. Are we?

But I don't want to leave the thought that obedience is just grudging, reluctant assent. And so I want to leave you with a picture. It'·s a marvelous picture, I think. This week I leafed through the journals of the early American conservationist, John Muir. John Muir lived at the end of the 19th century, and spent a great deal of his life studying and writing about the forests and mountains from California to Alaska. In December of 1874 he was hiking the Yuba Valley in the Sierras, and a sunny day gave way to a wild and frightening windstorm: 100 foot pine trees were bending over, trees were toppling everywhere. But instead of seeking shelter, Muir did a very surprising thing. He climbed to the top of a high ridge . . . climbed the tallest tree he could, and lashed himself in the top of the tree to ride out the storm. The journals say it was this wild, exhilarating and sometimes frightening ride . . . but Muir wanted to experience the wind, to step into it instead of run away from it or ignore it. 

The Holy Spirit blows through our lives, and we are over and over again forced to decide if we will be obedient -- trust, step into what God has for us, or not. We don't make the wind blow. But when it blows, we need to be ready and willing. We decide whether to step in and experience it, or not. I don't know how God'·s Spirit might be blowing through your life right now. I suspect there is some place, maybe even some absurd place where God has asked you to be obedient -- or if there isn't right now, there will be. So the question is . . . will you be ready? Ready to talk to someone, to take a new job, to be a parent, to move, to minister, to pray·

If we follow Joseph's lead, we won't spend a lot of time talking about it. In fact, I think I'll leave the blue tape on this figure, to remind me of what Joseph teaches us . . . when we hear God, we respond.

This week, I thought, "God, out of all the people available, why did you pick Joseph?" I suspect the answer has to do with the fact that God knew Joseph would do what he was told.