“A Righteous Man”
Psalm 80:1-7 and Matthew 1:18-25
December 22, 2019, Boeuff Presbyterian Church
Our text today gives us a different perspective than we usually associate with the stories of Christmas. The narrative we’re most familiar with is really a combination of all of the Gospels, the meeting between Mary and Elizabeth, the trip to Bethlehem, the manger, and the magi, they’re all spread out throughout the gospels. But in Matthew’s account, the focus is not so much on Jesus’ birth itself, though it’s in there. There’s no trip to Bethlehem or shepherds in a field. What there is however, is a focus on Joesph and his experience of Mary’s surprising pregnancy.
Joseph’s mostly a background character in most depictions of the nativity of Jesus. He’s the one leading the donkey, the one inquiring with the innkeeper. He shows up in paintings of the Holy Family and in nativity sets, but we don’t know a whole lot about him in particular. After the story of Jesus staying behind in the temple when Jesus was 12, we really don’t hear about Joseph again.
We do know him a little though through the world that surrounded him. We know that his ancestral hometown was Bethlehem, but our narrative begins with him living 90 miles north in the town of Nazareth. Once thought to be rural, recent archaeological discoveries have pointed to a perhaps more established community. We know also that he was a carpenter or builder, likely as a part of the family business. He would’ve known how to read Hebrew, learning it in order to be Bar Mitzvahed. He would’ve spoke Aramaic and could’ve known Greek and Latin to engage in business.
We know also of his lineage, he was a descendent of the house of David. The first verses of the Gospel of Matthew giving us a detailed account of who all was included in that lineup. I’ve always found it curious that Joseph’s family tree is the one detailed out in the first part of the first chapter of Matthew, then we’re immediately told that this child to be born is not a biological descendent of Joseph at all, acting as a testament to the strength of God’s trust in Joseph as Jesus’ adoptive father.
By, eventually, accepting this role in Jesus’ life, Joseph would be giving up his right to a biological first born son, something that was of high importance in the patriarchal culture of that time. It is a big ask.
And so for a great many reasons, we hear of Joseph’s hesitation. Upon hearing about the pregnancy his first impulse is to “dismiss Mary quietly.” I can’t imagine how that would’ve actually worked out for her, as women of that time did not have the ability to own property on their own. She would’ve certainly struggled to get anyone else to marry her after giving birth to a child that appeared to not have a father.
It’s hard to fully understand what’s going on in the text from a twenty first century Christian perspective, but former Luther seminary New Testament Professor Arland J. Hultgren explains the context of their relationship a bit more clearly than is captured in simple translations of the text. He writes:
“Mary is said to be “engaged to Joseph” (1:18, NRSV), but the English word “engaged” hardly captures the meaning of the Greek word that it represents (mnesteuo). The variety of translations in some of the most widely known English versions show how translators have struggled to render the word appropriately. The RSV says that Mary “had been betrothed to Joseph.” The KJV says that she “was espoused to Joseph,” and the NIV says that she “was pledged to be married to Joseph.”
The problem with the word “engaged” (NRSV) is that an engagement can be broken off informally; there is no need for a legal action. But the situation of Mary and Joseph was more complicated than that. According to the custom of the day, there were two stages for a couple to go through in what can be called a marital process.
First came the betrothal (Hebrew kiddushin), a marriage contract, typically arranged by the parents, that could be broken only by divorce (cf. 1: 19, where apoluo is used, rendered as “divorce” in the RSV and NIV; the NRSV has “dismiss”).
That was followed by a second step (Hebrew nissu’in) considerably later (sometimes a year later), often including a marriage feast, after which the groom took his wife to his home. The verb paralambano (“to take”) in 1:20 and 1:24 can actually mean “to take home” one’s wife, thus referring to what happened after the second step. The drama of our text, however, takes place between the two events in the lives of this young couple. The first step had taken place; the second is in jeopardy.
Joseph’s reaction, when he hears that Mary is pregnant, is to suspect her of adultery, one of the grounds for divorce in Jewish law.1 In light of that, Joseph “planned to dismiss [RSV: “divorce”] her quietly” (NRSV). It may seem surprising to many in our day that Joseph is called “righteous” as he contemplates divorcing Mary in her time of need (1:19), but the accent must surely be upon the clause saying that he was “unwilling to expose her to public disgrace,” wanting to keep the whole matter quiet. Moreover, law and the culture of the day would virtually say that Joseph had no alternative but to divorce Mary.”
Thank God, literally that Joseph took on this role as Jesus’ father, shaping all of human history by trusting the word of angels and of his wife, Mary.
And I think that is the message that Joseph’s narrative can have for us, that there is great value in being a background character in God’s great story. By looking for opportunities to trust God we can support God’s kingdom coming to fruition on earth as it is in heaven. Sometimes that looks like angels giving direct instruction, but more often than not it comes through trusting the direction God has given to others’ in our lives. We can support one another in the vocations God has given us, as we each endeavor to bear Christ into the world. Thanks be to God.
Amen.
On the Wednesdays we have Committee Meetings here at church we have a time of devotions based on the scripture for the upcoming Sunday, and so this past week we reflected on this text. I can’t name who it was exactly, but someone said upon reading this passage what stood out to them was the word “magnifies” and that this magnification brings Christ more clearly into view. Christ more clearly into view. This image has stayed with me throughout the rest of this week. 
You see, the word “magnificat” comes from the Latin for “magnify,” so of all of the parts of this song, the magnification of God is at the heart of it. And there’s something about this season for me that could use a bit more clarity. I turn on the radio and hear of all the ways I could be spending money or events I could be attending. I open Pinterest or Facebook and see all the traditions I could be establishing with Calvin and David, or the perfect display of food that I could bring to my family’s celebration. If I’m not careful I spend a lot more time looking at to do lists than looking to the savior whose birth we are remembering.
For Mary it meant giving her full self in service of God’s kingdom. I don’t believe it was simply a matter of surrender, rather it was an act of co-creation, a divine collaboration of God’s incarnation and Mary’s humanity. She refers to her lowliness and acknowledges how worth is transformed in God’s economy: power brought down, lowly lifted up. Jesus comes as the revelation of love from God and the revolution of justice for Mary and all God’s people.
We magnify the Lord through our own collaborations with God, seeking God’s will and acting out of the creative capacity that God has given us. Our acts of love and justice make space for God’s kingdom to be manifest in our communities, families, and individual lives.
This past week at our presbytery meeting we had the absolute delight of hearing the stories of two seminarians moving through the ordination process from the status of inquirer to candidate, one of them being our own Ashley Bair. It was incredible to hear how each of them in their own way was living into the call that God had placed on their lives. Through their respective passions of justice and peacemaking, imagination and creativity, Jesus’ incarnation was magnified and God’s love for God’s people was made clearer. After hearing both people speak, one of the pastors of the presbytery was so confident in the hope of their gifts for ministry that he jokingly said, “well, I guess I can die now!”
Most, however, don’t feel a defined call to ordained ministry or are visited by an angel who spells out the ways that we will “magnify the Lord.” Given the frustrations that a lack of direction can bring us, it’s tempting to say that following God’s will was less complex for Mary.
And then of course, there’s Jesus’ adulthood. How different things look for Mary a little over 30 years later: her son, her beloved Jesus is arrested, mocked, beaten, and crucified. 
This soul, all too soon to be pierced by grief, is first the site of God’s magnification, bringing God close, not just through a magnifying glasses optical illusion, but through living and breathing, flesh and blood incarnation. It’s not about pointing to some divine presence in the skies, but rather pointing to our God at work in the right here and right now. In the same way, she points to how in God the lowly aren’t just comforted where they are, but they are given positions of honor and their voices are valued.
Perhaps this a way that God will be magnified in your soul: through shedding light on a theology of God’s expansive love. Through acknowledging all people as God’s beloved children. Perhaps there is another frontier of compassion and justice that you are called to ignite through your magnification. Where are the powerful that God will bring down or the lowly to be lifted up? How can you collaborate with our God of justice to pair flesh and blood with the divine?
Last Sunday a few of you met my aunt Karen, as she came up here for worship. On Monday she was to head back to her home in Plano, TX, via the Detroit airport. 
Well if you’ll remember Monday’s weather, that was when the ice storm was hitting Michigan while Texas was recovering from tornadoes and getting hit by snow. My aunt went up to Detroit in the hopes that her flight would take off as planned. Everything seemed to be going smoothly up until a few minutes before the flight, when they shared the news that their flight crew did not make their flight in from Chicago. Not too long after the flight was cancelled. After standing in line for several hours to get her bags and trying to get a new flight she learned they didn’t have anything available till Thursday. She decided to go to a hotel for the night, but after trying six different hotels, none had any room, she rented a car and drove back to Toledo. Hoping to get home sooner than Thursday so as to not leave her shift uncovered as a neonatal nurse practitioner, she called the airline and saw what airports had any flights available, and ended up finally flying out of St Louis on Wednesday, connecting in Charlotte, NC and finally heading to Dallas.
But we rarely pay quite as much attention to the latter half of the journey, when they are told by the wise men to travel home by another way. The trip there was already difficult, so to take the long way home was likely a tremendous inconvenience, and then added onto it the reason why they needed to go this way it must’ve been a very frightful situation. More frightful even than flooding and ice blizzards.
When the wise men first met with Herod they were meeting with him in the hopes of getting direction, perhaps even to placate him in his own authority. Herod even tried to make the wise men believe that he too wanted to come pay homage to Jesus, but things were not as they seemed. The reason why they needed to take this long way home was the wise men had been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, who was fearful of what a king of the Jews would do to his power.
Joseph too is visited by an angel in a dream who says, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” This was not an idle threat. In the verses following our passage today we are told, “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.” New parents as they were, I can’t imagine the horror that Mary and Joseph felt at hearing of so many children’s death due to their actions, and the simultaneous relief for their own son’s safety. The divine rerouting of this dream altered the course of history, saving Jesus to live into adulthood.
What are your own stories of a divine rerouting? A time in your life when you thought you knew the path ahead of you, maybe you even had a boarding pass in hand ready for a specific trip, or for a specific educational path, relationship, or career. When those things we’ve planned for change it’s hard to know what to do next. Often in the moment being rerouted does not feel divine at all, rather it feels much more like being inconvenienced, or worse, being misled.
It doesn’t feel good to be inside of a fish, betrayed by your family, reprimanded by a tablet wielding Moses, encounter a succession of tragic deaths, or slinking home after squandering the family fortune, but God shows us over and over again, that in seeking God’s guidance we are able to make it home again, home to God’s will for us, which may look nothing like where we started. As Joseph says when he forgives his brothers, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.” To be clear, I am not saying that God causes the harm, but rather that God can work through our adversity for good.
Mary and Joseph also had plans for what their lives would look like. They were engaged to be married, had lived piously and now their lives were uprooted by a pregnancy that was hard to explain to their families or community. But God had revealed to them that Mary would become pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and bring Jesus, the very son of God into the world. This change from what they thought they wanted changed their lives and the entire world for the better.
This child, come into the world through difficult and extraordinary circumstances provided the divine rerouting that changed all of us. Jesus lived a sinless life, died on the cross for all of our sins, and was resurrected so that all of us may experience eternal life. Jesus made it possible for every one of us to go home by another way.
I’m not used to being quiet. As a priest, I spend many of my days surrounded by words, teaching what other priests throughout time have understood about the meaning of our sacred texts, preaching so that those who can’t read may hear what God has told them to do, and debating with others in the temple so we can better understand.
You see, I’ve lived my whole life waiting for what was now happening. My wife Elizabeth and I had waited our whole long, long marriage for a child, someone who could carry on our legacy and family name. But at our age? Impossible. Or so I thought.
As a priest, I’ve read over and over again the scriptures of the prophets, telling of a Messiah, one who could start a new future for us, saving us from the oppression of the Roman emperor, saving us from the oppression of our own sinfulness. And for year we’d waited for the opportunity for me to go to the Holy of Holies and offer incense. You see, we priests serve in a group, two times a year for a week we would draw lots each day for the chance to approach the temple Holy of Holies. Again and again, my lot was not called.
For years I’ve wondered what my purpose was as a husband, and as a priest, if all I’ve been waiting for and hoping for just weren’t happening. Had God forgotten me? Was I so stuck in going through the motions that somehow what I’ve been doing has ceased to honor God? I thought God was through with me, that is, until the day of the silence. That day that changed everything.
It seemed like just a typical day, traveling to the Jerusalem temple with my fellow priests. Chatting with each other as we walked, sharing our joys and our frustrations. I knew the way this worked, we would go to the temple draw lots, and I’d try my best to graciously support whoever was chosen that day. But then, my name was drawn, and I was to experience the Holy of Holies!
I looked and gasped as I saw…well, it’s hard to put it in words… but there was a presence in front of me, winged and bright and powerful. I was terrified! Wouldn’t you be?
I made the mistake of expressing my… disbelief and was immediately admonished. The angel said, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.”
Stumbling out of the inner sanctuary into the daylight I’m sure the gathered crowd thought I was stunned. And well, I guess I was. Try as I might I couldn’t tell them anything of what had happened, couldn’t explain my silence, couldn’t explain my incredulous joy. Then after the week was up I headed home to Elizabeth.
It was one thing to not be able to tell the other priests, but to not tell my wife? Especially about something so dear to us, so immediate to her own body, it was maddening. Try as I might I couldn’t speak a word. And my dear, darling wife, had never learned to read, so I couldn’t begin to share this story.
Finally the day came when Elizabeth gave birth to a son, our son. The one to prepare the way of the Lord! Over the past many months I had made peace with my silence, and with the future that lay before Elizabeth and me. My incredulity had been transformed into joy, my distrust into steady belief. I knew that God had a plan for this child, our child who was so much more than ours. The one who would make a way for the Messiah.
When those at the temple for his circumcision questioned it I confirmed by writing “His name is John.” And all at once I could talk again. My voice had come back and I had so much to say, no longer bitter from waiting, no longer fearful from mistrust, I had nothing to share now but praise: And so I began: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel. For God has looked favorably upon God’s people, and has redeemed them.”
Presbydestrian 