Gentle Joseph
Matthew 1:18-25
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 pregnant from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. 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. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
“Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,”which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.
This is a very familiar story. We read it every year on Christmas Eve, as we will again in just a few days’ time. It is the story of a good and righteous man who puts his faith in an unbelievable dream from God; and who puts his faith and his love into the word of a young woman carrying and impossible secret. There’s so much blind faith and unconditional love in this story right from the start. And when we dig into this story deeper, when we look at the historical and legal context, it becomes even more incredible.
The law at the time said that Joseph could have had Mary stoned to death for being pregnant out of wedlock, during this betrothal period—this was this sort of limbo period of time at the beginning of a marriage, when a contract had been legally signed, but before the couple was truly living as husband and wife; because remember— marriage was not about love in these days. It was a legal contract; it was mostly economic. Sure, some people got lucky and actually had positive feelings for their spouse, but not always. So even before this angel spoke to Joseph in a dream, he already had an impossible decision to make—should he do what society says is right and just and have Mary put to death? Or should he do what his gentle and compassionate heart told him to do, and “dismiss her quietly?” Our scripture says that he “resolved to do this,” which leads me to believe he was agonizing over what do to about this painful dilemma—surely, he was hurt and confused that it appeared that Mary had committed adultery; surely, if Mary tried to tell him that she was a virgin carrying the world’s savoir, he thought this woman he knew had gone mad. But even before his miraculous dream, he chose to do what was right in his heart, even if it wasn’t right by law. Joseph was a truly gentle man, “unwilling to expose her to public disgrace.” To us, in our modern world, this may seem like a no-brainer. But one has to wonder if Joseph thought he was doing the wrong thing by letting her off the hook in this way.
In these modern times, at least in our country, no one can be sentenced to death for extra marital relations, nothing so extreme. But I think we all know that we do not live in some kind of egalitarian utopia. I think we all know that in some ways, it seems that thanks to some reactionary and even hateful ideologies, things are actually moving backwards. Our own president just called a female reporter piggy a couple weeks back; photos from the infamous Epstein files are trickling out, of powerful men being photographed with the convicted sex trafficker; the “manosphere” of podcasters and youtubers, from the problematic Joe Rogan, to the violent and dangerous Andrew Tate are still wildly and frighteningly influential, convincing so many young men that they are victims of feminism, of women in general, of “wokeness” in spite of what reality and statistics say. I confess, and this is something I’ve talked about at our community potlucks, I fear for Frankie’s future in world in which these are the people that so many boys are being influenced by, in a world in which women’s rights and bodily autonomy continue to be rolled back and crushed under the thumb of chauvinistic authoritarianism.
It's ironic, really, that so many of these people who want “traditional gender roles” back (whatever that means—after all, poor women have always had to work outside the home); claim to use their Christian religion as the motivation for this backwards ideology. They want a muscular Christianity, and a muscular country, one in which hyper-masculine, domineering men are the be-all-end-all of humanity. I say it’s ironic because, look at Joseph. Look at this man, the earthly father of Jesus, husband of Mary. He is a man who first, trusts his gentle intuition and righteousness over what society deems as “right” by deciding not to bring death or any kind of disgrace onto this vulnerable young woman. He is a man who then has the courage to trust his faith and this unbelievable dream and take this already-pregnant young woman as his wife. He is a man who is truly righteous, a man full of faith and full of love. He is unmoved by the cruel and violent norms of the world in which he lives. He is a good man. He is a good person.
There are so many reasons in our broken world today that people are looking to a mythological past as something to romanticize and somehow recapture—a world boasting of economic comfortability and “tradition.” But that world never really existed; at least it didn’t exist for the majority of people. Today we’re fed so much in the way of headlines about the male loneliness epidemic; about young men getting left behind has more and more women are attending and performing better in higher education; about the lack of upward mobility for, not just young men, but young people everywhere, with wages stagnating, with housing costs skyrocketing and housing supply plummeting, not to mention the constant, foreboding specter of AI coming for entry-level jobs. It’s led many to fall down internet rabbit holes, to find someone to blame— whether it be a whole gender, a different race, or so-called wokeness; it’s led many to become despairing, cynical, even nihilistic. It’s led many to give up on the very idea, the very concept of love.
What will it take for us, as a society to get past this? What will it take for us to move past these dangerous and deeply harmful ideologies—ideologies that are harmful for women, queer people, and straight men alike. I don’t have a universal answer, aside from something as surface-level and as simple as going by the golden rule, and treating others as you would want to be treated. But I think for us, as Christians, we have and advantage of having these incredible role models—role models like Joseph, filled with compassion and empathy, and unconditional and faithful love.
Matthew is the only one of the four gospels that really gives any details about or spotlights Joseph in anyway. He’s just sort of… there in the other three gospels. In Luke, it’s Mary who’s the star, and in general, during Advent and Christmastime, we talk about Mary almost exclusively; after all, she is the carrier of our savior, so it’s understandable. But it worth considering Joseph in this story. Just as when the angel comes to Mary during the annunciation, and Mary says, Here I am when the angel tells her of the life she is carrying in her womb, so does Joseph—he is not quoted as Mary is, but he rises from his dream and does as he is told. I imagine him saying Here I am to Mary. I imagine Mary’s utter relief in Jospeh’s compassion, faith and love. I imagine her relief that she was betrothed to such a truly gentle and good man.
Not to step on Brian’s toes, as he’s going to be preaching on Matthew 2:13-23 next week while I’m away, but next week it another Joseph story, one of the few, and it is remarkably similar to this one. In it, and angel of God appears to Joseph in his dream, warns him of Herod’s violent intentions, and orders Joseph and his new family to flee to Egypt; and later in that same passage, once again, an angel in a dream appears to Joseph to let them know it's safe to return home, and that they should. Each time, Joseph wakes up and does as he is told. Each time, he does not question. Each time, he fully submits to the will of God, confident in his faith and his love for his family, that these are the right things to do.
Some of the emails from the church I attended in Philly, where we do our youth Mission Trip now, still manage to make their way into my main gmail inbox. Their pastor Michael, it seems, is preaching on this passage as well this week, and in the email, he wrote of an anecdote from a few years back of the form Pope Francis. Apparently, Pope Francis always kept a figurine of a sleeping St. Joseph near him, and if he had a problem, he would write it on a piece of paper as a prayer, put the paper under the sleeping saint figurine, and ask St. Joseph to pray with him. In the Catholic tradition, St. Joseph is the patron saint of the Church Universal because it is believed he can watch over it day or night, asleep or awake.
He is known to be a man so in tune with his faith, so in tune with his God, so in tune with the world around him, that his state of being, whether conscious or unconscious, is always ready to listen and to understand. He is a man who is open to the word of God, and open to what is right, whether or not society deems it so. He is a man who is compassionate and full of empathy.
We live in a world today in which some politicians and other public figures, even some Christian pastors, will try to tell you that empathy, that compassion are not just weaknesses, but sins. Those people so desperately want Christianity to be something it is not. They so desperately want Christianity to be a religion of muscle and empire. They want Christianity to be about dominance and control.
But as we prepare to celebrate Christmas, to celebrate the birth of our savior, come to earth as a vulnerable infant, we are presented with a man who is anything but dominant or controlling. We are presented with a man who refuses to let a young woman be publicly disgraced, much less killed for what he, at that time, was sure was a grave indiscretion on her part. We are presented with a man who, upon waking from dreams, fully submits to the will of God, without a hint of pride or stubbornness. We are presented with a man who trusts and loves fully, with his whole mind and his whole heart. We are presented with a man who truly allows himself to be led by love, no matter what frightening or unbelievable places that love may take him.
We are so used to focusing about Mary on Christmas—and rightly so. She is the one who had to deal with the morning sickness, the fatigue, the labor pains, not to mention the dangerous, quite literally deadly position she was initially put in as a young woman, pregnant and betrothed. But it is crucial that we spotlight Joseph too— especially in today’s world of misogynistic self-proclaimed alpha males and powerful men trying to assert and maintain that power by demeaning and denigrating others. Joseph is the type of cis male we should be looking to. Gentle, compassionate, faithful, confident, and so full of love. He is someone we can all—male, female, and nonbinary; queer and straight alike—look to as an example of true faith, compassion, submission to the will of God. He is someone we can all look to as an example of unconditional love.
As we come to the climax of our Advent season, as we continue to prepare for the miraculous birth of our savior come to earth fragile in human form; and as we also prepare for Christmas in our personal lives—for the busyness, the travel, the family drama, the general overwhelm— I’m wondering if we can work to be as clear-headed and as open as Joseph. I wonder if we can be open enough to hear God’s word in any state we’re in—conscious or unconscious… calm and relaxed, or full of anxiety—and I wonder if we can also be faithful enough to trust in that word—to trust when God’s word seems to go against what society-at-large deems “traditional” or “right” or even lawful; to trust when God’s word guides us to unexpected and uncomfortable situations… I wonder if the promise of Christmas will finally be realized once we learn that God will never guide use towards dominance, control, or hatred; that the promise of Christmas will finally be realized when we all, like, Gentle Joseph, are led by, lead with love. Amen.
