Matthew 1:18-25
Today we are going to look a little closer at two betrothed teenagers, Joseph and Mary of Nazareth, chosen by God to be essential for most important event in all of history, just because they were faithful to God.
God uses many ways to speak to us. We the Church, the people of God now, are the people of God in post-Pentecost times.
The Church, the people of God that Mary and Joseph were part of, was before the great revelation of Christ crucified and God often spoke to them through his sending of angels.
The word angel means messenger. So, both Mary and Joseph were sent holy messengers with holy messages. Mary was visited in person by the Archangel Gabriel, and Joseph was sent an angel in a dream.
The thing that really affects me is that they were both instantly obedient to God.
Mary said “Behold, I am a servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Today’s gospel shows Joseph, “did as the angel of the Lord commanded him” (Matt 1:24), and married Mary.
Joseph is such a humble man, the man in the background. The perfect example of the humble servant of God. The least who will be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.
God did not entrust his son to be fathered by a rabbi or a scribe or a Pharisee or a rich merchant but by a tradesman, from a very humble village in a lowly province in the Roman Empire.
Here are just a few things we notice in this short gospel reading about Joseph. He could have had Mary stoned to death, but he was a kind and righteous man, and wanting to avoid malicious and shaming gossip, he decided to just break off the engagement quietly. What a loving act.
Now God needed a very specific, Godly man to be Jesus’ adoptive father, and, as God does, he chose perfectly.
He was a man who did not need an angel to appear to him to change the direction of his life, but only a dream of an angel. A man who put God’s agenda for his fiancé before his own hopes.
When he married her, he would have been seen as a weak man under the thumb of an already adulterous wife.
He was a man who set aside the sexual expression of his love for Mary until after Jesus’ birth. He was a righteous man who knew that Scripture must be fulfilled. For the Scripture to be fulfilled, Jesus must not only have been conceived to a virgin but born of a virgin.
A man who risked Herod’s murderous intent and was ready to lay down his life for his bride, just as his son would be ready to lay down his life for his bride – the church.
So Mary and Joseph, utterly obedient to God. What did they make of the amazing promises in the messages they received from God.
All generations would call her blessed through this Son she would bear, who would be great and would receive the throne of David forever. And Joseph was told to call him Jesus -which means God saves.
But then almost from the beginning, things go crazy.
A census is called, so Joseph and a very pregnant Mary have to travel from Nazareth in the far north in Galilee, on a donkey, to Bethlehem in Judea, the other end of the country.
Relying on whatever savings the very young carpenter had, in order to be counted in the town of his ancestors.
When they get there the who town is full, nowhere to stay. And Mary is about to give birth somewhere.
The baby is born, and the only cot is a feed trough, (a feed trough!) in which the Saviour of the World is laid.
Out of nowhere, itinerant Shepard’s come and say, “you’ll never believe what we just saw and heard from the whole heavenly host of angles.”
And suddenly a whole lot of people knew that the King of Kings had been born - including Herod the Great.
Herod, perceiving a threat to his kingship decided to kill all the newborn boys in Bethlehem. Again, an angel appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him to flee to Egypt. Once again, obedient, faithful Joseph obeys
Does this chaos never end? I think this happens to us, too, all the time. We have blessed with amazing promises that at times seem so distant, and at other times so close
Just as Mary and Joseph had a calling on their lives, so too do we. Yet sometimes all we too can see is chaos.
In all sorts of ways, often, our expectations of life are shattered. The shattering brings forth something brand new and beautiful, always. It is from this shattered mess that the new thing comes, not despite the shattering but because of it.
Sometimes all we see is the mess. Where has God’s favour gone? Was the angel real?
But something else happening here is the story of Mary and Joseph, and in our own stories I believe. In all the mess of Mary’s and Joseph’s life, a beautiful miracle was emerging.
Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world was emerging and had emerged from her, the birth of a miracle.
With Mary and Joseph, the miracle was in the mess; just as ours is too. At the end of it all, Mary had the horrible reality of witnessing his shameful crucifixion of Jesus her son.
That is shattering. Yet at that very moment, the real miracle was just beginning.
And whatever the miracle is that is emerging from our mess, God will give us the grace to stand firm and endure and eventually come to the place where we can embrace the miracle and nurture it
And that, of course, is the incredible nature of the Nativity of Jesus: that a miracle emerges from chaos, and, in God’s good design, it is not that the miracle emerges despite the chaos but that the chaos itself is part of the emerging miracle. Let me pray.