23 December 2007                                       
Carolyn L Roberts
Matthew 1.18-25

            We have certain expectations of how loved ones are supposed treat us…even when they fail to do so…and of course, at some point—more than once, even, all of us fail to treat our loved ones as they expect us to treat them. The reasons for this could fill a book. Partly it’s because none of us is a mind-reader—we don’t always know what the other is expecting of us—especially if they never actually articulate the expectation. Even if we wish to be the perfect parent, the perfect partner, the perfect friend, the perfect sibling or child or pastor or whatever, it just isn’t going to happen. At some point in virtually any relationship, one of the parties blows it.

            I moved from Washington state to California after John and I got married, and after we had driven across the country and back for our honeymoon. For all my commitment to John, the love we shared, and the life we’d just begun together, I was anxious about actually arriving in California. As we got closer, I wanted to stop more often—especially at the Nut Tree, a tourist trap from a childhood vacation years earlier. John was grudgingly accommodating—he just wanted to get home. Once we arrived in Berkeley, I expected him to carry me over the threshold into our apartment. It was a naïve assumption on my part; he didn’t even think of it. Of course, I assumed he would figure out the whole Nut Tree thing and be extra attentive. Talk about rose-tinted glasses!

            If we remove the rose-tinted glasses of 2,000 years of tradition, we find pretty quickly that the gospel according to Matthew tells the story of Jesus’ birth minus the romance of wine and roses. He starts the story by listing a genealogy that makes historians cringe in its leaps between family groups, but the details Matthew is careful to insert catch our attention. Jesus’ genealogy includes the prostitute Rahab, the non-Jewish foreigner Ruth, the murderer and adulterer, King David, and Joseph, the husband of Mary. If we are looking for a “pure” bloodline, it isn’t there. Then Matthew makes the story even more challenging by raising and addressing the question: what to do with Mary’s child that is not Joseph’s son.

            This is where our scripture begins for today: right at the edge of Jesus’ birth. Right up front, we learn that even though Matthew lists Joseph as the father in Jesus’ genealogy, Mary’s pregnancy is a real problem for Joseph. Why? Because Joseph didn’t have anything to do with it. We know that the punishment for sexual relations outside of marriage was a big issue in Jesus’ time. As an adult, Jesus saves a woman from stoning by telling those who would kill the woman to throw their stone only if they haven’t sinned themselves. And then he tells the woman that there is no one who condemns her—not even Jesus himself.

            Joseph has a related problem. His wife is pregnant and he isn’t the father. Talk about having certain expectations of one’s loved one that are not realized! The expectation of Mary’s faithfulness to the covenant of marriage is central to the covenant itself. However, if Joseph divorces Mary, she is likely to be stoned according to Jewish law in Deuteronomy 22, or at the very least, treated with such contempt that there will be no place for either mother or child to find support. Matthew tells us that Joseph is a righteous man, a good man, a compassionate man, because he isn’t willing to hold Mary up to public disgrace and ridicule. Instead, Joseph decides to send Mary away quietly. In other words, he’ll let her live, but her welfare and the baby’s is not his problem.

            Then he goes to bed to sleep on it, and an angel appears to him in a dream, and says what the Bible’s angels always say: do not be afraid. Only this isn’t a general commandment not to be afraid. It is a very specific instruction: Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. Don’t be afraid, Joseph, that the neighbors will gossip. Don’t be afraid, Joseph, that your disappointment in Mary will make it impossible for you to love her. Because God’s holy Spirit is at work in this situation, transforming even the most  severely strained relationships. But Joseph has a hard choice; Joseph has to choose to remain engaged in the relationship. That is the hard work of love, to remain engaged, to be compassionate even when those we are closest to us disappoint us or upset us or hurt us.

            And right here, right in the very beginning of the story of Jesus’ birth, we have this stunning example of the powerful transformation that kind of love can bring. Joseph doesn’t have to take Mary as his wife. He doesn’t have to adopt this child and share his own lineage with him so that he can be called a son of David. Joseph doesn’t have to do any of that. But he is a righteous man, a good man, a compassionate man. And he is a man of faith. He hears the voice of God in the words of the angel, and takes the risk of being husband to this pregnant young woman who has hurt and disappointed him already.

            We may wear the rose-tinted glasses of 2,000 years of tradition; we may get caught up in the romance of angels and babies, but there is nothing easy about the story of Jesus’ birth. From the relational strains between Joseph and Mary to the harsh political realities of life under Herod and Roman rule, Matthew makes it clear that life is not easy. This is hard stuff. But right there in the midst of life’s hardest, God’s word to us is “Do not be afraid.” Do not be afraid to be compassionate even when relationships have been ruptured; do not be afraid to create the beloved community even in the midst of abusive and repressive systems, because right in the very midst of our most fear-filled places of living, God is present with us: Emmanuel. God is able to take what looks like life’s most disastrous situation and turn it to good. That is God’s word to Joseph. But God doesn’t do it alone; the word is made flesh. It demands a partnership.

            God’s word to Joseph is not only a commandment not to fear; it is also a radical demand for a new pattern, a new system of living. God’s word to Joseph is a direct challenge to the religious and social systems of the times. God’s word rearranges Joseph’s priorities. God’s word complicates Joseph’s life. God clearly is present with Joseph, but Joseph still needs to do the day-by-day living out of the compassion to which he is called…Joseph still needs to rearrange his priorities, he still needs to deal with the complications to his life.

            Roger Robbennolt was a very lonely only child, raised during the Depression in the backwoods of northern Minnesota. He had virtually no friends his own age, in part because of his own turbulent home life with an abusive alcoholic father. But the adults of the community adopt him and mentor him. One of these adults is Tony Great Turtle, a Native American healer and hope bringer, who teaches Rog to respect others—including the various forms of animal life in this great earth. Tony Great Turtle also shows Rog the gift of friendship with one large bass in the lake near their home. He would kneel down by the water, cupping his hand with a kernel or two of corn, and the bass would come, and Tony Great Turtle would stroke it gently under its chin. Rog learns to stroke the bass too, and revels in the intimate contact with this huge creature of the lake. Then one day a small group of Rog’s peers spot him by the lake and start to bully him. In a protective move, Rog tells how he can tickle the bass, and proceeds to show off. But in a wrenching turn, the boys capture the prize fish and killed it. And Rog is left to tell Tony Great Turtle what he has done. Tony Great Turtle knows that unique relationship with the great bass is broken forever. He also knows that it in his hands to bring healing to pain, and he pronounces benediction on both the fish and on Rog.[1] In that break-through moment, God’s word becomes flesh. Emmanuel. God with us.

            God’s word breaks through and speaks to our fears; it challenges the systems we build to contain them. It calls us to the hard work of relationships, to the practice of compassion even when those we love disappoint us. Just ask Joseph, or Tony Great Turtle, or any one who has dared risk being in relationship. Then listen to the Christmas angels, telling us that the great glad tidings call every one of us once again to open our hearts to that holy presence. O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel. Teach us the way of compassion.

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[1] Roger Robbenolt writes “autobiographical mythologies” of his childhood experiences in Tales of Gletha, the Goatlady, Tales of Hermit Uncle John, and Tales of Tony Great Turtle. I don’t recall which book holds this particular story.