Fairhaven Sermon 12-21-2025

You don't have to read the gospel narratives of the nativity too often to realize that men are relegated to a background status. Every time. And this is entirely intentional in Matthew, in Mark, and in Luke. God begins turning the social order upside down even before Jesus is conceived, setting the stage for what he's going to do in his adult ministry.

This subversion begins even before the beginning. And the fathers in this story are not really given this place of honor or authority, at least not in a conventional way. He's going to be a little bit more. So in the patriarchal norms that dominate the surrounding Roman culture, the father of a household, the paterfamilia, still a legal term, you know, basically is the emperor of the family.

And that's how Roman society was built. It was built on these concentric circles with a little emperor in each one, you know, the governor, the king, until you get to Caesar, who's emperor over all things and is almost a god himself. And the Jewish culture at this time, too, is one built on patriarchy. You know, the oldest leaders in the Old Testament are the patriarchs, Abraham, David, all of those guys.

And power and authority rests with the men. Power flows from the top down. But that is not what we see among the men of the nativity. When elderly Zechariah, we didn't hear this story this year, but when elderly Zechariah, John the Baptist's father, is told by an angel that his wife Elizabeth will give birth to a child, he refuses to believe it.

And in response, he is struck silent by the angel for the length of her pregnancy until he is finally able to speak up, only when it comes time for him to agree with Elizabeth and confirm what she wants to name the son, John. Not his name, Zechariah, but John. Not a lot of dominance and authority here on Zechariah's part, even if he wanted to exert it. And soon after, when we get to the miraculous conception of Jesus himself, the familiar Christmas Eve nativity story, the angel goes to Mary first and by herself.

Mary is engaged, betrothed to Joseph, which is a property relationship in that culture. It's a pre-marriage status that begins a woman's transfer from her father's custody to her husband's custody. And Joseph is not consulted about whether his wife should become the mother of God. And the angel's not particularly concerned whether Joseph is going to give Mary permission to be part of God's plan to save all creation, to reconcile it to God.

Joseph is a supporting character in this drama. That's not a minimizing thing, but he is definitely a supporting character. And then if we zoom in, specifically just what Matthew tells us, since Matthew's gospel is the source of our reading today, Matthew doesn't get into all these details about the angel's visit to Mary. Okay? Matthew doesn't actually touch that.

Unlike Luke that we hear on Christmas Eve, Matthew tells us what we heard this morning. That's all. And this is verse 18. This is how the birth of Jesus Christ took place.

When Mary, his mother, was engaged to Joseph, but before they were married, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. That's it. That's the whole Nativity story here in Matthew. And then we jump to Joseph.

So, by law, Joseph has every right to be furious. He has every right to demand compensation for what he's lost. Presumably, he's paid a significant dowry to Mary's father, which he's owed back because she's obviously committed adultery. If she's pregnant, he must be owed something because she broke this covenant.

A dowry... Dee was asking me whether Mary got a ring on the way in today.

Mary did not get a ring, but her father probably got some goats, some silver, and all of that stuff now has to be given back to Joseph because the contract has been violated. A wife is property, and so the potential husband has made this down payment. Now he gets it back. The contingency hasn't been fulfilled.

And so according to the law of Moses that we see in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, Mary is subject to death by stoning. Adultery is a capital offense. And by the time that Mary and Joseph are living, this rarely actually happened. Very few people were executed for adultery because you'd have to get Roman permission, all this stuff.

But even if she's not going to get executed... She's as good as dead, socially speaking.

She has shamed her family. She'll almost certainly never marry. In this young woman's life, her future are guaranteed to fall apart. But Matthew tells us, that Joseph is a righteous man.

He's a good guy. He doesn't want any of this to happen. He doesn't want to humiliate her. He's not interested in vengeance.

And as an aside, I think that's really interesting. Because Matthew emphasizes here that Joseph is righteous not because of his adherence to the law. He doesn't want the law to come cracking down on her. But because of his desire to spare Mary the consequences of the law.

Morality and legality here are two different things. Jesus will show us that repeatedly. Obedience to the law isn't inherently good, and defiance of it for a higher purpose isn't necessarily bad. So Joseph is righteous, and he decides that the best thing that he can do, both for himself and for his fiancée Mary.

is to quietly call off the marriage. Doesn't need to give anyone an explanation, just quietly send her back to her father's household. He can find someone else. He can try again.

And it's only then, once Joseph makes that decision, that God communicates with him. And notice that, because Joseph has already decided, before the angel comes in the dream, to be gracious and compassionate towards Mary. He certainly still thinks she's committed adultery, but he's already decided to be compassionate, even before God intervenes. Joseph is already going above and beyond the standards of his society, right? He's not concerned, again, with honor or with vengeance.

He's righteous. And righteousness here is grace. It's compassion. But then this angel appears to him in a dream and offers him both reassurance and a command.

The angel says, Joseph, son of David, Don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife because the child she carries was conceived by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you will call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. And Mary doesn't really tell us what Joseph says, if Joseph says anything. But his course of action is clear, and it's changed.

He's to stay with Mary. He's to marry her as planned. He's even to raise her son as his own. And his name is already picked out, much like with Zechariah and John.

And this is a key piece of the story for us today. Joseph represents someone whose inclination is already to do good before God has to tell him to. He is just this unimpeachably decent person. His heart, his intentions are pure.

He means well. He doesn't want to hurt anybody. God's grace has already been at work within him. He's a great guy.

But God tells Joseph that he's got to go further than that. He's got to jump beyond the decent thing, which is gently breaking off this engagement, to the holy thing. And that is sticking with Mary. That's caring for her, raising Jesus as his own, reorienting his entire life.

John Wesley would sometimes preach on what he called heathen morality. And Wesley believed, unlike a lot of Protestant theologians, that everybody has the ability to make morally good decisions. And I think that's true. We see that in the world.

Christian or not, you can choose to do something good or something bad. I tend to agree with that. But the implication of what he called heathen morality is that there is another standard entirely, a higher one, for God's people. There's stuff that anybody can do, and then there's stuff that God enables us to do that's above and beyond.

So it's this leap. From decency and goodness to holiness to transformation. Decency is being kind. It's good.

It far exceeds what we generally encounter in our lives. Lots of people aren't even capable, or interested, I guess, they're capable, of being kind. But it doesn't cost anything. Holiness costs something to you.

It's sacrificing our control, our desires for something that's greater. Right? And so God puts the same divine pull on our hearts as he puts on Joseph's. God calls us to the next step. The one that requires real vulnerability, real discomfort, for us to really put ourselves out there, to leave our own preferences, our own comfort zones behind.

God tells us to take, like Joseph, a potential hit to our reputations, right? To fundamentally change our lives, our orientations towards the world, and jump feet first into some messy and complicated situations. Just think about how huge Joseph's sacrifice is. It's not even just that it's a sacrifice of his status, of his reputation. People are always going to be looking at him sideways for the rest of his life.

It's control that he's losing over his life, over his destiny. He's going to be giving up leaving a lineage through Jesus. We know how important genealogies are, one of the most valuable things a man in the Jewish culture can have. What opens Matthew before we get to this passage is a genealogy.

And this is not how Joseph envisioned his path. He's not even married yet. His wife is a virgin, and he is supposed to be a stepfather. These steps are wildly out of order.

This is not what he signed up for. He signed up to marry this woman, to have his own son, to make their own lives together. And yet, this complete disruption is a gift, isn't it? Okay? The angel persuades Joseph, well, not so much persuading as commanding, but persuades Joseph to be in ongoing relationship with Mary, and the child who would turn out to be the savior of the world. And just think here, if Joseph had quietly left like he planned to avoid that messiness, which he was totally in his rights to do, he would have missed out on this blessing that no one else in history has ever known.

He would have missed out on teaching these hands that put the stars in the sky to begin with how to hold a hammer. He would have missed teaching God with us how to pray at his bedside before he went to sleep. Right? He gets to teach the Savior of the world what it looks like to be a good man who protects, who serves, who loves God. And what an enormous strength it is for Joseph to do that.

And so, while Joseph isn't by any means the protagonist in this story, we're doing him a disservice if we view him as just kind of a passive background character. Because his choice to stay with Mary is not being passive, it's not weakness, but it's this courage to dig in. It's this courage to hold on in this difficult situation. He dares to turn and encounter whatever God has asked him to stick around for.

Whatever he's supposed to be present for, he's decided he's going to be there. And he devotes his life to this unborn child that is not his own from that moment on. And it's unfortunate that there is a Protestant reluctance, maybe a Christian reluctance more broadly, to look at Joseph as an ideal of masculinity, of what a man is. He's not totally ignored.

Mostly he is outside of this week. And when we do talk about him, he is kind of turned into this passive background character. And throughout history, art and tradition have generally portrayed Joseph as an elderly man, very, very old. He's a widower, perhaps, and the implication is that he acts more as a guardian for Mary than her husband.

And people do this to kind of undo some theological knots here, to explain away Jesus' siblings, to protect Mary's perpetual virginity in Catholic doctrine. But I think we rob Joseph of all that he is when we make him this old, passive guy. If Joseph is at the end of his life when he gets married, his obedience is just kind of a quiet resignation. Like, okay, I don't got that many years left anyway.

Okay. But if he's young, if he's like Mary, this man in his prime with this desire to build a name, a family, a future, then his obedience is a lot more. He isn't just being nice. He isn't just being decent.

He's laying down all that he's entitled to as a man. His rights, his family line, his reputation, and he is sacrificing the prime of his life to protect God's life. And it makes me wonder, whenever we try to brush Joseph aside like this, if there's a level of quiet embarrassment about Joseph. Because are we to believe, really, that the ideal Christian father, the ideal Christian man.

.. is one who decides to buy this ridiculous story that his wife is going to give birth as a virgin, who selflessly raises a child that's not even his. What kind of man is that? Shouldn't he be a lot more intense? Shouldn't he want things of his own? Well, the Gospels tell us that this is one of the strongest, holiest men of all.

For all fathers, for all men to look up to. If he was a good enough stepfather for the Son of God, then he's a good enough example for men today. Masculinity, Joseph shows us, is not found in dominance and authority and control like every other system around him, around us. It's found in this warm commitment to showing up where God sends us.

To offer ourselves, to protect, to grow the people in our lives. And he is a good enough example for all of us, men and women. Bravery, commitment, self-sacrifice towards this specific, crucial role in God's plan of salvation. And so as we look at Joseph, the question arises for us, can we do that? Can we dig in and show up where God puts us? Can we be fully present in the messiness of where God's at work? Joseph is in this for the long haul.

He's not just dipping his toe into the calling that God's put on him while still clinging to the path that he's chosen for himself, just doing God's business on the side. No, Joseph is all in. And so can we, with God's help, do that same thing? All of this is driven by love. Joseph doesn't look at Mary as this problem to be solved.

What am I going to do with her now? What's going to happen to me? He looks at her as a person to be respected, to be loved, to be cared for. And then God shows him how to do that. and this might not come in the form of a divine messenger in a dream. It might.

But God will do the same thing for us. God's grace will enable us to do what Joseph did, to let go of the lives that we've planned so that we can receive the holy life that God has planned for us. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.