Sermon: The Threat of Christmas

Matthew 1:18-25

The Threat of Christmas

James Sledge                                                                                       December 22, 2019

Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. “A righteous man.” Outside of the Bible, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone actually described that way. Have you? I can’t think of a single example. For that matter, I almost never hear the word righteous at all, other than to speak disparagingly of someone who is “self-righteous.”

Some Bible translations try something else: a just man, a man of honor, a noble man, a good man. Unlike righteous, I’ve heard people described as good, noble, honorable, or just, and meant in a complimentary way. Righteous, however, just isn’t part of our everyday vocabulary. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that any of those other words quite capture what the gospel writer is trying to say.

To say that Joseph is a righteous man is to say that he is faithful in keeping God’s law. He is more than simply good. He lives his life by God’s commandments. He is guided by the principles laid out in the Torah, and Torah says he should divorce Mary.

Divorce is required because Mary’s engagement to Joseph is something very different from engagement in our day. When two people get engaged in our culture, they have declared their intent to marry, but there’s no legal change of status. They are still single and, should they call off the engagement, the only issues to navigate depend on how far along things are. It could be a simple as letting friends and family know that the wedding is off. Or it could involve unbooking reception venues and dealing with angry members of the wedding party who’ve already bought bridesmaid dresses or non-refundable airline tickets. But regardless of how easy or complicated, calling the wedding off doesn’t require any legal action to undo the engagement.

Not the case for Joseph and Mary. Their engagement is as legally binding as marriage is for us. It cannot be called off. It can only end with a divorce.

I can only imagine what goes through Joseph’s mind when he learns that Mary is pregnant. He might feel betrayed, although if this is an arranged marriage, perhaps not. In the eyes of the Law, however, Joseph has been wronged. He has made Mary his wife, even if the final formalities are yet to come, but now that Joseph has learned of her presumed adultery, he must divorce her, regardless of what he does or doesn’t feel for her.

Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. I’ve often wondered if Joseph’s plan to divorce Mary quietly comes from his being righteous or despite his being righteous. The Law required the divorce. It did not require Joseph to shield her from shame or disgrace. Perhaps the passage could be translated, Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man yet unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

Then again, God is called just and righteous and, at the very same time, merciful and abounding in steadfast love. The prophet Isaiah goes so far as to describe God as waiting to be gracious and show mercy because “Yahweh is a God of justice.” Perhaps in describing Joseph as righteous, the gospel means to say that, like his ancestor David, Joseph is a man after God’s own heart. He is in right relationship with God, and so he plans to do what is right, what is required, but to do so with mercy.

Yet if Joseph does as he plans, he will thwart God’s plans. For the Messiah to be from the house of David, he needs Joseph as his father. Even though Joseph is righteous, is good and noble and just and honorable and seeks to follow God, even though he is merciful and kind, it isn’t enough. For Joseph to be the one God needs him to be, he must trust in a dream.

 How drastic of a change would you make in your life because you dreamed that an angel told you to do so? What if, like Joseph, you were already doing exactly what you thought you should do? How much would you be willing to risk on a dream? And what if that dream told you to go completely against social convention, even to break the law?

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On this Sunday, the last Sunday of Advent, the gospel reading for the day finally catches up with the culture and starts to think about Christmas, about the birth of Jesus. But for the gospel of Matthew, there is little interest in an actual birth story. There is no nativity, no manger. There is nothing cute or warm or suitable for a Christmas card. In fact, the entire birth story in Matthew is a single sentence. (Joseph) took (Mary) as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

The gospel of Matthew is much more interested how people will react to the coming of Jesus, an event that threatens to turn their lives upside down. For Joseph, the coming of Jesus calls into question his understanding of faith and religion and what is right. It requires him to completely rethink what it means to be a good and faithful Jew. I wonder, could I have done that, with only a dream to go on?

In the story that immediately follows, the visit of the Magi, King Herod will seek to kill the young Jesus, likely a toddler by that time. Herod represents one response to the arrival Jesus, an arrival that threatens the wealthy and powerful. Herod prefigures the ultimate response of the powers that be to the threat of Jesus, a cross. Would it be any different today?

Then there are the Magi, foreigners, Gentiles, pagans who end up worshipping a Jewish Messiah. Everything gets jumbled and mixed up because of Jesus. Even as a baby, Jesus is a threat. Jesus is dangerous.

For many of us, Christmas is mostly a threat to our bank accounts and credit cards, not to how we live our lives. But I wonder if we don’t need a different sort of threat from Christmas.

For those of us who are comfortable and at ease in our religiousness, perhaps we need to be reminded that that the coming of Jesus challenges and upends cherished ways of understanding and practicing faith. Just ask Joseph, or the many religious leaders who were frightened by the threat Jesus posed to their organized and institutionalized religion.

For the many of us converted by our consumer culture’s gospel of more, we need to be reminded that the coming of Jesus calls people leave things they cherish behind and follow him.

For those of us disenchanted and disillusioned by a seventh anniversary of the Sandy Hook shootings without any changes to gun laws, by an ever widening gap between rich and poor, by a government that seems more and more an agent of the wealthy and powerful, we need to remember that when the wealthy and powerful thought they had done away with the threat of Jesus, that cross led straight to Easter, to resurrection.

Christmas is coming. In Jesus, God enters decisively into human affairs, into history. It turned the world upside down, and it will turn the world upside down. The threat of Christmas is coming. The world may never be the same.

Thanks be to God!