Video of Christmas Day Meditation (Luke 2:1-20)

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Video of meditation on the Annunciation to Mary

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Sermon video - Trusting a Crazy Dream (Matthew 1:18-25)

Audios and videos of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon - Trusting a Crazy Dream

Matthew 1:18-25
Trusting a Crazy Dream
James Sledge                                                                                     December 4, 2022

The Courageous Choice,
Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity,
A Sanctified Art LLC, sanctifiedart.org

Last Sunday we heard a bit of scripture that I’ve not ever heard read in Sunday worship, the genealogy from Matthew’s gospel. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar…” and on and on like this for forty-some generations. It’s a rather odd genealogy in that in contains women, Gentiles, foreigners, scoundrels, and others we might not expect to be highlighted in the genealogy of a Jewish king.

This genealogy, with prefaces our scripture for this morning, seems to serve several purposes. It establishes Jesus as a descendant of David and so someone who could sit on the throne of David. It also foreshadows the diverse, inclusive new community that Jesus comes to inaugurate. And finally, it marks Jesus as something startlingly new in the story of God’s salvation history, something very different from those who came before him.

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way, opens today’s scripture. And coming immediately on the heels of that long genealogy where someone fathered somebody and he fathered someone else, this way marks a striking change. It is something miraculous and new, a fresh start, a new creation. But this all depends on Joseph, something Matthew highlights by telling us nothing about Jesus’ birth itself, rather telling us about what Joseph did before and after it.

As critical as Joseph is to the story, we know next to nothing about him. He is the main character in this story and one other in Matthew; he is mentioned briefly in Luke’s gospel, and then he simply disappears. He is absent in all the stories of Jesus as an adult, leading many to find credence in the legend that says Joseph was much older than Mary, and he had died long before Jesus began his ministry. There’s even some uncertainty about his profession. Many of us learned that he was a carpenter, and he well may have been, but there seems to be some confusion in the Bible over whether it is Joseph or Jesus who is the carpenter.