Sermon on Matthew 1:18-25                Susan J. Barnes
St. Matthew’s, Austin                            23 December 2001

Tomorrow we will read the gospel story from Luke about Jesus’ birth, the magical narrative of the manger and the shepherds. Today we have Matthew’s account, which is more matter of fact, more prosaic, and more focused on Joseph than anyone else.

If we ever wonder why we have four gospels, the contrast between Matthew’s and Luke’s birth stories should help us understand The gospels are not histories, they are stories- stories of God’s salvation of humankind through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That salvation is far more rich and complex than a thousands tongues could sing, or a thousands gospels describe. Thanks be to God, we have at least four!
Without Luke, we would not have the poetic insight into Mary’s words as she agrees to become the Mother of God, or her thoughts as her son’s destiny unfolds in his birth and early years.
Without Matthew, we would hardly know Joseph. He is barely mentioned in Luke and John, and not at all in Mark.
Yet no one was more crucial to Jesus’ upbringing than Joseph. After all, Joseph was the family provider, the one on whom their living depended. Mothers could not be working heads of households in those days. Above all, Joseph was an example for his growing son, a teacher of faith and morals, well as of a trade. So, we long to know more than we can about this man and about his relationship with the son, Jesus, whom he adopted from his heavenly father.
Father Joe has thought a lot about his namesake. He has so much good to say that he should probably be preaching this sermon instead of me. But let me share one of his insights. As you know, it was a revolution in thinking when Jesus told us to address God as "Father"-even "Daddy". Our Joe says that shows that Jesus really loved-even revered-his earthly father. Joseph must have been an extraordinary man: surely he was a loving man.
Thanks to Matthew we know two extremely important things about Joseph. Explicitly, Matthew says that Joseph was a "righteous" man. Implicitly, Matthew shows that Joseph was obedient to God, because Joseph unquestioningly did as the angel of the Lord told him to. He accepted Mary as his wife, in spite of her potentially scandalous pregnancy. Remember that pregnancy might have cost Mary and her unborn child their lives, since she could have been stoned as an adulteress. .
Let’s look a bit more at those two qualities: righteousness and obedience.

Even a cursory glance at a concordance shows that the word "righteous" (or dikaios in Greek) is one of the most important words in the Bible. The righteous are godly, the opposite of sinful. Synonyms for righteous are: pious, virtuous, faithful to God. Interestingly, though the words "righteous" and "righteousness" fill the scriptures, they are applied to mere handful of God’s people. Instead, these words are held out as ideals-particularly in the writings of the prophets, and in psalms and proverbs. Time and again they tell us that it is the righteous whom God hears, God favors and God saves.
Jesus’ contemporaries knew those scriptures and they knew that righteousness was exceedingly rare to find in any human being. When Matthew described Joseph as "righteous," that put him in the very exclusive company of Noah and Abraham.
If you think about it, Joseph had a lot in common with both of those heroes of Genesis. All three men believed God’s words and followed God’s commands-even though they seemed to be preposterous, contrary to the laws of nature or the feelings of the human heart. Noah built that ark under a cloudless sky. Abraham prepared to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. Joseph accepted that Mary’s child was of the Holy Spirit.
Joseph’s obedience is both a consequence of and a testimony to his righteousness, his faithfulness to God.
    Matthew tells us that God spoke to Joseph three times in his dreams. The other two times were warning Joseph to flee to Egypt with Mary and Jesus, then telling him that it was safe to return.
In every case Joseph did what he was told without so much as a murmur; only after the fact did he know that God was right. Many of us will have had similar (though not so epoch-making) experiences-doing what we believe God has asked us to do (like go to seminary and get ordained!), even when it contradicts all of our plans and assumptions-and finding out later that God was right.
Radical obedience doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s is made possible by a relationship with God. Scripture tells us about God’s relationship with Noah and Abraham. Joseph’s faithfulness bespeaks his.
Obedience is a very tough concept for most of us. We associate it with authority-and who likes submitting to authority in this individualistic, entitled society? After a few years of submitting to the bishop’s authority, I’ve gotten more used to it than before, but I still resist in my head and heart.. Esther de Waal shed some new light on obedience when spoke at this year’s clergy conference. As many of you know, Esther de Waal is a specialist on Benedictine spirituality. She has written several important books on the subject. Obedience is one of the cornerstones of the Benedictine rule of life.
Ms. De Waal took us to the Latin roots of the word: Ob audire, she pointed out, is about listening. Obedience to God (and-by extension--obedience to our parents, our bosses, our bishops) really depends upon our listening faithfully, and our trusting that God knows better than we. God sees the future in the present. St. Paul testified to the Romans: "All things work to the good for them that serve God, and for them who are called according to God’s purposes." God wants good to happen-even, or especially out of tragedy-and if we will but listen, God will use us for good.
Obedience to God is still counter cultural today. Let’s face it. The heritage of the Enlightenment--so rich in learning, in science and technology--was poor in the theology of God’s active presence in our daily lives. We pictured God as a benevolent, distant being, who had created the world, set it in motion, and left human beings to take care of it. Who knows, maybe that was a necessary step in the spiritual development of the species-a kind of adolescent rebellion on a grand scale. Well, if we thought we could be good without God, wars, famines, genocides and terrorism seem to have set us straight.
The result: the great spiritual hunger that now runs through Western culture. Some of the hungry have come to church, seeking God’s presence in our lives, because we know it is real. We have tasted it, and we know that it makes our lives better. For us Joseph can be a shining example. He was, after all, one of us. He was just a simple man, a carpenter from Palestine-which we all know is in East Texas. From one perspective, more was asked of Joseph than will ever be of us. But, bottom line, it is the same. We are to surrender our lives. We are to trust in God. We are to listen to God. And finally, when we think we have understood, we are-simply--to obey.