THE FAITH OF AN ORDINARY JOE

(Preached on Sunday, December 19, 2004)

Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. ... When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he too her as his wife, but had not marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.                                                                   -Matthew 1:19, 24-25

 

Michael Lindvall, a Presbyterian minister, has written a story called “The Christmas Pageant.”

Set in the mythical town of North Haven, Minnesota, it tells of the year the young mothers of Second Presbyterian Church organized a rebellion.

Alvina Johnson has directed the Christmas pageant at Second Presbyterian for 47 years.  In nearly half a century, there has not been a single change in the script, which was lifted straight out of the King James Bible. 

Youthful faces came and went, but the Christmas pageant remained the same, unshakable as Gibraltar.

That is, until the year of the young mothers’ rebellion.

They demanded a new pageant, one that would have parts for all the children.

Alvina resigned in a huff, and it fell to the young mothers to plan the program.

One of the changes the young mothers made was to dump the King James Version and use a more modern translation.

As a result, Mary was no longer “great with child.”

She was, in more prosaic terms, “pregnant.”

The problem was, this change in the script was instituted at the last minute, and the poor little boy playing Joseph heard it from the narrator for the first time on Christmas Eve.

The kid froze in his tracks, gave Mary an incredulous look, peered out at the congregation and exclaimed, “Pregnant?  What do you mean, pregnant?”

“This, of course,” as Lindvall tells the story, “brought down the house.  My wife, wiping tears from her eyes, leaned over to me and said, ‘You know, that may well be what Joseph actually said.’”

 

Of course, we don’t actually know what Joseph said... about anything.  Did you realize that?

You can look it up in the Bible (In the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke, the gospels where Joseph appears.)

You will not find a single thing that Joseph said.

As famous as he is, Mary’s husband is never quoted in the Bible, not a single word!

Joseph didn’t say anything, but what he did was very important.

For Joseph listened, and he acted.

And the wonderful example of Joseph is that sometimes actions do speak louder than any words ever could.

 

Matthew presents Joseph as a man of strong character and a compassionate heart.

Joseph no doubt felt betrayed upon first learning of Mary’s pregnancy and found her explanation unconvincing.

Now, he had a range of choices for his response, some healthy and some not so healthy.

I suppose he could have abused her in some way, the way many husbands do today for far less serious offenses (and often for no offenses at all).

He could have gone out of his way to shame her — if he lived today, he might have decided to go on some daytime talk show called “Fiancees Carrying Someone Else’s Baby.”

He also could have strongly encouraged her, maybe even forced her, to abort the child, so they could begin their new life as husband and wife with a clean slate and no unnecessary burdens.

He also could have gone ballistic on her and dragged her before the public tribunal of elders to accuse her of adultery with the potential penalty of stoning.

 

But Matthew points out that Joseph was a righteous man, that is, he was a good man, a moral man, a man who was very concerned with doing the “right” thing.

In the careful words of the English Bible, “being a man of principle and at the same time wanting to save her from exposure, Joseph desired to have the marriage contract set aside quietly.”

He behaved decently — not superlatively, but decently.

Joseph demonstrates that just as important as doing what is right is doing what is right in the right way.

Sometimes out of our embarrassment and humiliation, we can do the right thing, but in a way that increases harm instead of correcting wrong.

For Joseph, doing what was right was different than doing what the law demanded.

That is something we struggle with in our society today: how to apply the principles of mercy and compassion in healthy, helpful ways.

 

And because Joseph was not one who applied the letter of the law, but who strove to live out its spirit, he also became one who was open to hearing the stillspeaking God in new and dramatic ways.

For what ultimately convinced Joseph of the truth was the spirit of God speaking to him in a dream.

The most difficult time to hear God is when the cries of our personal pain drown out all other voices.

When a loved one dies while we are in the hospital with our own health problems, it is difficult to hear any grace from God, to know that God is present in a helpful way.

When those planes flew into the Twin Towers the shock and pain were so overwhelming, that it was difficult to hear any voice from God.

Yet, if we can stay tuned in to God’s presence, it is in precisely those times when a word from God most often comes to us.

 

Peter Gomes, in a sermon in Harvard University’s Memorial Church, offers Joseph’s openness and action as the real miracle of Christmas — not the virgin birth of the creeds.

“The miracle to which our attention should be drawn at this holy season is the fact Joseph believes what he hears and acts upon it.  Miracles some say, miracles are things that happen in the absence of evidence to explain them.  Well, that’s not a miracle at all despite the fervent hope of some of our fundamentalist friends.  That’s not a miracle.  That is merely a mystery, or an as yet unexplained phenomena, or unbelievable fantasy.  The Bible is not concerned with unbelievable fantasies.  The miracle here is that a sensible, reasonable, pragmatic, and good man, a man named Joseph, the miracle here is that he acts contrary to the evidence that surrounds him on every hand.  He sees the evidence.  He understands it.  He knows its implications and he acts contrary to it.

 

“Faith is not life lived in the absence of evidence.  Faith is life lived contrary to the evidence on every hand.  The evidence on every hand is that people are nasty, brutish, and short: most of them are anyway.  The evidence on every hand is that they will do you in.  The evidence on every hand is that good guys and good gals come in second, third, or fifth.  And yet the gospel tells us that we love our neighbors, that we hope for peace in the middle of war, that we believe that peoples’ better natures will overcome their lesser natures.  That is faith contrary to all the evidences surrounding you.  That then is why this is an example of faith: life lived contrary to the evidence.  And, when he could have cut and run he stayed and he played.  And, it was as an active participant in the great drama of the incarnation that he played, not as a potted plant.”

 

Here is an ordinary man, a quiet man, a carpenter, caught up in the grand purposes of God.

He quietly obeyed.