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| "holy-family_04" by Waiting for the Word, on Flickr |
Matthew 1:18-25
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which means, “God is with us.”
When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
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So if we are being totally true to Matthew's gospel, the story of Jesus's life doesn't actually begin with Joseph's dream. It begins seventeen verses earlier, like this:
An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham:
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 Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram, and Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.
And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon.
And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Salathiel, and Salathiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.
So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.
In about three and a half minutes, the opening to Matthew's gospel points to a question that will be asked over and over again of Jesus during his ministry: Who are you and where did you come from?
It’s a complicated question. It takes forty-some generations of history to plant Jesus firmly into Israel’s ancestry. And it takes one seriously unexpected dream to learn two names that will forever sum up his identity, his mission, and the hope that he brings to the world.
The genealogy in Matthew starts by telling us that Jesus is a son of Abraham - this connects him back to the beginning of God's covenant with Israel. Jesus is also a son of David - this connects him to the kingly line, and establishes him as the king and messiah for whom the world has been waiting, the one prophesied by Isaiah and Jeremiah, the hope of nations. Jesus is a descendent of strong and suffering women, who reveal for us that God’s covenant promise extends beyond the boundaries of either ancient Israel or ancient patriarchy.
Jesus' lineage is traced through the generations all the way until we get to Joseph. And we hear that Jesus is connected to Joseph through Mary. And this makes sense until you really stop to think about it, because in truth, Jesus isn't related by blood to Joseph even a little bit. So all of the sudden, after forty-plus generations are named, we are stuck wondering why we bothered reading all of those names in the first place, if Joseph had nothing at all to do with his conception.
Joseph is pretty baffled by this as well. Mary, we read, was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. Joseph is understandably skeptical. It seems highly unlikely. It seems like a terrible cover-up story for some hidden infidelity. But even if Mary is telling the truth, the fact of the matter doesn’t change. Joseph knows for certain that he is definitely absolutely positively not the biological father of this child. And Joseph knows that this makes him part of a scandal. He knows that he will inevitably be asked the question, “Who is this child and where did he come from?” And he knows that he doesn’t have a good answer.
It is at this point that Joseph sees no other way out of his predicament than to dissolve his betrothal with Mary. It feels like the only way to save some shred of his dignity. He makes his plans to dismiss Mary, but to do it quietly so as to try to protect a little shred of her dignity as well, which is honorable, I suppose, but still leaves her in a bit of a lurch. But regardless, Joseph, satisfied with his plans, decides himself down for a little bit of a rest, to clear his head.
And it is in the middle of sleep that the truth comes to him. I like to think that Joseph was kind but stubborn, a little hard-headed, and that a face-to-face encounter with an angel during waking hours would have been lost on him. I like to think that God decided that the only way to get through to Joseph was to catch him with his guard down, by infiltrating his sleep and his dreams, when he would be most powerless to resist.
It is in the middle of sleep that the angel comes to Joseph to say to him what all angels seem to say: "Do not be afraid.” Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. Do not be afraid of scandal. Do not be afraid to believe her unbelievable story of conception via the Holy Spirit. Do not be afraid to love this child and raise it as your own. Do not be afraid, even though this child is no ordinary child.
This child will be called Jesus, the angel says, because he will save his people from their sins.
This child will be called Emmanuel, the angel says, because he will be God-with us.
This messes with the genealogy a little bit, doesn’t it? Jesus isn’t just an adopted descendent of the patriarchs, but Jesus is descended from God himself. Or, more accurately, Jesus is God himself. God-in-the-flesh. God-with-us.
I wonder what it was like for Joseph to wake up from a dream like that. Did his eyes snap open and was his heart racing? Did he wake up in shock or in peace? Did he immediately run down the road to Mary's house and tell her everything that had happened? Did he rub his eyes and wonder if it was all real?
Because all it took was one afternoon nap to turn Joseph from number one skeptic into the gracious, strong, loving, adoptive father of the Son of God. Author Quinn Caldwell writes, “The Messiah, the Prince of Peace, was an adopted kid, and…Joseph’s adoption of him made him so fully a part of the family that the Bible doesn’t have a moment’s hesitation in naming him the heir of David.” And if Joseph is the one who brings Jesus into the ancestry of Abraham and David, then Jesus is the one who brings Joseph into the ancestry of the very Son of God. Far from being merely the husband to Mary, Joseph becomes a living, breathing piece of Jesus’s identity. He becomes a part of the answer to the question facing Jesus: Who are you and where did you come from?
Joseph's story tells us a lot about our own stories.
Joseph teaches us that sometimes the truth of God comes to us most clearly when we are in a most vulnerable state. He teaches us that the hope of God sometimes comes to us most explicitly in our dreams. And not necessarily the weird dreams that we have when we eat too much ice cream before bed. But the dreams that have for ourselves and our world. God speaks to us through our dreams for a future of peace and justice and love; a world without violence or fear; a kingdom of forgiveness and grace and salvation.
Joseph teaches us that sometimes, the most powerful words that can be spoken to our hearts are the words, "Do not be afraid." Because the heart of the gospel message for us is that no matter how the earth shakes, no matter how much our calling toward love and justice gets us in trouble, no matter how much grief we bear or suffering we face, we do not have to be afraid, for God in Christ promises not just to save us, but to be with us every step of the way.
Joseph teaches us that our deepest hope is summed up in the simple name, “Jesus, our Emmanuel.” Jesus is the promised king and the hope of Israel, the one who pulls outsiders into the flow of God's lineage, the one who was born in scandal, the one born outside the lines, precisely so that he could count all people among God's chosen.
Joseph teaches us that we are all a part of Jesus's family, that we are all adopted as children of God. In Christ, we have been made part of the family of God. We are part of God's history of promise and faithfulness and salvation. We are inheritors of life and light and the very kingdom of God itself.
But maybe, above all, Joseph teaches us that in the genealogy of our faith, God works through the big names: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David…and through the small names: Hezron, Ahaz, Eliud…and through outcast women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, Mary…and through adoptive fathers like Joseph…and right on through the generations to us and through us. Joseph reminds us that Jesus is the center of our ancestry in faith, but from him radiate generations backwards and forwards of all manner of adopted children, all who are named sons and daughters of God, and all who are being used to bring forth the kingdom.
Gail Godwin writes, “If so much powerful stuff can have been accomplished down through the millennia by wastrels, betrayers, and outcasts, and through people who were such complex mixtures of sinner and saint, and through so many obscure and undistinguished others, isn’t that a pretty hopeful testament to the likelihood that God is using us, with our individual flaws and gifts, in all manner of peculiar and unexpected ways? Who of us can say we’re not in the process of being used right now, this Advent, to fulfill some purpose whose grace and goodness would boggle our imagination if we could even begin to get our minds around it?” (“Genealogy and Grace,” in Watch for the Light)
I think it is fair to say that all it took was one short snooze for Joseph’s imagination to be boggled by the grace and goodness of God. And I think that it is more than fair to say that God is, at every point in time, collecting up all of our own doubts and gifts and quirks, so that the world can continue to be blessed by the peculiar and unexpected ways that God works in the world, through the birth of a baby in a manger, through the song of the angels, and through each and every one of us. Because we, too, are named “child of God.” We, too, have been adopted into God’s family. And we, like Joseph, are always on the verge of being surprised by the ways that God is using us to bring light into the world.
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