Note: the featured image is ” “Dorothy Day and the Holy Family of the Streets” by Kelly Latimore

PREPARING FOR THE SOLSTICE FEAST AND THE BIRTH OF CHRIST

Matthew 1:18-25 Common English Bible

18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ took place. When Mary his mother was engaged to Joseph, before they were married, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. 19 Joseph her husband was a righteous man. Because he didn’t want to humiliate her, he decided to call off their engagement quietly. 20 As he was thinking about this, an angel from the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because the child she carries was conceived by the Holy

Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you will call him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 Now all of this took place so that what the Lord had spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled:
23 Look! A virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son,

And they will call him, Emmanuel.[a] (Emmanuel means “God with us.”)
24 When Joseph woke up, he did just as an angel from God commanded and took Mary as his wife. 25 But he didn’t have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son. Joseph called him Jesus.

Reflection: “The Law of Love”

Joseph was a “righteous man”. Or, in a more contemporary translation, “Joseph was a man who always did what was right”.
We don’t know very much at all about the life of Joseph, Mary’s husband and the earthly father of Jesus. There are the familiar stories about the beginning of Jesus’ life – his conception and birth, the flight to Egypt and the return to Nazareth. But Joseph disappears from the gospel narratives after their family pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover when Jesus was 12 years old.

Just before the passage above, the gospel of Matthew tells us that Joseph’s Hebrew genealogy traces all the way back to David and before that to Abraham. And later in Matthew, when Jesus teaches in the synagogue in Nazareth, his listeners ask, “Is this not the carpenter’s son?” Although the Greek word “tekton” that is usually translated as carpenter is more accurately translated as “craftsman”, and Joseph could have been a stone mason or any other kind of builder.

And that’s it, precious few facts in the gospels about the life of this man who is such a pivotal figure in the story of Jesus’ life and work. But today’s passage tells us a lot about his character and about his faithful efforts to understand and do what God needs him to do.

That first statement that he is a righteous man, or that he always did what was right, tells us that Joseph is probably someone who was comfortable following the rules, who was maybe even a little bit annoying to his friends, maybe a little bit unimaginative in how he lives his life. He works hard, he follows the Hebrew law, he is a pillar of his small-town community.
And now Joseph is taking the next big step on the expected path of his life, he is engaged to the right kind of girl, and he has followed all the rules for their betrothal. Although they are legally considered to be married, they are observing the traditional waiting period with Mary still living in her father’s home, and the marriage is not consummated.
And then, without warning, Joseph’s orderly, righteous life is shattered. Mary is pregnant, and in that time and place her pregnancy as a betrothed woman means that Joseph has the right to accuse her of adultery. She can be shamed, ostracized from her community, even killed. From now on, Joseph’s decisions about the right thing to do are a lot more complicated.
And here is our second clue to Joseph’s character. He knows what he is expected to do and he is not prepared to break the rules, but he is a kind man and doesn’t want to humiliate Mary any more than necessary. He decides to quietly break the engagement. He finds a nice compromise between duty and compassion. He is trying to do the right thing

In the first season of the Netflix series “The Crown” Queen Elizabeth II was no stranger to the struggle to do the right thing, to make the right choices between duty and compassion. The series shows the Crown almost as a character in itself, a powerful symbol of the burden of the queen’s duties as constitutional head of the British Empire and the Church of England. Elizabeth faces decision after decision where she must balance her love for family and friends against her duty as monarch. Because she is so schooled in her responsibility to the Crown, to the law and constitution of the land, she usually decides in favour of duty rather than love, but she does it at great cost to herself and to her relationships.

Joseph’s dilemma and Queen Elizabeth’s dilemma are played out in our world and our lives on a daily basis. Maybe our decisions don’t have the same huge impact as theirs, but we do have to make daily decisions between what society expects and what our hearts tell us is right. We have to weigh the law of the land, the rules of our organizations and workplaces, the unspoken rules of tradition and “we’ve always done it this way” against our desire to live honestly and compassionately. Those values don’t always fit the values of our world. Sometimes we have to decide between the rule of law and the rule of love, even if it makes us unpopular, even if it’s illegal, even if it’s dangerous.

Some of you might remember the Rev. Bob Stiven, who was the minister at Comox United Church before Maggie Enwright. I’ll never forget a wonderfully irate letter to the editor that he wrote a few years before his death, insisting on his right to pick up hitchhikers on the new highway. You’ve probably noticed the signs: No Hitchhiking. Pickup is illegal. Bob was furious. No law was going to tell him that he couldn’t offer the kindness of a ride to strangers in need. He would do it in spite of the threat of a ticket. For Bob, picking up hitchhikers was the right thing to do, a choice to follow the law of love.

Like Bob, we are sometimes faced with personal ethical decisions where the choice we make to act with love may be illegal or fly in the face of society’s expectations. We may also sometimes find ourselves caught in this sort of dilemma on a larger scale, especially when powerful governments swerve towards policies and laws that are unjust or cruel, that infringe on human rights and victimize people without the power or resources to fight back. We see it in actions of mass civil disobedience like the civil rights movement in the United States, and in those who risk their own lives to protect political fugitives, like the many people in Europe who sheltered Jews and other marginalized populations during WWII and helped them escape.

These decisions are never easy. There are usually grey areas, like the possibility of causing an accident when you stop to pick up a hitchhiker. It gets especially murky when our decisions affect others that we love. Whole families are endangered when we choose to shelter a fugitive. Who will care for our children if we are hurt or arrestedprotesting at a nuclear weapons plant? Usually, like Joseph, we look for a compromise, a way to do the right thing without risking everything.

But poor Joseph, just when he thinks he has found his way out of his private little hell of conflicting responsibilities, heaven breaks into his and Mary’s lives in a big way. He has a dream, and in that dream an angel tells him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because her baby is the child of the Holy Spirit. The angel tells him that the child is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, and that he should name him Jesus. And when he wakes up, Joseph does what the angel asks of him: he takes Mary as his wife and names the baby Jesus.

This is where we see the law of love in action. We see Joseph, fond of following the rules, wanting to take care of his fiancé but intimidated by society’s conventions. We watch him suddenly find the courage to love and protect Mary and her baby in spite of everything – in spite of certain shame and ridicule and possible physical danger. We see him open to hearing God’s message delivered by the angel, and ready to act because he trusts in God. He loses his fear and his timidity and his concerns about what people will think. Along with Mary, he becomes God’s partner in doing something completely new in the world.

Joseph can do this because he is at heart a kind man who loves Mary and wants to do the right thing. He can also do this because he is responding to the greatest Law of all, which is God’s love announced by an angel and made visible and touchable and vulnerable in the world, God’s love expressed in the baby born to Mary by the Holy Spirit. By naming Jesus, Joseph gives the baby a fully human heritage that links him to all the generations of God’s people reaching back to the ancestors Abraham and Sarah. This is the hope this story gives us: Joseph is not perfect, he is human and he probably didn’t always do what was right. And we are also human and don’t always do what is right. Sometimes, Christmas is a time that seems to magnify our imperfections. We aren’t perfect and our families aren’t perfect, and sometimes we end up treating each other badly as we try to live up to society’s expectations of a perfect celebration. Or we are sad and lonely because we are not able to be with everyone that we love at such a special time of year. But in spite of our very human imperfections and longings, God arrives in our imperfect world, shares our humanity, and encourages us to live by the law of love.

Thanks be to God for breaking into our lives without warning, calling us into partnership and offering us the invitation to change ourselves and our world. Listen, trust God, and take those first small steps with Mary and Joseph and the baby towards new life.
Let us pray: O God, we await your presence among us in the form of our great teacher and healer, Jesus. Give us courage, like Joseph, to live according to your will and dream for the world. Grant us patience and open our hearts as we receive Christ’s presence in our lives. Amen.

For Reflection:

As in the story of Joseph’s dream, angels are messengers of change and encouragement. What message of change or encouragement do you need to hear? What message of change or encouragement would you like to share with others?