St. Joseph, Guardian of Our Lord

Fourth Sunday in Advent

December 19, 2010

St. Matthew 1:18-24

Ruskin Heights Lutheran Church

Little else evokes the emotion and sentiment of Christmas than coming home. That is what we want, a home, a homecoming, a real place to find for ourselves. But there’s a lot to get us lost along the way.

The noted British author and Christian apologist of the 19th century, G. K. Chesterton, was a brilliant man. He had the uncanny ability to think deep thoughts and express them clearly. However, he was also absent-minded, and over the years he became notorious for getting lost.

About this, so a story goes, he used the e-mail of the day and telegraphed his wife:

“Presently, I am at Market and Harborough. Where should I be?”

His wife in turn telegraphed back a one-word reply: “Home!”

This is precisely what St. Matthew does for us … he brings us home.

He brings us home to the authentic meaning of Christmas.

Contemporary America has commercialized Christmas and, don't you think, made it stressful. Nobody likes it, but here we are, caught up in it. There is a lot of rushing around, buying; a lot of last-minute frenzy and confusion.

We’ve got Black Fridays and Christmas stuff out before Halloween and we compare retail sales receipts this year to last year as if our national security is at risk. It makes me nuts. Children have developed over-exaggerated expectations and I think most parents — including this parent — would admit they have lost the battle, even in a recession.

We had our day with it yesterday, my wife and me. Parking lots, store to store, and questions, questions, questions all coming down to one: “Why didn’t you do this earlier?”

Despite the experience, Dianne and I have decided to stay married.

It is so easy to lose sight of what Christmas is all about. But everybody here already knows that. We also know it is easy to become cynical and dismissive this time of year.

But Matthew calls us home, today.

He calls us to stop and be still. Matthew calls out to us, above all the froth and babbles of the season, and calls us home to heart of the season.

And when St. Matthew calls us home he introduces us first to a man later generations — including our generation — will call St. Joseph, Guardian of Our Lord.

Precious little is known about Joseph.

Even the oral tradition — the tradition outside Scripture — hasn’t got much to say about him. There's a lot of invented "history" but little that is real.

We do not know any of his history before his appearance in scripture — only that he was a “joiner,” a carpenter, a tekton in Greek (which today gives us words like technician and technology).

What we know is mostly what we know from St. Matthew and St. Matthew tells us only in passing — Joseph is a “righteous” man.

We know this because St. Matthew tells us Joseph was prepared to deal with a pregnant Mary according to the demands of righteousness, understood through the Jewish law and custom.

He was prepared to break his betrothal, to "put her aside," when he found she was pregnant. That is what "righteousness" demanded.

The one concession he made was to do it quietly, to diminish Mary’s public disgrace.

So Joseph is a righteous man, but not without some compassion.

Of course we know what happens next.

The angel comes, straightens Joseph out, and even gives him the name by which to call the child.

In Hebrew, the name is Yehoshua, “God is our salvation.”

The root word for Yehoshua in Hebrew is spacious, roomy.

God’s salvation is spacious, plenty of room for everybody.

Catch this irony?

He who was sent to make room for all finds no room on the night of his birth.

But back to Joseph.

Back to the angel.

Back to that word, “disgrace.”

The angel.

Frankly Joseph gets gypped here.There is no other way to put it. Compared to the others in the Nativity story, Joseph gets the shortest of short straws.

When it came time to announce the birth of John the Baptist, Zechariah, his father, gets a visit from no less than the Archangel Gabriel, who tells Zechariah that he, Gabriel himself, "stands in the presence of God." Pretty important stuff for an angel, who makes sure Zechariah knows it, too.

When it came time to announce to Mary her role in the salvation of the world, again, there’s another visit from the Archangel Gabriel, who says her pregnancy is by God’s choice through the Holy Spirit.

And even for the shepherds a bit later, they get a flash-mob chorus from heaven doing the Hallelujah.

But Joseph? What does Joseph get?

Joseph gets some no-name angel . . . and not even in person, no face time here. Just a dream.

Joseph doesn’t get the real thing, not like the others — no flappy wings, no dazzling light, no tune to hum on the way to work — he gets a dream and a lower echelon angel who goes unnamed whispering in his ear.

And Joseph acts on the basis of a dream. There is a brave man.

And more, when this no-name angel tells Joseph, “don’t be afraid,” well, at least this angel knows what he is talking about. (I don't think Gabriel always did; just my opinion.)

If a betrothed woman became pregnant, it was regarded as adultery.

The penalty for which was death by stoning (still a penalty in some Mideast cultures).

Joseph takes a risk, a big risk.

He took the dream at face value.

He does not put Mary aside quietly or any other way and, come time for the child to be born, he remembers the name to give.

Here is a “righteous” man by law and Jewish custom.

For a woman, and for a child not his own, he throws away his righteousness according to the Law.

This he tosses this aside for an uncertain future.

And the public disgrace that would have fallen upon Mary, Joseph takes it for himself.

St. Paul in one place calls himself a “Pharisee of Pharisees,” so diligently did he work to observe the Law — but all he did, so he writes, he counts as less than a filthy rag compared to the Good News of salvation through Jehoshuah the Messiah.

St. Paul said it.

But it was Joseph who first lived it.

And so St. Matthew brings us home this Christmas.

He bring us home to a place; home to the story of Joseph to remind us that what is yet honored best in this season and in any other are words like

courage,

duty,

love,

devotion,

faith

— words that every father and every husband should seek for his own.

And even though we know so little about Joseph, we know enough to call him Guardian of Our Lord.