“God Is With Us”

“God Is With Us”

Text: Matthew 1:18-25

© December 23, 2007 by C. Edward Bowen at Crafton United Presbyterian Church.

I think you would agree that Christmas carols certainly are a big part of this season. And by listening to carols and by singing carols, we’re reminded about all the different parts of the Christmas story. Some carols remind us about the angels that announced Jesus’ birth, carols like “Hark, the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn King….” “Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o’er the plains.”

Other carols speak of the shepherds, the first visitors to come and see the newborn Jesus, like the one verse in “Silent Night,” where it goes, “Silent night! Holy night! Shepherds quake at the sight.” Or there is “Go, Tell It On The Mountain,” where it says, “While shepherds kept their watching o’er silent flocks by night.”

And of course many carols speak about Jesus’ mother, Mary, like the first verse of “Silent Night” where it says, “‘round yon virgin mother and child.” Or another carol begins: “What Child is this, who, laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping.” Or in the carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” the second verse starts: “For Christ is born of Mary, and gathered all above.”

In the Christmas carols, we hear about the angels. We hear about the shepherds. We hear about Mary. We even hear about the wise men, who came offering their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But in the Christmas carols, did you ever notice who you almost never hear about? Joseph! Just think about it: how many carols can you think of that speak about Joseph? Hardly any!

It’s been said that Joseph is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Christmas story, because it seems that Joseph just doesn’t get any respect.[1] But why is that?

Well, part of that may be due to the fact that the Bible itself doesn’t tell us much at all about Joseph. We’re told that he was a carpenter or some kind of a craftsman. We’re told that he was engaged to Mary, and he was there in Bethlehem when Jesus was born. But besides that, about the only other thing the Bible tells us about Joseph is a rather short story in the Gospel of Luke that says that when Jesus was twelve years old, Mary and Joseph took Jesus to Jerusalem to visit the temple. But after that, there’s no mention of Joseph at all. He just sort of disappears from the story.

So this past week as I was working on this sermon, I decided to do some research and see what else I could find out about Joseph. But the fact is that there doesn’t seem to be much at all that anyone knows about him. There is a tradition, though, that says Mary was Joseph’s second wife. According to that tradition, when Joseph was 40 years old he married his first wife. But that tradition isn’t even clear as to what that wife’s name was – whether it was Melcha or Escha or Salome. But in any case, it’s said that Joseph had six children by that wife – two daughters and four sons. But when Joseph was 89 years old, that wife died. And according to that same tradition, the next year, Joseph, who was then 90 years old, and Mary, who was probably 12 or 14 years old, met each other and became engaged. If you’ve ever noticed in manger scenes that the Joseph figure usually looks a lot older than the Mary figure, it’s mainly because of that tradition. But I should add that historians seriously question just how reliable that tradition is.

But even though Joseph is someone that we know hardly anything about, here in the reading that we listened to today from the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph is the central figure. So let’s take a moment to set the scene, because at first glance the opening lines of this passage appear to be a bit confusing. Our Bibles say: “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.” Naturally we’re led to wonder: what does the Gospel writer mean when he says that Mary was engaged to Joseph but was not yet living with him?

Well, first we need to realize that what we understand by the word “engagement” today isn’t the same as what “engagement” meant back in the first century when Joseph and Mary lived. Back then young people often were engaged by the time they were 10 or 12 years old. An engagement was an arrangement, usually worked out by the children’s parents, that one day when they got a little older, the boy and the girl would get married.

And so usually for a couple years at least, even though a boy and a girl might be engaged, they each continued to live separately in their parents’ houses. And then normally when the boy was about 16 or so and when the girl was 13 or so, they would have their marriage ceremony and begin living together.

So what the Gospel of Matthew is telling us is that Mary and Joseph were in that stage where they were engaged, but they were still living in and sleeping in separate houses. But one day Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, and right away he knew that he wasn’t the father. And at that point no angel had shown up to Joseph to let him in on what’s going on. And so Joseph came to the only conclusion that he could have – that Mary must have fooled around with some other guy. And so here in Matthew we’re told that Joseph decided to dismiss Mary quietly.

But what exactly does that mean that Joseph decided to dismiss Mary quietly. Well, in the Roman Catholic tradition, they say that Joseph wanted to break off the engagement because he felt unworthy to marry Mary. That even though Joseph had not yet officially been informed that Mary would be giving birth to the Son of God, he sensed that that was what was happening, and he wanted to allow Mary to leave him because he didn’t feel worthy of the honor of being Jesus’ father. The only problem with that interpretation is that it just doesn’t match up with the way that the Gospel of Matthew tells the story.

No, as you read the story as it’s presented to us here in Matthew’s Gospel, you find that Joseph didn’t decide to send Mary away because he had too much respect for her to marry her. No, Joseph decided to send Mary away because he felt betrayed. He believed that she had fooled around, that she had committed adultery. And according to the law as it’s laid out in the Old Testament, Joseph would have had every right to drag Mary in front of the local authorities, put her on trial, and then have her punished by having her stoned to death.

But according to Matthew, Joseph was a merciful man and decided not to do that to Mary. Instead, his plan was to let her go, quietly – to let her just slip away during the night, never to be seen again. In that way, Joseph probably figured, he could put that whole awful, embarrassing mess behind him and start over. In that way, Joseph probably figured, he could be done with Mary, walk away from her, and look for happiness somewhere else.

But then, at the last minute, an angel appeared to Joseph and told him not to leave Mary, because the child conceived in her was from God. And the angel proceeded to tell Joseph that the child would be known as Immanuel, a name meaning “God is with us.” In other words, the angel was saying, Jesus was being born to show us that God is with us, that God is with us even at those times and in those places when we might be tempted to think that God is nowhere to be found.

Back around the year 300, there was a very well known Christian monk who lived in the deserts of Egypt by the name of Anthony. And people would travel from all over to see Anthony and to ask his guidance on spiritual matters. One day someone approached Anthony and asked, “What must I do to please God?” And the first two pieces of advice that Anthony offered were probably things the visitor expected to hear. Anthony said, “First, always be aware of God’s presence. Second, always obey God’s Word.” But then he added a third piece of advice: “If you want to please God, wherever you find yourself – do not easily leave.”[2]

Do you see the wisdom that Anthony was conveying with those words: “If you want to please God, wherever you find yourself – do not easily leave”? So often in life we keep trying to convince ourselves that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. And so many people spend their whole lives moving from one side of the fence to the other and on and on. We keep changing our spouses, we keep changing our jobs, we keep changing where we live, we keep changing our friends – and by doing that, we figure that at some point, some day, we’ll finally be happy. That by doing that, by making all those changes, we’ll finally find God and be where God wants us to be.

But what Anthony tried to get people to see, and I believe what this story from the Gospel of Matthew is trying to get us to see, is that we don’t need to make change after change after change in an attempt to find God. That’s because God is already with us. Whether we realize it or not, even when things might seem far less than perfect, God is with us, right where we are.

It’s like we say in the closing response here in our worship services: Wherever we are, God has put us there. God has a purpose in our being there. Christ, who dwells within us, has something he wants to do through us where we are. Believe this, and go in his grace and love and power.[3]

No matter where we are, God is with us and God wants to do something through us. The truth, though, is that that’s not always an easy lesson for us to learn. But we shouldn’t feel too bad, because that wasn’t an easy lesson for even Joseph to learn. At first he wasn’t able to see what God was doing in his life when Mary suddenly became pregnant. At first he thought that what was happening was awful, and just wanted to walk away from it and move on. But finally, with the help of an angel, Joseph came to see that in some totally unexpected, amazing way God was with him right where he was, right in the midst of what was going on in his and Mary’s life.

The truth is that God is always with us. But like Joseph, from moment to moment we might not be able to see exactly where or how God is with us. From moment to moment we might not be able to see what God is up to in our lives. But even so, just like with Joseph, we’re invited to have faith – to have faith that no matter what, whether we realize it or not, God is always with us.