December 24, 2007, 8:00 PM
Matthew 1:18-25

The Rev. David A. Davis

“By Any Other Name?”

 

            How about a word on behalf of Joseph? Matthew tells us he was “a righteous man”. You can count on less than one hand the number of men described in all of scripture as “righteous”. There’s Noah, way back there in the Old Testament. “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation; Noah walked with God.” (Gen 6) At the end of Luke’s Gospel, it is Joseph of Arimathea who went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. He wrapped in it a linen cloth and laid it in a tomb cut into the rock. Luke introduces Joseph to his readers as “a good and righteous man.” (Luke 23) Job, that infamous victim of all suffering, the bible labels him as “blameless and upright, one who feared God, and turned away from evil” (Job 1). That’s almost righteous. And Simeon, the old man in the temple who took the child Jesus into his arms to offer a blessing. Luke tells us that Simeon was “righteous and devout” and that the Holy Spirit rested on him. (Luke 2) Simeon. Joseph of Arimathea. Job. Noah.
            And Joseph, who had been engaged to Mary, and before they lived together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. “Joseph” Matthew writes, “being a righteous man”, like he’s describing the color of his hair or what he was wearing or where he was from! “Joseph, since he was from Piscataway, he was unwilling to let be publicly humiliated.” He was a righteous man and apparently, there weren’t all that many. Joseph, the son of Jacob, the one betrothed to Mary, the carpenter, who was of the house and lineage of David and of Abraham, he was a righteous man! He was devout, and he turned from evil. He was blameless and upright. He was good and he walked with God. Joseph was a righteous man!
            Mary had the benefit of a conversation with the Angel Gabriel, a bit of give and take. Joseph, he had to settle for a dream. Mary was able to visit with Elizabeth who was carrying John the Baptist in her belly at the time. They talked about babies kicking and the Lord blessing and the Mighty One doing great things. That’s when Mary sang about God scattering the proud and bringing down the powerful and lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things. Luke reports that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months while she was pregnant. I’d sort of forgotten that part. Joseph didn’t have anybody. He was a guy. He didn’t talk to anyone and he certainly didn’t share his feelings. In the tradition of the Evangelists, here in the four gospels, he never even says a word. Joseph, he must have been out pounding nails and wondering what on earth was happening to him and to Mary, what on earth would happen to this child. 
            On of Rembrandt’s religious etchings dated from 1654 is titled “The Virgin and Child with Cat and Snake.” Mary is depicted in a familiar pose cradling the Child and bending forward so that mother and child are just about cheek to cheek. To Mary’s right on the floor is cat curled up sleeping. The snake is slithering on the floor out from underneath Mary’s skirt, pretty much right in the center there at the bottom. The scene is a room in a house, more homey than a barn or a stable, but not much more.
            If one does just a bit of research on “The Virgin and the Child with a  Cat and a Snake” Rembrandt (1654), you can easily find some commentary out there. The web site of  National Gallery of Art explains that there is a legend that “the cat of the Madonna” gave birth to a litter of cats there in the stable where Christ was born. And experts are quick to point out the symbolism of the snake as the Devil, the one who will take on the Baby Jesus in his lifetime. To make us all feel better, some even suggest that Mary is actually stomping on the snake though you can’t see that from the picture itself.
            Folks write about the snake and the cat, but no one writes about Joseph. In the Rembrandt etching Joseph is there. But he’s actually outside the room, on the other side of the window, peering in. The cat is all set. The snake is in the center. Joseph is on the outside looking in, and no one seems to notice, much less care! Even Mary, if we’re honest. Her focus is on the baby. She doesn’t even know Joseph is there, at the window, on the outside, looking in.
How about a word for Joseph? Joseph standing there looking, on behalf of all who have ever felt a bit removed, a bit distant, a bit shut out. Joseph, standing out there on behalf of any who thought they were just trying to do the right thing, those who experienced a rather complicated and sudden turn in life, those who weren’t able to see or comprehend, let alone explain what God might be doing here. Joseph, looking in, on behalf of all who yearn to be closer to the promise, to know just a little of what Mary pondered in her heart, to share more in the embrace of divine love; on behalf of those desperate to look right into the eyes of God’s grace. Joseph, standing there on behalf of any who have been silenced by the tradition, shut out by the church, looked down upon and judged by the overly pious and the arrogantly religious. As when the crowds, much later in Matthew’s Gospel, when they were astounded by what Jesus did and taught and they said, “Is this not the carpenter’s son?”   
Joseph was a righteous man. He did as the angle of the Lord commanded him; he took Mary as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son. And then? And then, when the child was born, according to scripture, this minor character in salvation’s pageant, he didn’t sing like Zechariah, he didn’t ponder like Mary, he didn’t rejoice like shepherds or pay homage like the Magi, he didn’t preach like Peter, he didn’t pray like Paul…he named him Jesus. Joseph named him Jesus. For as the angel had said in the dream, “You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  He did more than sing. Joseph. He did more than speak. Joseph named him Jesus; for he will save his people from their sins.
According to Matthew, the naming, it wasn’t just obedience or even just righteousness, it was fulfillment. Joseph didn’t speak, he fulfilled. “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 with us.”(Matthew 1:22-23) Through the prophet. You remember the prophet Isaiah: “For unto us a Child is born, a son is given; and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” “and they shall name him Emmanuel which means God is with us.” It’s not just any other name. Jesus, our Emmanuel.
How about a word for Joseph, standing there on the margin, for in the naming of Jesus he invites you to encounter “God with us” this Christmas Eve night. Yes, take in the song and the fellowship and the scene. It’s Christmas Eve, after all! But Joseph, he stands out there as a reminder that Christmas Eve, is nothing other, nothing short, nothing else, nothing… if not an encounter with Emmanuel; God with us.
Sara Miles wrote a book this year entitled Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion, The Spiritual Memoir of a Twenty-first Century Christian. It’s too late for a stocking stuffer, but it is worth the read. By her own admission, the author is not the “kind of woman her friends expected to see suddenly praising Jesus.” As she started running the food pantry at St Gregory’s Episcopal Church, she chuckled that she was hardly the person President Bush had in mind when he talked about a “faith-based charity,” herself a lesbian, left wing journalists who covered revolutions all around the world. Her own parents, themselves self-proclaimed atheist children of missionary parents could never have imagined her serving communion in church to hymn singing folks.
Her book tells of how she became a Christian. “Claiming a faith” she writes, “that many of my fellow believers want to exclude me from; following a God my unbelieving friends see as archaic superstition. At a time when Christianity in America is popularly represented by ecstatic teen crusaders in suburban megachurches, slick preachers proclaiming the “gospel” of prosperity, and shrewd political organizers who rail against evolution, gay marriage, and stem-cell research, it’s crucial to understand what faith actually means in the lives of people very different from one another. Why would any thinking person become a Christian?” For Sara Miles, her journey centers on her experience of the Lord’s Supper and her encounter with the promise of God with us. In the end, she says “Christianity wasn’t an argument I could win, or even resolve. It wasn’t a thesis. It was a mystery that I was finally willing to swallow….Faith is a lens, a way of experiencing life, and a willingness to act.” Or as she reminds her reader, “as the Bible says, Taste and See”
Jesus, our Emmanuel.
Near the end of the book, Sara Miles describes caring for a very sick friend. The friend was angry at God, at the world, at her. The work of caretaking was wearing her down. She was tired, at the end of her rope. Sara headed to the kitchen to fix a snack to share. “I can’t do this anymore” she said aloud, quietly and yet miserably. “I can’t do this alone.”
The toast popped up and she buttered it, then she broke it. “It is truly right always and everywhere to praise you, Lord God, our Father, Lover of All”. She thought. And the words of the Anglican liturgy came back to her. There in the kitchen, she said all of the Great Prayer of Thanksgiving, and she went on “For on the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread.” The toast was on the plate and the glass of water in her hand. “I was as unprepared to find myself celebrating for the first time as I had been to receive”, she admitted as she took in this sacramental, holy moment. This taste of the presence of God. “I wasn’t alone. This wasn’t the end.” God is here, even here! She went back to the bedside and she offered the toast and glass of water and said “Millie, this is for you.”
The author sat with her friend for another half hour or so and then tucked her into sleep and poured a fresh glass of water for later and put it on the nightstand. And as she drove home, Sara found herself stunned and blinking back tears, and she said aloud to herself, “Oh my God, its real.”  Or as she described it better than I can, “each earthly detail incredibly vivid, with the eternal hovering right there in the middle of it, side by side with the suffering, and a huge peace beating slowly like the heartbeat of God.”
Emmanuel. God with us.
The Lord’s Supper on Christmas Eve. It’s not just one more liturgical act to fit into an overflowing night. For here, time stands still, it scrunches all together. Jesus invites you, and Joseph leads the way to your encounter with God’s fulfillment. Come, taste and see, share in the mystery of God’s presence. Here, where the manger, and the cross, and the empty tomb, it all scrunches together. Grace come down. Grace made known. Come to the Table, this Holy Night, that your life might be surrounded  and filled, overwhelmed by the very presence of God.

 

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