Father’s Day, June 18, 2006
“He Got It From His Daddy”
Matthew 1:18-25
Dr. Dan Ivins, preaching

“Is not this the carpenter's son?” (Mt. 13:55). The first way Jesus was known was a son of Joseph, not God’s. He was like a lot of kids today, who grew up with one mamma and two Daddies. Though not for the same reasons. One fathered him. He was pretty good! But they don’t come any better than the other one who raised him. Joseph was a carpenter by trade. It was the way he provided for his family. One thing he surely learned was that wood is a lot easier to work with than people.

Take the quandary that got kicked up over Mary's unusual pregnancy. As in no other occasion, in an intense personal crisis you find out what somebody’s made of. “Now the birth of Jesus took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, before they came together -- she was found to be with a child of the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man, was unwilling to shame her. So he resolved to put her away quietly” (Mt. 1:18-19).

They took “safe sex” pretty seriously up in the Galilee back then. It strictly meant an engaged man and woman were not to sleep together before marriage. To the Nazarenes it was “adultery.” No matter what those sophisticated city-slickers in Jerusalem called it. Bottom line: Mary’s pregnant. And her fiancee Joseph took the Bible seriously and perhaps literally ... until he married Mary. Funny how life can teach us more than we can learn in a classroom. And sometimes even arrive at a healthier approach to the scriptures.

Joseph was a righteous man. But he was not the father of Mary's baby. That meant he enjoyed 2 legal options. The first was public divorce. And Mary's certain humiliation; but vindication for Joseph's good name. Or he could put her away privately. Just keep it all in the family. In his reaction to a perplexing situation, we see the kind of father Jesus grew up around. And the impact it made on Jesus. Through it all, it’s easy to see why God chose this man to raise his “only begotten son.”

Matthew begins his story of Jesus, not like Luke, with an angel whispering “sweet nothings” in Mary's ear. But with Joseph, bolting upright in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat; having a nightmare about his sweetheart getting pregnant. And not by him. But that he should marry her anyway. Mary’s predicament and Jesus’ scandalous beginnings was appalling to Joseph. Who are “righteous people” if they’re not offended by the unrighteous?

To a lot of folks infidelity’s just a little-harmless fooling-around. You know, boys will be boys?. Not Joseph. For him, right was right and wrong was wrong. And that’s it. Every “jot and tittle of the law” was vital. So he’s, caught between a rock and a hard place. What’ll it be? His respect for Torah? Or his love for Mary?

But God knows what he’s doing. Even when it doesn’t look like it to us. Even as God’s messenger intervened with Mary, he mediated with Joseph. And from the scant amount of material about him in the Bible, we learn several characteristics that make for good parenting that ought to attract our attention. Because Joseph took fathering as seriously as marriage, the boy he nurtured turned out to be the Son of God!

The first thing is Joseph's compassion. Which is amazing, to say the least. Once Joseph learned of Mary's condition, his first reaction was predictable: to assume she'd been foolin’ around on him. I imagine too that he was not a little hurt by the apparent betrayal. And when we get hurt, its easy to hurt back, returning hurt for hurt. Joseph had every reason to humiliate Mary. For from his perspective, she dishonored him. But Joseph was a bigger man than that. Kind-hearted not mean-spirited. More importantly, God saw something uncommon in him.

“He decided to divorce her,” under the radar screen. He was unwilling to disgrace her. In spite of his wounded feelings. Even the Good Book couldn't override this good man's heart. He cared for Mary. Disregard the injustice Joseph faced, he still couldn’t add to her already heavy burden, or kick her while she’s down. Rather he showed mercy in her most stressful moment. God noticed that.

And it’s not surprising that years later, the young man who matured under righteous Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, would likewise say to another woman in a sexual predicament, lying in vulnerability before her indignant stoners: “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more!”

He got it from his Daddy! God the gracious Father in heaven knew exactly what he was doing, when he placed Jesus his Son, under this compassionate father on earth.

But another thing comes to light as Joseph got caught up in Mary's crisis: an openness to unbelievable possibilities. Here’s a man who’s just learned that his fiancee has a child, that he knows is not his. It gets worse. He decides to put her away without public notoriety.

That’s when she tells him that God’s behind all this “living-in-sin-stuff!” How much more could the mind accept? But incredibly, Matthew tells us Joseph “considered this” (v. 20).

The rest of us would have been so cynical that we'd laugh Mary to scorn! Nobody would’ve allowed even the slightest possibility that she might be telling the truth. I mean, “Who’s the Daddy?” “God.” “You gotta be kidding me. Angels? The Holy Spirit? What kind of fool do you think I am?”

But Joseph was no ordinary man. God saw something in him that he wanted in Jesus. He not only was merciful, but he was incredibly open, for a religious man. God knows that if anybody could accept the mother of his Son, it had to be somebody willing to entertain new possibilities? It came to him in a dream. God's messenger confirmed what Mary said was true. Only a man with an open mind is capable of hearing what nobody else would consider. Joseph was great because he didn’t try to restrict God to his own narrow limits. Joseph was a just man, but he was not a narrow-minded man. That’s the kind of Daddy God wanted for Jesus.

So it’s not surprising that the Son who was influenced by such a big-spirited father, would become the same free-spirit. “I must needs go through Samaria.” When nobody else would. “You’ve heard it said of old time, but I say unto you this...” When nobody else could. “When reviled, he reviled not in return." When everybody else did. He got it from his Daddy!

But the most notable quality in the carpenter's life is his willingness to move out on faith. Don't think for a minute that was easy. Dreams can be very real. But they're still dreams. With only a dream and Mary’s word, Joseph accepted an already-pregnant-woman, with a baby that was not his, and married her anyway! When nobody else would.

Then they split for Bethlehem. Luke says because of “Caesar's census.” But it was really because of Mary’s pregnancy. He needed to get her away from the small-town-tongue-wagging-month-counters. Because Joseph did what few other men would do, Jesus was delivered into the world, who from his manger-cradle was taught to venture forth on faith.

When his own “hour had come.” “The kingdom of God was at hand.” He “launched out into the deep,” with guts and purpose, in pursuit of his “father's business,” purely on faith. The righteousness of “today’s godly men” is self-righteousness. There is no compassion; just crab-minded, judgementalism. Here was a just man, who was compassionate toward others, open to God, and followed by faith. He not only did what others wouldn’t do, he exceeded in it. Jesus later asked his own disciples to “exceed in righteousness” (Mt. 5:20).

By “Loving their enemies, going the 2^nd mile, forgiving 70x7.” I think I know where he got that. From daddy Joe, whose own righteousness was excessively grounded in mercy. Excessive, because it did more than what was required. Excessive, because it was quiet. Excessive because it went beyond the Pharisee-kind-of-righteousness, that’s m ore wrong than right.

He didn't show off his own righteousness at Mary's expense. Though he was in a real bind, he still wanted to do the right thing. But not if it meant bringing harm to Mary. Pinched in a vise, between his doctrine and his heart. He went with his heart. When everybody else would’ve denounced her to defend the doctrine.

But Joseph neither denounced nor pronounced, for that matter. The man never speaks a single word in the Bible! Mary sings. Elizabeth exults. But Joseph the carpenter left us no poetic melodies to hum, no dramatic scenes to depict over at Hallmark. The carpenter wasn’t good at speeches. And couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.

What made him a good husband and father was: he does more than he says. He obeys the divine summons to marry. He fled to Egypt with his family on only a dream. And then he returned to settle in Nazareth...all without a word! Because his was a “righteousness that exceeds.”

A few years later Jesus spoke a beatitude, “Righteousness shouldn’t call attention to itself. Or pat itself on the back. Or trumpet its arrival.” To be righteous is to do what God wants ... quietly, enduring the embarrassment. This is the kind of daddy Jesus had. And they don’t come along that often.

From the moment Jesus was conceived, he caused righteous people to rethink their righteousness. All their moral values were turned upside down. Everything had to be reconsidered, revised or relinquished. To every righteous person like Simeon or Anna, for whom baby Jesus was an answer to prayer, there had to be somebody like Joseph, for whom Jesus was an embarrassment, requiring the quiet reexamining of everything life was previously based upon.

Jesus couldn’t have been what he was -- except for the carpenter of Nazareth, named Joseph. This Father’s Day we tell his story. Yeah, Holy Mary may have been “blessed among women,” to get Jesus into the world. But righteous Joseph was “embarrassed among men.” And wherever Joseph's story is told, Mary's Little Lamb still has that same effect. But you know what I know. He got it from his Daddy.

Pastoral Prayer:God of our own fathers, we gather as a family of faith on this Father’s Day to celebrate the importance of good parenting in a generation that’s better at home breaking than home making. We thank you for giving us a place to belong–the creative connection you devised that binds us to other persons.

Thank you for the ability to remember. And the influence of ages past on the age to come. For the faith within which we still stand. For those who defended it and amended it across the span of time. For those of our day who understand that nothing stays won, and work at continuing reform.

We praise you for all who strive to be good fathers and husbands and contributors to the health of our society. So many are stuck in bad homes, with absentee Dads who neglect their children because they care about other things more.

Just as our homes can make hearts, they can also break them, so be with all who are hurting in our homes, for whatever reason. In our homes, people have been battered and abandoned. In our homes some have not found any person who cared for them. Convinced that those they can see don’t care, they find it hard to believe that You care, dear God. May the acceptance and affirmation people get from our church instill in all of us the faith to believe we can overcome the bad things that happened in our homes.

What a difference it made in Jesus’ life that he had a Dad like Joseph. We praise you for all good fathers in our world, who love their kids, sacrifice on their behalf, teach them to be like Jesus, lift them when they fall, and plant within them the desire to make something out of themselves.

Heirs of such riches, we would bequeath as much and more to those who follow us, a desire to make this world better than we found it...because that’s what Jesus taught us to do...in his name we pray. Amen.