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From the First Baptist Church in America pulpit
The Second Sunday in Advent - December 12, 2006
“Between a Rock and a Hard Place”
Matthew 1:18-25
Dr. Dan Ivins, preaching

Few biblical passages say as much with such few words as Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus. Its an intriguing story, about God abandoning heaven for earth, trading power and might for dirty diapers and a teething ring. Jesus’ own mother couldn’t say exactly how it happened. But his mamma’s new husband knew it had nothing to do with him. Preposterous? Maybe. Which is why it is best understood not in terms of logic or reason, but as a theological story.

Most people think of Christmas in light of Mary. And Mary’s baby. Luke’s Gospel. But only Matthew tells us about Mary’s husband, Joseph. And I’m glad he did because Joseph illustrates something we better be familiar with–having our well-laid plans interrupted. Both Matthew and Luke, present Mary as virginal. But the emphasis is on the conception not the birth. Matthew doesn’t make the divinity of Jesus dependent upon Mary, but on God. You won’t find Joseph in many Christmas carols. And we have to read between-the-lines to catch something of his character. Joseph was a religious man of integrity, whose commitments mattered a lot. But he also had a warm heart. That’s the kind of balanced personality God wanted to be an influence on Jesus. And the world’s never been the same.

Luke has no place for Joseph in his story. His is a for-women-only account. But in Matthew, Joseph is not just in the middle of things -- he’s caught between a rock and a hard place. That often happens to good folks with kind hearts. His love for Mary was real. Therein lies the rub. Because of his love for her, even though she was in a bind, watch his sense of right and wrong give way to God’s. Not the least being his frustrated intentions. First Joseph plans to marry Mary; then he plans to divorce her, then God steps in and says “marry Mary anyway!” On and off. That’s how it is when we make plans. Joseph was making plans, all right.

But dreams are what angels bring. Dreams give us a vision of what God’s doing instead of what we’re planning. Sometimes like Joseph, we have more plans than dreams. Health plans, retirement plans, financial plans, family planning. Loaded down with plans. We know too much. We’ve seen too much. And much more at home with plans than dreams. In the midst of all these interruptions and change of plans, an angel whispers in Joseph’s ear, “Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife. God is behind all of this. It falls to you to name the Liberator, because your new wife’s baby signals the arrival of God on earth!”

Even though it wasn’t his, Joseph got to name Mary’s baby. But what did that make him? Father or a stepfather? The salutation is important. Matthew has no “Magnificat.” Mary has no lines in Matthew at all. So the annunciation is to Joseph, not Mary. According to Matthew, Christmas hangs on what happens with Joseph, who’s caught between his conscience and his heart. The arrival of God on earth hinges on what he does about it. If Joseph dares to believe the angel, then everything’s on. The story can continue. Mary gets a home in a family and her child will be born, as it was written, “a son of David.”

But if Joseph does not believe, then it stops before it gets started. If he wakes from his dream and heads out in righteous indignation for the Jerusalem divorce court. Then Mary becomes an outcast, to fend for herself and her illegitimate pregnancy on whatever she can beg, steal, or borrow. The child is Joseph’s till he says otherwise; not biologically his, but graciously his. Will Joseph claim him or not? Is this important or what? It means Joseph’s faith is as crucial to Jesus’ arrival as Mary’s womb! Of course, it takes both, Mary to give him his life and Joseph to give him a name. Then the shame of discovering Mary was pregnant. And he knew he wasn’t the daddy! But still he married her. What a guy! And what a way to begin a gospel–scandal all over the place. We oughta feel right at home with it. Picture Joseph bolting up in bed, in a cold sweat from a nightmare about his fiancee’s pregnancy, not by him. But he’s told that God wants him to take the risk and marry her just the same. You won’t hear this Advent story over at the mall.

Matthew revels in scandalous pregnancies. In his first chapter he links Jesus to David through Joseph, mentioning 42 fathers along the way and four women, two of whom had scandalous pregnancies and a third was a prostitute who couldn’t afford to get pregnant. Tamar became pregnant through her brother Judah’s incest. And Bathsheba was made pregnant not by Uriah her husband but David the king!

Before he closes the first Chapter Matthew adds a fifth woman to Jesus’ analogy: Mary of Nazareth and the ultimate scandalous pregnancy. They don’t come any more scandalous than this. And it put Joseph in a crack, caught between loving the law and loving Mary. What would he to do? As it turned out for the benefit of the world, Joseph did as he was instructed in the dream, and went with his heart, over his morality. He would be caring rather than right when it was impossible to be both. He took Mary as his wife and her child as his own. The rest is history.

I hope our church can be like that. Taking people in. People need a place that’ll take ‘em in, when they’re having a tough go of it. God give us more“no-strings-attached” churches; “radically-loving-churches.”

Jesus may not have inherited Joseph’s DNA, but he sure felt his influence. After growing up under Daddy Joe’s parenting, he asked his own disciples to “exceed in both righteousness and love” in his Sermon on the Mount. But before Jesus was born, Joseph was the first example of this kind of compassion, embodying a “love that exceeds,” and a righteousness that goes beyond what was expected. Now where do you think Jesus got that? We can’t ignore his initial impulse to divorce Mary. But don’t you find it interesting that in a gospel so rigid on divorce (Chapters 5 & 19), it is first mentioned as an act of righteousness?

That’s because excessive love trumps the law. And Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and prophets.” Love melts legalism. So Joseph couldn’t blame her, even though he was deeply hurt. Joseph was caught between his ethics and his empathy.

How different it is when we get hurt. We hurt back. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,”and everybody goes around eyeless and toothless! But Joseph neither denounces nor pronounces. Joseph never says a single word in the entire Bible! Mary sings. Elizabeth prays. But Joseph the carpenter, left us with no poetry to turn into Christmas carols; no dramatics to depict on our Christmas cards; no rousing speeches. And he couldn’t carry a tune. His gift was doing more than what was expected. Joseph was good at “going the second mile.” So later in his life, Jesus preached a second mile ethic. Because he grew up under a kind-hearted man whose goodness exceeded normal standards. Even when it didn’t make sense, he obeyed God and married Mary. Then fled to Egypt with his new family and returned to Nazareth when it was safe. All that without speaking a word! Joseph’s speech consisted of a life of faith in God. No wonder God chose such a man to be Jesus’ father!

So the arrival of Jesus into the world not only evoked joy and wonder, but also a crisis of what it means to be loving. Matthew shows us how the coming of God inevitably puts us between a rock and a hard place. From the moment Jesus was conceived, God put good people to rethinking their goodness and how love is more important that being right. And when Jesus is taken seriously, values get turned upside-down.

For every good person like Simeon or Anna, for whom Mary’s baby Jesus was an answer to prayer, there are those like Joseph, for whom Jesus’ Advent required a double-take of everything in his life that he thought he had nailed down. Joseph was just fine till Jesus came. But he still comes to give all who are caught in the hard rock cafe, an opportunity to reconsider their options. Joseph teaches us that what we think oughta be the just thing, may not be the best thing. There may be something more just than that.

Hopefully we’ll value our dreams more than our plans. For isn’t God saying to us the same thing the angel said to Joseph: “Don’t be afraid, trust your dreams, forego your rights, express your love.” That’s what had to happen for Christmas to come then and the same holds for us today. So I’m not “dreaming of a white Christmas,” I’m “dreaming of a loving church,” modeled after the carpenter from Nazareth. If we become like that, together we can take this infant revolution of God’s, that some people call “Christmas,” with it’s out-of-wedlock future; and to our offspring, through the grace of God, we can offer the name “salvation.”

You remember the baseball movie “Field of Dreams.” (Not plans). Kevin Costner played a farmer with a vision to do something odd: build a baseball field out in a Midwestern corn field. While it made no sense, nevertheless, the popular line from the film came through an angel: “If you build it, they will come.” Isn’t that what the angel said to Joseph? “If you bet on Mary, the Savior will come.” Yeah it’s a bad risk, if all you think about is who’s right. But to his everlasting credit, Joseph bit the bullet and bet the farm on Mary. And Jesus came. To inform us to forget about our faulty contaminated ideas of right or wrong! Just do what God says, like Joseph did! And good things will happen. That’s what always happens when we muster the courage to live by our faith instead of the rules.

And to us at old First Church that same voice is saying...can you hear it? “If you build a loving church...the way Joseph loved Mary...they will come.” I believe that. Don’t you?

PRAYER: Lord, whose presence alone makes Advent, help us to follow the visions and dreams you have given to us without fear. Let Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth renew our faith and rekindle our commitment. Let it fill us with compassion toward all who are caught between a rock and a hard place today. Through him whose coming has changed the world. Amen.