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From The First Baptist Church in America pulpit
Providence, Rhode Island – June 21, 2009
“Embarrassed Among Men” (Matthew 1:18-25)
Dr. Dan Ivins, preaching

Father’s Day isn’t as big as Mother’s Day in this society. Even though the restaurants and Hallmark are doing their best to make it so. For many reasons it’s just different with Mammas. But in my southern home I felt closer to my Dad than my Mom. I was blessed to have a Daddy who was the best Sunday School teacher in town. He’d take us to the lake in summertime; the mountains in the fall; firecrackers on New Years. You could tell how good he was because nobody wanted to graduate from his class. He’d get up every day and go off to work, but after school he’d come home and play softball with us kids in the back yard. Dad was always there in the home, providing the things a father’s supposed to offer his family. He was a respected leader in the community and someone I’ve always looked up to.

Jesus had some harsh things to say about fathers and mothers. “Who is my mother?” he said in put-down language. And “What man among you, if his child needs bread, will give him a stone? Or a fish, and give him a snake?” (Matt 7:7-10). Whew! Jesus’ family values. A whole lot of kids have begged their daddies for bread and got stones instead. Rather than facilitating their children's growth, they stunt it, through neglect or abuse. Our society is screwed up largely because too many kids have asked for a catfish and got a copperhead!

But not Jesus' daddy, Joseph. He’s the strong, silent type, whose deeds took precedence over his words. One of the earliest ways Jesus became known was when his hometown folks said, “Is not this the carpenter's son?” (Matt 13:55). It wasn’t until much later that he became known as “God’s Son.” Daddy Joe made a living as carpenter to provide for his family. There's a lot we can learn about him in the entanglement over his sweetheart's unusual pregnancy. In an intense personal crisis you learn what somebody’s made of. (Matthew 1:18-19).

Yeah they took “safe sex” pretty seriously in those New Testament days. It meant an engaged man and woman were not to have intercourse before marriage, period. Otherwise to the folks in Nazareth it was “adultery” no matter what the urbane city-slickers in Jerusalem called it. So Mary shows up pregnant. Uh-oh. But she’s in luck, because her fiancee Joseph was a good man, who took the Bible seriously and at that time still literally. No matter what kind of man he was, he knew he was not the father of Mary's baby. He had two legal options: public divorce, which guaranteed Mary's humiliation. But at least Joseph's good name would be vindicated. Or private divorce. And Holy Mary may have been “blessed among women” all right, but righteous Joseph was “embarrassed among men!” Jesus’ arrival made on feel sanctified; the other mortified. But in his gracious reaction to this dicey situation we see the kind of father Jesus grew up around. It becomes apparent why God chose a man like Joseph to father his “only begotten son.”

Matthew, begins his story of Jesus not with an angel whispering “sweet nothings” into placid Mary's serene life. But poor old Joseph’s, bolting upright in the middle of the night in a cold sweat! He’s having a nightmare about his sweetheart’s pregnancy, and not by him. But that he should marry her anyway. Way before Jesus got baptized, the holy family had been stigmatized. So it’s understandable that Joseph was offended by Mary's apparent infidelity. It’s different in our day. Adultery? Ah it’s just a little harmless “fooling around.” Unless you get caught! But Joseph took it very seriously because right and wrong mattered to him. And those whose ethics don’t allow for any gray area, are often stymied by life’s complexities. So he’s caught in a bind between loving Torah and loving Mary. What's a father-to-be-to-do? This one went with his heart over his scruples. Wouldn’t you know, as God was intervening with Mary, he was also mediating with Joseph. And from the scant amount of material about him in the biblical record, I can detect several characteristics that make for good fathering and contributed to one shining light that turned out to be the Son of God.


The first thing is Joseph's compassion. Once he learned of Mary's condition, his first reaction was incredulous: to assume she'd been unfaithful to him. God’s the Daddy? Yeah right! The pain of betrayal from somebody you love is excruciating. And when we get hurt, we hurt back, “an eye for an eye.” But we're dealing with a kind-hearted man. Joseph would be caring rather than right when it was impossible to be both. He was justified in humiliating Mary, for she’d embarrassed him. And the law was on his side. But Joseph was a bigger man than that. God saw something special in him: “He decided to divorce her, quietly” (Matt 1:19), and was unwilling to shame her. Neither his disappointment, nor the Mosaic Law could override something down deep in this good man's heart: compassion and empathy for one he loved who was “in trouble.” In spite of the terrible injustice he felt, he still couldn’t add to Mary's already heavy burden by “kicking her while she was down.” He showed mercy to Jesus’ Mamma in the most stressful moment in her young life.

Jesus may not have inherited Joseph’s DNA but he sure felt his influence. So it’s not surprising that the young man who grew up under Joseph the carpenter, would likewise say to another fallen woman, stooping in vulnerability before her indignant stoners: “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more!” Where’d he get that? God knows the difference a caring father can make upon his children.

Another thing comes to light as Joseph moved on through Mary's crisis with her: an openness to unbelievable possibilities. This man has just learned that his girlfriend is carrying a child that he knows is not his. But he decides to let her go, without public notoriety. Then she tells him God’s the Daddy! How much more can the mind accept? But incredibly, Matthew tells us Joseph “considered this” (v. 20). The rest of us would’ve been so cynical we'd have laughed Mary to scorn. Nobody would’ve given her even the slightest possibility that she might’ve been telling the truth. I mean, “You gotta be kidding me. Angels? Dreams? What kinda fool do you think I am?”

But Joseph was no ordinary man. He not only had a merciful heart, but he was incredibly open. He was not one to say too soon what is or is not possible. God knows if anybody could accept the mother of his Son, it had to be somebody who was willing to entertain new possibilities. That night in a dream, God's messenger confirmed what Mary said. Only a man with a generous heart and an open mind is capable of believing something like that. But that means Joseph’s faith is as crucial to Jesus’ arrival as Mary’s womb.

And again, it’s not surprising that the Boy raised under such a kind-hearted, open-minded father, would become the same type of trusting person. “Consider the lilies of the fields. They toil not; neither do they spin. Yet your Father knows you have needs.” If you want to know what God’s like, take time to stop and look at a flower! Nothing about memorizing the Bible or prayer.

But the most notable quality I detect in Daddy Joe is willingness to act on the basis of a dream. Dreams can be very real, but they're still dreams. But with only a dream and the word of a teenager, Joseph took an already pregnant woman, with a child that was not his, and married her! The next thing you know they’re moving to Bethlehem, because of “Caesar's census,” but I'd bet it was more about getting poor Mary out of hearing range of small-town-month-counters about her scandalous pregnancy. Joseph may have been convinced, but he didn’t press the point with his neighbors. This amazing man was willing to act on little more than a hunch, while others would demand proof. His decisiveness paid off on several occasions in Jesus' life.


When Joseph moved his family to Egypt because of a dream about the murderous Herod. And later, in a dream, he moved his family back to Nazareth, because of the political situation. And look who came into the world, who from his cradle was taught to venture forth on faith, with only a shred of evidence. Consequently, he was able to recognize when his own “hour had come” and went forth with courage and purpose, in pursuit of his “father's business.”

Because he had a good father named Joseph who was compassionate toward others, open to God, and willing to follow by faith. Later on Jesus taught his own disciples to “exceed in righteousness” (Matt 5:20). Now we have an idea where he got the second mile ethic: from Joseph the carpenter, whose righteousness was excessive, grounded in mercy not judgment. I wish we’d heard more from him. This good man never speaks a single word in the Bible. Mary sings, Elizabeth celebrates, but Joseph the carpenter left us no poetry to quote, no dramatic scenes to depict on Father’s Day cards. He wasn’t good at speeches and couldn't carry a tune. Nor is he as famous as King David.

But the thing that made Jesus' father a much better husband and father than Jesse’s son, was he does more than he says. He too must’ve been “a man after God’s own heart.” He obeys the divine summons to marry, to flee to Egypt with his family, and then to return and settle in Nazareth...all without a word! Because his was a “righteousness that exceeds.” It’s no coincidence that some years later, in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said 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, disregarding the embarrassment. Because what is humiliating to us, turns out to be obedience to God. Growing up around a guy like Joseph, Jesus later caused righteous people to rethink, revise and relinquish their righteousness.

For every righteous person like Simeon or Anna, Zechariah or Elizabeth, for whom Mary’s baby was an answer to prayer, there had to be a righteous man like ol’ Joseph, for whom Jesus' arrival was an embarrassment, requiring a complete overhaul of everything life is based upon. I don't believe Jesus could’ve been what he was if not for a Galilean carpenter named Joseph. Yeah, holy Mary may have been “blessed among women.” But righteous Joseph was “embarrassed among men.” And wherever Joseph's story is told, Mary's Child still has that same effect.

Providence Prayers: (6/21/09)
Before all beginnings and never-endings, God stretches between eternities. We’ve come to church to let you hold us awhile Lord, because we don’t have the slightest idea of how to hold ourselves. We need to lose ourselves for a little while, so you can find us. Then we can lose ourselves again in praise! Too proud to cry, too grim to laugh, too sophisticated to enjoy, too mean to repent, too ready to find fault than give thanks, we need to pray for ourselves, and beg Thy forgiveness for doing so little with so much. May this hour in this old Meeting House provide us with a new sense of what’s vital in life, lest we squander our years and waste our attention on inflated trifles.

We thank Thee for families that care, for ways that open when every door seems shut, for major purposes that make life’s minor irritations bearable, and for the confidence that our gravest extremities are merely heaven’s opportunities to save. For good fathers like Joseph, who was somebody Jesus could lean on. And for his heavenly Father, who makes leaning unnecessary. (wink) Heirs of such riches, we would bequeath as much and more to those who come after us, a desire to leave this world better than we found it. Like the carpenter from Nazareth, we would be dreamers. And that we would do all within our power to live up to Thy love for us ... that no resistance can diminish, nor need exhaust.

We remember those up against the numbers: the unemployed, the uninsured, the unwise, living in hell because of foolish choices; those existing in hospices who’s days are numbered; those who must retire from the only life they’ve known on a day already circled in red; those who know their income can’t meet the needs of their family; and those who face a deadline as they agonize over a difficult decision.

Even though there’s global recession in this economy, there’s no global recession in human need. Thus we remain a people of mission -- local and international. Make us sensitive to all feeling the intense pressures of life, knowing it’s a matter of Thy grace and not our merit -- that we’re not there too. For that we give Thee our thanks, through Christ our Lord. AMAN.