Joseph, a Model of Love
A sermon by Lanny Peters
(Concluding with “Two Josephs,” a story from Kate Hauk)
Pastor Oakhurst Baptist Church, Decatur, Georgia
The Third Sunday in Advent: December 11, 2005
I
Matthew 1: 18-25
This time of year brings to mind one of my parishioners when I was Associate Pastor at The First Baptist Church of Washington, D.C. That church had been the home church of Presidents Harry S. Truman and Jimmy Carter while they were in the White House. But it was also the home of Cora Johnson, a person who lived most of the year on the streets of Washington. It was this time of year when the weather was getting real cold that Cora would show up at the church asking me to take her to the shelter for homeless women where she spent the winter. I remember helping collect some of her things that she stored at the church and taking her to the shelter which would be her winter home.
For years, Cora was at the church almost anytime the doors opened. It went back to a time when the Moderator of the church responded to someone who had criticized the work of a committee by pointing out that every meeting of the church was open to any member who wanted to attend. The only person who took him seriously was Cora, who took the church schedule and thereafter planned her week to attend almost every meeting. And at that church, there were a lot of meetings. Its true that it gave her a break from the streets and the shelter but she did seem to pay attention to what was going on, though she never said much. Which is why it was surprising one night in the middle of a particularly contentious meeting, Cora raised her hand. The person facilitating the meeting saw her hand and said, a bit puzzled, “Yes, Cora?”
She said, “How much longer is this meeting going to go on? I have something important I need to be doing!” I do not recall what we were so passionately arguing about, but the meeting was soon adjourned, after we realized that if a homeless person had something more important to do, we probably did too.
I once was surprised to receive a letter from Cora. I opened it to read, “I have not been able to come to church for awhile. Would someone at the church please check on the reason for my absence?” I always appreciate people asking directly for what they need, so as soon as I could, I went by the shelter. She had been quite sick and was as delighted with my visit as if I had thought it up myself.
I remember the first time I met Cora. It was during Advent and I was teaching the Young Adult Sunday School class. I had only been at the church a few months and it was my first time to teach so I had really prepared to wow them with a lesson. Shortly after I began the lesson to this class of mostly well-dressed young professionals, in trudged this older woman bundled up in an old worn coat. The scripture I was focusing upon was the one you heard read today, which begins: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they had lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” I had begun my lesson focusing on the faith of Joseph, when the older woman interrupted me and said with an irritated voice. “Wait a minute, she could not have gotten pregnant if they hadn’t been together.”
Cora understood Joseph’s dilemma perfectly. When Mary came to him and told hem she was with child from the Holy Spirit, he did not believe a word of it. Not having the benefit of knowing about test tube babies, he was in emotional turmoil because he truly loved Mary. This is seen clearly when, unlike most men of his time, he was not willing to expose her to public disgrace in order to clear his own name. He knew that if he did not accuse her of adultery, he would be made a mockery himself. But still, he was not willing to shame her and so he resolved to dismiss her quietly. Perhaps he would go away and start a new life somewhere else.
He made his decision and then decided to sleep on it, and take action in the morning. But in the morning when Joseph awoke, he remembered a strange dream he had during the night. In the dream, an angel had told him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife even though her baby was not his own child. He was asked to name this child and give it his own family name. He was asked to believe that all of this was a miraculous sign that “God is with us.” Barbara Brown Taylor says of this “If he wakes up from his dream, shakes his head, and goes on to the courthouse to file the divorce papers, then Mary is an outcast forever—either killed by her family for disgracing them and herself or disowned by them and left to scratch out a living for herself and her illegitimate child on whatever she can beg or steal. The child is Joseph’s until he says otherwise. Whether or not his own seed is involved, he becomes the child’s father the moment he says so, because the issue at stake is not a biological but a legal one. ‘If someone says, This is my son, he is so attested,” reads Jewish law.” Will Joseph claim the child or not? Will he believe the impossible and give a child a home or will he stick with what makes sense and let the miracle go hungry? According to Matthew, Joseph’s belief is as important as Mary’s womb….”
Brown concludes: “The heart of the story is about a just man who wakes up one day to find his life wrecked: his (future) wife pregnant, his trust betrayed, his name ruined, his future revoked. It is about a righteous man who surveys a mess he has had absolutely nothing to do with and decides to believe that God is present in it. With every reason to disown it all, to walk away from it in search of a cleaner, more controlled life with an easier, more conventional wife, Joseph does not do that. He claims the scandal and gives it his name. He owns the mess—he legitimates it—and the mess becomes the place where the Messiah is born….” Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine (Cowley Publications, Boston: 995) Pp. 156, 157.
Joseph decided that theology was much more important than biology and he said yes. He decided that love was more important than convention, and he said yes. And not only did Joseph say yes then, but he would say yes again and again. It would be Joseph who would later trust his dreams and visions, which would save the life of his baby. Joseph would flee with his wife and child into Egypt to avoid Herod’s wrath. He kept them safe as refugees until they could return home again.
Back in their hometown, Joseph would teach Jesus how to be a carpenter like himself. They no doubt spent countless hours making furniture or ox plows and other things folks needed. While they were working Joseph shared his wisdom, his dreams and his hopes. When Jesus gave up his carpentry business and began his life as an itinerant rabbi, he came home to teach in the synagogue where he grew up. When the hometown folks heard him teach they were astounded and asked each other “Where did this man get this wisdom and mighty works? Is this not the carpenter’s son?” Ain’t that old Joe’s boy talking like that! Where then did this man get all this? (Matthew 4: 54-55.) They recognized how much influence a father has on a son.
As they underestimated Jesus, they also underestimated Joseph. Though certainly heavily influenced by his mother, Jesus would have received just as much from his father. His deep love for Mary was obvious from the beginning and that would have had a lasting impact on Jesus. It would have been Joseph who would have taken Jesus to the synagogue as he was growing up. According to Luke, the scripture Jesus chose for his first and last sermon in his hometown synagogue was the beginning of the passage from Isaiah read by Alexis earlier. Jesus declares that the good news of God’s love extends especially to the poor and the oppressed. In his own life, Jesus would model what that would look like, as God with us. Two years ago after I complained about there being no hymns about Joseph, Leslie Withers went home and did something about that. To the familiar tune of the Polish carol, “Infant Holy, Infant Lowly,” she wrote the words the choir sang earlier.
Abba Joseph, Abba Joseph, you will be his abba true;
Yours to hold him, yours to mold him for the work that he must do.
In your workshop, doing wood work, in the Temple, doing good work,
You will be his abba true.
Jesus came to model for us what God’s love looks like, “God with us.” Joseph would have been Jesus’ first, and thereby perhaps the most important model, of what it means to be a loving man. Jesus would later say that his disciples would be known for the love they have for one another. We to are called to be models for God’s love.
This week, Kate Hauk and I had lunch and she told me some stories about a couple of the men in her life and how they modeled God’s love for her. I asked her if she would also share them with you.
The Two Josephs,
Advent, 2005
Kate Hauk
When I was sixteen, I drove a rusted white rambler. One Saturday morning in early spring, the gas gauge was on empty. I had things to do. I can’t remember what they were; exactly, but at that time (even more than now,) my narcissism made me a budding Eastern mystic; in that, I believed that the world’s most critical needs and my own, were one.
My friends were waiting somewhere for me; that’s all I know, and I needed cash to fill up the car. The rambler’s gas gauge had no grace period. “Empty” meant, “empty.” I had only the distance between my home and the corner station to keep me from being stranded; and completely losing that ephemeral (not blessed) “assurance” of peer approval.
There was a cash box in the kitchen. My parents and I would borrow from it, and then replenish whatever we’d taken. That day, however, it was as empty as the gas tank. So, with a pen and paper to write my customary “IOU,” I searched the house for some spare change. Ah, there it was; on top of my dad’s dresser! I grabbed a handful, wrote my note, and took off for the Texaco pumps.
What didn’t know, was that I’d grabbed most of my father’s silver dollar coins. It wasn’t until I returned home that he told me about their value to him. He had saved them since his childhood, and he was lot more hurt than angry. I felt overwhelmed with sadness, that I had done this stupid thing. He wound up comforting me. “It’s okay, honey,” he said, “don’t cry. You’re worth more to me than all the silver in the world.”
Many years later, I was in the middle of a painful divorce, after seventeen years of marriage. My husband had just moved out of the house, and I had taken my kids to the Decatur City Beach Party. That’s when they fill the main street with sand, and dance the night away. Thomas must have been nine years old, and I gave him $5 to buy some dinner at one of the booths. I thought he’d be right back, but anybody who knew Thomas, knew that he could just disappear sometimes. By the time everyone had given up looking for him; he'd always show up smiling; even when everyone was ready to scream, “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!”
It was one of those times. After an hour or so, Thomas saunters up to me. He’s holding a crumpled brown bag. “Did you have dinner?” I asked. Thomas had a far-away look on his face.
“Dinner?” He asked, dreamily. “Nah,” he said, answering his own question. And before I could turn in to Joan Crawford, he hands me the bag. “I got you this instead.”
“Oh,” I’m thinking, “there go the five dollars, ” and I open it up. There, staring right at me, is this really bright, shiny American eagle pin; that even Phyllis Schafley wouldn’t wear.
Thomas straightened up and said, proudly, “I am the man of the house now, and you need someone to buy you pretty things.”
Two gentle Josephs surround me: one is my father, who told me that I was worth more than all the silver in the world. The other was my son, who traded his $5 dinner to get me something pretty and golden, worth more to me than the price of rubies. I am currently a lily of the field with an AARP card. I don’t tolerate much splendor these days. But I say to you, Even Solomon, in all his glory, didn’t have himself a pin like this.
I used to tell these stories with a rolled eye, or some tongue-in-cheek caveat; because they always seemed too (well) Walton-like; too sweet to be true. But maybe that is the point of Advent. We wait for glimpses of a love that is both sweet and true; beyond the imagination of our own, proud, weary hearts; a love that is simple and profound; like
Joseph; one that moth and rust can’t corrupt and that thief (even a clueless 16 year old daughter,) cannot break in and steal.