Tomorrow’s Sermon: Joseph The Disciple

Matthew
1:18-25

Introduction
Here is a series of telegrams between a young man and his mother:

Mum
Wedding off STOP Mary pregnant STOP Not mine STOP Why me STOP
Joseph

Joseph
Cannot believe it STOP Seemed such a nice girl STOP Will you be stoning her
STOP
Mum

Mum
Have decided to dump her quietly STOP Stoning a bit messy STOP Still love her
STOP
Joseph

Joseph
Plenty more fish in the sea STOP What about Deborah from baker’s shop STOP You’ll
never be short of bagels STOP
Mum

Mum
Change of plans STOP Wedding back on STOP Angel told me God is father STOP See
you at the synagogue STOP
Joseph[1]

Poor Joseph. And he’s a neglected character in the Nativity
Story. But this morning I want to remedy that, to a small extent. I believe
Joseph is a positive example of discipleship. He is a man of faith, who goes
beyond human conventions to radical trust in God. How so? Here are three ways
in which he is a model disciple.

1. Joseph Goes Beyond Righteousness
Your fiancée is pregnant, and you’re not the father. What would you do? There are
plenty of answers that our culture might give, but in Joseph’s Jewish culture,
there is one answer: stone her. That is the righteous thing to do. It fulfils
the requirements of the Torah, the Jewish Law. Joseph, you have a reputation
for doing the right thing: organise the mob and the stones.

But Joseph, righteous as he is, does not want to expose Mary
to public disgrace (verse 19), let alone a stoning. He is more than righteous. He
has a strong streak of compassion in him. He decides to have the betrothal
dissolved. He doesn’t just follow the letter of the law; he is considerate. Surely,
we would respect a decent man like that today.

However, the story doesn’t stop there. In a dream, an angel
tells him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because the Holy Spirit
has caused her to conceive (verse 20). Now that is one big step further. If being
considerate has moved him beyond cold righteousness, he is now being asked to
take a giant leap.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ says the angel. That’s the issue for
Joseph, isn’t it? Fear. He is afraid to take Mary as his wife. A quiet,
considerate dissolution of their relationship will at least preserve his
reputation. But to marry one who is already pregnant in a society that believes
sex is only for marriage – well! To marry Mary is for Joseph to share in her
shame. It is to stand with her in her social rejection.

Standing with the rejected – whether they deserve it or not –
is something Joseph’s legal son Jesus would do. Taking their shame upon
himself, although he was innocent would be central to Jesus’ life. He would be
baptised for repentance with sinners, even though he was guilty of nothing. He would
be executed on a cross, despite being innocent of the trumped-up charges. Jesus
would identify with the shamed and the sinners.

I am not saying that Mary had done wrong. She had not. For the
record, I believe in the Virgin Birth. But if you stand alongside the rejected,
you do so whether they are in the right or the wrong. So we care for an AIDS
patient, whether they were infected through a parent or spouse, or through
their own foolishness or sin. It’s called grace. We show love, forgiveness and
mercy to people. It’s not about whether they deserve it, because none of us deserves
it – especially ourselves.

And as we stand alongside the suffering, both the victims
and the culpable, our grace is what will speak most truly of God, rather than
our judgmentalism. I am not asking that we change our beliefs on the rights and
wrongs of certain ethical issues. I am saying, though, that a compassionate
solidarity with the hurting will speak faithfully about the purposes of God,
just as Joseph standing with Mary did.

2. Joseph Goes Beyond Tradition
When my sister and brother-in-law thought I would never marry, they gave their
second boy the middle name ‘David’ in my honour. When our daughter Rebekah was
born, we gave her the middle name ‘Anita’, after Debbie’s late mother. And when
Mark came along, we chose the middle name ‘Alan’, which is my father’s name.

Names are so important in the Bible, and perhaps nowhere
more than in the Nativity stories. Zechariah is to call his son ‘John’, and
here, the angel tells Joseph to name Mary’s child Jesus, ‘for he will save his
people from their sins’ (verse 21). The naming of Jesus to show his purpose and
destiny outranks any of the usual traditions. Remember that first century Jews
also had a tradition about using family names when a baby was born. We see it
in the surprise when Zechariah confirms his boy will be named ‘John’.

So Joseph’s obedience to God’s will as revealed by the angel
means that he will go beyond the normal human traditions. Traditions and
conventions have their place. They can describe tried and trusted ways of doing
things. They can be the means of handing down important truths. But when
tradition stops being a means to an end, we hit problems. When tradition
becomes an end in itself, we’re up the chute. When tradition has to be defended
or worshipped, we are in trouble.

The faithful disciple, then, will be keen to know when to
keep tradition and when to go beyond it. What is a tradition trying to
preserve? To take one issue here, does keeping wooden pews enhance worship? Do
the pews make us more like the community of Jesus or not? What exactly is the
church at gathered worship? We would need to pose questions like that if our
occasional discussions ever became a substantial debate.

We can be glad, though, that Joseph showed the obedience of the
disciple by dispensing with typical family tradition to name the baby ‘Jesus’. Giving
a child a name according to their divine purpose was the classic time when the
Jewish people over-ruled the tradition of family names. What matters most are
God’s purposes.

Therefore, that becomes the issue for us. What are God’s
purposes for us? His purposes for Jesus were those of salvation. He has
purposes for us in Hatfield Peverel and beyond. We have to ask whether our
traditions serve those purposes or get in the way.

One thing is for sure: Joseph becomes so committed to the
purposes of God that he is prepared to dispense with tradition if it gets in
the way. He is prepared to stick out as different from convention. Perhaps he
will be teased or mocked. If so, he takes the risk and the flak. It is worth
it, if going beyond tradition is what God requires in order for him to be
faithful.

And as with the first point, Joseph here gives a foretaste
of what Jesus will do. Jesus will participate in many Jewish traditions. But if
the traditions of the elders get in the way of grace and mercy, you can be sure
that Jesus will oppose them and thrown them out.

As for our situation, I’m not going to give any answers about
the pews or anything else. It’s something we have to grapple with together. Suffice
it to say, however, that like fire, tradition is a good servant but a bad
master. Is tradition our servant or our master? Joseph treats it as a servant,
and so does Jesus. Do we?

3. Joseph Goes Beyond His Rights
You will have heard preachers at Advent tell you before that a Jewish betrothal
is more than an engagement. The couple were called husband and wife (Joseph is
called ‘husband’ here in verse 19), and dissolving a betrothal required a
divorce. However, they only live together and sleep together once they are
married.

Against this background, let us assume that Joseph is a
typical red-blooded male. I think that’s reasonable. To read, then, at the end
of the story that not only did he obey by taking Mary as his wife, he also had
no marital relations with her until Jesus was born (verse 25), is quite a story
of self-denial! He does so to protect the integrity of the miracle. And it’s
because of Joseph’s self-denial here that we popularly speak of the Virgin
Birth rather than the Virginal Conception. Yes, Joseph is guarding the
integrity of God’s strange work by denying himself what every bridegroom would
have wanted on his wedding night and in the months to come.

It isn’t about the early Church having a downer on sex. That
wouldn’t be true of the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul tells his
readers there is only one reason why a married couple should deny each other,
and that is for a short season of prayer. No, as I said, Joseph abstains as an
act of self-denial to witness to the miraculous work of God in his wife’s body.

Suppose it became widely known that Joseph had done this. He
has probably already been despised for standing with the rejected Mary. He has
broken social convention. Now, surely, he will be mocked for this. What a fool
he will appear to be. His manhood will be in question.[2]

Were it to have happened today and in our culture, Joseph
would have been ridiculed even more. Not merely because ours is a sex-saturated
society, but because that is one symptom of a society addicted to pleasure. Self-denial
is not a prime virtue; self-fulfilment is. Do what you want, so long as you don’t
hurt anybody. You deserve it. Er,
why?

The lifestyle of the Christian disciple is not to satiate
every desire. Christ does allow us to enjoy following him. But it is the way of
love. And love gives up things for the beloved. Love sacrifices. It risks. It gives
up.

Our culture does know that in certain ways. We expect it of
parents with regard to children. We admire it when we see it in a Mother Teresa.
But we don’t make it the norm. We build
our economy around desire, lust and consumption.

Yet again, though, Joseph is only doing what his legal son
Jesus would do and teach. Jesus would grow up to teach that the lifestyle of
God’s kingdom was one of denying ourselves for the sake of the Gospel. And as
we approach the annual orgy of buying and selling, giving and receiving, we do
well to ponder the example of Joseph and consider where we would deny ourselves
our ‘rights’ so that the purposes of God’s merciful kingdom might be more truly
fulfilled.

Conclusion
You may know the story of how somebody once asked a famous orchestral conductor
what the hardest instrument to play in the orchestra was. The reply came back: ‘Second
fiddle.’ People want to play first fiddle, but who wants to play second? It
takes not only technique: it requires a humble attitude.

Joseph is a ‘second fiddle’ player in the nativity stories:
second fiddle to Mary, and ultimately second fiddle to Jesus. But what a second
fiddle! He gives us a taste of the melody Jesus will play. Joseph foreshadows
Jesus’ identification with the despised. Jesus’ overturning of tradition when
it gets in the way of God’s kingdom – Joseph previews that, too. And Joseph
models Jesus’ call to self-denial.

Joseph may be a bit-part player in the Nativity, but he
deserves to be known as more than the legal father of Jesus. He is more than
that. He is a model disciple of Jesus. May we follow in his ways this
Christmas.

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