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Matthew 1: 18-25
Romans 1: 1-7
“… In Matthew, Joseph plays an important role…. His ‘doing what was right’ can hardly mean his ‘fidelity to the Law’ but his compassion… The one has come in whom God in person dwells among mortals (Immanuel) and who thus will be the salvation of his people (Jesus). The importance of Jesus’ subsequent life, not his birth, is the reason for placing such stress on the obedience of Joseph, who, in the light of God’s great promise, can give up his previous moral principles to fulfill God’s command literally.” The Good News According to Matthew, Eduard Schweizer.
We know Joseph, the husband of Mary, is Jesus’ father “according to the flesh,” as Paul puts it in our reading from Romans.This is important because it is through Joseph that Jesus is established as being a descendant of David, “according to the flesh.” Of course, “according to the Spirit,” God is Jesus’ father. But we know Joseph from the stories of the birth of Jesus. The last appearance he makes in Scripture is in Luke, when 12-year-old Jesus disappears while they are on a trip to Jerusalem. His parents search for him frantically and find that he is at the Temple, teaching the elders, who are amazed at his wisdom. We don’t have any more stories about Joseph after that. Scholars generally assume Joseph dies while Jesus is still quite young.
That jibes with another thing we know about Joseph, or at least can extrapolate. Joseph was an older man. Very likely he was a widower when he married Mary. We assume this for a couple of reasons. Scripture tells us that Jesus had a brother, James. In Acts and Galatians, it is clear that James the brother of Jesus is the very first head of the church. Yes, I know many of us have learned somewhere that Peter was the first head of the church, but no, he wasn’t. It was James, and that’s stated clearly in Scripture itself.
Now here’s the thing: most scholars agree that James was older than Jesus. Keep in mind that there’s much about Jesus’ family that is shrouded in mystery because the church from early on felt in invested in maintaining Mary’s virginity. There are certainly scholars who maintain that James was a younger brother, and others who say Jesus didn’t have any siblings at all, and that James and the others that the Scriptures call “brothers and sisters” were really cousins. But there’s plenty of evidence that Jesus had younger brothers and sisters, and there’s plenty of evidence that James himself was older than Jesus, but from a previous marriage.
And so, assuming all this is true, in our Matthew passage today we meet Joseph, probably in his thirties, a middle aged man by First Century standards, about to enter into a new marriage with a young bride, a girl likely to be about fifteen. He’s a man who has suffered the loss of the woman he loved, and has at least one child by that marriage; and he hopes Mary will be the one to help him raise this boy, who is himself scarred by the untimely death of his mother.
And then, to his horror, he hears through the grapevine that this woman to whom he is engaged, but with whom he has not had “relations,” is pregnant.
He heard it through the grapevine. In a very small town. We must understand something here. Once this rumor starts going around, it has a life of its own. Everyone knows it. And no one will ever forget it. It’s clear from history itself that for the rest of their lives, Mary and Jesus will have to live with the fallout from this rumor that Joseph has heard. In fact, most scholars agree that the care and attention Matthew and Luke give to the circumstances of Jesus’ birth are proof in themselves that there was something sketchy about it. Rumors of Jesus’ illegitimacy would dog him for the rest of his life, and after his death would be used by opponents of Christianity to denigrate him and play down his importance. In fact, respected biblical scholar Bruce Chilton argues that young Jesus would have been considered a mamzer—a child who is ritually damaged because of the circumstances of his birth. A mamzer didn’t have to be an illegitimate child. Even the hint of illegitimacy was enough to make him a mamzer. But children born with birth defects, or whose mothers died in childbirth, would also be considered mamzers. They’d be considered ritually unclean, and so could not participate in worship at the synagogue. Other parents would likely not want their children to play with a mamzer. It would be a terribly lonely childhood.
All this, of course, was predictable, but still in the future. What Joseph had to contend with, after first learning that Mary was pregnant, was shame. He, an older man, has been shamed by a younger woman whom he has honored with his commitment to marriage. His neighbors were laughing at him. The Middle East of the First Century was not so different from the Middle East of today, or even our own country—it was an honor society. Joseph had been dishonored. He had every right to abandon her, to treat her cruelly, because, by Jewish law, even though they weren’t yet married, Mary quote belonged to Joseph unquote—she was his “property.” And so by Jewish Law, her pregnancy was tantamount to adultery. By law, he could even have her stoned, though that would have been frowned upon.
But he could publicly renounce her, shame her as she has shamed him, and so reclaim his own pride and his own manhood.
But that kind of justification for cruelty would be according to the flesh. It’d be the natural way, the way people normally operate. In our reading today we discover that Joseph is a man who lives according to the spirit—according to the heart. He won’t be cruel to Mary. He hasn’t yet even heard from the angel, who will assure him the pregnancy is of God—but already he has decided that he won’t mistreat Mary for the sake of his own damaged honor.
Matthew says that Joseph is a “righteous man.” A commentator points out that Joseph’s “‘doing what was right’ can hardly mean his ‘fidelity to the Law’ but his compassion… “ (The Good News According to Matthew, Eduard Schweizer). Joseph was only Jesus’ father “according to the flesh,” but Matthew wants us to understand that Joseph is the best possible human father for The Son of God. The core of Jesus’ ethical teaching is obedience to a higher law than the religious law. The law to which Jesus calls us is the Law of Love—of compassion—of mercy—of putting the needs of others before your own. This man Joseph, whom God has chosen to raise Jesus, already lives into those higher values. Joseph already lives in the Kingdom of God that the adult Jesus will proclaim in his ministry.
Joseph is a good role model for us, too. I’m a child of the South—South Carolina, Virginia, now Texas—and we Southerners know and care about honor. And we know about shame, too—and pride. I’m proud to be a Southerner, but I’m not proud of the way that our misplaced sense of honor has put us on the wrong side of God when it comes to civil rights for African Americans. Honestly, how many of us men, putting ourselves in Joseph’s place, can imagine that we might put our pride aside and act instead in compassion and mercy? And by the way, I suspect actually many of you would, and some of you even have, in similar circumstances. But we do well to reflect on how our own sense of pride and misplaced honor can drive us to make decisions that are contrary to the compassion, humility, and mercy, that are the hallmarks of the Kingdom of God. How often misplaced pride makes it hard for us to forgive, or misplaced honor makes it difficult for us to admit when we’re wrong!
And often as well we excuse our own cruelty and bad behavior when our own feelings are hurt, or when we’ve been shamed or mistreated. We sometimes think that shame or pain or mistreatment excuse us from making moral and compassionate decisions. After all, look at the terrible thing that’s happened! It’s only human to act cruelly or immorally in response to cruelty and immorality!
That’s not what Joseph thought. He did not live according to the flesh. He thought that you had to act compassionately even when, and maybe especially when, the rug’s been pulled out from under you. And that’s apparently how he raised Jesus, because Jesus taught the same thing. And that must be what God thinks—because Jesus is God.
Joseph is open. He is open-hearted. He is open-minded. These traits are what make him the appropriate hero for the birth narrative that Matthew provides us with. Matthew, a Jewish writer, wants us to understand that Jesus is the savior who will gather all the nations, all the goyim, all the non-Jews, to recognize and worship the God of the Jews. And so Matthew tells us the story of the Wise Men, travelling from the East, guided by a star—Gentile rulers who will bow before the Jewish messiah, right there in Joseph’s home.
And Joseph, open-minded and open-hearted Joseph, is the man who will open his home to Gentile strangers, thus representing the fulfillment of the Biblical promise that in the last day, all the nations will worship and adore the God of the Jews. He is the one that God has chosen to be the very first to exercise the radical hospitality of the Kingdom of God that Jesus, the savior of the world, has brought about. He is the proof that the radically open, inclusive and welcoming Gospel of Jesus Christ begins with an humble spirit and a compassionate heart—it begins with fleshly, human people who by God’s grace do not live “according to the flesh,” but according to God’s Spirit–and so make God’s future kingdom a present reality.