Sermon preached at St. Alban's, Spirit Lake, on December 23, 2007
(Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A, BCP Lectionary)
by the Rev. Carl D. Mann

Texts:   Isaiah 7:10-17
Psalm 24 or 24:1-7
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25

At some time when I was growing up in the Church, the tradition of the Advent Wreath took a little twist. Traditionally the Advent wreath has four purple or blue candles, one each for the four weeks of Advent. Purple or blue represents royalty, which would befit the anticipated coming of a king, and purple is also the liturgical color for penitential seasons. In some parishes such as ours, one of the four candles is rose colored signifying a lightening of mood from the solemn to the joyous on the third Sunday of Advent called Gaudete Sunday. As we learned last week, Gaudete is from the Latin word meaning rejoice.

But in the Church in which I grew up we had two purple candles, one rose candle and one blue candle. We were taught that each candle symbolized a person or day of importance each week. The first purple candle represented the Prophet Isaiah from the Old Testament; the second purple candle represented the Prophet John the Baptist from the New Testament, the third candle, which was rose, represented Gaudete Sunday, and the fourth candle, which was blue, represented Mary, the mother of Jesus because on the fourth Sunday of Advent we always read about the immanent nativity of Jesus. This is all very theological and sentimental especially the fourth candle since there can’t be a birth without a mother being present. But it was always hard to find sets of candles to make it work properly, which made the Altar Guild grumpy. And nobody wants that, especially right before Christmas!

Interestingly enough, two of the three years in the liturgical cycle has a passage from the Gospel of Luke on the fourth Sunday, which is the nativity from the point of view of Mary. But this year, which is year A, our Gospel comes from Matthew, which is the nativity from the viewpoint of Joseph. And Joseph doesn’t even get a candle!

Joseph isn’t mentioned very much in the New Testament and most of us have nothing to do with him unless we are desperately trying to sell a house. But Joseph is a key player without whom salvation history would have had to take a little twist.

We are told in Matthew’s Gospel that Mary was engaged or betrothed to Joseph but they had not yet lived together. And at some time prior to them living together she was found to be with Child from the Holy Spirit. Now Matthew doesn’t go into any detail as to how this was found out, so for us, the reader, it’s natural to go to the only other Gospel that details the nativity of Jesus. In Luke’s Gospel, we find that after the Angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she has been chosen to bear the Son of the Most High, she runs off to her kinswoman Elizabeth who lives in the Judean hill country, and is six months pregnant with John, the future Baptizer. Mary stays with Elizabeth for three months and then returns home to Nazareth. So at a little over three months pregnant, and possibly beginning to show, Mary has obviously shared her remarkable encounter with God’s angel with her parents, and her betrothed.

Back in the Gospel of Matthew, this is where we discover what kind of man Joseph really is. We are told that he is a righteous man meaning that he is a law abiding Jewish man in a right relationship with God. Righteous or not, as a man, he has to be shaken up by this news. His world has just been turned upside down. He’s probably thinking to himself, “My betrothed is heavy with child and it’s clearly not mine. According to the Law if a man lies with the betrothed of another man within the city limits, then both the man and the women shall be taken to the gates of the city and stoned to death; the man because he has violated his neighbor’s wife, and the woman because she did not cry for help. If she did cry for help, then just the man would be stoned. If the event happened outside of the city in the open country then she would not be stoned because there would have been no one around to help her if she did cry out. Mary was in the city so she is subject to the punishment except that she insists that there was no man and that her maidenhood has not been violated. Consequently there was no need for her to cry out. According to an angel named Gabriel, she claims that the Holy Spirit of the Lord God overshadowed her. That’s possible but the Lord hasn’t sent messengers to His people for centuries. I don’t know what to believe or do. If I do nothing then everyone will think me the fool for being impatient or a cuckold if it gets out that the child is not mine, which is bound to happen. Gossip spreads like a grapevine in a small town. We don’t stand a chance. If I have her stoned, I will lose the woman I love. But if her story is true and this is of the Lord, then who am I to interfere with His plans. What ever I do must be done quickly and quietly because I don’t want to publicly disgrace her. I will talk to her father in the morning and dismiss her privately.”

You see, Joseph is a righteous man and we can tell that he has strong feelings for Mary because he doesn’t want to sully her reputation, and he certainly doesn’t want her publicly executed. In his righteousness, he has actually demonstrated what we learned about last week from Jesus. Joseph responded to the situation with mercy before judgment. He was acting in a Christ-like manner before Jesus even made his earthly appearance. Talk about foreshadowing! You can almost imagine Joseph being worried sick, pacing the room, trying to work things out in his mind, and finally coming to a merciful resolution. With his newfound resolve maybe now he can get a good night’s sleep for the first time since he was told the news.

But in this special situation, God needs more from Joseph than just mercy; he needs self-sacrifice. And it’s precisely in this moment when Joseph is emotionally drained and humbly determined that an angel of God comes to him in a dream. “Joseph, you who are from the house of David, whose lineage stems from kings, do not be afraid to take Mary in matrimony. Her child is indeed conceived of the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus for through him the salvation of the world depends.” In essence, the angel is telling Joseph that by taking the responsibility of naming the child, he will legally become his father putting to rest any talk around the town. Joseph is given the choice to stand up to the plate and to do the right thing by taking on the mantle of fatherhood because this is a special child who needs a special man in his life who will protect him from harm and teach him to be a man. And Joseph wakes up and doesn’t even hesitate to act. And don’t we see that he made the right choice when later on in the synagogue of Nazareth after Jesus reads a passage from the prophet Isaiah and claims that the prophecy has been fulfilled in their hearing that everyone wonders at his gracious words saying, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”

Just as Mary obeyed God by saying, “Be it unto me according to thy word,” Joseph obeyed God by following the angel of the Lord’s command. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden fruit, they brought condemnation to all of creation. But when Joseph and Mary obeyed God and raised Jesus to manhood so that his heavenly Father could raise him as “the first fruits of those who died” they helped to bring about redemption for all of creation. Joseph and Mary, together, humbly sacrificed themselves, their names and reputation, not fearing what their situation looked like, not caring what the public said about them, even defying the letter of the Law in order to live out the will of the Lord their God as it had been revealed to them. With Joseph and Mary as his earthly role models is there any doubt that Jesus Christ obeyed his heavenly Father even unto death on the cross?

In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples that in his Father’s house there are many mansions, one waiting for each of us. And in our collect on this fourth Sunday in Advent, we pray to God that when his Son, Jesus Christ comes again that he may find within our hearts a mansion suitably prepared for his arrival? Isn’t it befitting that we talk about building houses on a day where Joseph the carpenter is the focus of our attention. Even more befitting is the collect for St. Joseph’s feast day wherein we pray for God’s grace to imitate Joseph’s uprightness of life and his obedience to God’s commands.

Now I’m not suggesting that we further irritate the Altar Guild by putting a red candle in the Advent wreath to represent Joseph but without him the nativity of our Lord would not be the same. So let us never forget the important components of sacrificial fatherhood that he provides for mother and child, and for us; merciful love, humble faith, and steadfast obedience.

Gloria Patri