“Joseph the Dreamer”

A sermon preached by Dean Tom Breidenthal in the University Chapel, on The Fourth Sunday of Advent.  Text: Matthew 1: 18-25

December 19, 2004

We have just heard the beginning of Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus. But it is not the entire beginning. The absolute beginning is the recitation of a long genealogy that links Abraham to King David, and David to Jesus.

Here is how it begins:

“An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram, and Aram the father of Abinadab, and Abinadab the father of Nahshon, and Nashshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David” (Matthew 1: 1-6).

And so it goes until we get down to Jesus.

No passage like this would ever be chosen as something to be read aloud in church. People just hate passages like this. I can’t tell you how many people have said to me they find the Bible off-putting because of all the “begats.” ‘The important things in the Bible have to do with faith and the moral life,’ we might say. Who cares who is the father of whom?

Nevertheless, the “begats’ are extremely important, because in each case they serve to provide an individual – whether it be Abraham, David, or Jesus – with a specific identity. ‘This is so-and-so, whose father and mother were so-and-so, who were themselves descended from so-and-so, etc.’  The genealogy is an ID card, if you will. It does not rank one person above another, since every descendent of Jacob is an Israelite with equal privileges and equal obligations. But it says who someone specifically is, as the bearer of particular family tradition and the inheritor of a particular history of successes and failures.

So we might say that Matthew begins his Gospel by providing us with Jesus’ ID. Here is someone, he says, who bears within his own person the whole promise and tragedy of David, and in whom that story will find its culmination and fulfillment.

But there’s a twist. The genealogy that links Jesus with David comes down to Joseph, but Matthew, breaking out of the formula that has shaped the genealogy so far, does not say ‘Joseph the father of Jesus.’ Here is how the last part of the genealogy goes, picking up randomly a few verses from the end:

“And Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah” (Matthew 1: 15-16).

At the last and crucial moment, Joseph is the husband of Mary, rather than the father of Jesus.  Matthew goes on to explain this in the passage we heard read today: through the Holy Spirit Mary conceived a child while remaining a virgin.

So why all the concern about Joseph’s pedigree, if he is not the natural father?  It is clearly important in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus belongs to the House of David: over and over again, people address Jesus as “Son of David,” as they ask him to heal them or forgive them. Yet, when he is on the brink of establishing Jesus’ descent from David through Joseph, Matthew declares that Jesus is not the son of Joseph.

Does this mean that for Matthew Jesus is not, after all, the son of David? No, quite the opposite. What it means is that Joseph, who is of the House of David, has the power to bring Jesus into the family. When Joseph takes Mary as his wife, he implicitly adopts the child she carries in her womb. When he names the child, the adoption is complete. Through the action of Joseph, Jesus is fully grafted into the House of David.

We might even say that Joseph assures Jesus a place in the larger human community, since, if Joseph had chosen to accuse his betrothed of adultery, she and her child would have been thrust to the margins of society with no one to care for them. It is even possible that Mary would have been stoned to death.

It seems incredible that a young man should be responsible for providing the incarnate Word of God with admission into the human community by conferring on him a specific ethnic and familial identity. But that is just what Matthew is saying Joseph did.

And I do think Joseph was young. Popular tradition has depicted Joseph as an old man for two reasons: first, to suggest that he never had marital relations with Mary, and second, to explain why he is never shows up again in the Gospel narratives.  Christians continue to argue about whether Mary had other children besides Jesus, but this hardly gives us reason to assume that Joseph was unable to father children of his own. By the same token, although it appears that Mary was a widow by the time Jesus was pursuing his public ministry, there is no reason to assume that Joseph died of old age. 

This may be a side issue, but it seems important to me. The Matthew Joseph presents us with is a dreamer, like his namesake in Genesis – the one with the technicolor coat. (See Genesis 37-50). Four times in Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus, Joseph is visited by God in a dream.

The first time, as we heard today, the angel of the Lord – a euphemism for God – tells Joseph not to put Mary away: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” The second time, after King Herod learns of Jesus’ birth, Joseph is warned in a dream to flee with Mary and child to Jesus. Finally, when Herod has died, it is in dreams that Joseph is commanded to bring his family home to Israel, and to settle in Galilee.

With all the ardor of youth, Joseph the dreamer is totally open to the presence of God, and ready to reassess everything in the light of divine revelation. In Luke’s Gospel, Mary is exactly the same. She listens to Gabriel’s announcement that she is to become the virgin mother of the Messiah, and she says, without the hesitation borne of age and experience, “ I am God’s servant. Be it done to me according to God’s will.”  Mary accepted the risk of shame and death, and trusted in God to protect her.

By the same token, when Joseph takes Mary as his wife, he puts much of his own life at risk. He may not risk losing his life, but, like Mary, he places in jeopardy his personal reputation, his standing in his family, and his self-esteem. And, as the story unfolds, and the newborn Messiah becomes the target of Herod’s rage, Joseph does, in fact, forfeit whatever political security he may have had. Joseph does all of this in order to welcome Jesus into the human community.

What does this mean for us?  Since Joseph is the first character Matthew presents us with, and since, moreover, Matthew tells us he was a righteous man, we can safely assume that Matthew is lifting Joseph up as a model for the Christian life. Not, I would add, a model for men only. Just as Mary, in Luke’s Gospel, demonstrates a submission to God’s will that we all are invited to imitate, so Joseph, in Matthew’s Gospel, defines the righteousness to which each of us is called as a follower of Christ.

Joseph’s righteousness was the righteousness of a dreamer. That is to say, he was alive in every fiber of his being to the close presence of God. For him, the boundary between the realm of human affairs and the spiritual realm was thin.

In his attentiveness to God, in his availability to God, Joseph stands in a long line of heroes and prophets whose intimate relationship with God constitute the very history of Israel as a people set apart for God. But part of the Gospel message is that each one of us is called and empowered, as a follower of Jesus, to enter into an intimate relationship with God.

When we claim Christ as our own teacher, our own rescuer, our own judge and advocate, we allow God to transform our ordinary lives into a sacred narrative, in which the whole drama of salvation is replayed. Most of the time, we do not pay nearly enough attention to the spiritual adventure we are engaged in, here and now, as Christians. When we walk the way of the cross, we are treading on sacred ground, and that path leads through our daily routines, our waking and our sleeping, our work and our rest, our time alone and our time with others. At every moment, we should be listening to hear the voice of God; in every situation, we should be gazing attentively to discern the movement of the Spirit.

And this is so because, in the final analysis, the story of Joseph is our story. We who have been claimed by Jesus as his sisters and brothers, who have been rescued from darkness and spiritual anonymity, who have been given a new name and new identity as the adopted sons and daughters of God, we are the continuation of the genealogy that moves  from Joseph through Jesus and straight to you and me.

Today, on this fourth Sunday  of Advent, the angel of the Lord is addressing each one of us as a child of David. ‘Child of David, do not be afraid. Do not be afraid to turn your life over to God for God’s purposes. Do not be afraid to take on responsibility for the spread of the Gospel. Do not be afraid to risk embarrassment or worldly loss for the sake of Christ. For the one whom they call Emmanuel, God-with-us, is indeed closer to you than you are to yourself.’  Amen.