Reading: Matthew 1:1-25 (sermon for Sun, Dec 22, 2019)
I am a
carpenter. My name is Joseph.
I like to create,
to make, to build. Houses and stables,
barns and mangers, storage boxes and family treasure chests. I like to build a life, help create
community, in my own way help make the world a good place to be. Maybe even bit by little bit help build the
kingdom of God again in our time.
Now, with that
last one you might think I’m getting a little presumptuous.
But I have to
tell you, that’s what all of us good Jews think in one way or another – that all
of us every day are created and called by the Almighty One to be partners with
him – praise be his name, in the work of making the world good and establishing
his kingdom on Earth.
And I guess I
also have a more personal reason to think about my life that way. I am of the house of David, the greatest of
our kings. There is royal blood in my
veins. The future of our people flows
through my line. The messiah who will
save us and all the earth will come of my lineage.
And the way the
rabbi counts it, from Abraham our first father to David our greatest king were
fourteen generations, from David to the time of the kingdom’s collapse was
fourteen generation; and from the time of the collapse to today is now also …
yes, fourteen generations. Which makes
me wonder sometimes: is there something special that will come of me, that I am
going to help bring into and build up in the world?
I think that’s
why I take special care to use only the best in whatever I build, and whatever
I do. I use only the best wood I can
find for anything I make. I do the work
as carefully and skillfully as I know how – measure twice, cut once we say. No shortcuts, no mistakes, no quick fixes,
nothing that will compromise the final product.
And the same in
my life. I study to know God’s law as
best I can, and pray to follow it completely and to the letter. I surround myself with good people, am
careful about the company I keep. I keep
away from bad people and influences, and keep myself as untainted by sin and
unacquainted with evil as I can. I
support the efforts of the rabbis and elders to rid our community and the
province of bad people and questionable characters. I want to be the kind of person and live the
kind of life and be part of the kind of people that God can use for something good.
Which is why I
was so happy in my engagement to Mary. I
saw her grow up and knew her to be a good person, too. Family and faith and faithful living were as
important to her as to me. So I was
happy when it was decided that I could take her as my wife, and happy when our
time of engagement officially began. We
were legally bound to one another – signed, sealed and ready to be delivered as
man and wife, looking and planning ahead to our wedding day when our union
would be celebrated by the town, consummated by us and we would begin to live
together as well. And who knows what
might then come of us – come of me, as the rest of our life and the story of my
line unfolded.
All was as it
should be, praise be to the Almighty.
Until the day I got
wind of Mary being pregnant. In my shock
at hearing such an evil rumour, wanting to beat the living daylights out of
whoever started it. Then hearing it from
Mary herself, spoken through such a combination of sobs and heart-rending
anguish about what this meant for us, and such strange assurances that it was
all God’s will and God’s doing, that I didn’t know what to think. Or feel.
Or do.
Although I did
know what I had to do. A carpenter
building good things to last and helping to build what God wants this world to
be, uses only the best of material.
Discards and doesn’t use the rest.
And Mary – my betrothed, was now tainted and impure. There was a stain on our engagement and our
plans for our life together. My own
hopeful wonderings about my own good purpose in life were nothing but broken
shards and fragments that cut and hurt me deeply – made me bleed and cry out
inside, each time I thought of them.
The law was clear
and offered me two ways ahead. One, the
more ruthless, was to denounce my bride in public and let the chips fall where
they may – let her be cast out of the village, excluded from our community,
even stoned if need be to save our purity.
The other, more compassionate, was to divorce her quietly, come to an
agreement with her family, and get on with our lives as best we could
diminished, without and apart from one another.
I chose the
latter and was prepared to go see her father about it the next day. Until that night … when I had a dream and a
visitation from an angel of the Almighty One.
And the angel told me not to be afraid to take and live with Mary as my
wife, and to build the life together we had talked about even now. For the child is of God, the angel said. And your greatest hopes were not wrong; he is
and he will be, by the gracious working of God, the one to save the people from
their sins and make the world good.
Measure twice,
cut once.
That dream made
me stop and re-think what I thought was the good thing to do, the way to be
part of the building of God’s kingdom in the world. That dream and that vision of God as one who
is at work even in the worst situations and through the most broken and
compromised of people, made me look at things anew – made me take a second
measure of Mary, of our engagement, and of my own life and life’s purpose.
And you know, I
realized later I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Because when I looked again at the lineage I was so proud of – the holy
line of David that I was so aware of being part of, I noticed something I had
not really paid attention to before.
Maybe you noticed
it yourself. The odd thing about some of
the links in that chain. For one thing,
not all of the kings – not all of the men in that line of succession were good
or faithful. Some were terrible
kings. But somehow they are still part
of what God uses for good.
But even more
than that. Did you notice the women who
are mentioned? When are women ever
included in tracing a family’s heritage and blood line? Yet, there they are – Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and
Bathsheba.
And if you know
the stories – of incestuous rape, a prostitute traitor in time of war, a seductress -- such
broken and questionable women – and some of them foreign women bringing who
knows what into our family. Not the kind
of women you would want your son to marry.
Or have as your daughter-in-law. Or
as a partner in God’s work in the world.
But there they
are. And here Mary and I are too in the
line of David. Broken and doubtful about ourselves, disgraced and doubted in the eyes of others. Part of the holy lineage of God’s people in
the world. Part of the people and the
family that God uses for good in the world, no matter how broken, despairing or
afraid we may be of the way our life seems to be at the moment.
The promise is,
God is with us. And uses us for good -- the good of God, of others, and ultimately of our selves, as
we are.
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