Matthew 1. 18-25… Joseph’s Story.

Matthew 1. 18-25… Joseph’s Story. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans

2020 years ago Joseph was sitting on a rock just outside a backwater town that nobody though much of called Nazareth. Nazareth was in the region of Galillee and it was the town in which Joseph lived. But, he was feeling utterly devastated and so he had come out here, to this rock, to think. His wedding was meant to be only two months away. But his fiancé, Mary, whom he had loved dearly, had returned just yesterday after three months away. She had taken a spur of the moment trip to visit her relative Elizabeth. But she had returned with news that had shocked him to the core. He had been so looking forward to her return home. He had missed her so much. But she had returned home pregnant! And he, Joseph, had never had sex with her. Of course he hadn’t… He always did what was right… She had not only told him verbally that she was pregnant. But he had also been able to see her small baby bump. Without that bump he would not have been able to believe her because she had come back mad. Utterly mad. She seemed really happy about her pregnancy and was talking excitedly about the angel Gabriel and the Holy Spirit and signs and messiahs and prophets and sons of God. None of it made any sense at all. But the fact that she was pregnant was definitely true. So he had run away from her in anger and in confusion. Since Mary’s visit to him yesterday Joseph had not eaten or slept. He had just been stunned and confused. It was only now, 24 hours later, that he felt able to think at all. And so he had left his carpentry shop; and walked out of Nazareth; to this rock to think. To make sense of it all. And there was so much to make sense of! The adultery; the madness; the life that he had had planned with Mary lying in pieces. How could he fit any of this together? Joseph pondered his confusing and agonising situation trying to find an order to think about it in; he couldn’t. All his thoughts tumbled together. He had known Mary to some extent all his life. She had never seemed even remotely mad before and she had been the kind of person for whom doing right seemed to matter. Prior to her return from Elizabeth and Zechariah, Mary had been kind, and gentle, and sensible. And Self-controlled. She was just ‘good.’ Good is a vague word but in Joseph’s mind it just meant that she always had just seemed to think about her actions and their effects on everybody around her; and to act in such a way so as not to cause harm to others. She had just seemed to care about people and to always have the best interests of others in her mind. She just wasn’t self-centred. She was other centred. But that just made the situation all the more confusing. What could have happened, who could Mary have met who could impact her so much to commit adultery. Something that just really didn’t seem to be in her nature. And so Joseph was angry. Angry at Mary; and angry at her lover. And bitterly disappointed in Mary. Another possibility was that there was no lover; and that Mary had been attacked. But that made no sense because the Mary Joseph knew – or at least the one he thought he knew – would have screamed out as the law demanded. Elizabeth, the relative Mary had been visiting, lived in a town and so she would have been heard if she had screamed. But had she been out in the country, and been attacked by a strange man where there was no one around to hear her scream, then she would have been deeply upset and troubled. She would have given a description of the man so that he could be stoned. And she certainly wouldn’t have been happy about her pregnancy. So that didn’t fit. It had to be that she had a lover. Most likely she had met him whilst visiting Elizabeth. But then why had she even bothered coming back to Joseph if she had a lover where Elizabeth lived – that was over a hundred miles away in Judea and fairly near to Jerusalem? Or maybe he was in Nazareth and she had met him prior to going to see Elizabeth. But whatever his location, if she had a lover and was really happy about her pregnancy why had she not simply run away with him to have his baby? And what about her story about the angel Gabriel? If she was going to lie why make up such crazy lies? Mary knew the Scriptures well. So why not come up with half plausible stuff? The angel Gabriel does appear in Scripture, the book of Daniel in fact. And the scriptures are full of various stories about angels, the angel of the Lord, and seraphim and stuff. But nobody of the Jewish faith had seen or heard of angels, let alone the angel Gabriel, in something like 500 years? And it had been 400 years since the last prophet of God. Yet Mary had still insisted that the Holy Spirit came upon her and she was to have God’s child (God’s child?!) and that she was to name him Jesus. What if she had a girl? Jesus isn’t even a unisex name. It’s a boy’s name. Would she be mad enough to call a baby girl Jesus? But all that aside, there was nothing in the Scriptures as far as Joseph knew about God’s Holy Spirit making a girl pregnant with a child of God. So why on earth make up such a crazy story? It just really seemed as though Mary had gone mad! And Joseph didn’t want to marry someone who was mad – who made up crazy stories; or maybe had hallucinations, or just wasn’t focussed on reality – and on telling the truth. And Joseph certainly didn’t want to marry someone who had a lover on the side. Joseph’s life was completely ruined because had been so looking forward to married life with the pre-mad Mary. He had it all planned. He loved her and he cared about her. They were going to have a great relationship. Joseph had felt he had found a lifelong friend in Mary. But now she was gone. The girl who had come to him yesterday was not the Mary he knew and loved. But in losing Mary he felt he had lost everything. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joseph knew that he should bring Mary forward - to have her stoned for her adultery - and the lover - if he could be found. Or have her defend herself publicly if she wished to claim that she was attacked in the country. That was what the law demanded. But he still loved her. He was confused and angry; but that was still mixed up with deep love for the girl he had known. So Joseph sat pondering the solution to his problem. Having Mary stoned was the right thing to do by the law; but there were deeper things than the written rules. These deeper things were feelings. It didn’t feel right to have Mary stoned. He wanted to believe in her. He wanted to believe that there was still a good person deep inside. If he were to take her as his wife when she was pregnant with someone else’s child, that would mean both knowing that she had a lover and enduring public disgrace. But he wanted to forgive her enough to let her live with this unknown lover. So Joseph began to ponder how he could go about breaking the engagement to Mary in a way that wouldn’t draw public attention to her adultery. Engagement was considered as serious as marriage – but without the couple living together. But Joseph knew a way to break the engagement quietly and yet officially. It wasn’t the done thing; but it seemed right on this occasion. He would begin the process tomorrow. And leave Mary free to be with her lover; even though that would cut him to the core. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So Joseph went back home. Having found a solution. A solution that went against the grain of his culture which was a culture that exposed adultery and sin. But it was a solution nonetheless. Joseph managed to eat a little and finally lie down in bed. Having been without sleep for such a long time Joseph felt himself able to drift off – and sleep came. As Joseph slept a bright and shining angel appeared to him in his dream. The angel asked Joseph to trust Mary’s explanation for the pregnancy. The angel said ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,[c] because he will save his people from their sins.’ [speak slow] Joseph woke up shaking. Feeling afraid. Afraid and sort of joyful at the same time. Everything was so different now. He had to stay sitting quietly a few minutes to get over the way the dream had made him feel. It had been so vivid. He was amazed by the dream. It was real. Now, he too had been visited by an angel. And the angel had called him son of David drawing attention to his ancestry and the fact he was from the line of the ancient king David as Mary was. Even though the child was not his. But the implication was he was to be Dad to the child. And Mary wasn’t mad. Instead something really special was happening. The angel of the Lord only came at really important moments in Scripture: so right here; right now - God was doing something new. Something unexpected. And he. Joseph, was right in the middle of it. As well as Mary. God was breaking into the world. Just when it was needed most. Herod was the most awful King. There couldn’t be a worse person to have become King of Israel – and he had only become King through the powers of Rome. But just at this awful time it seemed God was going to change things. Joseph was still shocked – but this time in a very different way. He had been shocked into hope and no longer into despair.

So Joseph went to speak to Mary. He needed to seek first her forgiveness for the way he had initially reacted to her news. But he was also really excited to tell her about his visitation by an angel. Maybe it had also been Gabriel. When he reached Mary’s house she ran out to meet him. She was so pleased that Joseph had come back to her and was now ready to listen and take her seriously even though her news was crazy. Joseph was forgiven in an instant. It seemed to Mary that God was already at work sorting everything out. Joseph and Mary talked and prayed together, both of them excited, although a bit scared too. They asked God to reveal to them more about what this ‘new thing’ was all about. One thing that amazed Joseph was how God was purposely using what looked like a situation full of sin for his plans. A pregnancy out of wedlock. Most likely everyone would realise that the child was not his. Sometimes God just does the most bizarre things. You’d think he would choose what looks good; not what looks wrong. It certainly was true that God’s ways are not our ways. Joseph and Mary talked and prayed and they decided to ask everyone they knew if there were any scriptures about virgins having babies. Apparently their actually was. Isaiah in the Greek Scriptures spoke about a virgin having a son who would be called Immanuel. Immanuel meant ‘God with us’. And Joseph and Mary couldn’t help but wonder if God was now using that Scripture in a new way. The name ‘Jesus’ had also been given by an angel, probably Gabriel, to both Mary and to Joseph separately. Jesus was from the Hebrew name Joshua which means God saves. But the child was not to be named after the patriarch Joshua in the Scriptures. Joshua had been part of God’s plan in bringing Israel into the Promised Land. Nor was he to be named Jesus because God saved his people in various ways throughout Scripture – not just in the rescue from Egypt. But instead he was to be named Jesus for a new reason. This child would save his people from their sins. There were a few Scriptures where it is said God himself will save people from their sins in the future: for instance there were words in the Psalms that read. Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. 8 He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. And Jeremiah wrote “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” Joseph wondered if it really could be true that the child Mary was carrying was God himself. All these visitations from angels certainly pointed to something very big indeed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- But there was something else. Now that Joseph had resolved all the tension with Mary she had been able to tell him all about her relative Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah where she had been staying in the first few months of her pregnancy. Elizabeth was old and had never been able to conceive a baby. This meant she had been shunned to a certain extent by her community all her life. And now she was well past child bearing age. But Zechariah too had been visited by the angel Gabriel. Gabriel certainly seemed to be having a bit of a busy time in bringing messages to people! Zechariah had only been able to communicate this through writing as he had lost his voice as a result of the visitation. Joseph was glad he still had his voice after his visit by an angel! Gabriel had apparently told Zechariah that he and Elizabeth were also to have a child. And like Mary they were told specifically a boy and what he should be called. Their son was to be John. And John too was to be filled with the Holy Spirit: and he was to change the way people thought; turning people back to a righteous way of thinking from a disobedient way of thinking. And this was to be in preparation for the coming of the Lord. And Mary told Joseph of Elizabeth’s reaction to Mary’s visit. How her baby had leapt in her womb at the arrival of Mary; and how Elizabeth had called her the most blessed of all women because Mary was the mother of her Lord! In other words – the mother of God. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A few days later Joseph went back to the rock he often sat on to think just outside of Nazareth. He had a new life to ponder. News had now made its way to Nazareth about the miracle birth of John to Zechariah and Elizabeth. And that Zechariah had his voice back; and that the people around Zechariah and Elizabeth were convinced there was something special happening. Joseph really did hope that John would have an effect on the way people thought. The world seemed so far from God just now. But Joseph was now filled with faith. Hope had arisen in his heart. Hope for a changed nation. A nation that would turn back to God and a world in which there was a King who cared about people. He knew his life was not going to be the simple happy life he had all planned out with Mary. Of course He would still love and care for Mary as he had always planned. And now for Jesus too. He would treat them well, and try to do what was right by them. Mary was an amazing person. So amazing in fact that God had singled her out to raise ‘His - that is God’s – own son.’ It still sounded odd. Just weird really. But his life, he knew, was likely to not be simple. What on earth would it be like to be part of God’s unfolding plan for saving his people from their sins. What would Jesus be like? How would people react to his marrying the pregnant Mary. And how on earth can God even be a helpless baby? Yep, still confusing. But undeniably true. Exciting. Scary. Challenging. But, hearts were soon going to be turning back to God. His certainly had! And Joseph went home to read the scriptures and to pray.

© Dawn Martindale December 2017