Fourth Sunday of Advent: Joseph, Most Faithful
The weeks and days of Advent that lead to Christmas give us readings that present an unfolding story. It’s a drama of sorts, and of the various characters in the story, the one who tends to be overlooked in it all is Joseph. For all the ways that we today hold him high, as a beloved figure and our parish’s patron saint, in the story’s real-time, it was a mess that he was in.
The Gospel tells us that he and Mary were betrothed. We might think that means something like engagement, but actually, they were married. In their culture, marriage was a two-step process. First there was a formal exchange of consent before witnesses. The second step was usually about a year later, when the groom took the bride into his home. Joseph and Mary were not yet to step two.
Joseph learned, though it’s not entirely clear how, that Mary was pregnant with child. The text seems to indicate that he knew the child was somehow the result of the working of the Holy Spirit. So he knew God was behind this precarious reality….but still. We’re told that Joseph planned to divorce her, and the most likely explanation is that he did not believe himself worthy of such a tall task. But also, he must surely have wondered, “Why can’t I just have a normal marriage and family life?”
I can imagine he struggled to sleep, late into the night with an assortment of feelings bouncing around actively in his heart: sadness, anger, embarrassment, and fear. For so many of us, those very things keep us from sleep. Even more, those things keep us from hearing God’s voice in whatever way He would want to restore our peace and trust. Perhaps God had been trying to comfort and assure Joseph, but those strong feelings rendered him unable to hear, as they often do for us. A little like Adam, whom God put into a state of sleep, in order to make a woman from his rib, I wonder if God imposed sleep upon Joseph and his restless heart and mind, in order that He might at last be able to speak to him.
In any case, sleep found Joseph, and in his sleep, freed from the nagging preoccupations, he was at last able to receive and hear God’s words of comfort and assurance: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”
St. Matthew tells us that, “When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him”. Yet as we know, this would not be the last challenging situation that would be placed on his shoulders.
They say that actions speak louder than words. Without even a solitary word, Joseph speaks powerfully to us, in all the moments that we look at the difficulties and irregularities in our particular lives—things we did not cause or invite, yet are….
• for all the ways that envy sets in and we wish our situation in life could be like those of other people…. • for all the ways that what is asked of us—our role—demands great humility and even acceptance of how it means others get the glory, attention and praise….
• for all the ways that God presents us, and trusts us, with responsibilities that come with things we find undesirable, with troubling uncertainties and causes for fear….
• for the ways that fear and pride, whisper to us, telling us to just walk away from our commitments and obligations….
For all that, Joseph, impels us to think otherwise. Instead, he shows us that it’s not about us, but instead how we are willing to lay down our lives for the good of others. He shows us that we must trust, and listen within to the voice of God, when the competing voices within, born out of our human frailties and our insecurities, tell us it’s not fair, that this is not what we ordered, and should just start over.
Like Joseph, each of us has less than perfect realities in our lives, realities that we likely wish were different. But that we might persevere in what’s entrusted to us, let us call upon Joseph for prayers. Let us keep before us, his example of patient trust, that we might have hearts ready for the Savior who was entrusted to his paternal care; the Savior who takes on our flesh and enters into the messiness of our lives and our world—all as an act of love, all to usher in his new and beautiful order. Come, Lord Jesus!