Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“The Mythological Joseph”
Delivered by Reverend Dan De Leon
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25
Here’s a dose of truth from the pulpit this morning: I can’t take anymore drama! I know some of you are with me. There is just too much drama! And it’s the same thing every year. Why is it that at a time when many of us have things slowing down at work and school, or many of us at least have some time off coming to us, why at this time does the drama increase?
The holidays shake up the hornet’s nest of drama with family tensions bubbling over, friendships changing, and even co-worker relations seething. Never mind the battle of giving more attention to the birth of Jesus and less attention to the materialism of the season, it’s all about the drama!
Who’s coming for Christmas this year? Who’s not? Are we having turkey or ham or neither? Who’s bringing the pies, and what kind of pies are they going to be? We haven’t put up the Christmas lights yet. Is it too late to put up the Christmas lights? Is it worth it? Who’s sleeping upstairs? Who’s sleeping downstairs? Do we go to so-and-so’s Christmas party, or do we decline the invitation? Someone I work with got me a Christmas gift; does that mean I have to get her a Christmas gift, too? Drama.
This is our social climate; it’s all around us. Magazine covers boast the year’s best and worst dressed; the most unexpected hookups and breakups; and collages of pictures that capture the iconography of a year in American life. And let’s not forget the most riveting news of the day: LOL, Britney Spears is pregnant again…wait…BRB…her little sister Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant, too. OMG. TTYL. Drama.
And when we can’t take one more ounce of this drama, what do we do in church? We have a children’s Christmas pageant.
Drama is our way of telling the stories of our lives. And stories are what give our lives meaning, purpose and direction. We base our lives on stories. So you’ve got to have a little drama.
William Willimon is the former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University and an esteemed Methodist preacher. He recalls one of his congregation’s annual Christmas pageants. It was a Sunday evening—the last Sunday of Advent—and the pageant was just minutes away from curtain call. At this moment, the director of the pageant came running down the hall from where the kids were getting their costumes on. She was out of breath, and she said to Pastor Willimon, “We have no Joseph! We have no Joseph!”
So, Willimon just said, “Relax. We can go without a Joseph. He doesn’t even have a speaking part. Just have one of the shepherds kind of lean in close to Mary. No one will notice the difference.” That’s exactly what they did and it worked. Joseph was a non-issue.
But Willimon says that later he re-read the Scripture from Matthew that we hear this morning and he realized all over again that Joseph was not only important to the Christmas story, he was essential to it.
Remember the gospel story about the rich man who goes to Jesus and says, “What must I do to follow you? What do I have to do to be your disciple?” And, in his case, Jesus says, “Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor?” Well, we’re not all rich, I know, and each of our outlooks and lifestyles are different; so, Jesus would have different answers for us.
But there’s one prototype for discipleship that all of us can learn from this morning: If you want to know what it takes to be a disciple—what it means to really follow Jesus in these two days to spare before Christmas—just look to Joseph!
Take a page from the story of Joseph and apply it to your life. Joseph is humble, thoughtful, levelheaded and strong. More importantly than what he’s like is what he does.
Everything that God hopes to come to fruition, Joseph makes sure it happens. Everything Joseph sees as an obstacle to God’s path, Joseph brushes it aside without hesitation. To put it simply: without Joseph, there is no hope at Christmas. In fact, without Joseph, there is no Christmas.
Peter Gomes writes a poem about stewardship where he says that we are God’s last hope. That was certainly true for Joseph: a confused carpenter thrown into an impossible situation. If we are to learn from the story of Joseph today, let’s understand that to be a disciple means that we are God’s last hope.
And finally, the last lesson we can take from Joseph today is that you don’t have to be a talker. You don’t have to say anything loud and proud to be a follower of Christ. Joseph didn’t. We read from Matthew this morning, and Matthew is the only Gospel that gives the account of the angel coming to Joseph in a dream, Joseph changing his mind about divorcing Mary quietly… The story of Joseph is right there at the beginning of Matthew, but we rarely pay attention to it. Why? Because Joseph says nothing. Not one word. He just gets up and follows God.
Are there people in your life like Joseph? Are there people you admire for never taking their eyes off the ball? People who you might not be sitting where you are today without? Are there Josephs in your life who do nothing more than provide a silent presence that you know has always been there and is there still?
I want you to hold onto that for a moment. Hold onto those Josephs in your mind while I mention something else here for a moment…
My parents emailed me an article that appeared as a feature in the opinion section the other day. It was titled, “Christmas Never Happened.” The article was chock full of factual evidence the writer had come up with to disprove the credibility of the Christmas story: inconsistencies in the time period, the impossibility of the Eastern star; stuff like that.
Now, hear me out, my parents were not trying to get me to come up with a set of facts that discredited this writer’s facts so they could breathe a sigh of relief and continue their church involvement. No, they wanted to know, I think, what I had to say about the writer’s main point. At the end of his article, he basically says, “Now, based on all this evidence I’ve presented here, a preacher and his or her congregants have to check themselves and be honest about whether they are being hypocrites proclaiming the story of the nativity every December.”
You remember last week, how we talked about the world being this or that—black and white—and that you have to make a choice all the time? Articles like this are no different. Every Christmas and every Easter, facts seem to bubble up that point to the holes in the biblical witness to Jesus’ birth, crucifixion, death and resurrection. Well, I don’t want to dodge those facts, because it’s pretty interesting stuff. I don’t want to refute them point for point either, because that’s just a waste of my time and yours.
What I’m saying is that facts leave no room for faith. And I don’t mean that we have to be sheep that follow some fantastic deity. What I’m saying is that we don’t have to make a choice one way or the other on this issue; we just have to make the choice to follow God and to enact the justice of Christ in this world, just like Joseph did.
In this corner is the historical account of Jesus: the scholars who hope to dethrone the kingship of the Christ by exposing the holes in the Bible’s presentation of him.
And in this corner is the literal account of Jesus: the fundamentalists who insist upon the inerrancy of Scripture and the notion that every page of the Bible is divinely inspired by God to support their evangelical claims.
Well, I want to get out of the ring and follow God into the world. I want to get out of the ring and bring Christ’s faithful kingdom of righteousness into a world that has to see it to believe it. I want to get out of the ring and live a life that takes a page from the story of Joseph, so that my life can start writing God’s stories in the here and now. That’s what kingdom living is. That’s what Jesus was talking about.
Fact: Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested in a diner in Montgomery, Alabama in 1958 for being a public nuisance and disturbing the peace.
Story: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. consistently did God’s will by demonstrating peaceful, humble acts of justice, and his actions forced an unjust nation to hold itself accountable for its racism.
You don’t have to choose between fact or fiction. You simply have to answer God’s call to place yourself in the story so that more stories like Joseph’s can be written in our broken world.
Are you still thinking about the Josephs in your life? There is a Disney Pixar movie that gets a lot of play in our house these days. Mac loves the movie Cars. And I mention it because in my estimation it’s a Joseph story for kids. Long of the short, the movie is about a hotrod rookie racecar who thinks that he can win every race all by himself because he’s just that amazing.
Meanwhile, his devoted pit crew just sits by and listens to the rookie mock them, talking about how pointless their job is because he can do it all by himself. And, of course, the rookie racecar can’t win by himself. And when he owns up to the fact that his silent, devoted pit crew is essential to his success, then he starts to win. No pit crew, no happy ending.
I’m glad that Mac is learning this subtle message early on, or at least he might reflect on it later. But as I watch over his shoulder, I can’t help but think about how real the story in this movie is today. The rookie racecar’s voice is provided by actor Owen Wilson. Owen Wilson is known in the media for his battles with drug addiction. But lately the stories about Wilson are changing.
Now the buzz is all about how Wilson is bouncing back, how he’s never been so peaceful and comfortable with who he is, how he has this newfound confidence and energy, and about how he wasn’t able to do any of this alone. What the media always points out is that Wilson was saved by his friends, but the stories never mention those friends or exactly what they did. The stories just mention that those friends never gave up on Wilson; that they were always there for him. No silent, devoted friends, no salvation story for Owen Wilson. No pit crew, no chance for victory. No Joseph, no Jesus.
Is there an egotistical rookie out there that you can be Joseph to? Is there a careless, reckless friend in your life that you can be Joseph to? Is there a story waiting to be born that you can make happen by taking a page from Joseph’s story?
God might not intervene in our lives the way that God rattled Joseph’s cage, but we can live our lives with obedience, patience and perseverance, like Joseph did. We can take a page from the myth of Joseph.
Did an angel appear to Joseph in a dream and tell him to do all the things that he ended up doing point for point in the story of Christ’s birth and infancy? I’m skeptical about that. But did Joseph rise to the challenges presented to him so that he could morph those challenges into great joys by God’s grace? Yes.
Is it possible for the miracle of Christ’s crucifixion, death and resurrection to exist without the miracle of Joseph’s parenting, guardianship, and shepherding bringing the endangered Christ child safely to adolescence and adulthood? No.
Is the gift of love that we anticipate being born into our hearts in 48 hours possible without the silent, devoted love Joseph demonstrated to his son Jesus? No.
The facts of Joseph’s life are insignificant in comparison with the lessons we take from his story. So, are we going to spend our lives waiting for an angel to come tell us what to do point for point, or are we going to live and learn by the example of Joseph’s silent, persistent obedience to the will of God? That’s some drama we can all live with. Amen.