Matthew 2: 13-23 - Following God's Direction

Tired. That is how I believe I would feel if I was Joseph. Joseph seems to get shafted in our telling of the Christmas story. At times it seems like we boil him down to be nothing more than a nice figurehead. Someone to stand next to Mary, looking down on the Christ child.

But Joseph had to be tired by this point. He found a woman he wanted to be wed to and had paid the bride price to her family for her hand. Only to find out a few months into their engagement that she was pregnant. And he knew that the child growing inside of her wasn’t his. Under Jewish law he had rights – the right to keep the bride price and not marry her. Shouldn’t the person she was intimate with take her as his wife (and under the custom of the time, make her family pay a second bride price). He also knew that he had the right to publicly shame her – in she could not prove that she was a virgin on her wedding night – at best he could send her back to her parent’s household, where she probably wouldn’t find another man to marry. At worst, he could ask for her to be stoned because of her deceit.

Because Joseph was not a cruel man, he decided to not publicly shame her, not even make a fuss about the fact that the child-to-be was not his. He would simply return her to her parents’ house, hoping that she could find a more suitable husband

Mary kept trying to tell him that the child was God’s, but God had never done anything like that before. It just seemed too far-fetched. But then an angel of the Lord came to him in a vision, telling him to stay with Mary. Was Joseph just getting wrapped up in Mary’s fantasy world?

But Joseph stuck with Mary, believing, or at least, faithfully acting as if, what the angel had said was true. This child growing inside of his fiancé was God’s. Who could they tell who would actually believe them? He couldn’t leave Mary alone when he went to register in Bethlehem. He had seen the looks her very family gave her – looks of their own disbelief. So he gathered up Mary to make the 92-mile journey from Nazareth. The journey took so long, and just as they made it, it came time for Mary to deliver. There weren’t any midwives around to help her give birth, let alone knowledgeable family members. So Joseph helped deliver this child, a child who wasn’t his biologically.

And now. Now the angel of the Lord had appeared to Joseph once again, telling him to flee to Egypt. Another 75 miles or more. This time with an infant. Mary and Joseph did not know anyone in Egypt. Who would they stay with? In a society so built around the family, with generations upon generations living in the same dwelling, who would take this new family in? Further, this would involve leaving the Roman world. It just wasn’t logical. But what were Joseph’s options really. The Angel of the Lord said that Harod was out for this child’s blood.

Even with the distance between Bethlehem and Egypt news would only take a few mere weeks to reach between the areas. Even without the Internet or telephones. Surely, Mary and Joseph would have heard or the wreckage in Bethlehem. Of so many male infants under the age of 24 months, being slaughtered. All because the king was looking for their child. But they couldn’t speak up – couldn’t return to offer up their son, God’s chosen one. So Joseph kept his family in Egypt, while holding an ear cupped towards the cries of the mother’s rising from Bethlehem.

We live in an age where we are used to things being quick and easy. We microwave food. We put our dishes in the dishwasher. Many of us have Internet on our phones so we can receive information at any point in time, even when we are away from our desks. We drive cars instead of walk. The list goes on and on. But this quick and easy mentality of our society makes us miss the beauty of the message of Joseph. Following God is not going to be easy. Often God commands us to do things that seem utterly illogical. Things that can cause us to be estranged from our family and friends. Things that call us to be away from everything we know, be it a familiar city, our home that we built, or maybe even our very country. At least this is how God called Joseph. And for that he is even failed to be recognized outside of the gospels for the great person of faith he was.

Joseph also shows us that following God’s direction can literally cause you to put your own life on the line. And the life of others. Joseph may not have known the full ramifications of each step of faith he took, but he also could have turned back. His customs allowed him to do so. And yet, he believed this angel of God.

I can hear the rebuttal forming – but the angel spoke to Joseph directly and God doesn’t speak to us like that today. That’s why he could respond with such faith. But the first time, Joseph was asleep, dreaming. Haven’t we all had those dreams that we know aren’t real. Or dreams that seem so real, but that we would never act upon. Joseph had decisions to make each step along the way; whether to trust this crazy path God had put him on or to back out.

I think we’re really good at backing out today. Or at least I am. We want a plan that seems logical, and where we at least have some sense of the direction we are headed. Or we are at the opposite extreme – the side that denies that we are human – the part that states that faith has to be fearless and full of vigor. Yet, I truly believe, Joseph had to be tired. Tired of running. Tired of the unknown. Tired of being tired. Maybe even tired of the angel of the Lord showing up.

As I was driving this week, a commercial came on the radio that stated that babies are a gift from God. I think the commercial was trying to capture the potential that is in each new birth, each new life. But I wondered if Joseph and Mary thought the same thing about this child – a child who was to be the Messiah. For they were only human parents, caught in their own pain of leaving everything they knew and held dear to get to this point, and parents whose hearts ached at the cries of the slaughtered in Bethlehem. Because of Harod’s view of the male king to come – their very son.

Mary and Joseph had to have doubts. They had to be tired and maybe even angry with God. But they still followed God’s direction – no matter how heart breaking and confusing it may have been. Do we have that type of faith – the faith that names our doubts, but walks on any way? The type of faith that knows that we might get it wrong along the way, but still move on? The faith that we know will cost us, even if we don’t know how great the cost exactly, but we take it one step at a time? May we be a people of God who alters the belief in our world that faith, like everything else, should be simple. May we live more like Joseph, offering everything we have, and even some that we didn’t know we have, trusting bit by bit in God’s confusing plan for our lives, the lives of other, maybe even this very world. Amen.