Because He Loved Her.

Matthew 1:18-25

He could have rejected her. He could have kicked her to the curb. It was completely in his rights, and socially acceptable, and totally understandable, for Joseph to reject Mary, once he found out the news. 

He wanted a quiet, normal life. He’d done everything right. He’d learned his trade, carpentry, a practical, useful occupation that would bring stability to his life. He was engaged to be married to a young girl from a reputable Jewish family. 

Everything was going according to plan. Go to school. Get a good job. Marry the girl next door. Have two children, a boy and then a girl. Live in a house in the suburbs with a golden retriever and a white picket fence. Follow the rules, toe the line, stick to tradition. And although the outside world was collapsing all around them, what with the insurrections, the end-of-the-world predictions, and the political rebellions, if he just followed the rules, everything will turn out alright. If he just stuck to the script. 

But then Mary comes along. She’s a feisty one. But she’s faithful. She’s tough, a hard worker. She trusts in God. This Mary comes along and everything is upended, all the plans they’d made together, all the plans their parents had arranged for them, gone in one fell swoop. She’s pregnant. They’d never been alone in the same room together, and yet here she is, somehow pregnant. This is not the Mary he thought he knew. This is not the life he’d planned on. And so, Joseph, being a righteous man, planned to dismiss her privately. He’d be leaving her destitute and alone with a newborn baby, but at least then she wouldn’t be stoned to death, at least she’d have some kind of a chance at life. So he stuck with the script. 

A pregnant Mary before their marriage was not part of the plan, so it was time to reset, let her go, start over again. 

What other option did he have? What would life be like if he took her in? Boy would people talk. His reputation would be ruined along with hers. They’d call him a fool, less than a man. No one would buy a table and chairs from this pushover. His carpentry business would fall apart if he couldn’t get customers. What would the leaders in the synagogues think? No. This is not part of the plan. This is not in the script he had written for his life. 

Mary’s been unfaithful; no matter what she says, no matter how much she protests and says this is from the “Holy Spirit”, others will talk, others will see, others will judge. And even if she thinks she’s telling the truth, then that just makes her crazy.There are only two options: she’s either unfaithful or a nutter, and he can’t have either. There’s too much at stake. There’s too much at risk. This is life or death. No. This is too much. It’s best if he just ends this now and moves on. He can’t be a part of this, whatever “this” is. 

Did they have a big fight? Was Mary in tears trying to convince him of the truth? Did she defy him? Did she say, “Take me or leave me, but I’m doing this!” or did she crumple, hopeless, into a ball on the dirt floor, desperate for him to believe, to understand, to know the truth of her situation? Did she try to reason with him? Or did she just accept his rejection? Did she have any hope at all that Joseph would stay? Did she expect him to stay? Or did she just accept that he’d probably reject her, leaving her alone like Hagar in the wilderness? 

Whatever the case, there’s still something that makes him hesitate, that gives him pause. He decides to sleep on it. He doesn’t reject her right away. Instead, he goes to sleep. Joseph decides to take a pause. He decides to wait on it. He knows what he has to do, he knows that he needs to let her go, but there’s something, something in him that makes him take a breath. He’ll sleep on his decision, and then dismiss her in the morning. 

*This next part is kind of hard for me, because God doesn’t send me dreams. God doesn’t speak to me in my sleep, unless God is warning me that all my teeth are falling out or I can’t open my high school locker, or I’m being forced to preach without notes, or I’m failing Calculus…again. No. God doesn’t come to me in dreams, at least not as clearly as an angel speaking to me from heaven telling me to not be afraid. But Joseph gets a dream, a dream telling him to not be afraid. 

You see, he’s scared. Terrified. He’s scared of what will happen to them. What will happen to this baby? What will happen to this plan they’ve spent their whole lives preparing for? He’s afraid. And understandably so. 

The angel tells him not to be afraid. This baby is from the Holy Spirit, that pneuma, that same spirit of God that once hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation. This baby is from the Creator of the Universe, the one who spun all this into being and continues to create today. 

Well if Joseph was afraid before, imagine his fear now. It must have tripled. At least. His domestic problems are suddenly diminished to a speck. What is having an unfaithful wife compared to being asked to be the earthly father of the Son of God? 

When he woke up, did he trust this dream? Did he pass it off as a stress induced delusion? He could have, except for that fear that he felt deep in the pit of his stomach, that fear that was still there. That fear that somehow tripled in the night. Angel messengers are always telling their recipients to not fear, but that’s like telling a kid to “calm down.” When has being told to not fear or to calm down ever worked? Was Joseph still afraid, just a different kind of afraid now? 

Joseph is being asked to defy social conventions. Joseph is asked to accept the unacceptable. Joseph is being asked to trust his gut, and his dreams. Joseph is being asked to take Mary as his wife, to stay. “Don’t be afraid,” the angel tells him. “Stay. Stay with the hard thing, the thing that doesn’t make sense, the thing that breaks your heart and then stitches it back together again.” “Stay,” the angel tells him. Stay. 

What makes him stay?

He was in his rights and in his right mind to leave. Everyone would have understood. Everyone expected him to leave. It wasn’t just the practical thing to do; it was the righteous thing to do. Somehow, she’d screwed up - she was either crazy or unfaithful - and what kind of future did that bode for Joseph and his family? He should leave. 

But an angel asked him to stay.

And Mary asked him to stay. 

Suddenly the whole world condensed itself into those two beings — Mary, and an angel. That’s all that was left of his carefully choreographed world, and they’d both asked him to stay.

Why does he decide to stay?

I think the answer is that he loved her. I think he loved her. I think it’s as simple and as complicated as that. I think that he loved her, and so he trusted what she’d said about her body, about her faith, about the course of her life. Maybe it’s just that simple. After he’d received this news, this betrothal, this economic arrangement of dowries and parental agreements, didn’t make sense in any way. And yet he stuck with it. He stuck with her. “Don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife” the angel had told him. Don’t be afraid to love, even when it doesn’t make sense, even when it looks ridiculous, foolhardy. Even when others will talk, when others will reject you, when others will make your life more difficult. Don’t be afraid to love. 

This is a love story, a story about the love between two people who were supposed to be together merely out of convenience or economic gain, but who find each other, who need each other. And because of their love for each other, our Savior has a home, has a family, has a beginning. I think Joseph loved Mary. And it was with a radical, impractical love. I think, somehow, he was able to drop all his pretenses, all his expectations, all his hopes and dreams for a “normal” life, and simply love Mary. And because he loved her, he took Jesus as his own and loved him. He gives him a name. He adopts him. He makes him his own. 

Because Joseph first loved Mary, Love entered the world with a home and a family and way to survive. 

He chose to trust her. He chose to trust himself. He chose to trust the message of his dream: Do not be afraid. Stay. Stick around. This is bigger than the script he’d written for himself. This is bigger than the plans his parents had made. Bigger than a too-common story of an unfaithful girl and a deadbeat dad. This is a love story. A story about sticking with the hard stuff and the hard people and their hard stories of disappointment and betrayal and heartbreak. A story about loving each other through the hard stuff. 

And when that happens, when we love each other through the hard stuff, Christ is born. When we love each other through the hard stuff, through the stuff that doesn’t make sense, through the heartbreak and the betrayal, the love of Christ is born again. 

Joseph shows us the Christmas spirit because he chose to trust his love. It’s not a spirit full of tinsel and noise, cookies and gifts, but of forgiveness and acceptance. Presence and participation. Listening and dreaming. This is the Christmas Spirit. It’s one of love, the love between two partners making a life together amidst complicated and even life-threatening circumstances. It’s a persevering and stubborn love, one that stayed. 

Immanuel. God-With-Us. Made possible because of a few simple yeses, a stubborn decision to trust and stick with the hard things, a decision to love, to stay.

Thanks be to God.