Sermon
Text – Matthew 1:18-25
I wonder what would happen if
you went out and just started asking people this simple question: “Who was
Jesus’s dad?”
Is it A) Joseph of Nazareth, B)
the Holy Spirit, C) we don’t know, or D) something else entirely?
You might think, for a
religion that has often been very focused on maintaining very specific rules
about how families should be structured, that Christianity would have a much
clearer answer to the simple question of “Who was Jesus’s dad?”
But we don’t. The fact is,
there’s no easy way to answer the question.
Our earliest sources gloss
over his missing father figure. Paul – who wrote our earliest Christian scriptures
– says nothing about Jesus’s dad. Tellingly, he refers to Jesus as the “son of
Mary.” Highly unusual, because in the Ancient Near East, you would have been
referred to as the son of your father, not your mother. If Paul had known who
Jesus’s dad was, he would have called him “son of Joseph.” Of course, Paul does
refer to Jesus as the “son of God” but it’s unclear whether he’s talking about
“son of God” as a theological statement or an actual statement of Jesus’s
parentage.
Mark is our earliest gospel.
As you may recall, it has no birth story. Jesus’s father is not mentioned and,
just like Paul, the author of Mark’s gospel refers to Jesus as the “son of
Mary.”
It’s not until we get to the
gospels of Luke and Matthew, which were written late in the 1st
century, that the character of Joseph is introduced. And, even then, we don’t
really know much about him.
Matthew’s author goes to
great pains to record a genealogy of Jesus, tracing his roots through King
David and Abraham. Joseph, son of Jacob, is Jesus’s link to David. But Matthew
is careful not to name Joseph as Jesus’s father. Instead, he calls him,
“Joseph, husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born.” Did you catch that slight
difference? Joseph is Mary’s husband. And Jesus is still the “son of Mary.”
As the stories about Jesus’s
birth solidified, Joseph was said to have been there at Jesus’s birth. He
claimed him as a son, gave him a name, and raised him as his own. In the Gospel
of Luke, Joseph is with Jesus and Mary when Jesus visits the Temple in
Jerusalem at the age of 12. But after that, he fades. That’s the last time
Joseph is mentioned in the Bible. Joseph is not present during Jesus’s adult
ministry. He wasn’t there at the wedding in Cana, when Mary gently pushed her
son into a more public role. And he wasn’t there at the cross, when Mary
watched her son die an agonizing death. And he wasn’t there when Jesus’s body
was taken down from the cross. If Jesus’s father had been around, that would
have been his job – to take care of his child’s body – but, instead, a different
Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea, takes on that role. In fact, Jesus’s dad doesn’t
seem to be around at all. If he had been, Jesus wouldn’t have had any reason to
give his mother, Mary, over to the care of his disciple John when he knew he
was dying.
Where did Joseph go? Did he
die? Did he eventually divorce Mary quietly, as he had initially considered? Or
maybe he never existed at all and when people started telling stories about
Jesus as a grown up, they forgot to add his dad back into the picture. We just
don’t know.
What we do know is that Jesus
does not seem to have come from a family that would have received a stamp of
approval from Focus on the Family. He didn’t have a mom and a dad who first had
love, then had marriage, then had a baby in a baby carriage. In fact, some
people might even describe Jesus as having come from a “broken home.”
I put “broken home” in quotes
because I just can’t bear to use that phrase without somehow designating it as
being completely inaccurate and offensive. Of course, we call come from
families that are broken in some way or another, right? Families are made up of
people….people who are both wonderfully whole and utterly broken all at the
same time. No one has a perfect family.
Some of us come from families
that get labeled as “broken,” though, and that’s what really frustrates me. I
grew up in a family that many would have labeled as “broken” – but, to me, it
was wonderfully whole. I was affirmed, cared for, taught to love, challenged,
supported, honored, cherished, kept safe. Sure, I got into arguments with my
sister and drove my parents crazy when I forgot to do my chores. But my family
was certainly no more broken than those of many of my friends.
My family of origin was
unconventional. I grew up with siblings from both of my parents’ previous
marriages. My mom and dad divorced when I was about 10. My teenage years were
spent as the only child at home with a single mom. Before my parents divorced,
I felt happy, secure, and loved. After my parents divorced, I felt happy,
secure, and loved.
In college I struggled to
reconcile my positive feelings about my family and my upbringing with
statistics and studies and anecdotes from classmates who had their opinions
about single moms and children of divorce. None of it resonated with me. My
life was just my life. My family was just my family. It was all I had known and
it had done for me what families are supposed to do….teach, care, protect,
connect, show, encourage, challenge, love. It hadn’t done those things perfectly,
but I never expected it to.
So when I read today’s
passage from the Gospel of Matthew introducing us to this Joseph character, my
heart tingles because I see in Jesus a kindred spirit. We don’t really know
where Jesus came from – in terms of his family background. But we do know that
it was likely considered unsavory by the standards of his time and place.
If we take Matthew’s version
of the story at face-value, here’s what we have. We have a woman who was
betrothed to a man and found herself pregnant. It’s important to remember that
although some translations say Mary and Joseph were engaged, that’s not really
an accurate description of their relationship. Marriage was so different in
Jesus’s time. An engagement wasn’t something that happened when a starry-eyed
young man saved up three months income and bought a perfect diamond ring. When
couples got married, it was because their families had come together and made a
legally-binding contract to join their families.
After doing so, there was a
period of time after the contract was made but before the woman moved in with
the man. This was the period of time Mary and Joseph were living in. They were
legally married, but not yet living together. So when Mary was “found to be
with child from the Holy Spirit” it was kind of a PR nightmare. People back
then knew different things about biology than we do, but it’s safe to say they
did know where babies came from. They knew that if Mary was pregnant, it meant
a serious breech of the marriage contract had occurred.
Joseph knew this. And he knew
what was expected of him. He was supposed to figure out who had fathered the
child and then have Mary and the father stoned to death. That’s what was
expected. So when the text says Joseph was “righteous and unwilling to expose
Mary to public disgrace” it’s not messing around. Joseph was seriously going
out on a limb here to protect Mary in this way. Don’t ever let anyone tell you
that Joseph was a jerk for wanting to divorce her. He was taking the high road
when he contemplated filing for a divorce. The low road would have led to
Mary’s death.
Instead, an angel intervenes,
and Joseph is convinced that he has other options. He can choose hope over
fear. He can continue in his marriage to Mary and they can make a life
together. He can name the child – claiming his role as father. And when Joseph
awoke from his dream, he did all of these things. He continued to live out his
obligations to Mary, his wife, and he named the child Jesus, claiming him as
his own.
I love the messiness of this
story. I love that Jesus was not born into a picture-perfect family. There were
complications, complexities, things that seemed insurmountable. And yet, at the
end of the day, Jesus arrived. And with his arrival he did was all babies do –
turned his parents’ lives upside-down.
Jesus has been the great
world-upside-down-turner since his arrival. A rule breaker from day one. And the
Holy Family, which we have sanitized and Hallmark-card-ized probably didn’t
look anything like those millions of picture-perfect Nativity scenes we’ve
looked at our whole lives.
They were real people with real lives. Real loves. Real regrets. Real triumphs. Real hopes. Real dreams. Real fears. Real weaknesses. Real strengths. And they were a real family.
No matter what anyone says,
they were a real family.
Family doesn’t have to look
like that cleaned-up version of the Holy Family that we put on display each
year. It doesn’t have to be a mom, dad, and 2.2 kids or whatever the average is
these days. Family isn’t about matching up with some societal norm. At least
not when God has any say in the matter.
Christ came into the world in
the life of a newborn baby who was born into a family that no one would have
put on a cover of a magazine. Christ was born into a home that many would have
called broken. And Christ comes still in every type of family you could
possibly imagine and some you’ve never even thought of.
See that single mom with her
four young kids as they pack up the car to go to Grandpa’s house for Christmas?
That’s a holy family and God is there.
See those two dads who are
nervously and excitedly preparing to travel across the country to their grown
daughter’s wedding? That’s a holy family and God is there.
See those two women who don’t
live together but consider each other to be the only family they’ve got?
They’ve been through the thick of it together. That’s a holy family and God is
there.
See that young couple at the
gym at 6:00am on Wednesday? They don’t have any kids. And please don’t ask them
when they’re planning on “starting a family.” They might not ever have
children. That’s a holy family and God is there.
See the two siblings in their
80s who live together after their spouses passed away? They fought like the
dickens as kids, but in their golden years they have found their way back to
each other. That’s a holy family and God is there.
Family is so much bigger than
what the rules and conventions of our day would have us believe. I’ve heard
folks joke about Jesus having two dads – ha! Two dads! Joseph and God! Get it? But
the thing is, Jesus really did come from a non-traditional family. Any way you
slice it – single mom, child of adultery, child of the Holy Spirit – any way
you slice it, the Holy Family was not the norm.
In a time and place where society
continues to disagree and argue about what holy families are “supposed to look
like,” let’s rejoice in the good news that Jesus came from a family that did
not fit the mold. I promise you, there is a whole world out there that is
longing to hear this good news. The Church has, for far too long, pretended
like it’s our job to preach some divine decree about what a family is supposed
to look like. How on earth did we come to this conclusion when the very person
we claim to follow broke all the rules at his birth?
It’s high-time the Church
stop focusing on what we think family should look like and begin celebrating
all the families out there who are nurturing human beings into the people God
would have them be.
God blesses all families. God
rejoices when families get it right. And God weeps with us when families get it
wrong. God cheers from the sidelines as people in families try their best to
offer love, care, safety, a sense of belonging, and a sense of rootedness and
connection. God rejoices when reconciliation occurs and holds out hope of
resurrection when relationships die.
Picture-perfect or
dysfunctional, so-called-broken or so-called-normal….every family is wonderfully
whole and terribly broken. Just like the family Jesus was born into so long
ago.
May God bless each and every
holy family this Christmas.
