Choosing What is Difficult: A Sermon for Advent and for Fatherhood
Written by Gary E. Smith Sunday, 06 December 2009 00:00
Many years ago, a friend made our family a beautiful crèche, a rough wooden stable with hand-painted clay figures, each one unique, the expressions on the faces of the wise men, the shepherds, the animals, the faces of Mary and Joseph. And I have always thought that our Joseph had the most amazing expression of all, painted by my friend, perhaps in some accident of the shaping, his eyes stand out away from his head, giving him, year after year, as he is carefully unpacked and stood in his place, the most astonished of expressions, as if to say, what on earth is happening here? Isn’t that what we remember most about Joseph, shall we call him a step-father in this situation? What place does Joseph have here other than to be the object of our knowing and sympathetic understanding year after year. Poor Joseph. What is he to think?
So what do we know about Joseph? Someone told me a few years ago in response to that question that we know Joseph is from a stable family. Seriously, what do we know about Joseph? We know that the Gospel of Matthew has been careful to establish his lineage, his forbears, his pedigree, from Abraham and David, no less, a genealogical listing of the famous and the not so famous, the savory and the unsavory, characters through forty-two generations. So when Joseph is called “a righteous man” in the context of his response to the news that Mary is pregnant without his benefit, we know who he is and what he’ll do. He’ll do the right thing.
So it is that what little we do know of Joseph comes from the Gospel of Matthew and then only in these few opening verses that Margie read earlier. You remember the story, but I wonder if you remember that Joseph has three dreams. The first dream is the one Margie read: an angel of God appears to Joseph and says, “Don’t be afraid.” Marry the woman Mary, and the child she will deliver, name him Jesus. And Matthew says that Joseph awoke from sleep, took Mary as his wife, and when the child was born, Joseph names him Jesus.
But that is only the first dream. There are two more. The second dream comes soon after the birth of Jesus, but we tend to forget this dream and the one after because there is violence in the next two dreams that we choose not to associate with the pageantry of gift-bearing astrologers. It is after those “we three kings of Orient are” have left that Joseph has the second dream. This dream tells Joseph that Herod, jealous for what it might mean for a Messiah to be born in the midst of his own kingdom, Herod intends to destroy this child Jesus. So the angel in dream number two says to Joseph, take Jesus and his mother and go to Egypt and wait. And what do we know about Joseph’s response? Matthew says that Joseph awakes from his dream and in the darkness of that very night, he takes Mary and Jesus to Egypt.
That is the second dream and the result. But there is a third and final dream. Herod learns he has been tricked, that the Messiah Jesus has escaped, and so Herod orders the slaughter of all of the children, aged two and under, in and around Bethlehem. This is the part we had rather forget, the slaughter of the innocent, the wailing and the lamentation. But Herod dies, the angel once again comes to Joseph in a dream, tells him all is safe and to return to Israel. What does Matthew say that Joseph does? Joseph awakens from the dream, takes Jesus and Mary, and returns to Israel. That is the last we hear of Joseph in the Gospel of Matthew.
From these three dreams we have learned two important facts about Joseph. One, it is clear that Joseph pays attention to his dreams. He does not blame these dreams on the spicy lamb stew he ate before going to bed. He does not get frightened by his dreams and stumble around in the dark for a glass of water to shake these things out of his head. He does not find in his dreams some great complex symbolism that he will report to his therapist next time he’s in Nazareth. None of these things: the first thing we learn about Joseph is that he pays attention to his dreams.
The second thing we have learned about Joseph is that not only does he pay attention to his dreams, he follows them, he obeys them, he does as he’s told, he is faithful. “Don’t be afraid,” the angel says. “Take Mary as your wife. Name the child Jesus. Take your family to Egypt and wait. Come back to Israel.” Now these are not ordinary dreams, and the instructions and directions are not everyday occurrences. How often do angels appear in our dreams, after all? This is not the kind of dream that has us roaming our old college campus trying to find our classroom. This is not the kind of dream in which we appear naked in some wildly inappropriate locale. The angel in these dreams is breaking the news of life-changing and traumatic events, and we are led to believe that Joseph is led to believe.
It was W.H. Auden who wrote of Joseph, providing for me the title. “To choose what is difficult all one’s days as if it were easy,” Auden wrote, “that is faith.” And then he adds, “Joseph, praise.” The Gospel writer has introduced to us a new kind of father. This is not the kind of father we have known from the ancient texts of our forebears. The Hebrew Bible, the Torah, has an image of God, has a God as father who is a distant God, a judging God, an angry, righteous, punishing, jealous figure of God. “You shall have no other God before me,” he thunders. We should have known. From the moment when the curtain opens on the Garden of Eden, we were taught that we can run but we cannot hide from God. Here was born the phrase, “just wait until your father gets home.”
You will remember some of the other stories as well: the story of Abraham, having had a son delivered to him and to Sarah in their old age, and God telling Abraham to take Isaac the son to the land of Moriah and to slaughter Isaac as an offering. This is not a proud day for fathers, Abraham there with the knife poised and ready, Isaac saved at the last minute because Abraham has proved something. He has proved to God that he is willing to do anything. We know in our time and culture that this notion of sacrifice is more than fairy tale. There are fathers now who sacrifice their sons, sacrifice their daughters with instruments more cruel than knives or fire.
Or what of the story of Isaac himself, when will he ever learn, Isaac thinking he must choose between his own sons Jacob and Esau, these twins fighting for a blessing, a birthright, all these stories of intrigue and jealousy and trickery, of peoples divided, these harsh contrasts of hate and of love, unfolding then in the NEXT generation when Jacob’s son Joseph dreams of lording it over his brothers. Again we have a father choosing, in this heritage of fatherhood, generation to generation, favoring one child, judging, punishing, blessing, withholding blessing, never getting the forgiveness part quite right. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph: we know these stories. They are not anachronisms. They are part of the themes of our lives. Who am I as a father? I am part Abraham, part Isaac, part Jacob and all the rest.
But come back with me now to Joseph, as in Mary and Joseph and Jesus. One of my teachers George Buttrick said that the Hebrew word Father, when it meant God as Father, usually meant a father of the nation Israel and not a father as in a father to a family. But Jesus began to use the Hebrew word Father in ways far more intimate. Buttrick thinks this is a tribute to Joseph and the care he had for his household. “It is fair to assume,” Buttrick says, “that Joseph was the human channel through which Jesus drew some of his incomparable wisdom.”
For evidence of this, look more closely at some of those things Jesus taught. Here is the prayer that Jesus taught, introducing now a God that provides and forgives. “Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Or when Jesus uses the more familiar word for father, a word in Aramaic: “Abba!” Jesus says, which means more closely “Daddy!” and having just said the word, the image of a father changes in our minds. No longer is this a white-bearded father in the heavens. It is now Abba, Daddy.
Or in one of the parables that Jesus told: the parable of the prodigal son. No longer is this a distant and jealous father, parceling out love and blessings on some unequal scale of justice. Jesus tells this parable, and if you remember, one of the sons asks for his inheritance and then promptly runs off to distant lands where he loses everything. He must return home. What does Jesus say about this father when he sees this son coming from a distance? “While he was still far off,” Jesus says, “his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran and put his arms around him and kissed him,” Jesus said, not even waiting but running toward this son “who had been dead but is now alive, who was lost but now is found.”
The image of father is changing. Jesus has learned about what a father is by having a father. I have said that the Gospel of Matthew does not mention Joseph again, after the three dreams, after the return to Israel. But the Gospel of Luke has one more story, another facet of Joseph and of this family, one you might remember as well: when, as with every year, “his parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover.” When Jesus was twelve and the family had been to Jerusalem for the Festival, and they were ready to return, Mary and Joseph realized that Jesus had not stayed with them. “They found him in the Temple,” Luke says, “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.”
“Child,” Mary cries [and can you hear your own voice now?], “why have you treated us like this?” “Didn’t you know I’d be in my Father’s house?” Jesus answers, not exactly answering her question, but bringing into focus something more about Joseph, his father with a small ‘f’, bringing into focus something Joseph would have wanted Jesus to learn. Listen to what Frederick Buechner says when he speaks of fatherhood itself:
“Even as the father lays down the law, he knows that his children will break it as they need to break it if ever they’re to find something better than law to replace it. Until and unless that happens, there’s no telling the scrapes they will get into trying to lose him and find themselves. Terrible blunders will be made: disappointments and failures, hurts and losses of every kind. And they’ll keep making them even after they’ve found themselves, too, of course, because growing up is a process that goes on and on. And every knock [a child] ever gets knocks the father even harder, if that’s possible, and if and when they finally come through [more or less] in one piece at the end, there’s maybe no rejoicing greater than this in all creation.”
Which is why that father, “while his son was still far off, saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him,” Jesus said, not even waiting but running toward this son “who had been dead but is now alive, who was lost but now is found.” When Jesus says to his parents, there in the Temple in Jerusalem, that there are other things he must be doing, Luke says they didn’t understand what he was saying, but I believe they did. I believe Joseph understood because Joseph had always had this grace and this ability to “choose the difficult as if it were easy,” even this business of letting his precious son begin to move away from him.
Joseph stands in the creche in my home, a bit in the background, eyes bulging, speaking to me of fatherhood with a small ‘f’, of who we are as fathers in this day and age, struggling in this culture to balance all the choices set before us: on the one hand, this crazy need to be, to achieve, to work hard, to make more money, to provide, to be driven, almost in a frenzy, to advance, to make it, to keep up, to keep on. And at the same time, in this generation we fathers can be fathers, can be there with our children, can be there from the moment of their births, can cuddle them, can be at home with them, can cook and wash for them, can step out of the old roles set for us, can be the father who runs out to meet them, to hug them and to kiss them.
Joseph, father of Jesus, choosing what is difficult as if it were easy. Praise to you and to all fathers. May we also be channels of incomparable wisdom in the lives of our own children. Joseph, praise.