Busch, Peter
4th Sunday of Advent
Dec. 21, 2025
Matthew 1:18-25
What is in a name? Why do we place so much importance on choosing the right name for a new baby? Our names hold our personal identity, our family history, and culture. We talk about living up to one’s name. Our names link us to something greater than ourselves. In many cultures, names are sacred, representing lineage, faith, or destiny. So we read our Old Testament and Gospel scriptures today recognizing that there is cosmic importance in the naming of a child–from the prophet Isaiah and the connection with another child about to be born 732 years later in Bethlehem.
This year we hear from Joseph, a man we know little about and who does not reappear in the Gospel texts after Jesus’ teenage disappearance in the Temple when he was twelve. Joseph’s appearance here in Matthew is entrenched in the scandal of his betrothed wife’s pregnancy and he knows that baby isn’t his. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, but God asks us to do some pretty strange things when we devote our lives to the service of the Divine. And in Joseph’s case, it’s a lot, especially in 1st century Palestine.
If anyone here today thinks they aren’t worthy enough to be accepted as God’s Beloved, to be a follower of Jesus, then let’s take a really close look together at the names listed in Matthew’s genealogy, the beginning of the Gospel right before we pick up the text in our reading today. To put it simply Jesus was not a blueblood royal. No, Jesus’ lineage is flawed, mixed with saints and sinners alike, but in God’s view all worthy of redemption and restoration. All worthy to be named in Holy Scripture as important in the lineage of the Messiah.
The first part of this passage is the lineage of Joseph. Here are just a few highlights:
- Tamar – a gentile, pregnant by father-in-law who also tried to burn her alive
- Rahab – a working girl
- Ruth – a foreign Moabite!
- “Wife of Uriah” who deserves to be named here, Bathsheba (King David’s decisions which brought about his downfall)
- Uzziah (struck down by God for his arrogance)
- Manasseh – restored idol worship and worship of Baal and was the worst king
- This is the family whom God chose to save the world and become incarnate within. If God can save the world with this family- imagine what God can do with you.
Yet Joseph is called righteous. He’s a just man, clearly not a man wanting revenge on being done wrong. He has contemplated what he should do in this situation of what he presumes has been a case of infidelity. The particular law that concerned Mary and Joseph appears in Deuteronomy 22, the case of an engaged woman found not to be a virgin. She was to be returned to her father’s house and stoned to death by the men of the city on account of the disgrace brought upon her father’s house.
Joseph does not want to do that. He does not let confusion and a sense of righteous indignation lead him to revenge and violence. That is what makes him righteous and just. He has power over Mary but does not use it to harm her. We don’t know what would have happened to Mary, though, if Joseph quietly dismissed her. Our translation says that Joseph did not wish to expose her to public disgrace. Other translations say he did not want to shame her. Shame is another powerful tool we use against each other yet Joseph chose not to.
So Joseph, most likely troubled and confused, has a dream. You know, one of those dreams so profound you don’t forget it when you awaken. An Angel, a messenger of God, appeared in the dream. Joseph probably paid a lot more attention to his dreams than we tend to do today. Dreams can be vehicles of divine communication. The angel tells Joseph that Mary has been conceived by Spirit, not another man, and this establishes Jesus’ divinity. Joseph, whom the Angel calls Son of David, is to adopt Jesus as his own son, establishing that Jesus also comes from the line of David which establishes Jesus’ humanity. Fully human, fully God, which Christians have spent the last 2000 years trying to understand.
The point at issue is whether Joseph should go through the entire marital process and bring to his own home (or his father’s) his now pregnant bride. While Joseph’s instinct was to interrupt the process, the angel’s advice is to go through with it as part of God’s plan. And Joseph and Mary were to name him Jesus, meaning God saves, which would happen according to Hebrew tradition on the eighth day at his circumcision. Joseph is stuck between following the Law and following his heart. He chooses to follow his heart. Jesus will later fulfill the Law in the same way when he teaches, “You have heard it said…but I say to you.” The Law of Love and Compassion is superior.
And then the Angel connects this scandal Joseph has found himself embroiled in with a prophecy told over 700 years before from the prophet Isaiah. One Joseph would have been familiar with. The prophecy had been told to King Ahaz of Judah who was concerned about the impending invasion of Syria and Israel in the north. The prophet tells Ahaz not to combine forces with violence and war but strongly reassures Ahaz that God is with him, that Judah will not be conquered and to trust in God’s promise despite what appears to be an unavoidable threat. Isaiah points to a young woman who is pregnant. She was likely Ahaz’s wife and the son to be born was Hezekiah. But Isaiah says, name the child Immanuel, meaning God is with us, and before that child is weaned, the threat you are experiencing will be no more. But Ahaz does not do that. Ahaz gave into fear and the child was not Immanuel and Ahaz became an Assyrian vassal.
But the prophecy still lived on and became fulfilled in Jesus. This son whose parents listened to God’s messenger is named Jesus, God saves, and it is he who becomes Immanuel through the incanration–God is with us. It was obedience to God in circumstances that were not at all ideal for anyone involved, that led to righting the wrongs and the ensuing evils of kings who gave into fear and the need for violent power to save. Which, of course, does not save. But this is the thing about God that we fail to recall or trust even today.
Things are not always what they appear to be. God is always doing the impossible thing, making a way out of no way through the unlikeliest of characters. Our tendency to give into fear and rely on violence, dominance, shame, pettiness, political leaders, and war is still a force at work in the world. We still find it too incredible that a savior would come from the scandal of a young woman who is yet to be married and a man who becomes the father through adoption. That concept of adoption plays out in our own lives as we have been adopted into the family of God ourselves. Believing the impossibility that a vulnerable baby of no significance, certainly no royalty, would become the Savior of the world. I mean, God’s love is so simple, so readily available to us all, but it does not come on our terms or through our own logic of how power or success works so we just can’t quite understand it. Think about it. If you were in Joseph’s shoes, would you have followed the Angel’s instructions in a dream? His family and friends, those he worked with, almost everyone in that town would have told him to do away with Mary. She would have been vilified and many would have wanted to follow the letter of the law and have her stoned. Almost everyone would have affirmed Joseph in that decision.
But the example of Joseph for us all is that he got up from that dream, reversed the bad decision of King Ahaz and those that followed, and did just as God’s messenger had instructed. We do not know who rejected that little family because of Joseph’s decision. But it would not have been easy for them at all. They would have been on the outskirts of acceptability of fine, decent folk. We don’t hear much about Joseph again, but this powerful story of faith, a faith that revealed Joseph as a man used to prayer, being therefore able to know when God was speaking, that he obeyed without any knowledge or understanding of what the future would hold. This laborer would teach his adopted son how to follow in his trade as a builder, not just working with wood, but most likely stone and metal, as well. That would lay the foundation for Jesus to become not just a building of homes or furniture, but the builder of the Kingdom of God.
Do we have the courage and the faith of Joseph so that we can look with trust and faithful obedience to fulfill God’s will here in our little church on the hill? God takes the small things, the impossible things through a bunch of ragamuffins to bring about God’s plan. But it requires our dedication to prayer and listening. It acknowledges that God is not a fairy godmother that waves a magic wand to make everything ok when we say yes to God. There are indeed consequences of standing for Love and righteousness that Joseph only knew too well. Yet I am confident that there is divine purpose for you, and for all of us at St. Christopher’s and together we can discern what that is despite the fears we may carry. Let’s be a people that do not fall prey to that fear but set out, resolute, with our faces towards God and listening–listening for the cry of a baby that lets us know that God is with us. O come, o come, Emmanuel.
Magdalena's Musings 