“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to
take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”
(Matthew 1:20b)
I have a funeral director friend who says there are lots of different ways to be a family. You don’t necessarily have to be swimming in the same gene pool, do you? In the gospel lesson for Advent 4, Year A (Matthew 1:18-25) God again shows off the divine penchant for the unconventional. I always liked this story because it highlights Joseph, a really good guy, who bucks the convention and becomes Jesus’ step-dad.
As a step-dad myself, I’ve had a pretty easy time of it. The woman I call my daughter was already a grown woman by the time I started dating her mom, so I’ve been more “step” than “dad.” But this isn’t always the case, and taking on a ready-made family takes a lot of courage for lots of guys. No wonder the angel tells Joseph, “Do not be afraid.”
In the world of the text, of course, when your girlfriend turns up pregnant and not by you, you’ve got a real problem. By law she could be stoned to death.[i] Joseph isn’t a vindictive fellow, so he just plans to break the engagement, making him both law-abiding and merciful. But God is about to take this awkward situation and turn it into the vehicle for the salvation of the world.
The whole first chapter of Matthew’s gospel—this whole whacky family history—is a testament to God’s ability to take unlikely people and unlikely situations and use them to produce something wonderful. We can’t expect God to operate by our rules. Luther always liked to point out that Jesus’ pedigree wasn’t composed of all sticky-sweet perfect people. Besides the Virgin Mary, Matthew only lists four other women as leaves on Jesus' family tree—and they’re some pretty loose chicks. Their stories are the kind of Bible tales we don’t teach the kids in Sunday school.
Take a look at Tamar[ii]. She’s something else. She married one of the sons of Jacob’s son, Judah, but her husband died before they had any kids. This was a pretty big issue in the ancient world as it left Tamar with no husband and no son to care for her in her old age. Under the levirate law of the day, she married her husband’s brother, but that guy bit the dust in an untimely manner too. She then asked Judah if she could marry his third son, but Judah figured this chick must be the kiss of death, so he denied her request. So what does poor Tamar do? When she learns her father-in-law is going off on a business trip, she sneaks off to the same place and disguises herself as a harlot (I like that word “harlot,” don’t you? It seems so less vulgar than some of its synonyms.). Judah, feeling frisky while on the road, figures he’ll hook up with a little female companionship and, not recognizing his daughter-in-law, sleeps with Tamar. She conceives, and her son is one of the direct ancestors of King David and Jesus—and the Bible takes her side.
Matthew also mentions Rahab.[iii] She doesn’t disguise herself as a harlot. She is a harlot. That’s her job. But she worships the God of the Hebrews and hides Joshua’s spies inside the walls of Jericho, thereby assisting in Joshua’s capture of the city and the return of God’s people to the land God promised to their ancestor Abraham. Matthew also highlights Ruth, who could be considered a foreign gold-digger, and, of course, Bathsheba, who cheats on her husband with King David but becomes the mother of Solomon, and part of the family of Jesus. The Bible is full of unconventional relationships, but God always makes it work.
There have been so many times over the years when couples who are virtually married except for the legal paperwork have asked me to baptize their babies because Catholic priests[iv] won’t baptize a baby born out of wedlock. I’m thinking, “Give me a break! Really, Father? You’re going to deny grace to a baby because you don’t like the way the parents did things?”
Let’s face it—young people today do things differently. I’ve married several ready-made families, couples who chose to have children and purchase a home before splurging on the cost of a wedding. Some years ago one of my former Confirmands—whom I love like a son or at least a favorite nephew—asked me to baptize his son about a year before he asked me to marry him to the boy’s mom. That’s not the order in which I’d prefer to administer the Church’s rites, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love his little boy with all his soul, or that he isn’t raising his son with integrity, affection, and faith. I know he is.
Unmarried moms and dads might’ve made our parents uncomfortable. Same gender couples would’ve horrified them, and inter-racial couples would’ve put them into a coma. But our kids’ standards aren’t our standards, nor should they be. And maybe our standards aren’t always God’s standards. There are lots of different ways to be a family, and maybe a good take-away form today’s lesson is Joseph’s willingness to see beyond the convention and believe that God can use any situation to God’s purpose and glory.
There are lots of ways to be a family. It’s a blessing to remember that in Christ we’re all family, all of us children of the same Holy Spirit.
[i]
See Deuteronomy 22:23-24
[ii]
See Matt. 1:3. Her story is in Genesis 38.
[iii]
Matt. 1:5. Her story is in Joshua 2ff.
[iv] I
swear the ultra-conservative Philadelphia Archdiocese is the Archdiocese that
Time Forgot. They’d push the altars back up against the walls and go back to the
Latin mass if they thought they could get away with it.
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