Matthew 1:18-25 (The 3rd Sunday of Deep Advent)
1.
There is no question that his life is now wildly complicated. There is no question that faith itself is about to rock his world. And there’s no question that what’s required of Joseph now is more, so much more than he ever imagined having. In his heart. In his bones. In his spirit.
But in his dream, in his sleep, in darkness that is both gracious and true, the angel says to Joseph: “Don’t be afraid.” The angel says to Joseph: “Salvation is at hand.” The angel in his dream says: “Take Mary and love this child and be a family.” And he wakes up. Joseph wakes up. And he does as the angel has asked him to do. Undaunted by all the unknowns, unfazed by fear, and ready to make love the singular purpose of his singular life. Wherever it takes him. And whatever the cost.
It's fascinating, really, that Matthew’s gospel begins not in a sanctuary or temple, with some kind of ancient rite, and not in a synagogue or classroom, with old texts explained—but in a simple man’s dream. God meets Joseph in the shadowy hallways of his unconscious; God visits Joseph in the language of his own uncertainty and bewilderment. “Don’t be afraid.” “Salvation is at hand.” “Take Mary and love this child and be a family.” In other words, resist the shaming energies of tradition, imagine a family made whole by love, and trust in God and God alone. Trust in the sanctuary of spirit you find in your own anointed heart. Where angels speak of fearlessness and salvation.
But it is Joseph’s faithfulness—in the absence of assurance, in the absence of proof—that seems most timely for us this morning. None of this can be easy for him. This kind of faithfulness is never easy for you, or for me either. Convention comes naturally. Codes of purity are predictable, even dependable. Orthodoxy makes sense. And yet, and yet, Joseph bares his heart before that angel in the darkness. He risks his future, his equilibrium, and certainly his reputation for the newness of God. Am I willing to do the same? Are you? Is it possible that this is the gospel challenge before us at Christmas? To bare our hearts before angels in the darkness? To risk our futures, our balance, our reputations for the newness of God?
2.
You know, we have every reason to center Mary’s courage, Mary’s chutzpah, Mary’s incarnational imagination in our reflections around the Christmas story each December. But there’s a place for Joseph in our wondering too, there’s a place for Joseph in our musing around faith and grace and making space for new things. If Mary’s imagination is the generating spirit of Christmas, then Joseph’s vulnerability proves essential to our receptivity and our own awakening.
So I want to offer this to each of you this morning, and most importantly to all of us as a community, as a church. While there are habits and traditions that have served us well, there are others that have outlived their usefulness, and even their faithfulness. And the despair-defying, world-flipping, grace-infusing spirit of God stirs in the darkness of our dreams, or in the incoherence of our grief, or even in the anger that gathers around injustice in our streets; the despair-defying, world-flipping, grace-infusing spirit of God stirs in us that we might see new visions, entertain new dreams, risk new relationships and embrace the kin-dom of God. On earth as in heaven.
Tradition would have Joseph divorce Mary, quietly, but permanently. Tradition would rely on habits of the heart that reduce righteousness and faith to formality and compliance. Tradition would limit God’s movement to purity codes and misogyny. But the angel says to Joseph: “Don’t be afraid.” The angel says to Joseph: “Salvation is at hand.” The angel in his dream says: “Take Mary and love this child and be a family.”
Here's a question. Is there even now a voice in the cave of your heart singing a new song, inviting you to claim your life’s vocation in a new way, insisting that you leave an old habit or way of thinking or even a religious conviction behind? Is there a vision emerging in the darkness, is there a grace once unnoticed now impossible to miss, is there a presence inviting you to do something once unimaginable, or something costly or unpopular, or even something ‘good’ Christians just don’t do?
Again Joseph isn’t a simple-minded bystander in the Christmas story. Don’t be fooled by pageants and creches. He’s a reminder to us all that God is doing a new thing; God is doing a new and unprecedented thing—liberating our hearts, revitalizing human communities, emboldening our many spirits for service and kindness and (yes) resistance in an authoritarian moment. So that our sisters, our brothers, our neighbors might know that salvation, wholeness, love is not only possible, but stirring in our hands and hearts, in our dreams and desires, in God’s creation, every blade of grass, every grain of sand, and every wisp of wind. And Joseph does all this without any guarantees. Joseph does all this because he trusts the angel in his darkness.
3.
Thomas Merton—one of the great mystics of the Christian tradition and a 20th century Trappist monk—did some marvelously whimsical theology around Mary’s story and Joseph’s, and the Christmas narratives themselves. And one of Thomas Merton’s curious insights has often surfaced in my own prayer life, and in my preaching I guess, during this Advent season. He questioned virginity as merely a category of sexual experience or inactivity. It made no sense to him that this was urgent in any way. And he wondered instead if virginity signified—in the biblical tradition at least—something of a spiritual orientation, a kind of cosmic awareness, or vulnerability to God’s amazing and sometimes unsettling grace. A metaphor perhaps for the soul’s capacity to entertain angels in the dark, the soul’s ear for grace in a season of bluster and blame.
Merton wrote that there is a virginal space in every human heart, “le point vierge” in French, a virginal space that is untouched by despair or illusion, unblemished by oppression or trauma, and a point of inexhaustible truth and divine presence. “Le point vierge.” A virginal space. In every human heart. Yours. Mine. The woman who’s shooting up behind the gas station in Dover. The guy who’s stealing bread to feed his hungry family. “Le point vierge.” And Merton often translated this into English as “the little point of nothingness.” And doesn’t this have a rather Buddhist feel to it? “The little point of nothingness.”
In the stripping away of one’s ego; in the deep, dark wonder of contemplation; in one’s costly discipleship alongside a beloved community, what’s revealed is God’s grace within us, God’s grace within you, God’s grace within me, God’s grace within each and every human heart. Inexhaustible and divine. “Le point vierge.”
In this sense, then, I want to say that just as Mary’s virginity suggests her own radical receptivity to God’s vision in a world of sorrows and wonders, to God’s embodiment in her own flesh—so too might Joseph’s (that’s right, Joseph’s virginity) offer us a way of appreciating this brother’s honest vulnerability and his wild imagination. The elders in his community might say: Divorce the girl. The tradition going back generations might say: She’s unworthy of your love. The morality of the time might say: There is no kind of love that can make a family of this mess.
But Joseph falls into a deep sleep just the same, dives deeply into the darkness of night, and welcomes God’s dream in the depths of his soul. “Le point vierge.” “That little point of nothingness”—unafraid of ancient traditions and nattering moralizers. That abiding love in his heart—open instead to the Spirit of God and God’s passion for the people’s liberation and wholeness. And Joseph hears the voice of an angel. “Don’t be afraid.” “Salvation is at hand.” “Take Mary and love this child and be a family.” And in these moments, his life is not just his life, but a gift to be offered for the repairing of his world, for the renewing of his people’s spirit. Joseph, Mary, the Child between them. And all the rest of us.
4.
Friends, I believe—and our gospel insists—that there is this same ‘virginal space,’ this ‘little point of nothingness,’ in each and every one of us. In each and every one of you. Where the cruelty of empires cannot claim or destroy your hope. Where the disappointments of life cannot diminish your wonder. Where the mystery of God and the wisdom of the Spirit dance freely and invite you to join joyfully in their creativity. “Le point vierge.”
Now you may be sitting there thinking to yourself: “Not me, preacher. My time has come and gone.” Or you may be sitting there thinking to yourself: “Not me, Pastor Dave. My spirit’s been thoroughly crushed.” There’s no wonder left in me. There’s nothing new for me to do. I’ve seen it all.
But that’s just it, you see. That’s the whole point of Joseph’s story and Mary’s courage and Jesus’ gospel too. That God seeks out the brokenhearted. That God partners with the crushed and hopeless. That God builds a new and buoyant beloved community with folks like you and me: revealing in all of us that “little point of nothingness” that is in truth God’s great glory and amazing grace within us and among us. Everywhere Jesus turns there is another brother, another sister who imagines their own unworthiness. Most of them have been battered by the judgment and scowling of others. And what does Jesus do: he takes that broken brother by the hand, he takes that shattered sister by the hand, and he says: Come with us. Let us bind the wounds of the wounded. With joy. Let us bear the burdens of the poor. With kindness. Let us fight for freedom and dignity. With courage. Come with us. Let us break bread together and be glad.
So, my friends, let us break bread together and be glad! Let us break bread together and be bold! Let us look into the eyes of our friends at this table and see undiminished glory and sweet and even defiant wonder. We will not betray our joy by giving up on one another. We will not yield our wonder to the meanness of the moralizers. So let us entertain the promise (instead) that in this bread, and in this cup, is the unquenchable love of God—for each of us, for all of us, and for life itself. Let’s say that again: In this bread and in this cup is the unquenchable love of God—for you and me and for life itself. And then let us, like Joseph, wake up to Spirit’s invitation: that we too, wild and woke, might defy shame and embrace diversity; that we, too, wild and woke, might break the rules that need breaking and build a beloved community; that we, too, wild and woke, might shelter one another and embody in our very lives the grace and peace of the Baby Jesus.
No guarantees how it all works out. But the promise of Love, abiding Love, eternal Love, God’s Love—along the Way.
Amen and Ashe.
