Christ the King Epiphany Church, Wilbraham

The Rev. Martha S. Sipe

December 21, 2025 / Fourth Sunday in Advent

Matthew 1:18-25

Years ago, friends gave me a beautiful, small nativity from El Salvador.  It had a five-inch oval base and a backdrop that stood like two white pillars and a red roof, giving the appearance of a stable.  The figures were little blocks of wood that stood about an inch and a half tall and were painted in vibrant colors on the front side:  Mary, Joseph, an angel, a shepherd, a cow, a donkey, and of course, the baby Jesus.  At Christmas time of 1996, Tricia and I were on internship, and we were living in the vicarage of the church I was serving.  The radiators at the vicarage had squared-off covers, making them the perfect place to display Christmas decorations, like my little Salvadoran nativity.  However, those radiator covers were also places where our two cats loved to lounge, enjoying their heated seats.  And those little wooden, blocky figures were just too tempting for playful paws.  And so, you guessed it – we would frequently find one figure or another on the floor on the other side of the living room.  One time, one of the cats batted Joseph off his perch . . . and we never did find him.  For years, we continued to set up that little nativity, making the shepherd stand in for Joseph because, well, Joseph didn’t make that much of a difference in the story, right?  It didn’t really matter if he had an understudy.

According to most tellings of the Christmas story, including the one we will hear on Wednesday evening from Luke’s gospel, Joseph is a supporting actor, not one of the leads.  In the lectionary, we only hear Joseph’s story every third year on this, the fourth Sunday in Advent.  While he is clearly subordinate to Mary in the birth of Jesus, nevertheless, he is an essential partner in the work of bringing Jesus into our world.

Matthew calls Joseph a righteous man who is unwilling to expose Mary to public disgrace.  Righteous, meaning following the law, and at the same time unwilling to demand strict enforcement of the law, which because Mary was engaged and pregnant by someone other than Joseph, labeled her an adulteress, and made her subject to being stoned to death.  Although I have read scholars who say that the death penalty wasn’t strictly enforced for adultery at that time, nevertheless, Joseph had a choice to make.  He clearly couldn’t go through with the marriage, but because he was righteous and compassionate, he resolved to divorce her quietly so as not to subject her to a public hearing and the judgment of the whole community.  He valued compassion more highly than the law.  Isn’t that what Jesus would later do?  Isn’t that what we are called to do as we bring Jesus into this world?  Let mercy win over legalism?

Joseph is also vital to the story because of his trust:  he trusted in the words of the angel in a dream.  He had gone to sleep with a nightmare scenario on his mind, his hopes of marital and familial bliss dashed by a pregnant fiancée.  Then in a dream, the angel reassured him that everything was going to be okay; in fact, everything was going along according to God’s plan.  Which would have been easier to believe?  The reality that was actually happening or a surreal dream?  We give Mary a lot of credit for believing what the angel Gabriel said to her.  I don’t think we give enough credit to Joseph for believing an angel in a dream.  We, too, are called to believe in a dream of sorts, a vision of what God’s beloved community is supposed to look like.  It’s easier for us to believe in the nightmare reality, in which society is infected with violence and injustice, hatred and greed.  It takes faith to believe that we could have a society

built on peace, justice, equity, and love, where poverty, racism, and discrimination are eliminated, and all people are cared for and connected with one another.  But we can trust, as Joseph did, that this is what God intends for us.  And when we trust in and work toward that vision, we bring Jesus into the world.

When Joseph awoke from his dream, he did what the angel had commanded, marrying Mary and naming his son.  By giving Jesus his name and claiming his as his own, even though he had no physical role in Jesus’ conception, Joseph adopted Jesus into the royal line of King David.  This was important because it “legitimized” him in the eyes of faithful Jews who were expecting that the Messiah would come from David’s family tree.  Arguments have been made throughout history that Mary, too, was a descendant of David, and that may well be true.  But in legal terms, it was the father’s lineage that defined the son.  And anyway, I sort of like the idea that Jesus was adopted.  It means, among other things, that Joseph made a conscious decision to see his son as like him, as related to him, just as his son would grow up to gather the whole world into his family.  Would that we could be more like Joseph – opting to see one another as belonging in spite of our differences, choosing to be responsible for one another in the family of God.  When we open our arms in love and service to all, we bring Jesus into the world.

So you see, Joseph is really indispensable in the story of Jesus’ birth.  And so are we.  We keep the story of Christmas alive when we act with compassion, as Joseph did.  We are essential to the Christmas story when we proclaim that God’s vision of what the world can be is stronger than the nightmare of what is, as Joseph believed.  We are the ones who bring Jesus to birth when we love and serve all people.

Max Lucado says it this way:

God still looks for Josephs today.  Men and women who believe that God is not through with this world.  Common people who serve an uncommon God.

Will you be that kind of person?  Will you serve . . . even when you don’t understand?

No, the Bethlehem sky is not the first to hear the pleadings of an honest heart, nor the last.  And perhaps God didn’t answer every question for Joseph.  But he answered the most important one.  “Are you still with me, God?”  And through the first cries of the God-child the answer came.

“Yes.  Yes, Joseph.  I’m with you.”^[1]

Just as the prophets had foretold, just as the angel had promised, Emmanuel means God is with us – with us to help us incarnate God’s love in this world.