Matthew 1:18-25
I’m going to attempt to be a psychological sleuth this morning. In other words, I’m going to try and get inside someone else’s head. No, don’t worry; it isn’t anybody here. It’s someone from the Bible. Namely Joseph. I’m going to try and figure out what Joseph, almost husband of Mary, was thinking when he was deciding to break off his wedding plans with Mary.
It’s a dangerous and foolish task to try to figure out what someone else is thinking. Just ask your husband or wife. The minute you think you know for sure is the minute you don’t know for sure. It’s easy to make assumptions. And it’s just as easy to be grossly misled by those same assumptions. Then all of a sudden you’re in trouble. Like this guy:
The only person who really knows what’s going on is the person whose head is being examined. Unless you’re the guy in this cartoon:
To attempt getting inside another person’s head with a person like Joseph who is separated by 2000 years, 4000 miles, and vastly different cultures away, is even more laughable. Especially when the only historical record we have of Joseph is 12 sentences long. So despite any disclaimers and rationalizations of what a foolish thing I’m about to do, I’m going to do it anyway. My imagination often short circuits my reason. Why shouldn’t it do the same while preaching?
My perspective about Joseph shifted this week. I have always assumed that Joseph never really bought Mary’s story about an angel’s visit. I mean, come on. What self-respecting guy is going to believe that the woman you are engaged to was impregnated by the voice of God? Guys know how pregnancy happens, and it isn’t by voices.
And Joseph certainly knew it wasn’t his child because he and Mary had never, well, you know. Sometimes the Palestinian culture allowed espoused couples to sleep together before marriage was officially celebrated. But Mary was from Galilee. Galilee was the “Bible Belt” of Palestine. It was the stronghold of the religious right in the country. They didn’t allow anything like that in Galilee. So Joseph knew it couldn’t be his kid that Mary was carrying. It had to be another man. That’s the only logical assumption Joseph could have made. I have always thought, then, that Joseph thought Mary’s explanation was a bunch of hooey.
But there’s a problem. Why did Joseph try to call off the marriage quietly? Matthew says Joseph was a “man who always did the right thing.” Well, if Joseph really believed Mary was carrying the child of another man, the “right thing” would have been to have her stoned to death. After all, what is right is always right. That’s the “right” penalty for someone caught in adultery. Even though they weren’t married, cheating on an espoused mate was adultery just the same. Why does Joseph, according to Matthew’s gospel, not want to “embarrass Mary in front of everyone” even though she has brought embarrassment and shame upon him and his family?
For a long time I have thought that the reason behind Joseph’s actions was that he really loved Mary. That there are two right things to do here. The right thing would have been to have Mary stoned, justice-wise. But also the right thing would be to go easy on her, love-wise. That’s the conclusion we came to this past Monday night as we were talking about Joseph at our Christmas Stories discussion group.
Yet, the more I thought about it, even that’s a tough assumption to make. All marriages, at that time, were arranged by the parents of the young man and woman. The future husband and wife really had nothing to say in the matter. Joseph and Mary’s marriage was probably arranged when they were children, or near the time of their marriage. It was more a financial transaction, between two sets of parents, that had very little to do with love. The bride and groom hardly ever saw each other until the day of the wedding.
Did Joseph know Mary prior to their arranged marriage? It’s not clear. Were they even from the same town? That’s not clear, but has always been assumed. The story doesn’t say one way or the other. But when Joseph had to register for the census, he and Mary had to go to his family’s home town, which was Bethlehem. So was Joseph from Bethlehem, and was only a visitor to Nazareth? Or maybe had extended family in Nazareth, and that’s how he and Mary were brought together? It’s not known.
So that’s the possible problem with my assumption. The proverbial fly in the ointment. What if Joseph doesn’t love Mary? What if love has nothing to do with his motivation to put this marriage aside quietly? Maybe that’s just our modern day romanticism talking more than 1st century, Middle Eastern reality.
So back to the question: Why doesn’t Joseph exercise his legal rights and have her stoned to death? There’s got to be something else going on here, in Joseph’s head. What is it? What is he possibly thinking?
While I was thinking about this an angel appeared to me...just kidding. But I did have one of those, “What if…” insights. And these “What if…” insights usually lead me to one of what I call, “Wing’s Hair-Brained Ideas.”
Here it is: What if Joseph believed Mary’s story of an angelic visit and being impregnated by the voice of God? Remember, this has all happened BEFORE Joseph saw the angel in his dream. So nothing is confirmed or discounted for him at that point. Joseph has simply decided to end the marriage, but do it quietly so as not to embarrass Mary. Is he doing all that because he believes her story?
Let’s assume for a moment that Joseph believed she was visited by an angel. He believed that the Spirit of God had spoken a creative word, like during creation, and she became pregnant. He believed that she was going to have a special child--a child formed “unnaturally.”
If that assumption is true, then maybe Joseph knew Mary. If Joseph actually was from Nazareth, then he might have had an idea about Mary’s character. If he knew her character, and she was like the Biblical record portrayed her, then he would have known she was a devout and pure person. If that’s true, then it would have made her explanation even more possible and plausible in Joseph’s mind. There are some people we know we’d believe, even if they told us a wild-hair story, just because of the depth of their character. Is that what’s going on in Joseph’s head?
If so, then I’m still stuck. If Joseph believes Mary, or believes her story, or both, then why is he still deciding to quietly call off the wedding? Why won’t he go along with the pregnancy, just say it’s his child, and stand by Mary’s side? He does that eventually. But it takes an angel in a dream to get him to do that. Why doesn’t he come to that point on his own? What is he thinking?
So here comes my giant leap into the unknown mind of Joseph. Are you ready for this one?
Let me start out by asking a question. If you were a young couple, and your fiancé or new bride became immediately pregnant, and then you found out this baby was going to be a special child of some sort, what would go through your head?
There are some parents, who because of their age or because of some pre-existing medical condition, have an amniocentesis test. Doctors can tell a lot from the amniotic fluid that the embryo floats in. Let’s say the doctor discovers your child will have Downs Syndrome, or will be physically handicapped. All of a sudden you’re faced with being a different kind of parent. A parent who will need great strength and patience and love and endurance. Granted, just being a “normal” parent (whatever normal is) takes all of those qualities. But it seems to me, from the parents I know with special needs children, they have faced a parenting of a different quality.
If you were a young parent-to-be, and you found out you would be having a special needs child, what would go through your mind? Wouldn’t there be questions like, “Can I handle this?” “Am I up to this?” I would guess financial questions come to the surface later. I would guess emotional questions and fears rise first and fastest.
Now, let’s insert Joseph into that scheme of things. If he believes Mary’s story, are some of the same thoughts and questions going through his head? Is he wondering:
If this is a child born of God, conceived of in a miraculous way, what does that mean for me?
How am I going to be handle this child?
If I don’t totally understand how this child came to be, how am I going to ever understand the child when he is born, and grows?
Am I equipped to handle this child and this situation?
If Joseph feels he’s unable to cope with a God-child he can use the whole hubbub of Mary’s pregnancy for a smoke screen for his own anxiety and insecurity. He doesn’t mind the thought of being married. He just isn’t sure he can handle being a father of a mystery child who has God mixed up in the whole process.
So he has a way to take care of the whole mess from his standpoint: simply ending the marriage plans quietly. It lets Mary off the hook. And more importantly for him, it lets him off the hook. He protects the special child by breaking off the arrangement, rather than having her stoned, which would kill the child as well. Joseph may have decided, until the angel comes in his dream, that Jesus was just going to be too much for him to handle.
And here’s the personal angle to that question: Is Jesus too much for us to handle as well? Joseph wanted to be a spiritual man. He just didn’t want to be THAT spiritual. When we first become Christians, we may be initially excited about our believing. But then we really run into Jesus. We face all that Jesus is going to demand of our lives. We begin to, alarmingly, realize what it all means to be a Christian. We begin to ask ourselves questions like: Am I strong enough to handle this? Do I have what it takes to really live the Christian life? It’s going to take a lot of strength, and patience, and love, and forgiveness, and endurance. Am I up to it? Or should I look for some way to quietly back away from Jesus? Or, How can I make it look like I’m onboard, but I just can’t live up to all the discipline a real relationship with Jesus will ask of me?
The Christ child will ultimately be more than any of us want to handle. The Christ-man, Jesus, will become even more so. The angel’s task with Joseph is to reassure him he can do it. He can live up to the task of being Mary’s husband and Jesus’ earthly father. It must have worked, because Joseph got right up, after the dream, and did what the angel told him to do.
Maybe, for ourselves, we also need that angelic visitation to reassure us that we can do this. We can be people of faith. We can accept Christ into our lives, believe in him and shoulder all the demands and changes that will be asked of us.
This Christmas, we not only pray for the coming of the Christ-child. We also pray, at the same time, for the angel, who will strengthen us to face Jesus, and the birth of our belief in him.
No comments:
Post a Comment