Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
———————————————————————————
Today is the fourth and final Sunday of Advent, the season of preparation and anticipation for Christmas, for the coming of Christ into the world. I know that you hear this every Advent season, but (along with today’s Collect) I want to remind us that Advent is not only about looking back and remembering the coming of Christ as a baby in a stable in Bethlehem 2000-some-odd years ago — nor is it only about looking forward with anticipation to the Final Coming of Christ, at the end of the age, to do away with death forever and make all things new. Advent is also the season where we learn to watch, day after day, for the coming of Christ here and now — for ‘God’s daily visitation’ — for the moments where the Holy Spirit overshadows us, presses in upon our lives, and calls us to faithfulness, to join him here and now, in bringing God’s life and love into our world.
I think Joseph is an excellent image of this kind of faithfulness to God’s ‘daily visitation’. The narrator clues us in that we should pay attention to Joseph’s actions in today’s gospel by telling us right at the beginning that he is a ‘righteous’ man. What does that ‘righteousness’ look like? Well, when we meet Joseph, he is facing a crisis — one of those moments of disruption and decision, where the future we imagined for ourselves has shattered, and we’re not sure where to go from here.
Joseph has just found out that Mary, his betrothed, his beloved, is pregnant and, so he believes that she must be an adulterer. As far as he knows, he has been betrayed by the one whom he has committed his life to, the woman who he has (literally) been building his future around. I’m told that it was the custom among Jewish families of this time that, once a betrothal had been confirmed, the families entered into a time of preparation before the marriage was consummated, much like the period between an engagement and a wedding in our day. Rather than this period being just focused wedding planning, however, the groom would return to his home (which was often the family’s ancestral property), and begin to ‘prepare a place’ for his bride. He would build a new home (or an addition) on the property for them to live and raise their new family in. As far as Joseph knows, this home will now stand empty, a public monument to his grief and shame.
Yet Joseph does not respond as many of us would to this betrayal. Remember that in this time, marriage was not primarily a private, romantic affair between two individuals; it was a public arrangement between two whole families with big financial and legal ramifications. One of the 10 commandments forbids adultery and elsewhere in the Torah, the punishment for adultery like this could escalate all the way to death. At this point, Joseph believes he has been deeply and publicly wronged, but he does not respond by taking Mary to task in front of their community. He does not demand restitution or accuse her of adultery before the scribes and Pharisees. Joseph understands that Mary is far more vulnerable than he is, that the life of a young woman with a child born of adultery would be at best a life of insecurity and struggle, shame, and likely poverty. Mary’s reputation is already ruined among her community, but instead of ruining her life further, Joseph decides to do what he can to save her from as much harm as possible and to divorce her quietly. Even in his grief and pain, instead of insisting that he get ‘justice’ for the betrayal, or insisting that the Law be upheld and Mary punished accordingly, he decides to prioritize Mary’s well being and the life of her unborn child. He decides that extending care to this vulnerable woman, even though he believes she has wronged him, is more important than ‘getting what he deserves’ or even enforcing the Torah’s laws in his community. This decision, Joseph’s choice to choose compassion and humility in the midst of crisis, this, it seems, is what makes him ‘righteous.’
But it doesn’t stop there. As he makes this choice, Joseph has a dream where an angel visits him and tells him — as though he is a character in one of the ancient stories of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob — that he has not been betrayed after all. Mary’s child is not only a miraculous baby boy like the one Sarah had in her old age, but something infinitely more: the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who was coming to save God’s people from their bondage and sin, the one whom prophets like Isaiah foretold hundreds of years before. Remarkably, when he wakes up, Joseph says ‘yes’! He does not dismiss the dream or insist that it’s impossible. Somewhere along the way, Joseph has become the sort of prayerful, discerning person who recognizes that this was more than just a crazy dream from someone in the middle of a big life crisis. He’s become the sort of person who’s willing to listen and act on what he believes God is telling him, even though it would have been easy to explain it away.
He receives Mary as his wife after all, despite the fact that, in the eyes of his community, she is an adulterer, Jesus will be seen as a child of sin and shame, and he will be seen by many as a pathetic enabler of one of the biggest sins in Jewish Law. Joseph would also know that, if this baby really is the Messiah, it means that he is saying ‘yes’ to making himself a target for the powerful rulers and leaders in the land who might not be so happy about someone claiming to be the promised king of Israel — and this is exactly what happens with King Herod in the chapter after this. But Joseph says ‘yes’ anyway, he accepts God’s invitation, risking his reputation and later his life, to be faithful to the call that he heard in a dream. And this decision, this ‘yes’, along with Mary’s ‘yes’, is how Jesus comes into our world and brings the kingdom of God with him.
This is what God’s ‘daily visitation’ looks like. Christ comes to us not only in joys and little moments of kindness and love, but also in the crises in our lives — in whispers and intuitions and dreams when things are not easy or clear — at moments when saying ‘yes’ might require taking a path that seems strange or shameful to many around us. Joseph shows us what it looks like to receive Christ’s coming in the midst of our lives here and now, what it looks like to be righteous: Becoming the sort of person who is prayerful and attentive enough to God’s presence that we hear the invitation and take it seriously, rather than filling our lives so full of distraction that we can hear nothing at all. Choosing courageous, humble love in the face of pain and crisis. Choosing to obey when there are so many excuses and ways to dismiss the call, when we don’t fully know what it will cost, but we know it won’t be easy. And look what Joseph’s ‘yes’ brings into the world — the Messiah, salvation, the presence of God among us, transforming everything, showing us all the path into abundant life and unbreakable joy.
We cannot know what God will birth in us, in others, in the world around us as a result of our daily decisions to choose compassion and humble love, and we often don’t get to see the fruit that that our choices might bear, but the Holy Spirit just might bring new and surprising life into our world if we learn to say ‘yes’ to God’s ‘daily visitation’, to look for and to receive his ‘coming’ in our life here and now. With Mary and Joseph, we also might help Christ enter our world through our courageous choices of love and faithfulness — we might become like new Bethlehems — ourselves and our communities becoming the spaces where Christ is born anew and from which his love spills out into the lives of those around us.
May it be so in us. Amen.