4th Sunday of Advent 2019
Isaiah 7: 10-14; Romans 1:1-7; Matt 1: 18-25
“Never underestimate the determination of A QUIET MAN.” These were the words of a politician some years ago. Whether he has remained determined, I do not know. Unfortunately, he has not remained quiet, but has had, perhaps, rather too much to say for himself, but that is beside the point. I quote him, not for his own sake, but because his words apply to that quiet hero, St. Joseph.
We do not have a single recorded word of Joseph’s, yet he is truly a hero of the Incarnation, the coming of God in our human flesh. The first thing said about him by Matthew, is that Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, was betrothed to him. Immediately after saying this, Matthew puts the proverbial cat among the equally proverbial pigeons by stating: “but before they came to live together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.”
Now bear in mind that Matthew does not tell us about the Annunciation or the Visitation, narratives with which we are familiar from the Gospel of Luke. He comes out straightaway with this bald statement. It is difficult for us to imagine how it would have struck us, if we had not already heard Luke’s account, if this had been our first inkling of Mary’s pregnancy.
It is, perhaps, easier to imagine how it must have struck Joseph: with shock, dismay, horror, one feels. How is he to react? He was dikaios, says Matthew. The Jerusalem Bible translates this as “a man of honour”, but this misses the point. Dikaios means “just”. What makes someone just? “Faith” says the Book of Genesis, speaking about Abraham (Gen 15:6), a point taken up and emphasised by St. Paul (Romans 4:1-12).
Joseph’s faith is perhaps, not as evident as his kindness, in his initial decision to divorce Mary informally, but it becomes clear in all his subsequent actions, as he responds, not only to the initial summons of the angel “Do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife”, but to the further angelic commands which were to follow. Indeed, Joseph may be said to surpass Abraham as the archetype of the person who is justified by faith.
Is there a message there for us? I would suggest that there are two: firstly, that we too are called to be justified by faith. We too must put our trust in God, especially at those times when faith is difficult, as it must have been for Joseph.
Are there times when you struggle to trust in God? Times when everything seems to be going wrong, when you see no way forward, when your hopes and dreams appear to have been dashed? Think then of Joseph, whose plans apparently lay in ruins, whose trust appeared to have been betrayed, for whom the way forward presented itself as an act of justice, but also as an act without hope. Yet Joseph put his trust in God, and his faith and hope were vindicated—that same faith and hope which are demanded of us, at the very time when they seem most difficult to maintain.
The second message is not to neglect Joseph, who deserves to be honoured for his role in the Incarnation, who can be for us a powerful patron, who received the message that Mary’s Son was to be Emmanuel “a name which means God is with us”.
And that is the ultimate message of today’s Gospel: that God is with us. Not “God was with us” or “God will be with us” true though both those statements are, but “God is with us”, here and now, in every circumstance and every situation of our lives. If we, like Joseph, are people who are just, who have faith, sometimes against the odds, God will occasionally allow us the faintest glimpse of His presence; but whether we glimpse Him or not, we can be assured that He is there, for He became one of us, born of Mary, cared for and protected by Joseph.
