Advent IV, 12/22/2019

Sermon on Matthew 1:18-25, by Brad Everett

St. Matthew’s gospel records three angelic encounters St. Joseph had in dreams.

 

We find the first one in today’s gospel. Mary is engaged to Joseph, but before they live together she is found with child. Joseph is a righteous man—thus he decided to dismiss Mary, (because it would be foolishness to wed a woman who was unfaithful) but to do it quietly (no need to try and intentionally inflict pain on her and her family).

 

However once, he resolved to do it, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. Now at the risk of stating the obvious, but for the sake of clarity—this angelic appearance wasn’t a figment of Joseph’s imagination, nor was it some made-up fantasy. An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph—that it was in a dream is simply the mode God chose to use to send this messenger.

 

The angel begins the message with the important and oft repeated line—“do not be afraid” i.e. there is no need to be afraid of this angelic appearance because God has sent them in love. Nor is there need to be afraid of the angel’s message, because it comes from, with and in the love of God.

 

We are familiar with the message—telling St. Joseph to take Mary as his wife, for the child was conceived not of unfaithfulness, but precisely the opposite—by the Holy Spirit because of her faith in God. The angel concludes with the verses from the prophet Isaiah, showing this event to be the fulfillment of God’s word.

 

As amazing as all that was—the angelic messenger, the fulfillment of ancient prophecy—we often overlook the dramatic conclusion to this whole story. “When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.”

 

Joseph didn’t just see the angel and hear the message, he acted on it just as he would in the two subsequent instances an angel appeared to him in a dream—in Mt. 2.13-14 when he was instructed to leave in the middle of the night with Mary and Jesus for Egypt to escape Herod’s murderous rampage, killing Bethlehem’s male infants. Then later in v. 19-21, when Joseph was told to return to the land of Israel after Herod’s death.

 

In each case, St. Joseph didn’t just see the heavenly messenger and hear the particular message, he acted on it.

 

Perhaps because we have heard the stories so often, we simply assume “of course he did what the angel said” and forget that he did have the option and probably a whole lot of reasons, to do otherwise.

 

But he didn’t.

 

 

The key as to why Joseph acted as he did is found in the description of Joseph as “a righteous man”.

 

When we hear St. Joseph described as a “righteous man” we usually think in terms of him doing the right things for the right reasons, and that’s it—as if this righteousness was something that Joseph managed to acquire on his own.

 

But it wasn’t. Righteousness was a gift from God that he received, and then put into use. Righteousness is the love and mercy of God that St. Joseph received and then returned that love to God and that mercy to those around him.

 

1 John 4.18 it says perfect love casts out fear. St. Joseph is a model of one who knew he was loved by God, and because of that love was willing and able to do as he had been instructed to do through the angel.

 

He was able and willing to trust more in the love and grace of God, than in his own worries, anxieties and misgivings about the circumstances he was in. And when I say “trust in his own worries, anxieties and misgivings” I mean focusing on those fearful things that might happen and then decide what to do and act based on those anxious speculations.

 

When the angel said “don’t be afraid” it certainly didn’t mean that somehow St. Joseph was miraculously exempt from every scary thing life had to throw at him. Read to the end of Mt. 2, and you see that there was no shortage of menacing things threatening him and his family (and remember we only know what Scripture records).

 

When the angel said “don’t be afraid” it was an exhortation to not let fear, no matter how real or legitimate, dictate his decisions, but instead to let God’s steadfast love guide him.

 

When the angel said “don’t be afraid” it was tied to the prophecy from Isaiah that the virgin will give birth to a son and they will call him Immanuel, which means “God with us”. God, the author, source and embodiment of the perfect love that casts out fear, is with us.

 

The message God gave to St. Joseph via the angel is the same message he has for us today on this last Sunday of Advent “don’t be afraid”.

 

I’m sure each of us have a long enough list of things that cause fear to rise up in our hearts and minds. And I’m also sure that we could come up with a convincing list of reasons why our fears our justified and perfectly reasonable.

 

Yet the fact remains that throughout Scripture, God’s command, “be not afraid” still stands—without qualification or exception. No, ‘be not afraid unless X is happening then of course be afraid”.

 

And it’s not about being strong enough, or brave enough, as if we could ever hope to dredge up enough strength or bravery from within ourselves—especially when facing the terrors this life can inflict.

 

Rather it’s about receiving the love of God and trusting in it and him more than our fears. That the promise of God with us, that become incarnate, enfleshed in Bethlehem’s stable at Christmas, and comes again every time we celebrate Holy Communion, as an objective reality and not a wishful imagining. In the bread and wine, comes Jesus, Immanuel, God with us, the perfect love of God that casts out all fear.

 

Now this is not necessarily a “once and for all” event. We are fallen, frail and sinful human beings who are repeatedly tempted to sin, including the sin of placing more trust in our fears to guide decisions than to trust the love and presence of God. Thus, the need to regularly be reminded of and receive anew the loving presence of Christ through worship, prayer, the eucharist. Because while the number of fears may seem  and feel limitless and relentless, it is the love of God that is truly limitless and fiercely relentless—the love that guided and enabled Joseph to take Mary as his wife to be father to the Son of God, is the same love offered each one of us today to preserve us in that peace of Christ which passes all understanding, for this life and the life to come.