Posts Tagged ‘Joseph’

Being good or being godly – Joseph takes Mary as wife

December 20, 2025

Advent 4 – 2025

Matthew 1:18-25

Marian Free

With Joseph and Mary, and all the prophets and saints, may we never fear responding to the call of God, no matter how difficult, or outrageous the call. Amen.

Some of you may remember that on Advent 1 I said that being a Christian is not about being good, but about being in relationship. At the time no one challenged me so I’m thinking that we are all on the same page – that we understand that following Christ is the centre of our faith and that goodness flows from that relationship not the other way around. Goodness on its own does not build ties of loyalty, develop a depth of spirituality, encourage submission to the Creator of the universe, or create an understanding that even though we can never be good enough, we are loved and treasured just as we are. 

My view is this: being good does not in itself distinguish a Christian from a non-Christian. Anyone can be good in the conventional sense – by not breaking laws of the state or of the church, by being kind and thoughtful to others and by observing cultural norms. However, I would claim that goodness and godliness are two different things and that godliness does not always equate with goodness – in fact just the opposite. There will be times when being godly (allowing our lives to reflect the presence of God) may require us to be anything but good in the conventional sense. In fact, godliness may demand only that we ignore the norms of the society in which we live, but that we challenge and even overthrow those norms. 

For proof of this view, we need look no further than the example of Jesus, but here in the Christmas narrative are the first signs that responding to and following God does not mean following the crowd. In both Matthew and Luke, the Jesus’ story has barely begun when already we are confronted by the fact that through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus God is turning everything upside down. It is no wonder that the ‘good’ people of the day failed to see what was happening and that God was acting in ways that they hadn’t begun to imagine. 

It would appear from the gospels that the leaders of the day had begun to confuse goodness with godliness, observance of rules with relationship. For example, the Pharisees believed that if only they could get the minute details of the law right, they would be put right with God. The priestly class on the other hand appear to have relied on getting the Temple rituals right as a means of getting close to God. Society as a whole seemed to believe that not rocking the boat would enable them to keep on the right side of the Roman oppressors would. 

To be fair – they might have been misguided but they did believe that they had to put themselves right with God and they did it the only way they knew how – obedience to law and proper observance of ritual. The problem was that though they hoped that God would send a Saviour, they believed that it was their actions that would lead God to act, thus demonstrating that they had totally missed the point. Observance of rituals and law were simply evidence that, at least subconsciously, they believed that their own efforts could force God’s hand– that they, not God, were responsible for their own salvation. 

At the heart of John the Baptist’s message is the refrain: “Repent for the Kingdom of God is near”. The Greek word “metanoia” does not mean “to be sorry”, but “to turn.” Both John, then Jesus are calling the people not to be good, but to turn their lives around, to turn towards God, to live lives that demonstrate a relationship with the living God. From the very beginning faith in Jesus was never about being good, but about being godly, about allowing the divine in us to have full reign – which has nothing to do with goodness as it is usually understood.

Take the story of Joseph – whose first reaction is to separate himself from the pregnant Mary. If we forget the sentimentality that presents Joseph as holy and righteous and selfless and take a look at some hard cold facts, we see a different story. 

Joseph is minding his own business when he learns that Mary – his betrothed – is pregnant. He does not know who the father is only that it is not him.  Can you imagine how that news must have hit him? He knows the baby cannot be his, he presumably wonders if he completely misjudged Mary and he almost certainly feels cuckolded. Did Mary tell him or does he know because of the gossip that is swirling around the village? No matter how he responds his reputation has already been ruined. He will have lost face in the eyes of community. Mary’s shame will not only be his shame but will reflect on his whole family. 

Joseph was within his rights to claim compensation, to expose the situation further – even demand the legal consequences – Mary should be stoned to death. He does none of these things but resolves to quietly free Mary of her obligations to him. This will not diminish the shame but will spare Mary the added consequences of her pregnancy. Already Joseph has shown a casual disregard for the law, but when the angel appears his actions become even more radical. In response to God’s call, Joseph ignores his obligations to his church, his community and his family. He agrees to marry Mary and to raise a child who is not his own one consequence of which will be that the child will inherit and Joseph’s line may come to an end. Not only that, his actions mean that he will lose face in the eyes of his community. 

It is easy to read this as a sentimental story about an honourable man protecting his fiancé, but in the cold, hard light of a first century day, Joseph is both defying the law by not allowing Mary to be stoned to death and breaking convention through his decision to marry her regardless of the shame. But, and here’s the point, Joseph is being obedient to God even though obedience to God means disobedience to religious law, cultural norms and familial obligations.

Joseph chooses fidelity to God over observance of human law; he chooses godliness over goodness, so should we no matter the cost or the shame. 

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It has nothing to do with being respectable

December 17, 2022

Advent 4
Matthew 1:18-25
Marian Free

In the name of God who moves us to act in ways that are surprising and unconventional. Amen.

Jimmy Barnes, the hard-living, drug-abusing, wild-boy of Australian rock, was born James Dixon Swan. He was the child of an unhappy marriage, the son of an abusive alcoholic. When he was still very young, his mother abandoned her six children to escape the abuse. In his autobiography Working Class Boy Jimmy tells of his life as a motherless child growing up in Elizabeth, South Australia. His father was rarely home, leaving the children to fend for themselves. Over time, the house fell into disrepair and niceties – such as sheets on the beds – became a distant memory. Sometimes Jimmy’s father gave his older sister money. She used to buy a sack of potatoes which was often the only food in the house. Left to his own devices grew up wild and on the streets. He first got really drunk when he was only nine or ten.

In the meantime, Jimmy’s mother was struggling to make a living so that she could reconnect with her children. One day the Child Welfare Agency came to her to say that the children were going to be made wards of the state unless she could provide a stable home for them.

She was at a friend’s house, crying, when Reginald Victor Barnes walked in.

“What’s the trouble love?” he asked.
“I need to find a husband and I need to find a home for me six kids and I need to do it quickly or they’ll put them in a home,” she responded.
“Why did you leave them?”
“I had to run away, my husband was a bad drunk.”
“No worries love, I’ll marry ya.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Someone’s got to save those poor kids.”

So, Reg Barnes married Jimmy’s mother and took on – sight unseen – six troubled, delinquent kids.
He provided them with a home, stayed up all night tending to anxious, frightened and sick children and he didn’t walk away no matter how trying and exhausting their behaviour.

As Jimmy says: “Reginald Victor Barnes was to be an angel in my life.”

Reg, Jimmy believes, had planned to be a priest. In order to rescue children he did not know and to save a woman he had just met, Reg exchanged a peaceful, ordered life for one of heartache and chaos. In gratitude, Jimmy took his name – Jimmy Barnes.

This, I imagine is a rare story, especially for a man of Reg’s generation. No doubt Reg’s friends thought he was mad. Taking on another man’s children was one thing, taking on – and fully supporting – six children, damaged and abused by another, was something else altogether.

When we think of the story of the Incarnation, our first thought is of Mary and the risks that she took and the sacrifices she made when she said her courageous: “yes” to God. We are less likely to focus on Joseph – who throughout Jesus’ life is relegated to the background – a shadowy, but necessary figure who gives the earthly Jesus some legitimacy. Joseph is presented as the strong, silent type. He says nothing, but simply acts on messages that come to him in dreams. Joseph’s role in the story is to save Mary from shame and to ensure that Jesus can claim to be of the tribe of David (from whom the anointed one was to descend).

As was the case with Mary, though, Joseph’s obedience came at a cost. If he married Mary, he would bear for the rest of his life the reputation of someone who has been cuckolded. The scandal of Mary’s pregnancy would follow him wherever he went, and he would almost certainly be ridiculed or pitied for taking on another man’s child and having as his heir a child whom he did not father.

We are told tantalizing little about Joseph. He is a righteous man – a man anxious to do what is right before God. A righteous man would know that Mary’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy was contrary to the law and that as such he had no obligation to assist her. He would know too that any association with her would reflect on him, impact on his standing in the community and call into question his knowledge of and adherence to the law. He would have further cause for concern regarding Mary’s insistence that the child she was carrying came from God – an impossible and blasphemous claim which would have been an affront to his faith, and another reason for his family and neighbours to deride and revile him. For Joseph to marry Mary would have lasting effects. Her shame would become his shame. For the rest of his life, he would be subject to rumours and inuendo.

So, being a righteous man, knows that he must dissolve the engagement, but he proposes to do this quietly so as to shield Mary from public scrutiny. (He is presumably confident that her family will protect her and keep her forever from the public eye.)

God has other ideas.

It is perhaps an indication of Joseph’s righteousness (his closeness to God) that he understands that his dream is not a fantasy, but a message from God and that a message from God is not to be ignored, but to be acted on. He accepts, contrary to everything that he knows and believes that marrying Mary was part of God’s plan. Joseph was a law-abiding, righteous man but he was not so hide-bound, not so fixated on doing what was right that he put adherence to the law before the will of God.

Ultimately faith cannot be neatly bundled up as a set of rules and regulations. Faith, as Joseph demonstrates, is a relationship with the living God, who cannot and will not be confined by the limits of human imagination.

What we learn from Joseph is faith has nothing to do with rigid certainties, and everything to do with risk-taking. Righteousness has nothing to with having a good reputation and everything to do with a willingness to be a “fool for God. Pleasing God has nothing to do with observing certain codes of behaviour and everything to do with an openness to where God is leading us and a willingness to take our part in God’s plan.

Being in a relationship with the living God, means being willing to have all our certainties thrown into question, our values turned upside-down. and our lives turned inside out.

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What is God asking you to do?

December 23, 2017

Advent 4 – 2017 

Luke 1:28-38

Marian Free

 In the name of God for whom nothing is impossible. Amen.

 If you read the beginnings of the four gospels, you will notice some substantial differences. For example, Mark launches straight into an account of Jesus’ ministry: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.” Mark is not interested in where Jesus has come from, but only in what he has done and what it means for those who believe. The gospel attributed to John is cosmic in breadth and poetic in expression. Jesus is identified as the Word who coexisted with God from the beginning of time and who, in fact, is God. The author of John’s gospel is not interested in Jesus’ earthly birth and childhood, only in his divine origin.

If we want to discover anything about Jesus’ human history, we have to rely on the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Unfortunately they are not reliable sources. Their accounts of Jesus’ birth have at least as many differences as they have similarities. Luke has much more detail than Matthew making his account nearly twice as long. Even the style is different. Luke’s is rather like an overture to an opera, two of the main characters burst into song. Matthew’s account is more sedate and includes to fewer details.

In Matthew’s gospel, Joseph, not Mary plays the central role. It is to Joseph that the angel appears and it is Joseph who is informed that the child is to be called Jesus (because he will save his people from their sins). Joseph makes no protest and asks no questions, but simply does as the angel has commanded. There is no census, no crowded city and no manger. We are simply informed that Joseph formally married Mary and that he didn’t consummate the marriage until after the birth of the infant. We are to assume from this that Joseph and Mary were already in Bethlehem. (Jesus only goes to Nazareth because after Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt they learn that it will not be safe to return to Bethlehem.)

Joseph plays only a supporting role in Luke’s version of events. In fact, we are half way through the story before Joseph appears and then he is only mentioned as the means by which Mary gets from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Mary takes centre stage here. The angel (named) appears to Mary (in person, not in a dream) and tells her that she is favoured in God’s sight. Mary is informed that she will bear a son who will reign over the house of Jacob forever. Unlike Joseph who simply accepts the angles word and responds immediately, Mary reasons with the angel (reasoned is a better translation than “pondered”), and she challenges him: “How can this be?” It is only when the angel reminds Mary that nothing is impossible with God that Mary acquiesces to God’s plan.

After Jesus’ birth, the gospel writers again present two quite different scenarios. According to Matthew the magi come from the east following a star and bringing exotic gifts. From the way in which Matthew tells the story, we can infer that Bethlehem was Mary and Joseph’s hometown. And from Herod’s over reaction we can guess that by then Jesus was about two years old. In place of the magi Luke records the appearance of the angels to the shepherds who visit the newly born Jesus in the stable.

Both Matthew and Luke are determined to show that Jesus didn’t simply emerge from nowhere. They make it clear that from his birth Jesus was set apart as God’s anointed. Not surprisingly, the way in which the gospel writers tell the story reflects their different interests and different audiences. Matthew wants to make it clear to his readers that Jesus fulfills the Old Testament promises. He also wants to demonstrate that the new community of faith is the true Israel. Those who believe in Jesus cannot be considered a breakaway sect because they exist in continuity with all that has gone before. In Matthew’s account, Joseph has dreams as does his namesake in Genesis, Mary’s pregnancy and the gifts brought by the magi fulfill events predicted by Isaiah and Bethlehem is the place where according the Old Testament, the King of Jews, God’s anointed one was to be born.

Whereas Matthew is writing for an audience that is primarily Jewish, Luke is writing to a largely Gentile readership. Luke’s audience knows that they are not Israel – new or otherwise. They are more interested in the power of the God revealed in Jesus and through the Holy Spirit. This God, Luke tells them, can achieve the impossible and can create something out of nothing. Other characteristics of the Lukan author are evident in his account of Jesus’ birth – his interest in contextualizing the story against the events of the time, and his concern with the poor. It is important for Luke to ground Jesus in the history of the time, so (even though he gets both the date and the ruler wrong, Luke connects the birth of Jesus with the census ordered by Quirinius in 6CE). Mary’s hymn affirms that the “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty”. It is uneducated shepherds with no resources who are the first to worship the infant Jesus.

All of this is interesting and we could spend much more time examining the differences between all four gospels and exploring the reasons why they emphasise different aspects of the beginning of Jesus’ story. But these are not quaint stories written so that we can exercise our brain. They are stories of faith and as such they continue to speak to and challenge us today.

Joseph and Mary are ordinary people going about their ordinary business when an angel bursts into their lives and demands that they trust God and that they join God in a grand and costly adventure. The response of Mary and Joseph force us to consider:

Is our relationship with God deep enough and intimate enough that we are able to recognise the voice of God when God speaks to us?

And if we do hear:

Is our trust in God strong enough and confident enough that we are able to believe that God will empower us with the courage and skills we need when God asks us to do the seemingly impossible?

And if we do trust:

Is our faith robust enough and important enough to us that we are comfortable with the idea of taking risks and not worrying what others might say about us?

In their different ways, Mary and Joseph answered God’s call to bring Jesus to birth. Are we paying attention, are we aware of God’s presence and if so, are we ready and willing to respond to God’s call?

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Moving the boundaries

August 16, 2014

Pentecost 10. 2014

Matthew 15:21-28

Marian Free

 

In the name of God who is constantly breaking down barriers and opening new possibilities for existence. Amen.

The account of the Canaanite woman is perhaps the most confronting story in the New Testament. Our familiarity with the Gospels means that we are not at all shocked by the way that Jesus befriends sinners and eats with them. Nor are we surprised that he allows a woman of the street to wash his feet. It seems perfectly reasonable to us that Jesus should heal on a Sabbath. But this story is shocking Jesus is rude and unsympathetic. He refuses to respond to a mother’s agonised cry for help. Worse still, not only does Jesus ignore the woman’s pleas, he adds insult to injury when he justifies his refusal by likening the woman to a household pet that does not deserve the same food as the children.

This hard, uncompromising Jesus is almost unrecognisable. Is this, we might ask, the same Jesus who only a short while ago had such compassion for the crowd that even though he needed to be alone he healed the sick and fed more than 5,000 people?

What is going on here? Such an unflattering and unexpected description of Jesus demands further explanation. Why would the Gospel writers include an account in which Jesus is so uncompromising, so rude? What is it that causes Jesus to withhold healing in this situation? Did he think that he would find the peace he was seeking outside Israel’s borders and did the woman interrupt that peace? We may not be able to find a satisfactory answer to those questions, but we can draw the conclusion that the purpose of this story in Matthew’s gospel is to explain how it is that the Gentiles have come to faith in a Jewish Messiah. – why it is that the faith community consists of both Jew and Gentile.

There are two versions of Jesus’ encounter with a Gentile woman in Mark and Matthew. A comparison between the two accounts shows that Mark’s record of the meeting is much less confrontational. Matthew has heightened the contest in a number of ways, which makes the outcome even more surprising. He elevates the position of the woman and he emphasises Jesus’ refusal to help. The woman recognises Jesus as the Son of David and falls down and worships him. This makes her a more formidable combatant than the woman in Mark’s account as she knows who Jesus is at a time when Jesus’ disciples have not yet made up their minds. The battle lines are more clearly drawn In Matthew, Jesus ignores the woman’s request not once but twice and his refusal to acknowledge her is supported by the disciples who urge him to send her away. Jesus’ response to the woman is strengthened by the assertion that his responsibility is only to the lost sheep of Israel. Matthew makes the woman stronger, Jesus harsher.

The basic elements of the story are the same in both gospels. Tyre and Sidon are on the Mediterranean Sea – a long way from Galilee and in territory that is primarily Gentile. It is Jesus, not the woman, who is out of place. The woman who seems to appear out of nowhere is desperate. An evil spirit oppresses her daughter. When Jesus rejects her plea for a second time she is not deterred. So confident is she in his authority and in his ability that she informs him that the crumbs will be enough. In her wisdom (or humility) she has understood that there is more than enough to go around and that even the left-overs will be more than sufficient to meet her need[1]. By helping her daughter, she suggested Jesus’ ministry to Israel would in no way be diminished.

Jesus is outside his territory on the woman’s home ground and she demands that he take her faith seriously. Consciously or unconsciously, the woman foreshadows the future. After Jesus’ death, the gospel will be preached in the regions beyond Israel. There the Gentiles will recognise Jesus and will demand their place in the community of faith.

In the final analysis, this account is much more than a story about one woman’s faith. It is in fact a reflection about boundaries, boundaries that turn out not to be rigid and immovable but fluid and ever-changing. The world into which Jesus was born was very clear about who was in and who was out and the lines between the two were fiercely guarded. Belonging was more than a birthright it also required adherence to strict purity laws. One could be born a Jew but still be an outsider. Anyone with a disability or skin disease was considered unclean, tax collectors and prostitutes were excluded. Temporary exclusion could result from contact with a corpse, a flow of blood or a failure to observe the purity laws. It was close to impossible for anyone from outside to be given admission to God’s chosen people. The woman’s insight and her refusal to be denied made it clear that the boundaries were moving and that Jesus’ message was intended not just for a few, but for the whole world.

Our readings today remind us that God doesn’t observe conventions or maintain strict boundaries. Genesis tells us that by default Joseph, the Hebrew slave of Pharaoh, becomes the ruler of all Egypt. In Romans Paul reminds us that, contrary to expectation, wIld olive shoots (the Gentiles) are grafted on to the rich root of the olive tree (the Jews).

The faith that grew in Jesus’ name shattered all previous boundaries and admitted as full members those who were previously on the outside or who were languishing in the shadows.

The Canaanite woman demanded and received recognition for her faith. She challenged Jesus’ narrow mind-set and forced him to think differently. In a world in which boundaries are becoming drawn ever tighter or being raised against perceived threats or new fears, perhaps it is time for us to consider where we stand and to ask ourselves whether our fences represent the mind of God or whether they are simply there to separate ourselves from others and to protect the ways of the past.

[1] An interesting insight in view of the quantity of leftovers from the feeding of the 5,000.

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Bridging the gap

December 24, 2013

Christmas Eve 2013

John 1:1-14 – a reflection

Marian Free

In the name of God who will stop at nothing to ensure that we reach our full potential. Amen.

“In the beginning was the Word and the word was with God and the Word was God.” Have you ever noticed that John’s gospel denies us the Nativity. Not for John the angels, the shepherds or the Magi. John does not mention Mary or Joseph or Bethlehem. Those looking for familiar images or for the Christmas card stories will find none of that sentimentality here. The author of John takes us back to the very beginning – to creation. Whereas Matthew and Luke use genealogies to trace Jesus’ lineage – Matthew to Abraham, Luke all the way back to God. John makes it very clear that Jesus existed before anything else. According to John, Jesus is much more than Luke’s “Son of God”. Before time began – the Word, Jesus, co-existed with God, in fact was God.

Luke and Matthew try to engage us with stories of Jesus’ human beginnings, John is much more interested in connecting us with the mystery of Jesus’ being both God and human. John tells us that in Jesus, God takes on human flesh and becomes fully engaged in human existence. John not only takes us back to the very beginning, but he also grounds us in the present. In the fourth Gospel we come face-to-face with the confronting reality(?) of a God who is fully human and a human who is fully God. Instead of contemplating a baby, we are forced to consider the deeper realities of our faith, to ask ourselves what does it mean? How can Jesus be both fully human and fully divine? Why would God abandon the heavenly realms for the messy, dirty, risky experience of earthly existence?

God enters our existence to bridge the gap, to heal the divide between human and divine, to show once and for all that all creation – including the human species – is infused with the presence of God, and to demonstrate that God is intimately engaged with God’s creation. The Word made flesh is not a dispassionate, detached deity who is uninterested in human affairs, but in the person of Jesus, has fully identified with the human condition – assuring us that nothing is outside of God’s concern, that our daily lives are not so dull that God is not interested in them. The Word made flesh is proof positive that unlike us, God does not make a distinction between the holy and the mundane, the extraordinary and the ordinary. When God in Jesus took on human form, God in effect declared that all creation bears the image of God.

When we revisit the baby, we discover that the child in the cradle is just as confronting and challenging as the Word made flesh. There, vulnerable and dependent lies God himself – totally (and at great risk) entering into the human condition. This is what we discover once more at Christmas time. God’s love for the world was so great that God could not stand aloof, but had to become one with God’s creation, so that creation could achieve its true purpose – to become one with God.

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An angel made me do it

December 21, 2013

Advent 4 – 2013

Matthew 1:18-25

Marian Free

 In the name of God whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts. Amen.

 There is a wonderful line in the mini-series of “Pride and Prejudice” when the overly religious and moralistic Mary states – in response to Lydia’s elopement: “As difficult as this situation is, it is a useful reminder to us that a woman’s virtue, once lost, is irretrievable.”  She reflects a common view. Her cousin, Mr Collins has already commented something to the effect that the situation would not have been as bad had Lydia been dead. All the blame, all the responsibility for her loss of virtue fall on her. Mr Wickham, the man who has persuaded Lydia to run away with him, will have a reputation of not being a “respectable man”, but it is Lydia and her family that will bear the censure and the social isolation that will result from her reckless behaviour. No one will want to socialise with the family after this and the four other sisters will now be tainted by association. As Elizabeth says: “She is ruined, and her family must share in her shame and disgrace.” Sexual indiscretion on the part of the woman seems to have been seen as something that was contagious. It was considered to be so morally wrong that no one would want to be seen to be condoning it by maintaining a friendship with the family.

These sorts of attitudes regarding chastity make Joseph’s reaction to Mary’s pregnancy quite extraordinary. In many cultures even today, a woman who shames her family or her husband can be cast out of that society or even worse, put to death. A respectable man would want nothing to do with her and would certainly not want to raise someone else’s child as if he or she were his own.

So far as we can tell, in the first century, as in some places today, young people were engaged at a very young age. They didn’t necessarily live together and were not actually married until they were older. This seems to have been the case with Mary and Joseph. When Mary fell pregnant she and Joseph were not married and not living together. You can imagine his shock and disappointment when he discovered that Mary had become pregnant to someone else. In the normal course of events he could have caused a commotion. Mary’s pregnancy would have been a source of great humiliation, shame and embarrassment to him. In normal circumstances, he would want nothing more to do with her, he would not want to be associated with someone who was not chaste and he almost certainly would not want to raise someone else’s child – especially in a culture in which a son was required to carry on the family name.

Mary’s parents have let him down. They have not kept their side of the bargain that would have been to ensure Mary’s chastity – any commitments they made with regard to the betrothal have been broken. Now that Mary is pregnant, she is “spoiled goods”. Joseph is within his rights to ask for compensation and not to marry her.

However, he resolves not to make a fuss, to demand recompense or to make an example of Mary. Instead he decides “to dismiss her quietly” and to release her and her parents from any arrangement they have made. Perhaps, as tradition has it, Joseph is an old man who with the wisdom of age understands why a young woman might choose someone else or perhaps he just likes to keep to himself and does not want to draw attention to the situation. Whatever the reason, Joseph presumably thinks that this episode in his life has been dealt with and put behind him. Not so – God, in the form of an angel intervenes with an outrageously unbelievable story. “The child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

Assuming the account to have some truth in it, Joseph is asked to make a huge turn around. He has to reverse his decision, he has to come to terms with marrying Mary, he has to accept and raise a child that is not his own, he has to confront the fact that his neighbours may view him with contempt and that his only explanation for behaviour which will make no sense at all to those around him – will be: “An angel made me do it”.

Unfortunately, we cannot go back in time, so can only guess at the scenario and wonder how much license the author of Matthew has taken with the story. It is possible, as Matthew suggests, that Joseph was held in such esteem in the community that his behaviour would have been seen as further evidence of his goodness and generosity. He is protecting a young woman from life-long isolation and shame. All the same, we cannot underestimate what a huge decision this would be for Joseph and risks he was taking in marrying a woman who was already pregnant. His own moral codes would be called into question and his social standing compromised as a result.

It is possible that the culture of the time was more open to God speaking to people in dreams or to angels appearing apparently out of nowhere with messages that turn a person’s life upside down. Even so, few, I imagine would believe that God was asking Joseph to do something that was so socially unacceptable. In effect, Joseph would have had to convince his family and friends to accept that God was asking him to do something that would compromise his (and God’s) moral standards and to behave in a way that was contrary to the principles and values that his community held in common. Joseph had to be absolutely convinced that he message that he had dreamt did indeed come from God, absolutely sure that the risks he was taking were worth the end result and that going against his own moral code was, in this instance, the right thing to do.

Some people make the mistake of confusing Christianity with morality. Being a Christian, they believe, has to do with being good (as opposed to being in union with God). This allows them to make moral judgments and to censure those who do not live up to their particular set of standards. The reality, as we know, is much more complex. When we strip away the sentimentality from our Christmas stories we find a different point of view. Beneath the romantic story of angels and dreams and of Mary and Joseph and the baby, we discover that God is not bound by our ideas of right and wrong or by our set of moral principles. The central characters of the Christmas story are a woman who has become pregnant out-of-wedlock and a man who is prepared to risk his own character and to ignore the accepted morality of first century Palestine. Each, in their different ways, respond to an angel who asks them to behave in ways contrary to the social mores of their time and to act in ways that will expose them to derision and disdain. Yet their relationship with God is such that they are able to place their trust completely in God, to put their own hesitations behind them and to take risks that make them vulnerable to censure and to social exclusion to ensure that God’s purpose can become a reality.

The example of Mary and Joseph is not an excuse for us to ignore moral values or cultural norms, but it is a reminder to us that we should build our relationship with God such that not only do we know and do what is right and proper, but that we also know when we are called to step beyond cultural boundaries and social constraints so that God’s presence might be known in the world.

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