By the time we get to the fourth Sunday in Advent, most of us are on the Christmas train. We have bought presents for loved ones, greened our homes and church (although we did hold back on any red to get us through Advent!), we have been singing along with Nat King Cole and Mariah Carey for weeks, and based on the crowd at the grocery store last night, we’ve bought tons of food for the big day. So, on this fourth Sunday in Advent, when we hear of Jesus’ origin story – although not the fun version from Luke that we’ll hear in few days – most of our eyes glaze over and our ears tune out, thinking “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Joseph was a pretty cool dude to stay with Mary and claim Jesus as his own.”
This year, though, I am especially grateful for some time with Joseph and Matthew’s gospel. Like many people of faith, I normally resonate more with Mary – I have multiple icons of Mary and Jesus in my office, I love to pray the Hail Mary, and given my gender, I simply relate to the physical experience of Mary more than Joseph. But on a very practical, everyday level, Mary can seem a little otherworldly – a saint so saintly that she can be hard to emulate. Instead, I like the earthy, realness of Joseph today.
Joseph had done everything by the books. He is a righteous man, which means he follows the law to the letter. Everything is heading in the proper direction, going as planned, according to schedule. And then he gets the worst possible news. Mary is pregnant. Since Mary and Joseph are betrothed, but not yet in the stage of marriage where they have consummated the union, there is no way Joseph is the biological father of the child. He can only assume Mary has been unfaithful. Joseph has two options: he can have Mary stoned or he can divorce her.[i] He is well within his rights to utilize either path, and would not receive criticism by other faithful Jews. But Joseph is one of those rare treasures who not only knows the letter of the law, but also understands the spirit of the law. Instead of a brutal, public punishment for Mary, he decides he will divorce her quietly, hoping to help her avoid the full force of cultural judgment.
Joseph makes a well-informed, respectable, and compassionate decision. He makes his decision and then rests his weary mind and body. That is when life changes yet again. God appears to Joseph in a dream, and explains that Joseph’s decision cannot stand. This child in Mary’s womb is special, and not only is Joseph not to divorce her, he is to legally claim the child as his own by naming the child. So, what does Joseph do? He bends even further than he already has, and takes Mary as his wife.
On the one hand, I like that this is a story of an ordinary man listening to and responding to God. In that way, we hear the gospel lesson sharing a similar message to us today. You don’t have to be some superstar like Mary, or have some band of angels come with messages, or even journey for months following a star. You don’t have to be some holier-than-thou Christian, some uber-activist bringing on world peace, or even a sinless follower of God. You just need to be like this everyday Joe – a Joseph who is willing to pay attention and to say a quiet yes – even if saying yes feels scary or scandalous.
Yes, on the one hand, I like that this is story of an ordinary man listing to and responding to God. On the other hand, I like that Matthew’s gospel tells us that Joseph is not actually some ordinary man – some everyday Joe. You see, Joseph is a direct descendent of not only Abraham, but also King David. If we had read the 17 verses before the passage we read today, we would have gotten the genealogy of names that lead to Jesus – those hard names that every lector dreads reading. But those names tell us so much. Matthew, “…mentions Abraham – the patriarch who abandoned his son, Ishmael, and twice endangered his wife’s safety in order to save his own skin. He mentions Jacob, the trickster usurper who humiliated his older brother. He mentions David, who slept with another man’s wife and then ordered that man’s murder to protect his own reputation. He mentions Tamar, who pretended to be a sex worker, and Rahab, who was one. These are just a few representative samples.” Scholar Debie Thomas asks, “Notice anything? Anything like messiness? Complication? Scandal? Sin? How interesting that God, who could have chosen any genealogy for his Son, chose a long line of brokenness, imperfection, dishonor, and scandal. The perfect backdrop, I suppose, for his beautiful works of restoration, healing, hope, and second chances.”[ii]
I like that Joseph is not just an ordinary man saying yes. I like that Joeseph is a specific, special man, even if that specialness does not come from something he did. In that way, Joseph is like every person in this room. Like Joseph, your life is probably messy too. You probably have misbehaving people in your family tree, that ancestor that people only talk about in embarrassed whispers, or that relative you do not want to introduce to anyone else for fear of guilt by association. If God can use Joseph in all his messiness, specificity, and ordinariness, then you better believe God is likely inviting you, in your ordinary, messy, specificity into some scary, world-changing stuff too. No wonder that the angel Gabriel’s first words to Joseph were, “Do not be afraid!”
I know you were hoping to hop onto the Christmas train and skip over this fourth Sunday in Advent. But maybe this year isn’t supposed to be about some idyllic, picturesque Christmas. As Debie Thomas says, “If we want to enter into God’s messy story, then perhaps [“Be not afraid” are] words we need to hear, too. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid when God’s work in your life looks alarmingly different than you thought [God’s work] would. Do not be afraid when God upends your cherished assumptions about righteousness. Do not be afraid when God asks you to stand alongside the scandalous, the defiled, the suspected, and the shamed. Do not be afraid when God asks you to love something or someone more than your own spotless reputation. Do not be afraid of the precarious, the fragile, the vulnerable, the impossible. Do not be afraid [to notice and embrace the] mess [of Christmas this year]. The mess is the place where God is born.”[iii] Amen.
[i] David Lose, “Matthew’s Version of the Incarnation,” December 17, 2013, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/matthews-version-of-the-incarnation on December 20, 2025.
[ii] Debie Thomas, “Into the Mess,” December 15, 2019, as found at https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/2484-into-the-mess on December 20, 2025.
[iii] Thomas.
Seeking and Serving 