Powerful Love

Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 22, 2013
Matthew 1:18 – 25

Joseph’s love for Jesus, and his mother Mary, was risky. As a man of honour and tradition from the family of King David himself, the trouble had all begun for Joseph when Mary, his virgin fiancée, had whispered those incredulous words: “I’m pregnant.”

Joseph was caught in the middle—caught between the law that said Mary should be stoned and the power of love that said he should have mercy. After great struggle we can only imagine, Joseph came to the best resolution he could. He would keep things quiet and go to Mary and tell her it was over. But he would not bring charges against her. To do less would be horrible—sending Mary to disgrace and even death. But to do more would be crazy.

It would be going outside the bounds of what scripture said. It was a risk that a person of faith could not take.

But then, of course, came the dream and the angel and the living voice of God. The angel of the Lord meets Joseph right at that intersection between his fear and his faith. God speaks to Joseph and tells him that as a person of faith, he must take this risk and take Mary as his wife. That was the beginning of the dangerous, costly path of love that Joseph and Mary and Jesus would follow for the rest of their lives.

Joseph does trust God; now he is in; he is hooked. But Joseph’s love for Jesus was different. Not less, just a different kind of love. Mary would not have had the same kinds of questions that Joseph had. She carried Jesus inside her for nine months. She knew he was as much her flesh as he was God’s Son. Joseph’s love, however, is the tremendous, powerful love of adoption—when a child that is not of your own flesh and blood becomes truly “your” child. When Joseph held the baby in his own arms, he took him as his own. The tiny baby confirmed what he had heard from the angel. This is Emmanuel—God with us. And this was his own son.

It is not unlike what happens in the church, when the church is truly being the church. When parents bring their child to be baptized, the church is asked to love this child and raise this child as its own—nurturing him or her in the Christian faith. And if the church wants a model of what that kind of love looks like, we must look not to Mary and her instantaneous, immediate love for Jesus, but to the love that Joseph had for Jesus. It is love you choose to give fully. Joseph regarded Jesus as his own child, going to great lengths to keep him safe. He watched and helped him grow and question and change. He shared his joys and defeats in love.

This is the same love God shows us through the church, when we are adopted into God’s own family through baptism and a congregation accepts the risk of truly being the church.