Advent 4, December 22 2013
Is 7:10-14; Rom 1:1-7; Matt 1:18-24
Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel each tell us the story of Jesus’ birth. The stories do not overlap. Luke tells the story from Mary’s point of view, while Matthew focuses on Joseph. In Luke, Jesus is born in a stable in Bethlehem and angels announce the good news to shepherds nearby. In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph and Mary live in Bethlehem and the magi come to visit when he is perhaps two years old.
In both Gospels, Mary conceives Jesus before she and Joseph are living together. Matthew tells us that they are betrothed. Betrothal in those days was not an informal affair like getting engaged today. There was a formal contract, and the couple was legally bound, but Mary still lived with—and in the eyes of people those days—belonged to her father. After she moved in with Joseph, she would belong to him.
We can imagine Joseph’s situation. He is legally contracted to a girl who is pregnant with a child that is not his. Of course, he also doesn’t want to be stuck with a faithless wife and another man’s child.
Matthew tells us that Joseph “was a righteous man.” I can remember often wondering about this phrase when I heard the Gospel read. Sometimes the translation said that Joseph was a “just” man. But what is just or righteous about putting Mary away privately? In biblical thought, “righteousness” is linked to justice, ethics, and Torah observance. According to Torah (Deuteronomy 22:23-27), if a young woman, a virgin, has sex with a man not her betrothed and she doesn’t cry out for help, then Deuteronomy calls for the stoning death of both the man and woman. If it happens in a place where no one could hear her cries for help, then we assume she resisted, and only the man is punishable by death (that’s better than in some middle Eastern countries today). The law tries to provide justice to a victimized girl but also insists on justice to the betrothed husband and his family.
So it would be righteous for Joseph to accuse Mary of adultery and let her be stoned. It would be righteous for him to divorce her, exposing her to shame. But Joseph does not want Mary to be stoned or shamed. Joseph is righteous in a different sense, in the sense that Jesus will use the word throughout Matthew’s Gospel.
In Matthew’s Gospel, righteousness means a right relationship with God and your fellow man, as exemplified in Jesus’ two great commandments: love God with your whole heart and love your neighbor as yourself. This sense of righteousness is what made Joseph so reluctant to do the apparently “righteous” thing about his pregnant betrothed. For Matthew, righteousness means obedience to the divine will and imitation of God’s compassion. Joseph intuits God’s will in his own strong reluctance to expose a young girl to punishment or disgrace.
The angel tells Joseph not to be afraid to take that girl to be his wife. He should not be afraid of whispering by the village gossips. He should trust that Mary will be a good wife to him. He should go with his sense of compassion and trust in God for the rest. So he did. And so this kindly workingman became the father of the Lord.
Jesus will say, “Blessed are the merciful,” and “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. This is the whole law and the prophets.” Over and over Jesus will call us to mercy and not to judgment. He will tell us to trust our sense of compassion rather than beating others with external yardsticks of justice. Is it any wonder that this was the man God chose to raise his Son?