Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
December 25, 2010

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Joseph is a righteous man, and Joseph has a problem. The woman to whom he is engaged but with who he has not yet had marital relations is pregnant. As Matthew introduces Joseph to us Joseph doesn’t know that Mary’s child is from the Holy Spirit, so he reaches the only conclusion he could possibly reach. Mary has been unfaithful. Joseph is a righteous man, and he knows what he must do. Joseph is a righteous man, and he knows what the law requires. He lives by the law. That’s what makes him righteous. That’s what being righteous means to him—obeying the law of Moses, the law of his Jewish people. Being righteous means being in right relationship with God, doing what God wants you to do; and Joseph knows that God wants him to obey the law, the Mosaic law, the law interpreted and enforced by the Jewish leaders and teachers of his day. That law says he must dismiss Mary, to use Matthew’s term. He must put her away and not go through with the marriage. She is an adulteress, as far as he knows; and the law said he could not marry her. So he planned not to. He planned to do the righteous thing as he and his Jewish faith of the time understood righteousness.

But then he runs into this slight complication. He has a dream. In the dream an angel of God appears to him and tells him not to do what the law, what righteousness as he understood it, required him to do. He hears the angel say the most improbable, nay, impossible, thing. The angel says that Mary’s child is of the Holy Spirit and that for that reason Joseph should go ahead and marry her even though the law said that he should and could not do so. So Joseph does what the angel said and marries Mary anyway.

Now, if this story was just about some guy named Joseph who lived two thousand years ago in a place very far away it might not have much meaning for us. Jesus would still have meaning for us, but the story of Joseph and his angel wouldn’t. Yet I think that this little story of Joseph and his angel actually has a great deal of meaning for us. I believe that in this little story Matthew completely redefines for us what righteousness is.

We begin with the traditional Jewish understanding of righteousness. Righteousness is obeying the law. That’s what Joseph was going to do. He was faced with a situation. He looked to see what the law said about that situation. Then he determined to do what the law said he should do because that’s what righteousness was. That’s what righteousness required. That’s how you got and stayed in right relationship with God, by learning what the law said you should do in a particular situation and then doing it. Joseph needed an answer. The law gave him an answer. He was going to do it. Righteousness preserved.

But then that pesky angel pops up and says Hold on! Not so fast! Joseph hears a new word spoken directly to him by a messenger from God. The new word says obeying the law is not what God wants from you in this situation. What the law says is not God’s will here. Listen to your angel. Listen to the new thing God is saying. Pay attention to the new thing God is doing. Obeying the law here would be precisely the un-righteous thing to do. Obeying the law here would contradict what God wants, would hinder what God was doing. Joseph listens to his angel, ignores the law, and does the new thing that God is calling him to do.

In this story of Joseph and his angel righteousness is transformed. Righteousness is changed from obeying a fixed, predetermined law into listening for God’s word in each situation in our lives. Determining the righteous thing to do in any situation is changed from looking up the situation in the law and obeying what to law says to listening for God, to discerning for ourselves what it is that God wants, discerning for ourselves what the right thing, what the righteous thing, to do is. In this story Joseph is a righteous man, but his righteousness is transformed. It is transformed from a legalistic righteousness to a free righteousness. It is changed from a righteousness of law to a righteousness of grace.

Saint Paul understood that transformation. He doesn’t mention this story, but he tells us over and over again that in Christ Jesus we are freed from the law. He tells us over and over again that being righteous, or being justified to use his most common term for it, isn’t about obeying the law, it is about living in God’s grace. In Christ Jesus we have freedom, freedom from a stagnant legalism, freedom from a rigid code, freedom to listen for God’s still, small voice speaking to us prayer, in dreams, in silence. In Christ Jesus we are free as Joseph was free to follow what we discern to be the true will of God.

Freedom is a great thing. Freedom is a wonderful thing. In freedom we can grow, we can ourselves be transformed into more faithful disciples of Christ. But freedom is also a scary thing. There is a security in the law. There is a certainty in the law. The law is what it is, and in the righteousness of the law all we have to do is read what the law says, then do it. Freedom is different. In Christian freedom we have to listen, we have to discern. Christian freedom doesn’t give the security of the law. It doesn’t give the certainty of the law. We are constantly discerning, and there is always the risk that we may discern wrongly. In Christian freedom we don’t have the security and the certainty of the law. What we have is grace. We have God’s grace that tells us that even if we discern wrongly God is with us. God forgives us. God blesses our discerning, our attempt to be faithful, even when we fail.

Joseph’s angel told him to look for a new thing that God was doing. Joseph’s angel told him that obeying the law wasn’t what God wanted of him, not this time, not in this case. Joseph could have said no. Joseph could have doubted that his dream was real, that his angel was real, that he had really received a new word from God. He could have retreated into the righteousness of the law, but he didn’t. He trusted his dream. He trusted his angel. He trusted his discernment. In doing that he models for us a new righteousness, the new righteousness of Christ that frees us from the law and calls us into a life of discernment. It is a life of risk, but it is also a life of grace. Looking to the law is easy, but in Christ Jesus we don’t get off that easy. In him righteousness is transformed. On this Christmas morning may we have the faith and courage of Joseph, the faith and the courage to say yes to the still speaking God, to take the risk of freedom, the freedom of the Christian. Amen.