Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Genesis 37:5-11 and Matthew 1:18-25

Introductions are such an interesting social phenomenon.  We walk into the Christmas party as the hostess gives polite introductions.  “Susan, this is my friend Bill.” The very first thing she asks is, “What do you do Bill?”  Sometimes we save time by including occupational information along with the introduction.  “Susan, I’d like you to meet my friend Bill.  Bill is a fourth grade teacher.  Susan is an accountant.”  The hostess moves away as the two begin their conversation.

This inclusion of one’s profession makes it stickier when someone is introducing me in these social settings. “This is my friend Bruce.”   Do they tell their friend I am a minister?  Do they say Pastor?  My Catholic friends seem to struggle the most with this.  “Do I call you ‘Father’ when I introduce you?”  “Just call me Bruce.”  “Oh, I could never do that.  Shall I call you Pastor?” “Okay, introduce me as pastor.” 

I know what will happen as soon as I am introduced as a pastor.  The other person will start searching for something religious to talk about.  “So, you are a pastor…  How about those Padres, padre?”

I avoid this confusion when I am with my wife at a social gathering of artists.  We wander into the art gallery where I am introduced simply as “Bruce, Kate’s husband.”  She is the recognized artist.  I am merely the spouse.  “Kate’s husband.”

As we continue our journey toward Bethlehem this year, I am thinking of the guy in the story who gets mostly overlooked—Joseph.  Most of us know him only as “Mary’s husband.”  If we were making the introduction of Joseph to a friend and asked what his job was, most of us would say he was a carpenter.  Actually, the Bible nowhere tells us that Joseph was a carpenter.  There is a reference to Jesus being a carpenter, so it is an easy jump to assume that Jesus was apprenticed to his step-father who must then have been a carpenter.  Perhaps Joseph died while Jesus was still young so that Jesus was apprenticed to a relative who was a carpenter.  We are not sure from the Bible what Joseph did for his occupation. 

What do we actually know about Joseph?  Not much.  However, Matthew makes a point of telling the Christmas story from Joseph’s perspective.  Matthew makes a point to introduce Joseph to us.  Let’s see how Matthew introduced Joseph.

Read Matthew 1: 18-25.

Will Rogers was the political comedian of his generation.  Famous for his phrase that he never met a person he didn’t like, he enjoyed making people laugh.  The story is told of the evening he was introduced to President Calvin Coolidge.  The President was known for his somber disposition.  He rarely smiled and never laughed.  The crowd that evening realized it was something of a duel between the famous comedian and the President.  Rogers would want to make the President laugh, but the President was unlikely to even crack a smile.  Finally, Will Rogers made it through the welcome line and was officially introduced to the President.  “Mr. President, this is Will Rogers.  Mr. Rogers, this is resident Calvin Coolidge.”  Rogers leaned forward as he reached to shake hands and said, “Sorry, didn’t catch the name.”  President Coolidge laughed.

His name was Joseph.  For most of us as Protestants, that is about all we know.  He makes a cameo appearance each year at Christmas time when we put out the crèche.  “Mom, is this one Joseph or a shepherd?  I can tell the three Wise Men because they have crowns on their heads.  Does Joseph hold a staff or is he the one who is kneeling?”

Our Catholic friends don’t have this problem.  Saint Joseph is a big deal for Catholics. Not Mary, mind you, but still a pretty big deal.

Last summer I attended a conference at a Catholic retreat center.  I discovered in their little bookstore a Catholic Saint Joseph Bible.  It includes the Catholic books that are left out of our Bibles, known as the Apocrypha.  But I wondered as I flipped through it what made it distinctively a Saint Joseph Bible.  I found that it has two glossy pages at the front that explain why Saint Joseph is important. According to these glossy pages Saint Joseph is the patron saint of the Universal Church. He is the saint who guards children and families.  He is the mentor saint for single men to help them protect their purity and the saint for married men to help them maintain their fidelity in marriage.  He is the guardian of virgins, helper for the poor, and patron saint for seminarians and priests.  He is a big deal!

As I was purchasing this Saint Joseph Bible the lady in the Catholic bookstore said, “Oh, if you are interested in Saint Joseph too bad we don’t have any of the Saint Joseph statues.  We sell out of them so fast that we just can’t keep them in stock.”  Curious I asked what Catholics do with the Saint Joseph statue.  “People use the Saint Joseph statue to sell their house.  You bury him upside down in the yard when you put your house on the market and he’ll help you sell the house.”

So here is what we have… Protestants barely know anything about this guy who makes a cameo appearance at Christmas time.  Catholics claim he can do pretty much anything and everything, including selling property and helping you move.  So let’s go back to the Bible and let Matthew make the introductions.

Can you hear the whispers around the room?  Matthew invited this guy to the Christmas party but nobody in the room seems to know who he is.  “Didn’t catch the name?”  “Joseph? Glad to meet you.”  As Matthew makes the rounds introducing his friend, we learn what Matthew considers to be Joseph’s claim to fame.  It is not that he is Mary’s husband.  Yes, that is important, but Matthew wants us to know something else about him.  Matthew says, “This is Joseph.  He’s a dreamer. God speaks to him through dreams.”

Wait a minute!  Joseph the dreamer?  Isn’t that the guy we learned about last week?  Wasn’t Joseph the dreamer the good son who God used to rescue his family in Egypt? 

Matthew’s Christmas carries intentional connections with ancient Hebrew stories because Matthew wrote his gospel to his fellow Jews.  Matthew wanted to show his own people that Jesus fulfilled the Hebrew prophecies about the Messiah.  As we read through Matthew we meet up again and again with his refrain, “And so the prophecy was fulfilled….”  Matthew wants his Jewish friends to meet Jesus as their promised Messiah.

Thus, Matthew introduces this Joseph by making an intentional tie with the Joseph from the first book of the Bible.  Joseph in Genesis was a dreamer who interpreted dreams as well.

Let’s compare these two Bible characters.  God spoke to Joseph, Mary’s husband, at Christmas through dreams.  God used a dream to confirm that the baby in Mary’s womb was God’s Son.  In essence the message of the dream was simple—“Marry Mary.”  God gave Joseph another dream to flee from Bethlehem in order to protect the child from King Herod.  Joseph obeyed the dream and took the child and his mother to Egypt.  Finally, God spoke to Joseph through a dream to show that it was safe to bring the family back out of Egypt and return to Nazareth. 

The other Joseph, in the Book of Genesis, also receives God’s direction through dreams.  Matthew intends us to connect Joseph of Christmas with Joseph in Genesis.  In fact, these two Josephs teach us something important about God leading us. 

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes wish God were more direct in communicating with me.  “Lord, if you just spoke directly to me from a voice out of the sky or at least through a clear dream, I would know what to do.”  I guess I assume that the Lord speaking directly will make my life easier.  I will know for sure what is God’s will and be able to do it.  Yet both of these Josephs get as clear a message from God as possible and it doesn’t make their lives any smoother. 

In both Josephs we see that God speaking directly and guiding still means that things can be confusing and uncomfortable.  Becoming the step-father to the Son of God took Christmas Joseph on a path from Bethlehem to Egypt to live as a refugee.  Following the dream of being in the right place at the right time to save his family meant Genesis Joseph had to follow a path through slavery and  jail before he eventually arrived at the end goal.

Yes, God had a destination for them.  But the path wasn’t what they expected when they first had the dream.  When God speaks to us and calls us there is still room for life to get messy and the path to feel confusing.  The good news at Christmas is that God is with us on the path.  The message is the same for both Josephs, “God is with us—Emmanuel.”

I recall as a young Christian reading an illustration of how this works.  The author lived in the Swiss Alps.  He used the image of hiking in the mountains.  He compared God revealing a vision to us as seeing a cabin in the distance.  God says, “There is the destination.  When you get there it will be fulfilling and glorious.”  We see the cabin the distance and get excited.  “For me, Lord?”  We receive the message (maybe not literally in a dream) and get excited.  “Okay Lord, I’m in!” 

So the Lord says, “Now, follow that path to get there.”  We step out in faith and are excited to be doing something the Lord called us to do.  But pretty soon the path veers off onto the side of a mountain and we realize we are walking further away from the cabin.  We follow the path for a while but begin to feel lost in the trees.  “Is this the way?  Lord, are you still there?”  The soft whisper of the Holy Spirit assures us.  “Emmanuel.  God is with you.”

We walk for a mile or two and realize that the forest has closed in around us and we no longer are sure which way we are going.  We become hesitant in our steps.  It feels a little scary.  Darkness closes in around us and we wonder if we missed a sign or accidentally turned off the path.  The excitement of the cabin clearly seen a while back fades. 

Just about the time we are thinking about retracing our steps, the woods open up and we realize we are nearly there.  Indeed, we were on the path the whole time, but it led differently than we expected when we first caught the excitement of God’s clear call on our lives.

Maybe for some of us this season feels a bit like Joseph, the husband of Mary.  We feel called, the path got pretty confusing.  Here is the assurance for Christmas.  Emmanuel—God is with us.