Holy Jo: Men to transform Canterbury.
More Holy Jo’s please!
Matthew 1:18-25
It has become fashionable to label a guy who gets serious with God – a ‘Holy Jo’ but today I want to challenge that and actually make a pitch for more ‘Holy Jo’s’. I want to suggest that if we had more men around of the caliber of Joseph (spiritually and emotionally) the world would be a far better place this Christmas and beyond. Ladies forgive me for seemingly excluding you but I am sure by the end of this message you will join me in wanting more men like Joseph too. Indeed next Sunday I will be making a similar pitch for Holy Mary’s as well!
So imagine the scene in Nazareth: The Angel Gabriel comes to a teenage Palestinian girl and says she is to give birth to the Lord, the King. ‘I think you must have the wrong Mary’ she would have replied. ‘I mean, you’ll need someone influential, important, of royal descent, well off (you can’t have the Lord running round in rags or receiving a sub-standard education!). And, of course, ‘If the Lord is to be born into poverty, well, you’d need an experienced mother who got several kids already (who are healthy and well adjusted)….I don’t even know how to hold a baby, and you’re telling me that my first baby will be the Lord. What if I drop him? And by the way…………………….. What is Joseph going to say?’
Then imagine the scene with Joseph. ‘Why Mary you’re looking big….. Why, Mary you’re pregnant! Who with?’ Mary answers: ‘With the Lord’. What’s his line after that I wonder? Doesn’t happen every day, eh?
What do we know about Joseph? He was a descendant of David, a carpenter, maybe older than Mary (and maybe a widower with children) who was alive when Jesus was twelve, but may have died before Jesus’ public ministry (As far as we can tell he was not at the wedding in Cana?) So that’s it.
Oh no it isn’t. When he learned that Mary was pregnant – presumably to someone else – Matthew gives us some interesting insights into this amazing man. This must have been a staggering blow to him. She’d been ‘sleeping around’. Most fiancées would have exploded in vindictive rage. His gut reaction might have been to humiliate Mary as well as to drop her. But he didn’t.
Here’s Holy Jo seeking to respond to his worse case scenario: how did he do it: there are six helpful clues in the Joseph-story.
First, Joseph was a thoughtful person. (Matthew 1:19/20) So the first thing he did was nothing, he did nowt. He ‘considered’ the situation. For days, weeks, months…who knows? No doubt he prayed fervently as well. There is also a fascinating echo in Mary’s experience as well: Luke 2:19 talks of her pondering what had happened in her heart. The moral for us: when you have a difficult decision, don’t be in a hurry: more mistakes are made in haste than by delay. How much time in our busy lives to considering or pondering what God is doing or saying?
Second, Joseph was a ‘just’ man (v.19). That is, he lived under the law of God. His obvious question here would have been, “What does the law of God say?” Answer: (see Deuteronomy 24: 1) he had to send her away. According to Jewish custom, a betrothal could only be terminated by ‘divorce’. Indeed, Mary should have been stoned. So the moral for us: Always ask, “What does the Word of God in Scripture say about this?” Nothing is ever right if it contradicts God’s word and will for us.
But thirdly, Joseph was a tender, compassionate man (v19). He believed that justice must be tempered by love. He had to obey the law of God that was clear. But how to do it in Mary’s best interests? How could he avoid embarrassing her? Joseph did not want to put Mary to shame. We know the sequel: it was revealed to Joseph by the Angel Gabriel that Mary was not guilty of adultery at all, but was highly favoured by the Spirit of God. The lesson for us: always ask, not only what God’s law/Word requires, but how to apply that law/Word in love. Not even Joseph’s hurt feelings or his religion’s legal requirements could overrule something more important: his compassion for someone who was ‘down’. (Pity weeps and walks away, Compassion weeps and comes to stay) ‘In spite of the terrible thing he thought Mary had done to him and to their dreams, Joseph still had deep feelings for Mary the person and could not find it in his heart to add to her burden or to stamp on her while she was down’.
Forth, Joseph was open to mystery, to the incredible. Now he was a male, and would have prided himself on his logical approach to things (and carpenters have to think in those terms too!). Mary impregnated by God? A Divine Pregnancy? What? Is there a precedent for this? Ridiculous! But no, Joseph’s response was not circumscribed by his logic or experience. What Gabriel said to Mary, Joseph obviously believed: “With God all things are possible.” That’s what faith is all about – letting God be God, not restricting God within the limits of human experience….
Fifth, Joseph was humble enough to be willing to listen to the voice of God, even in a dream. If we believe that God can speak to us then why confine that to when we are awake. People in the Developing world are far more open to God speaking to them in this way and we should be too. Maybe we don’t hear because we are not humble enough to open ourselves to God speaking in this way? Are we open to mystery or do we put God in a box marked: privatized Saviour? As someone once said: there is no deficient about God’s communication, the issue is our lack of openness to hear Him. Let God fill your days and nights with glimpses of His Glory!
Sixth, Joseph was a man of action. With only the word of Mary and the words in a dream to guide him, he took Mary to be his wife, and took her away from Nazareth (ostensibly to register in his home town of Bethlehem but also, I have no doubt, to get Mary away from the wagging tongues up north!) He later moved the little family to Egypt to get away from the murderous Herod, and then back to Nazareth rather than Bethlehem to avoid the political climate. A wise person is one who knows what time it is in life and Joseph eminently qualifies for that title….He was profoundly aware of what was going on around him, and just as importantly, had the courage to act on the sense of promise that beckoned him to venture forth. This courage of course was the offspring of trust – in Mary, in the angel, and in his own experience of truth, and as we know, Joseph was not disappointed. In fact, because he did trust so courageously, look who came into the world – a Son who was taught from the cradle, to faith it through life, and who was able again and again, to recognize when his hour had come and to venture forth in courage and purpose.
The Old Testament is all about a God who gives us laws and then gives himself permission not to enforce them sometimes! When later in his life Jesus was confronted with a woman who had committed adultery, he first said ‘I do not condemn you’ before he said ‘Go and sin no more’. Pharisees ancient and modern, who only ask ‘What does the law say?’ and not ‘How can I act like God, with compassion?’ could never say that. Jesus had learned some wonderful lessons from this wonderful man Joseph.
Paul’s 2nd Letter to Timothy gives us a wonderful example of a Holy Jo (Paul) who discipled/fathered another Holy Jo: and both made an enormous impact for Christ in their generation.
So this Advent & Christmas season, I invite you to use this wonderful man Joseph as your guide when confronted as we all are with huge and difficult moral dilemmas all around us. Let us do what Joseph did, namely: reflect deeply, for as long as it takes; ask ‘How does the Word of God instruct me here?’; act always with compassion; be open to mystery; listen for the voice of God, in whatever medium God chooses to speak; and then act.
There is no doubt at all in my mind that it is Holy Jo’s that will help to transform Canterbury and such men of that kind of godly caliber will attract Women of God and will shape families who will once again be the raw material of the reestablishing of God’s Kingdom here in our nation.
Of course, as we will see next Sunday it could be Holy Peter, Holy Lorna, Holy Malcolm, or Holy Sue: the common denominator is Holy – and such is the gift the Lord wants to give you and me this Christmas. Maybe you have never opened your life to this gift: well as the well know carol says, its time to allow our Saviour to “Cast out my Sin and enter in, be born in me today!” So receive anew the lover of your Soul, receive the gift of holiness (which will attract the worlds attention) and become the man – or – women whom God can use to bless many.
Pastor David November 30th 2014