Advent 4 - Narrative sermon Matthew 1:18-25 (Boxted)

Good morning, let me introduce myself, my name is Joseph Davidson, just plain old Jo to my friends, and I think I’d count you all as my friends, after all, what’s in a name really.

Well it turns out, quite a lot, actually.

My first name might seem fairly unremarkable, certainly there are plenty of Joe’s around, my surname is a bit more significant though. Davidson … so literally meaning the son of David … and what David I hear you ask? Well none other than King David so I have a pretty significant lineage … descended from royalty you might say … but well, that was 14 generations ago, I don’t think you’d easily identify my royal lineage by the way I live my life today, I’m quite a simple man really, enjoy the simple pleasures in life, and my simple job, working with my hands, I’m a carpenter you see, a good honest trade, for a good honest man.

And I’d like to think I am a good honest man. I try to do the best by people, and to be honest, I expect them to do the same to me, to treat me, the same way that I would treat them.

As I often say ‘do to others whatever you would like them to do to you’ I think this a sound principle to live by, I’d like to think, others might learn from my example ….

Anyway, things were really looking up for me, when Mary said yes … O you have probably heard about her saying Yes to the angel, and the birth of a child, conceived through the Holy Spirit. Well I am not talking about that Yes, well not now at least, no I mean, when Mary said yes to me, when she said yes to being my wife. I was so excited, our betrothal meant so much to me, I don’t know, do you use the word betrothed these days? It’s a bit like being engaged, only its deeper than that … you can’t just walk away from a relationship when you are betrothed to one another, it’s a formal commitment to marriage, a time when dowry’s are arranged, families come together, and to break a betrothal, means to divorce … and wow, that’s just massive … divorce just brings so much shame, not just to the couple but to the families too …

When Mary said Yes to me, I was the happiest man alive, I never guessed how quickly that could all change. When Mary told me of her pregnancy, well the rug was well and truly ripped from beneath my feet. How could she do something like that to me … how could she expect me to do anything other than divorce her, but how could I do that, without bringing even more shame on her and her family.

I was devastated, but I still loved her you see, I still didn’t want to hurt her any more, because, I could see, despite all these fanciful stories of an angel, and the Holy Spirit, and the uniqueness of the child inside her, that though she was clearly deluded, I could see, she still loved me …

Oh, they were dark days … I wrestled with what to do … how to salvage something of my reputation … how to keep Mary from being the absolute talk of the town … there is little else going on round here you see.

So she went off to visit her relative, Elizabeth, well there’s a tale in itself, Elizabeth was, well, let’s just say, getting on in years, to say the least, and well she was pregnant too, several months ahead of Mary, these children would be cousins … absolutely bizarre, years and years everyone had assumed Elizabeth must be barren, her and her husband Zechariah a priest, destined to never have a child, but now Elizabeth was pregnant and Zechariah, had gone mute … everyone thought he must have seen a vision, after all he became mute whilst in the temple, Elizabeths pregnancy seemed to be somehow linked, it all seemed very strange …. What was God up to?

Anyway, Mary went off to see Elizabeth, before the gossips could really get going, there is, after all, only so long, you can hide a pregnancy … someone would notice sooner or later.

This gave me time and space to think … and believe me I did a lot of thinking as I sawed and planed the wood in my workshop, I thought about all the possible ways I could quietly divorce Mary, without bringing her shame, but I knew that ultimately, whatever I did, people would talk, of course they would about Mary the teenage mum, with no husband … what could I do …. All I knew was I had to do something and it was certainly going to be more practical than falling for visions or angels … that sort of thing really isn’t for me … I am good, honest, practical Jo … I am not going to be taken in by fanciful tales.

Only then an angel came to me in a dream, believe me, I am not easily conned, but this was something else … everything changed that night … I knew when I got up the next morning exactly what I had to do … I knew it wasn’t going to be easy … but I knew that I had to stand by Mary, and to stand by the baby in her womb too … to be an earthly dad, to a child that was no blood relation to me … I was to give him the name Jesus, after all that is what the angel said ‘Joseph, son of David, I prefer Jo Davidson to be honest, but hey ho, angels are more formal I guess, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’ These words have been seared into my memory!

And so when Mary returned, things had completely changed, I was no longer angry … confused maybe … frightened certainly … seemed like such a big responsibility for us … Mary so young, me, just a simple guy, practical, yes I could probably turn my hand to making the odd cot or two and some simple toys, but from what the angel said, to Mary and to me, this was no ordinary child, so much potential for us to get it wrong, and then imagine the fall out from that, this child was going to save Gods people from their sins, what if something awful happened to him and it was all my fault, imagine that!

I just had to trust, that whilst we were bound to make mistakes, we are only human after all, God was in this, and his will would be done, despite our human failings and so after a last minute trip to Bethlehem, thanks to the poor timing, one could say, of a census, Mary gave birth to a child in somewhat less than ideal circumstances … and I, just as the angel told me to, I named him Jesus … God with us … Immanuel.

And as I named him, I knew that life would simply never be the same again … not for me, not for Mary and not for anyone who really encountered him.