Joseph: The Forgotten Hero of Christmas

Matthew opens his gospel with a genealogy, and Drake pointed out that it is full of tension.

There are men and women in it. Jews and Gentiles. Sinners and saints. It is written to a Jewish audience and it is meant to be honorable — Jesus comes from the line of David, the fulfillment of the promise that someone from David's house would sit on a throne whose reign never ends.

And right there in the honorable list: Rahab the prostitute. And David, who is named here not simply as king but as the father of Solomon "by the wife of Uriah" — the woman he took, and the man he had killed to cover it.

Matthew could have left that out. He put it in.

How can it be that Rahab, or David and Bathsheba, brought forth God's chosen one? Because God uses broken things and broken stories to accomplish his purposes. He always has.

If you have been assuming your history disqualifies you, read the family tree again.

Put yourself where Joseph is.

Mary is pregnant — about four months along, Drake reckoned, so it is beginning to show. She has spent three months with her aunt Elizabeth, who is overjoyed about all of it. And Joseph? Confronted with this reality three or four months in, he is simply bewildered.

He is described as a just man, and a kind one. He does not want to disgrace her. So he resolves to divorce her quietly.

Understand what he is carrying. The story is too strange to believe. The pressure and the stares have started. His own character is now in question — people are doing the arithmetic and drawing conclusions about him.

And he is trying, in an impossible situation, to do the most decent thing he can think of.

That is worth honoring even though he had it wrong. Joseph was not being faithless. He was being as good as a man can be with incomplete information — which is most of what any of us are working with.

It is Christmas Eve. And into Joseph's honest, wrong plan comes an angel — in a dream.

Drake admitted he wondered about that. Lord, if you speak to me it will have to be in a dream, because I have some crazy dreams. But then — what would be more normal? A burning bush? A divine light from heaven? A voice out of nowhere? Or some strange man showing up to tell you what God wants you to know?

Pick your method. The point is the same. God spoke, Joseph listened, and it changed everything.

Joseph was a man weighing his circumstances who certainly did not have all the answers. And maybe that is exactly where you find yourself tonight — wondering what is going on and why, placed by God in a situation you did not choose, not sure where you are going or how you will get there, but believing this is where he is calling you.

So you put one foot in front of the other and follow as best you can.

That is not weak faith. That is Joseph.

Merry Christmas.

The angel gives Joseph a name and a reason, and the reason is the whole of Christmas in a single line: "you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."

Not from Rome. Not from poverty, or obscurity, or the census, or the hard circumstances that framed that night. From sins.

It is worth noticing how unromantic that is. We have built a great deal of warmth around this night, and rightly — but the angel's explanation of why the baby is coming is not sentimental at all. There is a problem, it is ours, and it is deeper than our circumstances.

And the fix is a person. Not a principle, not an example, not an improved moral framework. A child, with a name that means *the Lord saves*, born into a family tree with Rahab and Bathsheba in it, to a couple too poor to offer more than two birds at the temple.

That is who came for you. Merry Christmas.

Here is Joseph's entire recorded contribution: "When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him."

He did it.

No sermon was ever preached by him. Not one of his words is recorded anywhere in Scripture. He does not get a Christmas carol. Mary gets Silent Night, Mary Did You Know, Breath of Heaven. Joseph gets a brief cameo and a great deal of responsibility.

And maybe that is precisely what Matthew wants us to see. This is probably not an educated man. He is certainly not old. He is definitely poor — when they made their sacrifice they offered a turtledove, the smallest offering available, the one the poor brought. And this man traveled hundreds of miles to protect his wife and this child.

Nothing he said survived. His quiet faithfulness helped change the world.

As Joseph became less, the Son he was chosen to raise became more. That was the mission of his life, and it is not a bad one to borrow.