joseph, a just man or just a man

December 21, 2025 • Fourth Sunday in Advent
Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 7:13-14 (The Inclusive Bible) &
Matthew 1:18-25 (A New, New Testament, ed. Hal Taussig, with foreword by Dominic Crossan)
Rev. James Norton, Guest Preacher

[You can view the full worship video recording at: https://youtu.be/olLUMZVFR4k]

Jesus told stories called parables
Naturally, so did his first followers
Untrue, from a scientific view
But, meanings about which we can stew

Parables are meant as comparables
About what makes life more tolerable
How we can live more honorable
So, don’t waste time on imponderables

Two stories tell about Jesus’ Birth
sharing how He became God on earth
Today’s tale is about Joseph’s rebirth
His courage without which life is dearth

Joseph’s betrothed is pregnant, Oh No!
Fallen Mary, a sad video
Joseph’s not the impresario
Who broke the rules like any old schmo

Mary’s plight is of a deadly sort
Sex out of wedlock lands one in court
Unlike today, life could be cut short
Sent to realms beyond by brute transport

If Joseph exposes poor Mary
His burden through life he would carry
Torment that she whom he could marry
Instead, he’d cause her to be buried

Going against the law of the day
Joseph chose to go another way
His sweet Mary he simply would leave\
Silently, shorn of a Christmas Eve

Was it an angel or just instinct
Love’s allure resists being extinct
Can true love ever become unlinked
Or is its trait indelibly inked

Mary and Joseph lived in turbulent times, not unlike our own. As our congregation’s Learning and Conversing Together group has been discussing, stories like this one that focuses on Joseph, were not meant as history, but as parables conveying questions about life’s meaning.

Obviously, one of the points about today’s story has to do with the unequal treatment between women and men. The issue may go all the way back to our prehistoric roots. There was a time when males, like animals, fought for the right to be the Alpha male, the one to whom would fall the conjugal rights to all the females in the pack. Today, it’s silly imagining one male with such a heavy responsibility (though there are probably men who fantasize about such prospects), but more curiously, what did the other males do to meet their own needs. Did they sneak around with some of the “shes” in the bushes, or did the “hes” find other ways of fulfilling their urges after Maslov’s primary needs of water, food, and safe shelter were met?

Whatever, the influence of our earliest traits may linger in current behaviors. The Kansas City Chiefs’ kicker, Harrison Butker, in a commencement speech he gave last spring addressed the women in the crowd by telling them that their number #1 duty is to be a comforting and consoling wife and homemaker for their husbands.

The first Christmas of our marriage 63 years ago, Polly and I, after the Christmas Eve service, returned to our small student apartment, accompanied by a long-time elderly friend, Siggy, a woman who was my mentor in significant ways throughout childhood and teenage years.  We settled in, sheltered against the wintry cold, and I said, “Polly, would you get me a cup of coffee?”  Before Polly could get up from her chair, Siggy blurted out: “Get your own coffee!”  Coming to with a jerk, I sprang to my feet as if something were the matter, and darted into the kitchen.  A year before Betty Fridan’s Feminine Mystique hit the bookstores, Siggy taught me a vital lesson about male/female expectations and marital relations.

Back in Jesus’ day, however, the laws regarding women were crude and cruel.  If a man discovered his wife-to-be were already pregnant, being a just man, he would turn her in to the authorities, and she would be dragged by the hair into a first century equivalent of a football arena, and there be publicly executed.

According to the Book of Numbers in the Bible, if a man merely suspects that his intended has fid addled with another man but has no proof, he can take his “beloved” to the priest who will prepare a “bitter potion” to test her.  If as a result “her belly swelled” and “her thigh rotted,” it was proof of her guilt.  On the other hand, if the bitter drink passes through her without side effects, it proves her innocence.  But not always!  The biblical teaching in Numbers also includes the warning that sometimes the test fails to detect the truth, and guilty women escape. (Numbers 5)

What is so difficult to understand, unconscionable really, is that still today there are places in the world where the treatment of women parallels the same kind of hostility toward them that existed when Jesus was alive.  Given the eons of violence against women, we have to be astonished that the many stories about how Jesus regarded women ever made it into the scriptures, which were recorded by men.  His care of women as persons of worth and value, not as objects of scorn and mistreatment, but as deserving of dignity and respect, these attributes of Jesus were preserved in the collective memory of the early church!  How else can we regard the radical affirmation of women at a time of intense hostility toward them except to explain it as an example of progress, of the natural thing being the continual movement in directions that improve life, or if you will, the constant urging and luring of God’s presence in ways that make life better.

There’s a deeper dilemma going on here, however.   Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan, in their book entitled The First Christmas, compare it to the geological phenomena of those massive tectonic plates that comprise the earth’s crust constantly grinding against one another, such as underneath the San Andreas Fault.   The shifting and rubbing of continental plates and the consequent buckling cause earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains, valleys, and rupturing rifts and gaps on the earth’s surface.

In the same way, since our earliest times as evolving humans two massive tectonic plates have been grinding against one another.  The one we know all too well: it is seen in phrases like “might makes right,” “my country, right or wrong,” “my way, or the highway,” “America first,” “Make America Great Again,” and “peace with strength.”  It invests in military, economic, and political power, and throws its weight around over the world.  It bullies a lot.  It takes from the common people and gives to the wealthy few.  It conducts campaigns to eliminate undesired populations: Herod’s killing all male babies in Bethlehem under the age of two, or Pharoah’s ordering all infant boys born to Hebrew parents thrown into the Nile River, or Trump’s separating infants and children from their parents and locking them up in cages, or ICE agents nabbing people of color off the streets and whisking them away for deportation.  We are very familiar with the crushing action of the tectonic plate controlled by authoritarian tyranny.

But there is another groundbreaking energy that may also have been materializing during our primitive human history.  We are speculating here, but consider the possibility that the other than Alpha males in our ancestry, which is probably (because of our second class status) most of us, may have begun to develop more caring traits.  Engaging in surreptitious relationships in the bushes while the Alpha male was entertained elsewhere, may have marked the beginning of a different way.  Something about being #2 may make us more aware and sensitive to pain and hurt existing in others.  Might it have happened that those secret relationships provided opportunities to develop qualities of give and take, a kind of intimacy that really cares for and values the other?  The sense of Oneness between the mutually involved persons may even have included the willingness to sacrifice for the sake of protecting the other.  Could these kinds of humane qualities have evolved into the Judaic-Christian ideology of later years that, in time, flowered as blossoms of compassion in, with, and for the whole created order?  Are these the attributes that came to greater fruition in Jesus?  Might humans simply have experienced the kind of fullness that just is, just becoming naturally kinder and gentler, more caring, just humbly being without having to be “Just” in certain ways?

Some of you have been introduced to my father before, a man who was deafened by scarlet fever when he was three years old.  Around the same time, his father abandoned the family, returning to his hometown and mother in Buffalo, NY, living the rest of his life severely addicted to alcohol.  It makes sense that Dad was a bitter and angry man, having lost his father and his hearing early in life.  I remember very few times when he was happy.

But one time stands out.  It was after I left home and was married to Polly and we had a young son.  Maybe your Christmas Days as a young family were like ours, when after spending the morning opening gifts much too early, thank you, Trevor, and eating breakfast, it was time to pack up oodles of gifts for relatives and our personal necessities for the obligatory drive to Christmas celebrations with both of our families.

Back when my sister and I were young children, Dad took us to Sunday School and church, but there was no way he could participate due to his deafness.  He did, however, operate the elevator for a brief time, shuttling worshippers to and from the sanctuary on the second floor. 

But long after my sister and I were grown and gone, a new pastor at the church met my parents, and through his care and wisdom, he helped the congregation to see the need for a sign-language interpreter for both worship services and other events.  Consequently, the congregation hired an R.I.D. certified interpreter, which is the highest level of competence there is for interpreters.  Mom and Dad became active members in the church, developed many new friendships as congregants began to learn sign-language themselves, and often joined these friends in a nearby restaurant after church.  Both my parents were discovering the joy of being in relationship with others in the church, which was becoming family to them.

So, back to Christmas Day.  The three of us showed up at my parents’ apartment, arms laden with packages, and after pushing the button that lit up a light inside, my dad opened the door, his hands flying all over the place, exuberant about the Christmas Eve Candlelighting Service the night before.  At first, I thought, “Who are you?”  “And what have you done with my father?”  This man who was usually surly, even on Christmas (sometimes he was so critical of Christmas gifts he received that we threatened to give him a box of ashes next year)…but this time he was happy, describing in detail the prior evening’s special service, as if I, a pastor, had never witnessed such an event.  My father at long last experienced the deep joy of being One with a community of love surrounded by the soft glow of lit candles.

We live in a turbulent world, the most chaotic I have witnessed in my 84 years.  There is very little that is encouraging going on now.  We write letters to our legislators, march in protest movements, publish articles in local papers, do what we can to resist today’s tyranny.  But the damage that is being done now will take a long time before it is undone, if ever.

If we do not find ways of maintaining joy in life in the meantime, then we will, indeed, become more bitter and pitiable.  We are meant for joy, intimacy, inclusion, not just with others, but with the entire cosmos.  A solitary walk on a snowy day in Central Park can be a happy time of communion with the beloved creation.  Times of intimacy at the dinner table, reading to gain more knowledge or feel more connected with others, finding projects around the house that bring pleasure through the work of our hands, joining with others in contemporary creations of ancient stories, such as last week’s Christmas pageant, and yes, even watching comedians and laughing on late night television, especially those who point out the boorishness of today’s politicians.  John’s gospel records Jesus’ last will and testament.  What did he leave us:  joy and poise.  “That your joy may be full, and you might have peace.” 

Amen.

Copyright (c) 2025 - Rev. James Norton
All rights reserved.