William H. Willimon - "The Man Who Loved Mary" (December 24, 1989)

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-	The Gospel for this fourth Sunday in Advent.	0:04
	"Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place this way.	0:10
	"When his mother, Mary, who had been betrothed to Joseph,	0:15
	"before they came together, she was found to be with child	0:19
	"by the Holy Spirit.	0:25
	"And her husband, Joseph, being a just man	0:27
	"and unwilling to put her to shame,	0:31
	"resolved to divorce her quietly.	0:35
	"But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord	0:39
	"appeared to him in a dream, saying	0:43
	"Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary	0:46
	"as your wife.	0:51
	"For that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.	0:53
	"She will bear a son.	0:58
	"And you shall call his name Jesus, for he will	1:00
	"save his people from their sins.	1:04
	"All of this took place to fulfill what the Lord	1:08
	"had spoken by the prophet.	1:12
	"Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son	1:15
	"and his name shall be called Emmanuel,	1:19
	"which means God with us.	1:23
	"When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel	1:26
	"of the Lord had commanded him.	1:30
	"He took his wife, but knew her not	1:33
	"until she had born a son, and called his name Jesus."	1:36
	Always during this time of year as we approach Christmas	1:47
	we speak eloquently of Mary, the mother of Jesus.	1:52
	But today, taking our cue from the Gospel of Matthew,	1:58
	I would like to say a simple word	2:03
	for her quiet husband, Joseph.	2:07
	Unlike Mary, because he was not a woman,	2:14
	Joseph could not be the vessel for the Messiah.	2:16
	So God, unable to bless Joseph with immaculate conception,	2:22
	settled for simple embarrassment.	2:28
	Our story takes place in Galilee.	2:32
	Out there in Galilee, out in the hinterland,	2:35
	safe sex meant that an engaged couple	2:40
	did not have intercourse until marriage.	2:43
	And if they did, folks out in Nazareth called it adultery,	2:47
	no matter what more sophisticated people up in Jerusalem	2:51
	might call it.	2:54
	Mary, the woman engaged to Joseph,	2:56
	was found to be pregnant.	3:00
	As a just man, as a righteous observer of all of God's Law,	3:05
	Joseph could not tolerate adultery.	3:11
	So God's Law in Scripture gave Joseph two options.	3:15
	One, public divorce, with its attendant	3:20
	public humiliation of Mary.	3:24
	Or number two, private divorce,	3:27
	in which Joseph just simply, quietly put Mary away.	3:32
	Mary may have been blessed among women, as the angel said,	3:39
	but Joseph was embarrassed among men.	3:44
	Matthew tells us that this child came by the Holy Spirit.	3:50
	But Joseph did not know that.	3:55
	When most of us hear the word annunciation, annunciation.	3:59
	I think in our minds we normally think	4:05
	of God's announcement to Mary.	4:08
	We think of Fra Angelico's painting	4:11
	with the beautiful angel speaking	4:14
	to a serenely beautiful Mary.	4:16
	Or we see Simone Martini's Christmas card,	4:19
	elegant angel whispering in the ear	4:22
	of an elegantly dressed Mary.	4:25
	But few painters tried their hands with Matthew's version	4:31
	of the annunciation.	4:35
	Joseph, bolting upright in bed,	4:39
	awaking in a cold sweat after the nightmare of being told	4:44
	that his fiancee was pregnant, and not by him,	4:48
	but that he should go ahead and marry her anyway.	4:52
	They don't tell you this annunciation in Sunday school.	4:55
	Now, the people who heard this story	5:00
	knew stories from Scripture of strange births,	5:03
	coming to unlikely people.	5:07
	Births of people like Isaac and Jacob.	5:09
	But nobody knew a story from Scripture	5:12
	which prepared them for this.	5:15
	A virgin, conceiving a child.	5:17
	Nothing prepared them or Joseph for this.	5:22
	Joseph, Matthew tells us, was a righteous man.	5:27
	And as a righteous believer, he found this situation	5:33
	to be offensive.	5:38
	For who are righteous people except those people	5:41
	who are deeply offended by unrighteousness?	5:45
	There are people in the world for whom adultery	5:51
	is but a quaint, old fashioned term	5:54
	for something we call just fooling around.	5:56
	There are people in the world for whom	6:01
	the picture of hungry children in Africa is called,	6:04
	well, just something that happens.	6:08
	There are people who are not angered by injustice,	6:12
	not offended by war, not embarrassed by oppression.	6:16
	When these people hear the word law,	6:22
	they automatically hear the word legalism.	6:24
	A violation of my own personal prerogatives	6:27
	to do what I think is right, when I think it is right.	6:31
	But Joseph was not one of those people.	6:36
	I told you, he was righteous.	6:38
	It really mattered to Joseph what the Bible said.	6:42
	Right or wrong, just, unjust, every jot and tittle	6:47
	of the Law made a difference to Joseph.	6:51
	And can you picture this righteous man	6:55
	caught in the bind between the rock of loving God's Law	6:58
	and the hard place of still loving Mary?	7:04
	What was Joseph to do?	7:07
	Well, even as God intervened	7:12
	to bring an announcement to Mary,	7:16
	God intervened in a dream to Joseph.	7:18
	Leading him by the dream to the decision	7:23
	that he ought to marry Mary.	7:26
	"This child is part of my plan to bless the world,"	7:30
	said the vision.	7:35
	In believing that Mary's child was divinely given,	7:38
	Joseph, the carpenter, set out on a lonely,	7:42
	uncharted path of marrying a pregnant fiancee	7:45
	and naming, and thus claiming this child as his own.	7:52
	Assuming responsibility for a child who,	7:59
	when he was called, answered not to the name of Joseph Jr,	8:04
	but to Emmanuel, God with us.	8:09
	I think this is a story about how God is often with us.	8:17
	Just like God was with Joseph.	8:23
	I expect that there are people in the congregation today	8:26
	who have walked down that lonely,	8:31
	poorly illuminated path with Joseph.	8:35
	I would expect there are people out there	8:39
	who know what it is to take a road	8:42
	that you thought was right, and you hoped was right,	8:45
	but there were no road signs up there	8:50
	to tell you for sure that this was right.	8:53
	We wouldn't spend so much of our lives in quandary,	8:57
	in restless, tortured uncertainty,	9:02
	if God's will for us were a simple matter	9:05
	of merely walking the same path taken by our parents.	9:09
	Or else flipping open the Bible and pointing to a verse	9:14
	and simply doing what the Bible said	9:17
	and going by the book.	9:20
	We wouldn't have a problem if God spoke to us	9:23
	through neon visions written out in plain English	9:25
	across an evening sky.	9:29
	Rather than these dreams.	9:32
	These dreams, these visions that could be from God,	9:36
	but also could be after an evening of Mexican food.	9:40
	So you can see Joseph.	9:46
	You can see Joseph silently just stumbling along	9:48
	behind Mary to Bethlehem.	9:51
	And Joseph, you remind us of ourselves.	9:54
	Of our own stumblings and gropings,	9:57
	which we hope one day shall be called faithfulness.	10:00
	We hope.	10:04
	Now later on in the Gospel of Matthew,	10:08
	in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his people	10:12
	that they were to exceed in righteousness.	10:17
	I believe that Joseph is the first example	10:22
	of this excessive righteousness.	10:25
	Because Joseph's righteousness was a righteousness	10:29
	blended with mercy.	10:34
	Remember?	10:38
	His first impulse was simply to go by the book	10:40
	and divorce Mary,	10:44
	in order that she should not	10:47
	be put to shame or suffer public humiliation.	10:51
	That would not be an easy decision by one so righteous.	10:57
	Isn't it interesting in a Gospel that is so hard on divorce,	11:03
	that divorce should first be mentioned in Matthew's gospel	11:07
	as an act of righteousness?	11:10
	We usually speak of righteousness,	11:16
	righteousness as severely impeccable good behavior.	11:19
	Righteousness is goodness with a stiff back	11:23
	and an upraised neck.	11:27
	Let the chips fall where they may,	11:29
	I've just got to do what's right.	11:31
	Righteousness and mercy are seldom found together in public.	11:35
	But here in Joseph, we have a different	11:42
	kind of righteousness.	11:45
	A righteousness that is quietly willing	11:48
	to bear the guilt of others,	11:51
	silently to suffer ridicule for the sake of somebody else.	11:53
	The old righteousness was defined as staying out of jail.	12:00
	But Jesus spoke of a righteousness that was willing	12:06
	to go to jail, to sit down beside the prisoner.	12:09
	The old righteousness was defined as non-defilement,	12:14
	keeping oneself pure and spotless from sinners and outcasts.	12:19
	But Jesus sat down at table with sinners	12:25
	and welcomed harlots to his parties.	12:28
	He redefined righteousness as convivial proximity	12:33
	rather than as distant, aloof, non-defilement.	12:38
	Here in Jesus was a very new way	12:43
	of serving a righteous God.	12:48
	Then there's another thing about Joseph	12:53
	that I only recognized when I looked at this text this year.	12:54
	That is that Joseph's righteousness was excessive	13:02
	in that it was so quiet.	13:06
	He didn't show off his righteousness at Mary's expense.	13:10
	This righteous one was not out to shame others,	13:15
	to call attention to his righteousness.	13:20
	How different is that image of righteousness,	13:24
	of righteous Joseph, wanting to do the right thing,	13:28
	but also not wanting to harm Mary,	13:32
	from our image of the righteous prophet?	13:36
	Nostrils flared, teeth exposed, denouncing, pouncing,	13:39
	pronouncing, publicly pointing to everybody else's	13:45
	racism and sexism and materialism and sin.	13:50
	The righteousness, the unrighteousness	13:56
	of loud-mouthed righteousness.	14:00
	In fact, Joseph never pronounces or denounces anything.	14:05
	He never even speaks a single word in the Gospel.	14:11
	Mary sings.	14:18
	So do Elizabeth and Zechariah.	14:19
	We remember these jubilantly righteous people,	14:22
	and we love to sing their songs as Christmas carols.	14:26
	But Joseph, the carpenter, left us no poetry to sing.	14:31
	He left us no dramatic monologues or dialogues,	14:36
	no eloquent scenes to depict on Hallmark cards,	14:40
	no moving speeches about liberation to the captives	14:44
	or light to those who are in darkness.	14:47
	Because this carpenter wasn't good at speeches.	14:51
	And he couldn't carry a tune.	14:55
	And so his witness is more in what he does	14:58
	than in what he says.	15:03
	Joseph obeys the divine summons to marry,	15:08
	and then he obeys to flee with his family	15:14
	to Egypt as refugees.	15:17
	Later he obeys to risk and come back	15:19
	and settle down again in Nazareth.	15:22
	All this he does without a word, without a single word.	15:26
	Because Joseph's witness is not in speech	15:31
	but in active response to the will of God.	15:36
	That's a witness too.	15:43
	One day, Brother Juniper asked Saint Francis,	15:47
	"Francis, teach me to preach.	15:52
	"I am not as eloquent as you.	15:54
	"I am no good with words."	15:56
	"I will teach you to preach more eloquently than I,"	16:00
	replied Francis.	16:04
	"Meet me early tomorrow and I'll teach you how to preach."	16:07
	So early the next morning, Brother Juniper	16:13
	dutifully met Francis.	16:16
	To Juniper's surprise, they just began walking.	16:20
	They walked down through the marketplace of Assisi,	16:24
	smiling at the laborers,	16:28
	speaking to the merchants, the children.	16:29
	They stopped to help an old woman carry a load of wash	16:33
	up a set of steep stairs	16:36
	and they walked and they walked,	16:38
	and finally exasperated, Brother Juniper asked,	16:41
	"Francis, when shall you teach me to preach?"	16:47
	And replied the saint, "We are preaching."	16:53
	Or as they said oftentimes in the southern church,	17:01
	"Don't talk the talk if you don't walk the walk."	17:08
	Some of you wouldn't have the nerve	17:15
	to get up into a pulpit, and yet you preach.	17:17
	You preach in the middle school or you preach in the office	17:21
	or the classroom or the kitchen.	17:24
	You preach.	17:27
	So Martin Luther said that the purpose of a preacher	17:30
	getting into the pulpit is to make better preachers	17:32
	of everybody else in the church.	17:35
	So that you'll be able to preach, not in a church	17:38
	where it's easy, but in the world, where it matters.	17:41
	In his Sermon on the Mount,	17:50
	Jesus said that real righteousness	17:53
	doesn't call attention to itself.	17:55
	It doesn't stand on the street corners and shout	17:58
	to everybody passing by.	18:01
	It should not pat itself on the back	18:03
	or trumpet its arrival.	18:05
	To be more righteous is to be less loud.	18:08
	To let actions speak as words.	18:14
	I think through the story of Joseph,	18:19
	Matthew introduces us to the first practitioner	18:22
	of the new righteousness.	18:25
	To be righteous is to do what God wants,	18:28
	quietly, obediently, whether we understand it or not,	18:35
	no matter the embarrassment.	18:41
	I believe that Matthew put the story of Joseph there,	18:46
	right at the beginning of his Gospel,	18:49
	for all of those dear first century believers,	18:52
	those righteous, God's Law, Torah-loving people.	18:55
	For whom the arrival of this baby at Bethlehem	19:00
	elicited not only joy and wonder and song,	19:04
	but more importantly provoked a crisis	19:08
	in what it means to be righteous and faithful.	19:12
	Through Joseph, Matthew says, from the moment this baby,	19:16
	Emmanuel, was conceived, he just had a way	19:21
	of causing righteous people to have to sit down	19:26
	and rethink what it meant to be righteous.	19:29
	When this baby was born, the whole world	19:33
	got turned upside-down.	19:35
	Everything had to be reconsidered and started over.	19:38
	For every righteous person like Simeon or Anna	19:42
	or Zechariah or Elizabeth, for whom the baby Jesus	19:46
	was an answer to their prayers and a cause for singing,	19:50
	there had to be about as many righteous people	19:55
	like Joseph, for whom the advent of this baby	19:58
	was a tongue-tying embarrassment.	20:02
	A befuddling shock which required a quiet rethinking	20:05
	of everything on which life is based.	20:11
	A challenge to come forward and commit,	20:15
	to allow God to work righteousness through us,	20:21
	despite us rather than attempt to make righteousness	20:25
	an act of our own.	20:30
	I tell you, 20 centuries later,	20:35
	everywhere Joseph's story is told this day,	20:40
	the foster child of Joseph tends to have	20:45
	the very same effect on people.	20:49
	Amen.	20:53

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "The Man Who Loved Mary" (December 24, 1989)

Description:

Sermon start time: 01:47. Sermon end time: 20:55.
On the last Sunday of Advent, the preacher draws his audience’s attention to Joseph, the often neglected figure in the story of the virgin birth. Joseph is considered to be an example of “new righteousness” by the preacher, a righteousness that is willing to bear the guilt of others, to suffer ridicule for another, to witness through actions not speeches, and to do what God wants whether he understands or not, no matter the embarrassment. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)
Key quotation: “Joseph’s witness is not in speech but in active response to the will of God.”

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4pc2tp8k

Date:

December 24, 1989

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Advent

Biblical Book:

Matthew

Chapter and Verse:

Matthew 1:18-25

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0466
ref8717_hbe
uachapelsermaud
duke:320440
dcrau001373
ark:/87924/r4pc2tp8k
e9c868bb-3430-4fac-a424-35205eead7c2

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

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This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "The Man Who Loved Mary" (December 24, 1989)

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