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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
At the Rotary Club of Kilgore’s last meeting of the calendar year last Wednesday, local entertainer Shelia Small provided Christmas entertainment. She finished her “show” with a song that was new to me but which song some of you may know: the song was “It Wasn’t His Child”, written by country singer‑songwriter Skip Ewing back in 19‑89, but also recorded by Trisha Yearwood in 19‑94, and performed by Tim McGraw on the Country Music Association’s “Country Christmas Special” just the end of last month. In writing the song, Ewing reportedly asked himself what he could say different from what others had already said, and so he wrote a song that purports to tell of Jesus’s birth from Joseph’s point of view. (Wide Open County) Christian singer‑songwriter Michael Card later did something similar in 19‑91, with “Joseph’s Song” on his album “The Promise”, in which Card has Joseph ask the Lord how a man could be father to the Son of God. And, in their 2006 movie “The Nativity Story”, director Catherine Hardwick and screenwriter Mike Rich did likewise, for example, having Joseph wonder aloud to Mary whether he would be able to teach Jesus anything at all. This Advent, part of our preparing with repentance and faith for the celebration of Jesus’s birth in the flesh, for His coming to us now in Word and Sacrament, and for His coming a final time in glory, has been asking the question “Whose Son is the Christ?” Previous weeks’ sermons have answered “Son of God”, “Son of Man”, and “Son of Mary”, and tonight’s sermon answers “Son of Joseph”.
In some ways, Joseph may seem somewhat forgettable, as one writer put it, an extra piece in the nativity set to balance out the scene with Mary (Hagan, CPR 31:1, p.57), though for centuries the Church Calendar has designated March 19 as the Feast of St. Joseph, the Guardian of Jesus. Whether we call Joseph “guardian” or “step-father” or “adoptive father”, we acknowledge his important place: in Jesus’s legitimate legal descent (Schweizer, TDNT 8:363), in Jesus’s protection by his fleeing to Egypt from Herod the Great’s attempt to kill Him (Matthew 2:13-15), and in Jesus’s exodus from Egypt to Nazareth and His upbringing there (Matthew 2:19-23; Luke 2:39-52; confer Pfatteicher, Festivals, 126). People today may wonder what Joseph thought about raising Jesus, but God in His wisdom has seen fit to give us only the glimpse into Joseph’s thoughts that we got in tonight’s First Reading, when Joseph had resolved to divorce Mary, for otherwise Holy Scripture tells of God’s communicating with Joseph, like his likely namesake, through dreams (Genesis 37-50), and of Joseph’s dutiful obedience. At first Joseph may have been afraid to take Mary as his wife—and Jesus as his Child—but later, regardless of when Joseph may have died, Joseph was nevertheless known, at least to some, as Jesus’s father (for example, John 1:45), although, as we heard in tonight’s Second Reading, others were not afraid of accusing Jesus of being born of sexual immorality.
There may be sexual scandals in our own families, and we ourselves may be guilty of sexual immorality. As Jesus in tonight’s Second Reading told the Jews and tells us, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin and does not remain in the Father’s house forever. Those Jews may have been in denial about their being subject to Rome, and we may be in denial about our being subject to sin. Whether or not we are physical descendants of Abraham, like those Jews, we are by nature spiritual descendants of the devil, a murderer from the beginning, a liar and the father of lies. On account of our sinful nature and of all of our actual sin, we are, as tonight’s Additional Psalm put it, like a breath, our days like a passing shadow (Psalm 144:1-15; antiphon: v.3).
Yet, in that same Psalm, we, enabled by God, called out in repentance and faith for Him to stretch out His hand from on high and rescue us from that liar and the power of his falsehoods, and, in Jesus Christ, God did stretch out His hand from on high and does rescue us from sin, death, and the power of the devil. Amid the Jews’ false allegations that Jesus was born of a Samaritan and had a demon, Jesus made the true claim that He was the Son of God. As the angel of the Lord told Joseph, Jesus was conceived in Mary of the Holy Spirit, and, as His name indicated, Jesus saved His people from their sins. Out of God’s great love for even the fallen world, Jesus took the sins of the world upon Himself and to the cross. There on the cross, Jesus died for all people, including you and me. He suffered in our place the death that we deserved. When we turn from our sin and trust in Him, then, like our spiritual ancestor Abraham, we are righteous through faith (Genesis 15:6; confer Romans 4:3, 9; Galatians 3:6; James 2:23). By God’s grace for the sake of Jesus, God forgives our sin of sexual immorality; God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives our sin, through His Means of Grace.
On at least one occasion, the Jews’ knowing Jesus as the Son of Joseph seems to have gotten in the way of their accepting that He was the Bread of God that came down from heaven and Who gives life to the world (John 6:25-59, especially v.42). As Jesus told them, everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Him, eats His flesh and drinks His blood, has life in them, abides in Him and He in them, is raised up on the last day, and lives forever. This is what the children whom God has adopted and rescued in Holy Baptism and who are individually absolved do: they partake of the Sacrament of the Altar: to remain in Christ and with one another; to receive forgiveness, life, and salvation; and so to be strengthened and preserved in body and soul to life everlasting. More than preserving our lives here and now, Christ’s Body and Blood in, with, and under the bread and wine, are the medicine of immortality!
God’s adopted children who are so strengthened and preserved also do good works in keeping with their vocations. Joseph, the Guardian of Jesus, did as God directed him to do. Likewise God, as we prayed in the Office Hymn, grants wisdom and patience “to parents everywhere, who guide and teach the children, entrusted to their care” (Lutheran Service Book 517:14). Then the prayer of the Additional Psalm can be fulfilled, that our sons in their youth can be like plants full grown, and our daughters like corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace. If we are not parents or guardians of our own children, we serve others’ children as God gives us opportunities to serve them, and we honor our own parents and others in authority, we live sexually pure and decent lives, we do not tell lies about our neighbors, and we keep all of God’s other Commandments.
Whose Son is the Christ?” As we have considered tonight, the Christ is, in some sense, the “Son of Joseph”. Despite Joseph’s initial thoughts that would have rejected Mary and her Son, God revealed Himself to Joseph and reveals Himself to us that we might know and receive Him. As we have considered this Advent, the Christ is the “Son of God”, “Son of Man”, “Son of Mary”, and “Son of Joseph”. All have their importance in the Christ’s fulfilling God’s plan of salvation for us! To that end of His saving us, we let God work through His Means of Grace to create and preserve in us repentance and faith that does not reject Him as He reveals Himself to us but instead receives Him as He came once in the flesh, comes now in Word and Sacrament, and will come again in glory, that we might be delivered from the afflictions of this life to be with Him for all eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +