The Rev. Dr. Kenneth H. Saunders III
Greeneville, TN
The Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 21, 2025
For the 2 Sundays prior to today, the question about who is coming was answered by someone who was known as John the Baptizer. John referred to Jesus as “the one to come” and “he who is more powerful than I.”
As we move deeper into the season of Advent and all the preparation that’s happening around us, we get more and more of the images in our readings that we would all expect to be building up to… The story of how Isaiah’s ancient prophecy is fulfilled... stories about how God becomes a human being… Of how he became incarnate – became flesh and bones…
The Gospel according to Matthew takes John’s introduction and expands on it, including who Jesus is through four stories… Matthew first tells us that Jesus is a descendant of Abraham and David. Then Jesus was the child of the Virgin Mary, wife of Joseph.
In chapter 2 Matthew tells us that Jesus as king of the Jews and hope of the nations and tells us that Jesus is God’s son who is called out of Egypt. The pericope from Matthew that we hear this morning is the second of those 4 stories… And that story puts the spotlight on Joseph, who is probably the most obscure character in the Jesus story.
In fact, most of the time in nativity pageants that we see this time of year, Joseph is no more than an extra. Joseph is the one without a speaking part. He’s the one who shows up in Luke’s birth narrative but is only casually mentioned later by others trying to figure out who Jesus is.
The story from Matthew helps us put the puzzle pieces together and figure out how that ancient prophecy was indeed fulfilled… The text we just heard is only a small part of the whole story. It is, however, deeply interlaced with profound meaning. Matthew’s audience was primarily from the Jewish community... the community that became some of the earliest followers of Jesus.
They would understand precisely what Matthew was talking about. This is what we call “high context” language. Meaning that, the intended hearers of the message would understand what Matthew was saying, simply because of their knowledge and experience. It seems that Matthew assumes that his audience already knows much of the information that he is presenting… So much so that we may have a hard time understanding its richness, because it is not our “normal” way of doing things... It’s not our usual way of thinking.
So, let me set up the gospel story a bit for us this morning… At this point in Matthew’s gospel account, he tells us that Joseph’s family has made a marriage agreement with Mary’s family… This is much different from the marriages we are accustomed to… Marriage in the ancient world was done for 2 primary reasons… One was to form alliances between families, primarily to gain power and wealth… And the second was procreation… to ensure that your name and family are continued, so that you maintain your power and wealth.
Mary and Joseph are betrothed – promised to one another, probably from a young age, in an arrangement between their families… At this point in our story, we can assume that the agreement had been signed by the families and the bride-price or dowry has probably already been paid… Joseph and Mary were not involved in a romantic courtship or engagement before the decision was made for them to marry.
And though Joseph was an artisan, a carpenter, on the low rung of the social ladder… He was considered a righteous man... a keeper of the law... and he was respected in the community... and Mary’s family obviously saw Joseph as a competent provider, a potential good father, and a man of honor.
So, let us reflect for a second on the strange predicament in this marriage contract… This honorable & righteous man, this follower of the Law of Moses (the torah)… this good Jew has just received some very scary and serious news.
The young woman to whom he has made a betrothal commitment to is pregnant, and the child is carrying is not his; and to quote Maury Povich, "he is not the father..." because they have never been together. You can almost feel the gasps in the ancient audience as they heard the story for the first time… What a scandal!!! Pregnant?
A young woman who is supposed to have been “chaste” or “pure" is pregnant before she ever gets into a marriage bed! This puts Joseph in a real bind… He is faced with a big moral dilemma, and he has a huge choice to make…
Now, according to ancient law, he basically has three options... He can choose to follow the letter of the Law of Moses, which says that Mary and her whole family are to be publicly disgraced. This could ultimately cause Mary to be dragged out into the public square and stoned to death. OR... He could dismiss her quietly (divorce her), retain his honor, and have her face the consequences of being unmarried and pregnant, which would also lead to her public disgrace and death. OR... He can make the choice to listen to the dream he has and have faith in what he perceived to be an angel of the Lord, and what the angel told him, that the child she carries is “holy.” Which means he’s special… set apart for God’s purposes.
The angel even gives him instructions on what to name the child. He is to call him Yahshua (In Hebrew), (or as it was written in the Greek New Testament –Iesous). We best know the name by our Anglicized Greek – Jesus – which means “God is Salvation.” Now we all know the choice Joseph made, or we wouldn’t be here today.
Matthew referred to Joseph as “righteous” in the Gospel reading. But what’s interesting is that being righteous means that he did what was correct according to the law. But in this case, he is considered righteous even though he didn’t follow the letter of the law and subject Mary to public disgrace. He chose to listen to what he understood to be a messenger from God that spoke to him in the dream, and then let the prophecy be fulfilled through him.
So Joseph took Mary to be his wife, but had no marital relations with her until after she gave birth to the holy child, Yahshua… A child referred to as “Immanuel” by the prophet Isaiah, which means “God with Us.”
So, Joseph serves as a model for us this morning. He is a model of faith and commitment… As he keeps the intent of the law rather than the letter of the law by following and listening to God. Joseph embodies at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, as a model of what Matthew hopes for all Jesus’ disciples... For each reader of the Gospel accounts, as we live in the tension between understanding God’s law as it is written in the commandments and this new thing that God is doing in Jesus the Christ.
By obeying the shocking and unexpected command of God, Joseph is living into the nature and heart of the law, not its literal interpretation. He is living out the new and higher righteousness of the kingdom of God that Jesus calls us to throughout his ministry.
In a difficult moral situation, Joseph listens to the voice of God and is willing to set aside his previous understanding of God’s will in favor of the true word he understands to be from the loving and saving God.
In our lives, we are often in Joseph’s situation, as we navigate the tensions and stresses of our lives... teetering between the decisions we must make on a daily basis, moral and otherwise, as we journey through this life. Our nature, sometimes, is to fly by the seat of our pants and try to steer our way without God because we think that we have it all under control.
To cope with his tension, Joseph makes the difficult decision and chooses to follow God. Likewise, we should always try to follow the will of God in our hearts, by our actions, through our decisions… Living this life, loving one another, breaking bread together, and responding to what we understand to be God’s call on our lives... always erring on the side of love and compassion.
As Christmas, the Christ-mass, our celebration of the birth of Christ creeps around the corner, we stop here for a moment on the 4th Sunday of Advent and reflect… reflect on the presence of the saving and living God that is already in our lives. And we use Joseph’s response to the living God as our model.
So let us use what little Advent time is left to just stop... stop and take a minute to be still amid the craziness in our lives… Stop, just for a moment, and realize that our God is indeed with us, Immanuel, redeeming us, loving us, and saving us… Because we so desperately need a loving, saving, and life-giving God to be present with us and help us…
Help us direct our lives and guide us in ALL of our decisions… So, we say today, Come, Lord Jesus!!... O Come O Come Emmanuel (God with us)... O Come and direct our lives, O Come Lord Jesus and save us…
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