Courage and Serenity
Isaiah 7:10-16; Matthew 1:18-25
December 22, 2019
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
With Christmas just 3 days away, we finally get to hear about the birth of Jesus. Matthew’s version is kind of under-stated on the details of the birth itself. We will hear more about those on Christmas Eve from Luke. Today, we just get part of the lead-in from Joseph’s point of view. I know, I know, this is the story some of us have been waiting for all month, but first, we need to go back about 700 years to Isaiah. Isaiah is the prophet that Matthew quotes in verse 23. Matthew is writing as a Jewish person to other Jewish people who know their history. We do not know that history and so this one verse has been tripping up Christians for hundreds of years.
Isaiah the prophet lived in Jerusalem during the 700’s BCE. Much of the first part of the book is about the destruction which is coming because of the people’s sin and disobedience. Matthew quotes from chapter 7, in which Isaiah is addressing King Ahaz, who is the ruler of Judah. Two neighboring countries have joined forces and are trying to take over Judah. They want to take Ahaz’s throne away. Of course, King Ahaz is frightened by this. His dilemma is whether to align himself with a third party or to trust in God for deliverance. God sends Isaiah to Ahaz to reassure him that his enemies will not succeed. And God even says that since Ahaz is so reluctant to take him at his word, that he should ask for a sign from God that this is true.
Ahaz replies “I will not ask; I will not put the LORD to the test.” This is a show of false piety. “Actually, what the king means is that he is so little used to asking God anything at all that he is fearful that YHWH will say nothing to him by way of response.”[1]
Since Ahaz refuses to ask for a sign, Isaiah provides one. Isaiah says “Look, a young woman is with child and is about to give birth to a son. Let her name him Immanuel.” Isaiah says that by the time the child named Immanuel can choose between bad and good, the two kings Ahaz is currently worried about will be history.
Now, Isaiah is not talking about Jesus. I know that this is how it is traditionally interpreted – thanks in large part to Matthew’s quotation – but that is not quite right. Isaiah says that a young woman is already pregnant. She is pregnant in his time, 700 years before Mary carries Jesus. Isaiah is not predicting Jesus’ birth. He is also not talking about a virgin birth. Isaiah is talking about a young woman having a baby, full stop. And there are translation issues between the Hebrew of Isaiah’s time and the Greek of Matthew’s. I don’t want to get into those details right now, but if you want the technical explanation, ask me during coffee hour.
So, if Isaiah is not talking about Jesus in the first place, then why does Matthew quote him to talk about Jesus? Remember that Matthew is writing to Jewish people who already believe that Jesus is the Messiah. He is not trying to convince them of that, as much as he is describing how well Jesus embodies Messiahship, how much he is in continuity with their faith tradition.
Matthew and his audience do not believe that Isaiah was predicting Jesus’ birth, but there are important parallels between the two stories. When Isaiah addresses King Ahaz, he calls him “House of David.” “When Matthew quotes Isaiah, he alerts his audience that God is once again raising up a ruler from the line of David to deliver God’s people. He is appealing to them to trust in the God who has always been faithful, even in the midst of sin and judgment.”[2]
God’s promise to Ahaz was fulfilled. His enemies did not prevail. That sign was true in Isaiah’s day and so, Matthew is applying that truthfulness to the story he is telling about Jesus. Incidentally, we notice that Mary’s son is not actually named Emmanuel, which means God-with-us, but Jesus, which is related to the Hebrew word Joshua and means Savior. Jesus, the “new deliverer represents not only God’s presence, but also God’s solution for the problem [of sin] which had led [Judah] into conquest and exile in the first place.”[3]
Today, I notice one more connection between these two stories, and that is the issue of trust. Ahaz was unwilling to trust God, not even enough to ask for a sign. The story that Matthew is telling in the very first chapter of his gospel seems to hinge on trust. Joseph’s trust in Mary, his trust in God, perhaps even his trust in himself. So, now, finally, let us look at that story.
The story is familiar to most of us. Joseph and Mary are betrothed. Betrothal was legally binding, in a way that contemporary engagements are not. To break a betrothal required a divorce. Mary is pregnant. Joseph is not the father. The penalty for adultery is stoning, or at least public shaming. Matthew tells us that Joseph is righteous, and that he wants to keep things quiet, to divorce Mary as privately as possible, to help her avoid disgrace. Scholar and pre-eminent preacher Fred Craddock said, “When he decides to protect Mary from humiliation and punishment, he does so contrary to the law, and he does so because he is just (righteous).”[4] The traditional interpretation is that Joseph is working hard to do the right thing, which is to protect Mary, even though it violates the law, and righteous people generally keep the law. But then the angel comes to him in a dream and tells him not to be afraid, but to continue with his plans to marry Mary. And he does, because that is the most righteous action in the circumstances.
This is an interpretation we have heard often. It is familiar and persuasive. It might even be the best interpretation. But I read another possibility this week which is worth considering. This one depends on how we understand the last part of verse 18 which says “but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” We, the readers, know that this child is from the Holy Spirit, but does Joseph know that? It says “she was found to be with child”. Found by whom? I think whether Joseph knows or not is ambiguous. One commentator believes that Matthew is saying that Joseph knows about the Spirit’s involvement from the outset, and that unfaithfulness is not the reason he wants a quiet divorce.
“If Joseph thinks Mary has betrayed him, we might expect the angel in his dream to say, ‘do not be angry’ or ‘do not be heartbroken’ – [instead of] ‘do not be afraid to marry her.’ And on the other hand, in many scriptural stories, being afraid is indeed the first human response to divine presence, so it would make sense if Joseph’s first reaction to Mary’s divine-and-human pregnancy was fear. From this angle, we shouldn’t translate the angel’s message to him as, Hey, the child is from the Holy Spirit, not another man, so don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife..., but rather: Hey, don’t let the fact that the child is from the Holy Spirit make you afraid to take Mary as your wife…’”[5]
That’s an interesting angle, isn’t it? If Joseph is not afraid that Mary has been unfaithful, what might he be afraid of? Perhaps he is afraid of getting in God’s way, of messing up what God is doing. Maybe he feels unworthy of being the stepfather of God’s child. Perhaps he is simply unnerved and bewildered and downright afraid that God has come so unimaginably, intimately near. [6]
I’m intrigued by this new-to-me interpretation. It puts Joseph in a parallel position to Mary, being given a choice about whether he will accept the role God is inviting him to step into or if he will let his fear control the decision.
Whichever interpretation you prefer, either way it seems to come down to trust. Will Joseph trust Mary’s faithfulness? Will Joseph choose to trust that God is really speaking in his dream or will he claim that it was just a nightmare from the anchovies on his pizza right before bed? Will Joseph trust himself to welcome this child, to name him and raise him as his son? Will he add his lifelong support to Mary’s courageous yes?
The issue of trust is an important link between Isaiah and Matthew. Matthew’s appeal to the Hebrew scriptures is a reminder that God is trustworthy, even when humans are not. Matthew has also just finished listing all of Jesus’ ancestors. That long list of names would have triggered memories of God’s faithfulness and of those ancestors who accepted a call from God to do the unexpected. In other Advent seasons, we have noted that Matthew includes 4 women ancestors, each of whom is associated with some scandal, not usually of her own making. He is setting up the expectation that Mary and Joseph’s apparent scandal will be used by God for God’s purposes just as those were.
Joseph wrestles with his options. He wants to do the right thing, the best thing. It makes me think of the well-known prayer written by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1930’s. Often called the Serenity Prayer, it simply says, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Serenity is another word for peace. This could be called the peace prayer. It also speaks of the courage necessary for change, and so it could be called the courage prayer. Of course, this prayer wasn’t circulating in first century Judea, so Joseph wasn’t saying these particular words. But surely, it reflects his quandary. What could be changed about his situation? What must be accepted? Where was the wisdom?
In his dream, the first words the angel says are “do not be afraid.” It’s what angels always say, isn’t it? It seems that wisdom is found in trust, that peace and courage are the result of not giving in to fear. Roy Bennett has a collection of inspirational sayings. One of them is “Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.”
“Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.”[7]
That is what Joseph does. Facing the fear of potential disgrace and shame and scandal, the total messiness of human life, Joseph is led by God’s dream, of strong love in the midst of harsh realities, of serenity fueled by trust. He chooses to trust that Mary is faithful, that the angel is really speaking to him. He believes in a baby named Savior who comes as a sign of God’s presence, Emmanuel. This is the path of wisdom and courage and peace that leads to joy. May it be so for you and me. Amen.
[1] John Holbert at https://www.patheos.com/progressive-christian/2013/12/young-woman-bears-john-holbert-12-16-2013
[2] Sharon Dowyd in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, Volume 1 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp, Editors, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2019), p. 51.
[3] Sharon Dowyd, p. 51
[4] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2010-11/sunday-december-19-2010
[5] Courageous Love: SALT’s Lectionary Commentary for Advent Week 4, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2019/12/16/courageous-love-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-advent-week-four
[6] Courageous Love
[7] Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart, Amazon Digital Services, 2016.