The Rev. Fr. Anthony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.
God, give us hearts to feel and love,
Take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh.
Amen.
Today, the final Sunday of Advent,
is Mary Sunday. But we hear actually
very little about her in today’s Gospel.
That is because the cycle of Gospel readings for this year is from St.
Matthew, and in general, Saint Matthew does not focus on women as closely as
does Saint Luke. The principal figure in
Matthew’s infancy story is not Mary, but Joseph. There is no annunciation by the angel Gabriel
to the Blessed Virgin here, only an unexpected pregnancy and a dream explaining
it to Joseph, her promised soon-to-be husband.
Matthew patterns Joseph after the Genesis patriarch by the same name, he
of the coat of many colors, of dreams and prophetic interpretations, who saved
his family by taking them into Egypt.
Given how overwhelming the figure of
the Blessed Virgin is in Luke and in early and later Christian faith and
devotion, I find it somewhat comforting, as a man, that a figure like Joseph
shows up in Jesus’ family. The German
carol, “Josef Lieber, Josef Mein” (Beloved Joseph, Joseph Mine), sums up well
his role, “hilf mir weigen das Kindelein” “help me rock the little baby to
sleep.” Foster, not biological father,
yet father all the same.
There is an important detail in this
story: “because he was a just man,
Joseph did not want to publicly denounce Mary, so he decided to divorce her
quietly.” This assumes that Joseph could
exercise the rights accorded to males in that society and, to protect his dignity
(read: male pride), punish the woman who has so shamed him. He can do this by publicly
accusing her of adultery and divorcing her, and perhaps even see her stoned to
death to satisfy the honor of a man who had seen his property rights so violated.
But Joseph just can’t conceive of
such a harsh and bitter way of treating Mary, although it is fully within his
rights in his culture. He decides a
quiet divorce is the kindest way out of the difficult position into which Mary
has put him. Of course, abandoning Mary and her child would
mean probable starvation for both or a life of prostitution for Mary, but at
least he would not have to know about any of that if he made a clean break with
the faithless girl.
Joseph here is called a “just” or
“upright” man. In our lives, there different
ways of choosing how to live. We can look
out for number one, not play by anyone’s rules, and be nasty, brutish, and get
away with what we can. The religious and
legal traditions of most cultures, Joseph’s included, all rightly label such
unfettered selfishness and shameless pursuit of one’s own pleasure at the
expense of others as wrong, horrible, and deplorable. Our laws and moral prescriptions aim to
moderate and eliminate such bad behavior, and protect everyone by clearly
defining our boundaries and rights.
And so we have a system of rights
and obligations. In this story, engaged
people are required to be faithful, and faithlessness means punishment to restore
the social order. Wrongdoing must have
consequences, after all! But even here
within a system of moral law and protection of rights, an aggrieved person can
be either vicious or compassionate. He
may exact vengeance and cause humiliation, shame, or death, or he can quietly
break off relations with the offender.
Joseph has every right, in his society, to punish Mary and make her a
public spectacle. But he chooses a less
brutal path: quietly break the engagement and send her on her way. Both paths
are legal, and “right” in accordance with their law.
Of course, our values and sense of
rights may be skewed and wrong in light of a broader system of ethics: we can sense this from the distance of our
own culture when we think that the basic logic of the rights Joseph enjoys here. It is based in the oppression of women, in
males holding females as chattel property in marriage. This is an important thing to remember in our
own age: law and morality, so conceived,
can be wrong. People defending exploitation,
cruelty and brutality on the basis of “we’re just exercising our legal rights”
are still trying to defend the indefensible.
So we can be honorable, law-abiding
citizens. That is far better than
selfish and unrestrained narcissists in pursuit of greed, pleasure, and raw
power. Beyond that, within the realm of
legal rights, we can seek within limits vengeance and punishment, or be we can
try to show compassion to those who have violated us. Generally, this means not standing on our
honor and insisting on our rights and dignities.
This is the situation Joseph is in:
out of compassion, he decides to exert the less cruel option of his legal rights:
quietly put her away. What would society
be if wrong-doing were never punished, even in a less cruel way?
There is something to be said on
standing on one’s rights. Back in
September, I wrote a Trinitarian article on putting anger aside. It told of me almost losing it in the Phoenix
Arizona airport at rude and cruel TSA officials who put Elena through an ordeal
that no one, especially the disabled, should ever have to face. When I posted the article saying that seeking
inner serenity and balance meant leaving rage alone, a dear friend and
colleague from the foreign service made this comment: “It's a thin line. Are we like sheep? If we don't speak up, does
our silence give approval to the [bad] behavior now and on future [victims]?” A
Chinese scholar once told me about why he thought there is so little respect
for human rights in China: “We get the governments we deserve—we are so focused
on getting along, cultivating acceptance, and gracefully eating bitterness that
over the centuries we have enabled tyrant after tyrant. You Americans have stood up for your rights,
and your leaders generally respect them.”
Of course, you can maintain your
serenity, not lose your temper, and still be consistent and strong in standing against
wrong. This is what Jesus calls us to
do.
This is because there is a path
beyond insisting on our rights, beyond right itself.
Joseph has a dream, and an angel
tells him that Mary has not betrayed him, and rather, that the child to be born
is holy. Joseph must not abandon Mary or
the baby. He is to support and sustain
Mary, foster the child, and even give it the heroic, patriotic name
Joshua.
On occasion, God intervenes and
talks to us, whether in dreams, or scripture, or contemplative moments, or in
the advice of friends. And sometimes God
tells us to go beyond right, beyond good, beyond nice, and truly sacrifice
ourselves to make God’s love become flesh in our lives and the lives of
others. Sometimes this means civil
disobedience; sometimes simply in forgoing our rights.
Negatively, this principle lies
behind several sayings in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says that a
commandment forbidding a bad thing does not mean you get a free pass on related things that have gone unmentioned. “You have heard the Law say, do not commit
adultery, but I tell you do not even look lustfully on another. The Law says do not murder, but I say, do not lose
your temper in anger or call people demeaning things.”
Jesus teaches us to forego our rights in a peaceful but robust engagement with evil: “If someone strikes you on the right
cheek, turn to him your left.” If a haughty overlord gives a brutal but
dismissive blow with the back of the right hand to someone lower in the pecking
order, Jesus says “Don’t strike back. Instead, stand up tall and
turn, forcing them to use their open palm on your left cheek as they would a
social equal.”
He also says “If a
creditor sues you for your outer garment, give him your inner garment as well.
Let your nakedness shame them and reveal the nature of the exploitative system
of the rich despoiling the poor. Jesus also
says, “If the Roman military compels you to carry baggage for them for a mile,
insist on going with them a second mile.”
The one mile limit had been set up to prevent unmanageable popular
disgruntlement and the uprisings it inspired. “Make those Romans break their
own rules in order to show just truly how bad things are.” Don’t stand on your own rights. Give them up, and actively use the sacrifice
to help bring the Reign of God near.
Joseph’s path is less militant that
this, but all the more self-sacrificing.
He listens to the dream and then spends the rest of his supporting and
nurturing the woman and child whose abandonment had been his legal right.
Even in his infancy, even in the womb, Jesus calls us
to abandon self, serve those who have no claim on us, and make God’s love
present. May we listen to that dream. May we follow Joseph’s example
and follow this call when it comes to us.
In the name of God, Amen.
