Beyond Right (Advent 4A)

 

Beyond Right
Isaiah 7:10-16; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18
Fourth Sunday of Advent (Year A)
Homily delivered at Trinity Parish Ashland (Oregon)
18 December 2016: 8:00 a.m. Said, 10:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist

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.