The Heart of God

A snippet from the Dec. 24th Christmas homily at the Rochester Church with myself and Patrick Mead.

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Joseph, the illegitimate father of Jesus has much to teach us. In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph is the focal point—the one on whom all the angels and creation lean in asking, “What will he say? Will he say yes to God?” Will he believe the angel or will he chalk it up to bad Chinese food or stress at the office? What will this Joseph think? Will he allow his wife-to-be to endure shame, and gossip. “There’s goes Jesus—who’s his father anyway?” It is scary to think, that had Jesus been born today, he might be a candidate for abortion.

In our own age of people who raise children without benefit of marriage, the issue of legitimacy sounds a bit quaint, but the heart of the story is much bigger and more profound than that. The heart of the story is about a just man who wakes up one day to find his life wrecked: his wife pregnant, his trust betrayed, his name ruined, his future revoked. It is about a righteous man who surveys a mess he has had absolutely nothing to do with and decides to believe that God is present in it…He claims the scandal and it gives it a name. He owns the mess—he legitimates it—and the mess becomes the place where the Messiah is born (Barbara Brown Taylor in Gospel Medicine, 156-157).

I’m really glad that Joseph didn’t do what many Christians say they would do in any given situation, “Well, I’ll just do what the Bible tells me to do,” as if the Bible can just be mined for any situation without thought or interpretations. As one man reminded me this week, do we know what the Bible Joseph read instructed him to do in this situation? It instructed him to take the woman out “and stone her death in front of the people,” what about that (Deut. 22)? Joseph understood that the Scriptures must always be read through the heart and character of God. I’m glad he didn’t just read the Bible and do what it says.

I'm glad he "read" scripture and life through the heart of God.