Joseph and Ahaz, Different Understandings of Righteousness

 The Rev. Robert P. Travis

Advent 4^th Sunday Sermon – 8:00am and 10:30am Church of the Ascension, Knoxville TN

RCL Advent 4 Year A 12/22/2013

 Scripture text: Isaiah 7:10-16, Psalm 80:1-7,16-18, Romans 1:1-7, Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon Text:

So my son Jack is three years old,

almost four,

so he's at the age when he's starting to ask some

really good questions.

Just the other day he asked me,

"Daddy, does God kill all the bad guys?"

Since I'm not a universalist,

I could say with great certainty,

“Yes, God kills all the bad guys forever.”

He said, "so I don't need to be scared right?"

I said, "right Jack, you don't need to be scared,

because God is bigger and stronger

than all the bad guys."

The next question caught me off guard,

"But can the bad guys kill us?"

Whoa, that one kind of slowed me down for a second,

but I said, honestly,

"Yes, Jack, the bad guys can kill us,

But if they do, we get to be with Jesus forever,

so they really don't win,

and then God kills them forever."

Since you all know I believe strongly in peace,

I see it as my responsibility,

to teach my son about peace.

So when he then said,

"I'm not scared of bad guys killing me,

because I could just kick them,

or fill them with holes" (that's three speak for shoot them).

I said, "no, we don't do that,

because Jesus didn't kick the men who were killing him,

or fill them with holes."

Of course, I know, that teaching my son to turn the other cheek,

puts him in danger,

so I do so with a measure of trepidation,

but as his father,

I feel I have to teach him from the heart,

from the depths of what I believe.

What father wouldn't do the same?

Today, as we approach the celebration of the birth of Jesus,

we get to consider two important fathers in the story of God's people,

Joseph and Ahaz.

The important thing about these two men,

is that they had a very different understanding of righteousness.

Now notice that Joseph and Mary were engaged,

but before they lived together she was found to be with child.

Now the scripture says she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit,

but if I were the man engaged to Mary,

I can tell you even if she told me it was from the Holy Spirit,

I would have thought it was another man's child.

For any man, today or back then, this would be scandalous.

For a man in Joseph's time, the law allowed for him

to have the woman publicly humiliated and killed by stoning.

Now look closely at the scripture,

turn to it in your bulletin if you will.

Because here is where we learn a great deal

of the little we know

about the man who was Jesus' earthly father.

It says, and I've looked at the greek as well this week,

just to double check,

"Joseph, being a righteous man,

and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace,

planned to dismiss her quietly."

Being described as righteous,

means that even though Joseph was a carpenter,

he knew the law,

he might not have been able

to mince words with the pharisees,

but he knew both the letter and the spirit of the law of God and man,

and followed them with his actions.

That is what the Greek word

translated as righteous means here.

So Joseph knew that while the law prescribed public humiliation and stoning for Mary,

it also allowed for a more gentle option,

that of going back to the girl's parents and saying quietly,

I cannot marry this woman because of what she's done.

That would have meant that Mary

would have to raise the child alone, or at least

with her parents help, as long as they were alive.

But it would have been a very hard life,

for Mary and the baby.

Joseph, knowing the spirit of the Law,

and being therefore a man after God's heart,

chose to do the more loving action,

even though he was probably

afraid of the consequences for Mary,

and broken-hearted that he had to do it.

Now look at the next sentence.

"But just when he had resolved to do this,"

that means he had made up his mind,

and if he was anything like me,

with monumental decisions it take a while

for me to make up my mind,

he probably made up his mind right before going to bed.

So he probably said something like,

that is what I am going to do tomorrow.

That very night, "an Angel of the Lord

appeared to him in a dream”

and said, "Joseph, son of David,

do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,"

That first part of the Angel's message is significant,

because the Angel is reminding Joseph of who he is,

It may have been many generations ago,

but Joseph is reminded that he is descended from David,

and that means he could be part of the messianic prophecy,

that the child will be called a son of David.

And then the Angel says, do not be afraid.

That is what angels always say,

and yet when we come in contact with God,

it is natural for us to be afraid,

because we are not God,

or angels for that matter,

and we are so much weaker than both,

but it is important not to act in fear.

And it's also important because the angel is correctly interpreting Joseph's own emotions

that he was afraid to make Mary his wife,

because of this scandalous situation.

So let's leave Joseph there for a moment and look back,

a few hundred years earlier,

to Ahaz.

Now Ahaz was a king of Judah,

and we know from the book of 2 Kings,

that he was not a good man,

that is, he was not a man after the heart of the one true God,

but he was a religious man.

We know from that book that he liked to worship so much,

that he copied the altar in Damascus,

that was an altar to another God,

and replaced God's altar in the temple,

with that Altar,

so he did worship God, lots of Gods for that matter,

and he loved religion

so much that he even liked to do

a particularly nasty practice that other religions

at that time did,

but our God forbade

called "making your children pass through

the fire of Molech."

That was basically burning your own children

with fire to see if

the God wanted them for sacrifice.

So Ahaz was not a good man,

but he was a religious man,

and he was King of Judah,

descended from David,

and ruling God's people in Jerusalem.

So it was not that unusual for him to expect,

that God would speak to him directly,

as God had done so often in the past.

But look at what happens when God does speak to him.

The Lord says, "Ask a sign of the Lord your God;

let it be as deep as Sheol or high as heaven."

In other words, much like God said to Solomon,

remember that?

'ask for whatever you want!'

But Ahaz, thinks that he is a righteous man,

after all, he doesn't just worship one God,

he worships whatever Gods seem right to him,

he's the king, and he knows what's right!

So he says, knowing full well that one of the commandments

is Thou shalt not put the Lord your God to the test.

Remember that scripture?

Jesus used it correctly when he was tempted in the desert.

Ahab says "I will not ask,

and I will not put the Lord to the test."

He probably thinks he's passed a big test,

but what he has really done is refused a gift from God,

so he gets the word through Isaiah, God's prophet,

that God's going to give him a sign anyway,

and it is not the sign that Ahaz would have wanted,

"a virgin will bear a son who will know how to refuse the evil and choose the good"

by the time he is weaned,

this, of course, is the man of God's right hand,

the son of God who will be Immanuel, or God with us.

But before that happens, "the land before whose two kings

you are in dread will be deserted."

In other words, the deepest fear of Ahaz's heart,

that he will lose the kingdom

and God's people will be dragged into exile,

will happen.

But incidentally, it doesn't happen to Ahaz, but to his son

the good King Hezekiah.

So we see, that Ahaz's arrogance, was just a cover up,

a mask covering his fear.

And because of his pride,

his fears would come true.

Ahaz thought that he was righteous,

but his righteousness was not seeking God's heart,

and the spirit of the Law,

of loving God and neighbor,

but simply following the letter of the law

in whatever way seemed right to him at the time.

So Ahaz became the example,

of the father who was not worthy of God's blessing,

by his own choice,

even though he was king of God's people.

But let's not dwell there, let's go back to Joseph,

a much more humble man,

but one who also was given the opportunity

to receive God's blessing.

Joseph is reminded by the Angel,

of the prophecy that was given to Ahaz,

and so Joseph knows that the decision he has made,

righteous though it may seem,

is not what God wants.

So when he wakes up from sleeping,

he changes his mind,

and does what "the angel of the Lord commanded him;

he took [Mary] as his wife,"

(he takes the courageous route,

knowing what scandal he will have to bear)

but had no marital relations with her until she had born a son.

Let's be as clear as possible here, that this child

could not have been Joseph's biological child.

And Joseph named the child Jesus,

not because that was the name in the prophecy,

but because the Angel made it clear that Jesus

was to be the child's name.

So in order to become the father

that God needed Joseph to be,

to be the earthly father of Jesus,

Joseph had to give up his own understanding of righteousness,

and accept a righteousness that was deeper,

and more loving than even the best he could imagine.

Thomas Keating, one of my spiritual fathers, writes,

Joseph "had to surrender his personal vision

in order to become Vision itself." (Awakenings, pg. 102)

That kind of surrender is necessary for every father,

and indeed, for every mother,

and actually for every person who wants to follow Christ.

The transformation that God is asking from us,

is to surrender even our very ideas of what is right,

for the vision that God has for us.

Because his vision for us is more right

than we can even imagine,

and what he has in store for us

is better than we can imagine.

So as we approach the celebration

of the birth of Jesus.

Let us all allow the vision of God for our lives,

to be born in our hearts.

And when he offers us a gift, a blessing, or a task

let us seek diligently His perfect will

and do exactly what he commands us to do.

Amen