Observing Righteousness
Matthew 1.18-21
First Sunday in Advent
Rev. Matthew M. Fry

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that as the scriptures are read and your Word is proclaimed, we may hear with joy what you say to us today. Prepare our hearts, O God, to accept your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own, that, hearing, we may also obey your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in the gospel of Matthew. Listen. Matthew 1.18-21.

18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20 But just when he had resolved to do this, 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, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."

The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.

Here we go again. Once again, we have come to the beginning of the Christian year, near the end of the calendar year. Not that we need to look at the calendar to figure out what time of year it is. Just turn on the television and see the commercials, or drive by any store and look in the window, and you will note, it is Christmas time. We’ve been here before, done this before. We’ve got our rituals that will make this time what it will be. We’ve got shopping to do for family, parties to throw or attend, food to prepare, stockings to stuff. If we do it all, and do it all right, we will have a wonderful Christmas and our families will think well of us. We will have found favor with our family, have earned some measure of righteousness in their eyes.

And we’ve been here in the first chapter of Matthew as well. This is Joseph’s story. This is the point when Joseph is visited by the angel. That happens to Mary in Luke’s gospel, as well as Zechariah. But in Matthew, it is Joseph who gets the angelic visitor. And we’ve been here. We know that Joseph is a good guy, we even remember that he is described as being righteous. That is why he was willing to only dismiss Mary in secret. Joseph was in his legal rights, especially as a righteous person, to dismiss her publicly, as a way to continue to keep up his righteous image, so that his family and community would continue to think well of him. Joseph has spent a lifetime building up favor with his family and with his community, and now Mary and her situation stands in place to wreck it all.

The Greek word that is used to describe Joseph iss. It means one who observes what is righteous. One who practices righteous life. One who lives by the letter of the law, and finds favor within the community. And it is because he is so nice, he is being a good , which is sometimes translated as intended, or betrothed, but literally means that Joseph is Mary’s man, or husband. So, Joseph is such a nice guy that he is willing to only quietly let his woman or wife out into the world with no money or way of making a living, while she is pregnant. He intends to send her out into the world into a rough existence with her unborn child, but hey, at least he’s going to do it quietly.

Is it just me, or does that seem odd? In Joseph’s situation, the only way he could remain righteous was to take his wife, who was pregnant, granted with a child that wasn’t his, but Joseph had to send her and this unborn child out onto the street, to live a life of shame. This is not just in his right to do, but is his obligation if he wants to remain in good righteous standing. That’s right, it’s not just within his given set of choices, the choice is taken away from him. If he wants to remain righteous in the eyes of his family and the Jewish community, he HAS to send out Mary and her unborn child into the streets.

Early on, in the first chapter, Matthew sounds the case that righteousness by the standard of the law is not what God requires. Righteousness by standard of the law would have Joseph send Mary out into the night. But an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and told him to do what was outside the code of righteousness. A messenger of God told Joseph to do something that his religious code would not let him do. Society had set up the system where people could and would be made into outcasts, people could be pushed to the fringes to the point where they could be passed by and not even looked at. Yet Matthew reads that an angel had him go outside the norms of society and good religious behavior to follow God’s lead. I wonder how that computed in his brain.

I wonder how it computes in ours. Ours is a world and society which is not much different. There are rules, societal rules, which we all know. You know, just like I do, that there is a race out there to make the most money, to drive the nicest car in the neighborhood, to have more money than anyone else that you’ll see at the school reunion, to look the best at work, and whatever else that is out there. And we know that the call of Jesus is a different call. The call of God is to step outside of that call and to do something different, for the sake of God.

But there are also other sets of laws, religious systems that complete for our attention. Not too long ago, people used the book of Philemon to endorse slavery. It was, after all, in the Bible. And people lived for years with the presumption that if slavery was endorsed by the church, which it was, then it must be okay in the eyes of God.

And recently, in Germany, there was a movement endorsed by most churches, called the Third Reich. But many Christians, and some churches, went against the societal and religious order, and spoke out or acted out against the ethics of Hitler and the atrocities committed out of that mindset. Often times individuals or communities must go against not only the societal norms, but also the accepted religious norms, to do what God really wants.

This church can claim some of that in our history. Our person who is in charge of keeping our facilities so nice is Perry McClendon. In fact, one of the tings that I have been told is that when I interview with churches, to make sure that Melissa and I each use the respective restroom. If the facilities and the restrooms are kept nice, that is a sign of how particular to detail a church is, and how much they care about facilities, and by inference, ho much they will care about their staff. We were very impressed with Perry’s work well before we met him.

I’m not sure how many of you know that his family used to live right down the street from here, near the Shell station. And Perry grew up here, and while he is quick to point out that he was not in the first class of the first African American students to go to Norcross High School, he was in the second class. And in the south, at that time in history, an African American going to school with a heap of kids of Northern European heritage was not a welcome idea. Many of the churches in the area were against the idea of integration, and spoke out about the matter in the papers, in the community, and even from the pulpit, wherever they could. But the pastor of Norcross Presbyterian Church spoke out in favor of integration, and directly helped integrate the school, including Perry. And that is one of the reasons that he continues to work so diligently to keep our facilities in the shape that they are. Because at the time, this church went against the established society and religious call to instead follow the call of God.

In the first chapter of Matthew, the note is sounded that righteousness is being redefined. It is a note that sounds out throughout the gospel. Observing righteousness is not about some code, following a set of rules whether written by society or written by the folks who are religious. Observing righteousness is about keeping relationships, about being right in the relationships you have with God, with others, with yourself, and with the world. Observing righteousness is about not sending people out into the fringes of society, and about rescuing any that we can from those fringes so that they might be in right relationship with the community.

Joseph is our model for this kind of behavior, and for it he is honored through the past 20 centuries as one who followed the call of God in the face of the call to what people thought was righteousness. And in doing so, it is reckoned to him as righteousness, the real righteousness of God.

Let us have the power and strength to, like Joseph, follow God in the face of righteousness. Amen.