This sermon was preached for Sunday, December 18, 2022 at St. Mark's Episcopal Church on the Fourth Sunday of Advent. The texts for this sermon were Isaiah 7:10-16, Romans 1:1-7, Matthew 1:18-25, and Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18.
This is my first Sunday back with you after the birth of my daughter. As my leave ended on Wednesday, twelve weeks from her arrival, my husband’s parental leave from his job began. He was chatting with one of his colleagues (who doesn’t have kids) about the next three months when she asked him whether he was planning any trips or fun adventures now that he didn’t have work. He just laughed and laughed. Having been through a parental leave before and having just supported me through another with a newborn and a toddler, Aaron knows perfectly well that leave is not a time of expanded horizons, opportunities to travel, or any free time to speak of.
If anything, parental leave is, in our experience, a shrinking down of one’s world to the simple, mundane tasks of keeping small human beings healthy, loved, and alive. It’s an opportunity so many working American fathers and mothers don’t get a chance to have. Yet it’s hard not to experience it as a shrinking down of oneself, too. A time to put so many of the things that make you you on hold. We both found ourselves asking the question: who am I when I no longer have the kind of purpose and productivity I receive from my job? Who am I when my life needs me to be mom first above all else?
Today we get the story of another parent readjusting the path of his life. We don’t know a lot about Joseph from the scriptures themselves. We don’t know whether he’d been married or been a father before, as would have been common at the time. We do know that Mary’s surprise pregnancy derailed the couple’s plans. We do know Joseph has a choice to make. In fact, he'd already made the choice to end their engagement when God burst in to tell him he needs to change his mind. From here on out, Joseph’s life is no longer about him. It’s going to be about being a father to the small life growing inside his fiancée. It's going to be about being her partner, too.
Now he’s not the first person to be redirected by a divine dream - he’s not even the first Biblical Joseph! Joseph of the Hebrew Bible, Joseph of the technicolor dream coat, was also told marvelous things in dreams from God. But that Joseph’s dreams were much more grandiose. They told him that he, Joseph, was destined for great things, much greater than his older brothers. The dreams told him that one day he, Joseph, number 11 out of 12, would rule over his father and brothers, become fabulously wealthy, and save his people.
When Americans talk about dreaming big dreams, that first Joseph’s dreams are often what we mean. We mean dreaming of fame and fortune, success in art or acting or our chosen passions. We mean believing fervently, despite the naysayers, that we are destined for more than our current life. When we tell one another to dream big, we often envision future presidencies, blockbuster movies, sold-out concerts, prestigious professorships and Nobel prizes.
This Joseph’s, Mary’s Joseph’s, dreams are much more humble. While he, too, dreams of the salvation of his people, the angel proclaims that it is the child who “will save his people from their sins.” This Joseph is called to the sacred work of caring for a newborn and his mother. He is being asked to shoulder the responsibilities of fatherhood for a child that is not his own. I’m fairly certain Joseph wasn’t running around changing diapers but still, this dream is pushing him toward the mundane and sacred work of loving a fragile new human being and a brand-new teen mom. And he’ll do it - he’ll go to ordinary and extraordinary lengths to raise that child in a dangerous and unjust world. But he won’t be doing it as the main character. God asks Joseph to be a supporting character in every sense of that word. There’s a larger story at work.
This past month, Netflix released a documentary all about Harry and Meghan - that is the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the King of England’s second son and daughter-in-law. When the two married in 2018, the world imagined a modern family tale for them: a handsome prince and an American actress living happily forever after. But in 2020, shortly after the birth of their son, Prince Harry and Meghan dramatically split from the royal family and that story was turned on its head. This series is their chance to set the record straight about why their lives were so abruptly derailed. It’s a complex plot involving race relations, tabloid culture, and colonial history, but at the end of the day the couple really just wants the viewer to believe that their story is a Joseph story, all about one man’s willingness to disrupt the plan of his life for love.
If you watch the series, you'll hear story of a prince who gave up many of his royal privileges, his titles, inheritance, palaces, and his home country to become a husband and a father first and above all else. For Harry, loving his wife meant standing up to the entangled institutions of British media and royal family to protect her from the same threats and harassment that led to his mother’s tragic death. Loving his two young children meant moving miles away to give them the childhood he never had, one filled with freedom and privacy, away from the pressures of royal life. It’s clear it’s not the life he and others envisioned, but in the end, in the last episode, the prince insists he is certain this is where he is meant to be, doing what he was meant to do.
If you had told me this time last year that I would be a mother of two before the year was out, I would have been flabbergasted and maybe a bit terrified. I’d have worried that another baby so soon would wreak havoc on my career, my marriage, and in my body. I think a small part of me would have asked, but what about me? What about my plans?
I know I’m not alone in the experience of this sort of fear and shock in the face of the unexpected - I’ve heard your own stories. For many of you, the toughest and most sacred derailings of your lives have been all about caring for a loved one in ways you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself. I’ve heard all about how you moved to care for an elderly parent who has taken a turn for the worse or how you’re raising grandchildren and great-grandchildren. How you’ve readjusted the patterns of your life to protect an immunocompromised spouse. How you’ve had to let go of what you thought parenthood would be.
So much of what I admire about each of you are the ways you have stepped up and stepped back to support others, to make your life all about folks going through a rougher time than you are.
As self-reliant as I like to imagine myself to be, these last three months have driven home for me how much we all depend on people like that from time to time. My husband and I would not have made it through the last three months if it weren’t for two sets of grandparents willing to drop everything to come help us out last minute. I don’t know what we would have done if it weren’t for family able and willing to let go of their plans to pick up the pieces we’d been forced to drop by illness, hospitalization, and cancellations - you name it. And here at St. Mark’s, many of you took on additional responsibilities and tasks to ensure the last three rector-less months went smoothly, just as you have at many other uncertain times in our community’s life.
Indeed, St. Mark’s has had to weather plenty of unplanned-for storms. In each of these derailings, the success and survival of this community depended on each person’s understanding that they are not the main character of this story. Jesus is.
Joseph’s story - Joseph’s dreams - remind us that the supporting character roles are also callings from God. The everyday tasks that make up caring for family, friends, and community members are the humble vocations that change, and yes, save the world.
This sermon is less of a call to action than a much-needed thank you. A thank you from me, but also gratitude from God. A thank you for all the ways you’ve been a supporting character in the lives of strangers, friends, and family who’ve needed it. Now I know you didn’t do it for the credit. Yet I believe the practice of faith is both about saying thank you to God and about receiving and truly feeling God’s gratitude for you.
So please, really take a moment to hear this thank you as if it is coming from God.
Thank you for all the ways you are or have been Joseph. Thank you for all the times you’ve allowed love to change who you thought you were or what you thought your life would be. Thank you for all the moments your sacrifice and hard work has not been fully recognized or appreciated by those it’s helped. For when you’ve put your dreams on hold to listen instead for God’s humble dream for your life.
Thank you for everything only God knows you’ve done.
Amen.
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