Embarrassed by the Great Offense

On Tuesday evening, we will tell the story again in word and song, and a dozen of our youth will be helping us to think about those persons who surround the Holy Family.

It is an important time....everyone needs to know the story well, and take the time to think about it.

But we are not fully ready to jump into the Christmas celebration until we are willing to face the fact and discomfort of the offense which Jesus' coming places in front of us and among all those who act antagonistic toward Jesus and his followers.

We have only to pick up the paper or listen to our litany of the saints week after week to know that the very existence of Christians is abhorrent to some Muslims.

Our message of Jesus, and our very lives are deemed unworthy of life.

This offensiveness has resulted in a war that has been going on for 1,500 years, and does not show any human signs of ending soon.

The offensiveness of the Good News begins in Matthew's Gospel with Joseph, when he discovers that he is engaged to a young woman who is pregnant to someone else.

He is of course properly offended.

Engagement in that culture was taken very seriously; there was nothing casual about it...contracts between the families had been made and the marriage was all arranged.

Oh, the embarrassment there would be with a broken engagement!

And all his relatives can count to nine.

He considers breaking the engagement, or perhaps having an adultery trial.

Both of them would be ways to salvage his honor.

And think of the offense that breaking the engagement would cause Mary.

She would be giving birth in a society in which a woman's social standing and economics depended on her location in her husband's house.

He would be condemning her to a life of poverty and possibly starvation.

And the result of an adultery trial would be death by stoning.

Joseph is a righteous man, caught between loving the Torah law and loving Mary.

What should he do?

God intervened, just as he had done with the Old Testament's Joseph, by using a dream.

God suggested that this later-day Joseph do the unexpected thing and wed Mary anyway.

No doubt lots of relatives were offended, and Joseph would have been silently confused by the situation.

One scholar calls Joseph's actions the first example of a new kind of righteousness, a righteousness which sees past the offensiveness to a new blessing.

Jesus will later urge in the course of his teaching that the disciples are

“to excel in righteousness.”[5:20]

Indeed, their righteousness is to excel that of the scribes and Pharisees, those who worked diligently at observing the law.

In the old days, to be righteous meant to keep away from contaminating contact with others less righteous than oneself.

Remember the story of the Good Samaritan where the Levite and other proper people pass by on the other side, righteously staying away from the contamination of the injured man.

The new kind of righteousness, shown by the Samaritan, is to stop and help.

He breaks the old rules for the sake of new possibilities.

The old righteousness was defined as staying out of jail; Jesus taught a new righteousness as the willingness to go and sit beside the prisoner.

Rather than keeping the old restrictive rules, Jesus demonstrates a new way of righteousness,

--by sitting at table with “sinners”,

-- by welcoming harlots to his parties, and

-- establishing a new community upon his gift of forgiveness and a fresh start to all who will listen, Jew or Gentile.

To be righteous is to be in close supportive contact, not in distant reserve.

This new righteousness is not just for Biblical characters, it is for us too!

Will it bring offense to us? Yes, of course.

It will upset our cherished old patterns of how we relate with each other.

It will confound our enemies and puzzle our friends who had thought they have us all figured out.

But the new righteousness has the potential of being a great blessing to us and to our community, in ways that we have not even imagined.

It is parallel to the economics observation that half of the jobs available these days did not exist 20 years ago.

When one begins to take Jesus seriously, one does not have any idea where following him will lead... perhaps in new and surprising directions.

As an example, consider this:

When we started on the Stephen Ministry path years back, those who agreed to enter the training group had no idea what would happen.

We discovered along the way that both care-givers and care-receivers have benefited greatly from the approach to our life together.

This brings us to the next observation about Joseph's new righteousness: it is so quiet.

He did not make a great public display of his righteousness; he just did it.

He didn't shame Mary when he had the right, according to the old righteousness.

He is so quiet that the gospels do not tell of him speaking a single word!

His witness is in what he does more than what he says:

--continuing the engagement and completing the marriage with Mary

–fleeing with the family to Egypt to escape from Herod

--settling later in Nazareth and engaging in carpentry to sustain his family.

To be righteous is to do what God wants, quietly, obediently, whether we understand or not, no matter how embarrassed.

There is an old story told about St. Francis.

Brother Juniper came to visit and asked, “Please teach me to preach as eloquently as you.”

“Sure,” replied St. Francis, “meet me here tomorrow and I will teach you to preach.”

The next day they met, and walked around the city,

they smiled at the shopkeepers, and played with children,

and helped an old woman carry her wash up the stairs.

On they walked....

Finally Brother Juniper asked in exasperation, “When will you be teaching me how to preach.”

St. Francis responded: “But we are already preaching.”

Yes, we do still need to have this pulpit kind of preaching, which I do in order to guide, inform, and shape our other kind of preaching, the new Joseph-style of righteousness in living; quiet but very active preaching with deeds more than words.

Lots of persons have observed that “Being a Christian is more than instantaneous conversation – it is the quiet daily process whereby you grow to be more and more like Christ.

That is going to be different for each one of us.

A few of us may turn out to be in the public spotlight, but for most of us, Joseph is a good model.

--a quiet one, a supporting character,

--one who hears and sees what is needed, and does it.

Blessed indeed are those like Joseph who see what is needed, and do it.

Blessed indeed are those who like Joseph see past the offense that Jesus brings and are willing to be changed by it.

So, some questions for today:

--How has God startled me, or perhaps offended me?

---How am I being called in a new direction?

--How can I be like Joseph, get past the offense, and do what is needed.?

Blessed are those who are thus a bit more ready for Christmas. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.