For many years I used to do a Christmas quiz with my university students that began like this: ‘Two of the Gospel’s tell the Christmas story, and two of them don’t: which two give an account of the birth of Jesus?’ It always amazed me how few knew the correct answer –whether because they were the children of a largely secular society, or because Roman Catholics aren’t encouraged to look too deeply into Scripture, hardly any of my students could answer that question confidently. So I’m sure you could do better…
Matthew and Luke, of course! But actually, that’s not really true. Despite today’s gospel beginning Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way… Matthew doesn’t actually recount the birth of Jesus. After today’s passage, which focusses on Joseph’s dilemma when he discovers that Mary is pregnant, and the angel instructing him that he should marry Mary and tells him what to call the child, we go, in chapter 2, straight to Now after Jesus had been born in Bethlehem… wise men from the East came to Jerusalem. It’s like those new-born baby scenes on screen, when the first glimpse of the child is as the parents are leaving the hospital, and yet the baby is at least three months old…
So what do we learn from Matthew’s account of the nativity, told at it is through Joseph’s eyes? One lesson, like his namesake’s in the Old Testament, is the importance of dreams. Yes, one of the ways God communicates with us is through our dreams: God changed Joseph’s life, and Mary’s too, and – come to think of it – Jesus’s too when 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. So taking dreams seriously – not all of them, but certainly some of them – might be one lesson from today’s gospel.
However, a more obvious, and perhaps a more actionable lesson can be found in the line Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. Joseph was righteous man: he didn’t throw a tantrum, didn’t creep off in despair, didn’t plan to denounce or expose his inexplicably expectant fianceé, all thoroughly human reactions which we have seen played out in the plots of scores of soap operas. No, his thoughts were all for Mary’s feelings and how to protect her from shame. His solution was to dismiss her quietly. This, by the way, would have been righteousness under the law – Old Testament rectitude.
Let me add a little bit of context here. Betrothal in first century Israel, was a rather more formal, and legally-binding contract than our own practice of a ring and a promise. The betrothal would have been arranged between the two families when the girl was about twelve, and the boy about eighteen – though legend has it that Joseph was considerably older – leading to the marriage a year later. Probably the couple hardly knew each other, and would have had little contact, limited and under strict supervision, during the period when they were engaged.
So Joseph’s decision to break off the engagement quietly was not just generous and charitable, it was impeccable. And yet, after he had the dream, he goes much further than this: he goes ahead and marries her. We might even see this as a moving beyond Old Testament rule-keeping righteousness to the risk-taking, compassion-based love introduced into human affairs by Christ himself. It is already an example of the self-sacrificing love which Jesus himself would exemplify. Moreover it shows Joseph as a man of great faith, binding himself to a marriage on something as flimsy as a dream.
So to sum up what we have said so far: Joseph is protected, guided, and blessed by God, and he is God’s blessing is in part a consequence of Joseph being a righteous man. So what is the relationship between righteousness and flourishing? Even asking such a question is likely to set off alarm bells. ‘I came to save sinners and tax-gatherers’ says our Lord: it is the sick, not the healthy who have need of a physician. As Martin Luther so joyfully reminds us, we our not saved by our good behaviour , our good works, we are justified by our faith alone. To come at it from another angle, the Pharisees were in their own eyes, very righteous people, and proud of it. So righteousness comes with quite a few health warnings on the label.
But if it is true that righteousness is not the ticket that gets us into the Kingdom, it is required once we have got through the door. Perhaps you will remember the story of the wedding banquet, where those who were originally invited wouldn’t come, so the servants are ordered to bring in the good and the bad in from the streets. In Matthews version, this is in chapter 22, when the king enters to greet the guests, he notices a man not wearing a wedding garment and orders him to be bound and cast out. Well, the wedding garment is righteousness. Once we here, at the feast – which is the Eucharist we are about to enjoy in a minute, with all the promise of eternal life and the promise of God’s blessing on our life – we have to dress appropriately: we have to put on righteousness.
What exactly does that mean? What do the garments of righteousness look like? A bit like shirt, collar, and tie there are three items to this dress code. Let’s call them soberliness, righteousness, and godliness. The first, soberliness is about ourselves: it is about learning self-control and self-discipline: God doesn’t want us to be drunk, or angry; he wants us to live in the love and gentleness which he himself has for us. Then there is righteousness itself, which is about the way we relate to other people – as I said, look to Joseph for an example of that and how he reacted when he heard that Mary was expecting a baby. Would we have done that? And the third item, the third garment that needs to be in the wardrobe, is godliness: a correct, prayerful relationship with God. So that’s the dress code: sober self-conduct, thoughtful, compassionate treatment of your neighbour; and thirdly, we need to cultivate an ever-present awareness of whose party this really is.
The feast of Christmas is almost upon us. We are all invited to come on in and enjoy. But remember, there is a dress code: like Joseph, we must put on the garments of righteousness.