SERMON PREACHED BY

JUDY CHAPMAN

AT

SCARBORO UNITED CHURCH, CALGARY

DECEMBER 23, 2007

    “Do The Right Thing”

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    Like Joseph, all of us have been in a position at one time or another where we have had to make a difficult decision.  It may have been a decision about whether or not to get married, about whether or not to get divorced.  It may have been a decision about career or retirement or surgery or some other medical treatment.  There are times in our lives where we have these really important decisions to make and we know that they will have major consequences for us down the road, and so we weigh them carefully and prayerfully.  And sometimes we toss and turn in our beds at night trying to decide what the best course of action is for us. 

    The particular decision that was troubling Joseph was whether or not he should break off his engagement with his betrothed publicly or quietly.  This young woman, Mary, was obviously not marriageable material if she was pregnant.  As the story goes, Joseph knew perfectly well that the baby was not his.  And Mary’s claim that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit was just too far fetched for him to swallow.  His pride, his ego, his status within the community were all at risk.  Everyone knew that a woman must be a virgin on her wedding night or she was considered “damaged goods”. 

    And besides, one of the main purposes for marriage was to establish who owns the children born into the community.  Who is going to be responsible for the children – to feed, clothe, and protect them?  Who is going to benefit from the children’s labour and loyalty as they grow into adulthood?  Who is going to have children to look after them in their old age?  Children were an important means of wealth and security – and of course, joy – for their parents. 

    In such a culture it was important to know whose child was whose.  The requirement for premarital abstinence from sex and total fidelity in marriage were necessary to support this cultural system. 

    So Mary’s untimely pregnancy threw Joseph into a moral dilemma.  According to the law, Mary had committed a sin that could be punishable by death.  But, Joseph had feelings for her and concern for the child she was carrying.  He did not want to see harm come to them.  He thought perhaps he could quietly give her a divorce writ – that’s what would have been necessary to break this betrothal – and send her away, perhaps to another town where she had a distant relative.  But, as a single Mom, Mary could never hope to be given in marriage to anyone else.  Mary would be doomed to a life of servitude in someone else’s household.      

    Well, we are told that Joseph was a righteous person who always tried to do the right thing.  He could have maintained his dignity and righteous status either by disgracing her publicly (and the community might put her to death) or by sending her quietly away.  Neither option was good for Mary.  She would be disgraced at the least and killed at worst.    

    And then came the angel – the messenger of God – the God presence – and opened up a new option that Joseph, knowing the law and its requirements as he did, had not even considered. 

    In a dream the angel said, “Joseph, descendent of David, do not be afraid to take Mary to be your wife.”  Then in words inspired by the Greco- Roman tradition of gods and humans mating to produce super-human progeny, the angel says, “For it is by the Holy Spirit that Mary has conceived.  She will have a son, and you will name him Jesus – because he will save his people from their sins.” 

    The weaving of the Jewish tradition and the Greco-Roman tradition is seen clearly in this story.  The angel takes pains to name Joseph as a “descendent of David” and Matthew opens his chapter by listing the genealogy of Jesus, tracing his ancestry back to King David and even as far back as Abraham, through Joseph.   So which is it?  Is Joseph the father?  Or is the Holy Spirit? 

    It seems that Matthew wants it both ways: firstly, he wants to claim that Jesus is a descendent of King David (which was important in the Hebrew tradition – they were waiting for a leader like King David to rise up and free them from oppression, to re-establish Israel as a great nation) and secondly, he wants to claim that Jesus was divinely conceived (which was important in the Greco-Roman tradition). 

    Well, in the 21st Century, we are not so concerned with the lineage or with the uniquely divine heritage of our leaders as were the historians of two thousand years ago.  Who of us would know the father, or grandfather or great-grandfather of any of our Prime Ministers?  In our day and age, we are likely more intrigued by the human drama facing Joseph and Mary in this story, and the God presence that helped them through that dilemma.  Because we know that in the 21st Century, we have many human dramas unfolding around us that require some tough decisions.  And we want to know that God’s presence is available to us when we are struggling with those decisions. 

    Marriage, divorce, career, retirement, and medical treatments are but a few of the personal dilemmas we might face in life.  Chances are good that there will be some others that show up within our own homes: addictions, abuse, mental illness, consumer debt, unemployment, alienation of family members, failing health or mobility.  And we long to know that God is with us when we face personal predicaments and tough decisions that affect our daily lives.   

    And, of course, there are other predicaments besides personal ones.  We know that our planet is having a dilemma of its own – one of global proportions.  High levels of CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is destroying the ozone layer and contributing to global warming.  The oceans, lakes, and rivers are being polluted with human and industrial waste.  The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  And world peace seems a distant hope.      

    And in the midst of all our struggling with these kinds of dilemmas, the angel comes – the God presence – and says, “Don’t be afraid.  Just do the right thing.”  

    When we think about the direction that was opened up for Joseph by the angel, we get a hint at what “the right thing” might be.  He was to go ahead and take Mary as his wife.  That was the new option that the God presence opened for him.  It was the option that provided the greatest protection for the vulnerable mother-to-be and her unborn child; it was the path that was most life giving. 

    Now Joseph did have to swallow his pride and set aside his concerns about what others might think, set aside his doubts about Mary, set aside his  own certainty that he knew what was “right and proper”.  He was challenged to see beyond his own self-interest and to choose a path that would mitigate the suffering of his young fiancé and her unborn child.   

    Whether we are making personal or political decisions, it is helpful to keep those two questions in mind: what will provide protection for the vulnerable and what will be most life giving?  And, of course, in some circumstances the vulnerable one may well be you.  In that case I would hope that you would show yourself the same kindness and consideration that you would show others. 

    When we make political decisions, which are by their very nature communal decisions, we have to move out of the realm of personal benefit to the realm of communal benefit.  When MLA David Swann was fasting and standing in the cold outside Prime Minister Harper’s office in Glenmore Landing for two weeks to raise awareness of the plight of people in Darfur in

    South-western Sudan, he had to move beyond his own comfort level in order to stand in solidarity with those who suffer half a world away.  It was a very public, very “in your face” thing for David to do.  It took a lot of courage. 

    And yet I heard him say to the media more than once, “Please don’t focus on me, the messenger, but rather on the message. That’s what is important.”  And the message was to ask our government to mobilize Canada’s efforts to protect the vulnerable ones in Darfur in whatever way is possible.  It may not be possible to send our troops into Darfur – but we have skilled negotiators, heavy equipment, and lots of expertise to share. 

    The message was that Canada needs to commit its fair share of resources to fulfill the UN’s commitment (UN Security Council, Resolution 1769 – July 07) to put peacekeeping troops in Darfur by the end of this year.  We are just over a week away from year-end and our government seems to be turning a deaf ear and a blind eye toward the vulnerable ones in Darfur in the midst of the first genocide of the 21st century. 

    After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda our government said “never again – not on our watch”.  In Rwanda the genocide happened in the space of 100 days.  Despite the fact that there were clear warnings of a disaster looming, the international community claimed that they didn’t have time to react to stop the killing.

    A decade later, stories of genocide began to leak out of Darfur.  For four years now we have been hearing these stories.  It is Rwanda in slow motion.  In this agonizingly slow response from the UN, one success has been realized.  After its hands had been tied repeatedly by Sudan’s refusal to allow UN troops into the country, the UN finally agreed that there is one principle that super cedes the sovereignty of any country and that is the right to protect its citizens.  That Right to Protect Resolution now allows the international community to intervene to stop this genocide.  All the reasons not to act have been cleared away.  The time to act was four years ago, but now is better than never.  Yet, it will take ordinary citizens like you and me to make our government aware that we want to protect the vulnerable, we want to do what is life giving, we want to do what is right.  As David Swann has said repeatedly to anyone who would listen, “Call your MP and ask the Canadian government to do the right thing!”

    Like Joseph, most of us want to do the right thing.  Sometimes we have a hard time discerning what that “right thing” is.  But if we use the two principles that Joseph’s story points us toward, we will have a start on what God might be asking us to do: protect the vulnerable ones; do what is life giving. 

    Is this ancient story of Joseph being visited in a dream by an angel relevant in our time?  Does it really say anything to our reality in the 21st century?  I believe that it does.

    You see, when the angel comes, and we are confronted by God’s presence, our awareness is always stretched.  We see new possibilities we never knew existed.  We see with new eyes – as if with God’s vision.  We look beyond what is safe and comfortable and habitual for us.  We look beyond our limited vision of what we think is right or wrong, wise or foolish, worthy of praise or punishment.  We look beyond the ego-centrism of our own lives, beyond our own little dramas, which on any given day, I know from my own experience, can totally absorb us, and we discover “the other”.  We discover the vulnerable ones.  And in the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, we have to take them into account.

    And so my Christmas prayer would be that the angels, the messengers of God would come to us – and through them we would be aware of God’s presence with us - in all of our struggles to “do the right thing”. 

    May it be so.  Amen