Some of you may know that I am working with three wonderful and generous congregation members to lead First Parish’s eighth grade Covenanting Year program. FYI, when you volunteer a year of your time to work with nineteen young people who you don’t even know, you are indeed wonderful and generous! And, yes — that is a plug for any and all of you who may be interested in sharing your time with our children and youth! I should point out that our first responsive reading this morning was from Sophia Lyon Fahs, 20th century religious educator and visionary who helped us understand that children learn faith not by rote, but through experience, and it is a joy to experience growth with them.

Last Sunday we used our class time to find the birth stories of the baby Jesus in the Gospels. Of the canonical Gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — only two have birth narratives. Does anyone know which ones? Yes, Matthew and Luke. Luke is the one we hear most often — the one that includes “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus . . .” and “ . . . she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” Poetic and memorable, these lines wrap us in the familiar as we anticipate Christmas day.

Matthew is the less well-known version of Jesus’ beginnings, and gives us another perspective. Whereas Luke gives a fuller picture of Elizabeth and Zachariah, for instance, who were the elderly parents to John the Baptist, and gives us long Mary narratives, Matthew gives us a glimpse, for one thing, into the character and role of Jesus’ father — Joseph. Matthew is perhaps less poetic — in fact, earthier and more pragmatic — than Luke. The struggle in this Gospel often focuses particularly on the “predicament and problems” of the Jewish community, and grounds its story “within the history and heroes of ancient Israel.”

I want to invite you to think back on our reading this morning. We might imagine Joseph and Mary engaged to be married. It’s reasonable to think they were in love and excited about building their life together . . . when it is discovered that she is pregnant — she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Consistent with the focus on Jewish community life, Matthew reminds us that Joseph could have subjected her to fairly significant public humiliation because of Mary’s inferred indiscretion. We find the “ordeal of bitter water,” in the Book of Numbers, for example, which explains the husbands’ right to subject the fiancé or wife to drink a mixture that might have caused miscarriage. Instead, in the Matthew narrative, Joseph — being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. We know at this point that Joseph is trying to be, at least, a decent guy — not inclined to extreme or overly punitive reactions. He is, in essence, an ordinary sort of man — with a tough decision to make.

It makes us a little uncomfortable, doesn’t it? Our poetic story of the beautiful baby Jesus, sullied with the idea of infidelity and public disclosure? And, poor Joseph having to choose how to deal with his unfaithful fiancé? Somehow, it doesn’t feel very Christmas-y, really . . . and yet it also serves to make the story more real somehow. This is not all fa-la-la-la-la.

The writers of Matthew tell us that Joseph is visited by an angel of the Lord who assures him that this IS a child of the Holy Spirit. In Matthew “the mission and purpose of this child” is clear. 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. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20-21) (Jesus, by the way, is the Greek form of Joshua, which means The Lord saves.)

. . .

I was in the Post Office yesterday, waiting, waiting, waiting . . . wondering why they only had two of the three service areas open. A new post-mistress came to the third and started keying in her cash-register and checking her stamps. “What have you got,” she called out to her colleagues. “Madonnas? Angels?”

“No angels,” came the response from the guy next to her. “No angels?” she checked. “Nope. No angels,” he confirmed.

It made me wonder as I stood there with the other thirty people waiting to mail my Christmas gifts: What if Joseph had had no angels? Really, I’m standing in line for a good 40 minutes at the Post Office thinking, what if Joseph had no angels? Do we have angels? What if they’re here and we just can’t see them. Matthew tells us an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Has that ever happened to you? Really, now, I’m wondering. Joseph was an ordinary man, who goes to sleep thinking one thing, and wakes up, willing to make a pretty extraordinary decision – particularly in the time and place in which he lived. The Gospels suggest he had a dream and in his dream an angel of the Lord appeared and told him to cut Mary some slack. So when he woke up, he married her — and took care of her and had no relations with her until the baby Jesus was born.

Joseph was an ordinary guy, who did an extraordinary thing.

In our conversations with the eighth graders last week, we talked about the Bible and how we go about making sense of it. The liberal Christian tradition is less literally-disposed and more inclined to regard these stories as myth — story to make use of in a non-literal fashion. Jim M. had provided us with the following definition: a myth cannot be true or false, only effective or ineffective. No one can self-consciously create a myth. It has to arise spontaneously out of the consciousness of people; it has to correspond to reality as they experience it; and it has to make sense for them of that reality.

A myth cannot be true or false, only effective or ineffective. In that context, it is not especially relevant whether the Christmas story happened just as we have read it, but that it corresponded to a reality that was being experienced, and if we take it to heart it has the opportunity to be effective for us.

I like to think of it this way: Joseph woke up to love.

We sang these words this morning (from hymn 125 in Hymns of Truth and Light): Despite my shame and shattered hopes, I took the angel’s word. Another’s love lay in my arms; I loved her as my own. With joy and pain she bore a child; I thought, “no son of mine.” Yet, when I held him in my arms, I loved him as my own.

O Sing to the Lord a new song — for he has done marvelous things — our Psalm reading this morning. An angel of the Lord woke Joseph to love, and gave us an example to live by. He was an ordinary man who woke up and made an extraordinary choice.

No angels!? Ah, she was wrong. There are angels among us all the time if we are ready to welcome them. I wonder now how it would have felt to call out to the gathered in the Newtonville Post Office — yes, there are!! There are angels!!

It is the extraordinary gift of our existence, itself, that provides us opportunity for the ordinary ability to love as God and the angels of the Lord would have us love.

Joseph showed us that choosing love, as opposed to the socially sanctioned thing, choosing love as opposed to the thing everybody expected he would probably do, choosing love even at the expense of his own comfort, would do more for this world than he could know, or perhaps even imagine.

Jesus may have been the one to bring light to the world, but long before that our friend, Joseph, did his part!

This is not an easy season. I heard the other day that Christmas is really for children. That may be. I know it’s far more complicated now than when I was small. Life is busier, and more stress-filled. We cannot always afford what we might like to be able to, or have the people in our lives be just the way we want them to be. We may be surrounded by too many people, or not surrounded by enough. We may be unhappy with the state of the world or the state of ourselves, or we may just be weary.

But in the ordinariness of our complicated lives is the opportunity for extraordinary love. May our hearts be open to possibility of “Joseph moments” during this season. May we hear the angels’ voices whisper in our ears, do not be afraid.

So may it be, and Amen.