“I have a mission for you,” God said.

“Okay…” the angel said quizzically.

“I want you to go to Joseph.”

“Who?”

“Joseph. He’s engaged to a young woman in Palestine.”

“And…?”

“Well, Mary is pregnant, and Joseph isn’t the father.”

“Scandal in Nazareth?”

“Not exactly.”

“He’s the one who will save Israel. The child is Immanuel.”

“Oh my G...”

“Yes, that’s who. Anyway, Joseph is having a bit of trouble believing all of this.”

“You don’t say…”

“And so I need you to go talk to him.”

“It’s gonna terrify him. He’s not expecting you to show up. He’s not expecting me.”

“When have they ever expected me?”

“Never. They don’t expect you to show up. And they certainly don’t expect you to show up like this.”

Joseph was going to quietly slip away, away from the questions, away from the stares, away from the raised eyebrows that were the last thing he needed. We all know where babies come from, Mary. What was Joseph supposed to think? “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel,” the angel said. Immanuel. God with us. God with you, Joseph. Joseph woke up in a cold sweat. He remembered the tears streaming down Mary’s face as she told him, as she begged him to believe her. As he turned back to his work, silently, making it clear the conversation was over. Rubbing his eyes, he wondered: Was it real? The angel told him the same thing Mary had. Their voices echoed, Immanuel, they were going to name him. Immanuel. How was he supposed to raise the one who would take away their sins, the one who would save Israel? How was he supposed to raise God-with-us? What was he supposed to say when people said “you must be so proud of your son”? Would he teach him how to be a carpenter? How do you prepare a kid for a world like this, for poverty, for hunger, for sickness, for death? How do you look at the swelling belly of your beloved and not think about all the things that you might do right or wrong? It would have been easier if he had dismissed them, been a bachelor, heard about them in the gossip mill and faded into the background. It would have been easier if God hadn’t shown up in an inconvenient and unexpected place. But inconvenient and unexpected places are where God does God’s best work.

Joseph, being righteous, was going to dismiss them quietly so that they wouldn’t be publicly disgraced. What does it mean to be righteous? Is righteousness always doing the right thing, always saying the right thing? Is it a public reflection of an inner disposition? Or is it simply an image to maintain? It doesn’t say Joseph does anything righteous; it simply says he is righteous. Our tendencies to attach righteousness to actions, to appearances, and to external things reveals that we think that righteousness is something we do. It something we can earn, something we can protect. We fool ourselves into believing that Joseph’s action in dismissing them – whether quietly or not – was an act of righteousness, an effort to preserve his purity before God. But what if righteousness works differently from that? What if righteousness is something that is far deeper than an action? What if it says something not necessarily about who we are, but something about who God is? The way I see it, Joseph’s decision to dismiss Mary was a commonplace normal decision; it’s what most people would have done or at least thought about doing. Righteousness isn’t really about saying or doing the right thing all the time, not really. It’s who we are, standing before God, with all of our excuses and all of our reasons and everything we would point to and say, “Look, God, look what I’ve done for you.” Righteousness is an angel showing up, waking you in a cold sweat, telling you that you stand before God. Joseph’s determination to dismiss them quietly wasn’t a particularly righteous act, but his trust and fear of God – the fact that he feared God and obeyed God’s command before he made himself concerned with what it might look like to have a baby born less than 9 months after the wedding.

I wonder what would have happened if the story had gone a little differently. Joseph was an upstanding man in the synagogue and in the community. He was well-respected and well-loved. He was the one that everyone knew would make it. Joseph, knowing he had an image to maintain, knowing that he couldn’t be the subject of the rumor mill, of the old men and the old ladies that sat in the marketplace drinking mint tea too hot to drink. They’d watched he and Mary grow up. They’d watched their fathers discuss the terms of the engagement. They watched as Joseph started looking up from his work when Mary passed, not too obviously, but just enough to bring a smile to their faces. Mary told him the news, beginning with, “I don’t expect you to understand…” and of course he didn’t. Of course not. “We all know how babies are made, Mary,” trying not to raise his voice so that nobody thought anything was afoot. Joseph was concerned what this might do to his reputation – to his reputation for being righteous. He was going to dismiss them quietly and forget this whole business, live as a bachelor, give up on women for good. He didn’t want to disgrace or shame her family. But the disgrace would soon be obvious, as Mary, now single, began to swell with child. Maybe her parents would believe her and let her stay at home. Maybe they wouldn’t have. She could have been killed. It would be hard to find someone else to marry her. But it wouldn’t have been Joseph’s problem. "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." All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," said the angel. Joseph, waking in a cold sweat, determined it was only a dream. The prophets spoke long ago, and the street preachers had been yelling them on the corners of the towns ever since. Nothing happened. It was just a good story of long ago and far away, of ancient Israel. God didn’t visit his people this way. They were basically on their own, basically trying to do more good than bad, telling themselves that righteousness is something that you wear like a badge, showing it off proudly in town. Joseph could have walked away. It was his legal right. He could have left her and the child to their own devices. At least then people would be staring at her instead of at him. At least then he could still live the life he had planned for, the life he had imagined. He would have forgotten the sound of her laugh eventually. He would have moved on. He would have watched as she raised the child that was not his, an object of betrayal and rejection. He could have told God no. It would have been easier if God hadn’t shown up in an inconvenient and unexpected place. But inconvenient and unexpected places are where God does God’s best work.

“The young woman is with child and shall bear a son and name him Immanuel.” Our God is inconvenient and unexpected… but sometimes I wonder whether this is because God is inconvenient and unexpected or because we don’t really expect God to show up, not really. We spend our time looking everywhere for signs, for something to tell us that God is with us, and in all our business searching for God, we forget that God is pursuing us. God comes to us. I can’t help but wonder if the reason God is inconvenient and unexpected is because we keep forgetting that God searches for us. God comes to us. God is with us. In all of our efforts searching, to have a God that searches for us is unexpected. In all of the places we look for God, we find ourselves surprised that God doesn’t seem content to show up in the places we would expect, but shows up as we are busily going about our lives.

As we are busy trying to stack up our righteousness so we can get closer to God, God comes to us, walks among us, and dwells with us. In all of our searching for God, we find that God has been searching for us all along. In all of our efforts to get it right, to do something for God, God does something for us. God turns our world upside down, inviting us to look at it in an entirely new way. God shows up in the places where we wouldn’t look for God, because those are the places in which we need God the most. The places we would name God-forsaken are the places God chooses to dwell, the situations we declare hopeless are the places God shows up and does a new thing. The times we would expect judgment and condemnation we hear “Go in peace.”

“Behold, She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us." And Joseph did as the angel commanded him because he was righteous, standing before God-with-us even as he held him in his arms.