Today is the 4^th Sunday in Advent, the Sunday before Christmas. Over this month, we have been moving through a range of themes: hope, peace, joy; and today the theme is love. And we have meet a number of people who were part of the drama leading up to Jesus’ birth: shepherds, wise men, politicians (Herod and his court), business people (the inn keeper), even animals (oxen and asses). Then, last week we zoomed in a bit closer to centre of the story. Belinda preached on Mary, mother of Jesus, and her great hymn of praise and prayer, the Magnificat.

This week the lectionary directs us to that other figure in the frame, Joseph. The contrast between the two could hardly be greater. Mary is visited by Gabriel, chief of the angelic host, in broad daylight. ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you ... you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High ..." (Lk 1.27ff). Joseph gets a call from an unnamed angel, in his sleep, with the message, ‘"Joseph, ... do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife", what’s happening with her has nothing to do with you, but go ahead as planned, and take whatever flack comes your way.’

In both Luke and Matthew’s account of the story, there is no doubt where the main game is. God is about to do a new thing. The definitive self-giving of God to the world is brewing up here—Emmanuel, God with us. But it is the Holy Spirit, the child to be born, and Mary the mother-to-be who are centre stage. Not Joseph. Joseph is on the sidelines. And this is just the start. His minor status continues. He gets a couple of mentions in the Gospels but it’s marginal. ‘Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?’ the sceptics ask at one point when Jesus’ ministry starts to take off (Matt 13.55). A barely disguised put down, not only of Jesus, but also of Joseph. ‘Look at the stable this chap comes from’, they are saying. ‘Nothing worthy of note here!’

Joseph gets nothing like Mary’s biblical coverage. No great theological utterances like the Magnificat. No invitation to that famous wedding in Cana and the chance to press Jesus into a miracle whose implications will echo down the millennia. No place by the foot of the cross at the end. No participation in the birth of the Church. And it’s the same when it comes to the tradition since. There are scores of famous paintings of the Annunciation, Gabriel’s visit to Mary. But scarcely one of Joseph’s meeting with the angel. Or try finding a hymn to Joseph in our hymn book. Dozens feature Mary, but hardly a one for Joseph. He makes it, eventually, to the Calendar of Catholic saints in 1479. And then he is invoked as the patron saint of a good death, carpenters, and, would you believe, Wednesdays! I mean what can you do with Wednesday? If Joseph is a saint, he’s the patron saint of the sideliners. Not Friday, the day of the cross, nor Saturday, the holy day of burial, nor Sunday, the day of the resurrection. But Wednesday!

I’m tempted to take refuge in psychology at this point. I’m a father too. And fathers count in the scheme of things. For good or bad I grant you. But they count. Jesus can’t have lived for 30 years (or however long it was) in Joseph’s house and not been shaped by him. The meals, the jokes, the chores, the shop, the debates, the tears, the rivalries, the hugs, the smiles, the frowns—it was all there. And Joseph was a part of it. Can you imagine the beatitudes coming from the mouth of Jesus if Joseph had been a monster of a man, a spiritual barbarian? And can we ever overestimate the fact that Jesus’ favoured name for God was ‘Abba Father’, dear father. Would that have been possible if genuine fatherly love were not at the heart of Joseph’s being?

But such pop psychologising is speculation. It may be plausible. But for all that it is speaking from silence. I want to speak from what is said in the text. And what is said is that Mary and the baby are centre stage. Joseph is a support part. An also ran.

When God plans a new thing in the world, but I am not at the centre of it; when God brews up a storm somewhere, but it cuts across my preferred course in life, what do I do? That’s Joseph’s dilemma. He thought he was marrying sweet Mary, girl of his dreams. Settle down. Work the shop. Have kids. But the action of the Holy Spirit reported in this text trashed it before his eyes. ‘She’s pregnant. It’s not my child. And now they’re telling me that’s the main game’. Any wonder his first thought was to bail out and leave them to it!

But he doesn’t. An angel of the Lord appears to him. ‘Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife…’ To put it bluntly, ‘don’t mess this thing up, Joseph! This is of God. And despite what you think about it, don’t get in the way’. That’s not easy to hear. But he did. He took it on and played the only role he could: the foster father, the also ran. Joseph could have chosen otherwise. He could have stood on his dignity, kicked up a fuss, thrown Mary out. I am sure, had he done that, the course of God’s journey into time would not have been undone. Emmanuel would have made his nativity. He might not have been named Jesus. And the details of the story would certainly have been different. It would have been a lot rougher on Mary and perhaps on the baby as well. Who knows? But Joseph chose not to thrown her out. He chose not to get in the way of what God was doing through Mary. He stood by her. That’s Joseph’s strength; and that’s Joseph’s love, for Mary and for God.

Don’t get in the way of what God is doing. That’s the first thing. But there’s a second. The next part of the story goes on to tell of Herod’s efforts to murder the baby Jesus. Again the angel appears to Joseph. This time the message is, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt … for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him’ (Matt 2:13). In other words, do what you can to protect this new act of God. Ward off the danger that is targeting the child. It’s the assistant’s role again. Your job, Joseph, is to be the shield. Protect what is going on over there.

Don’t play the spoiler. Do play the shield. That’s the angel’s message to Joseph in a nutshell. That’s why he’s in the text. He didn’t mess up the main game. And he didn’t let someone else mess it up.

It not always easy to have a bit part in the work of God’s kingdom. It can cost a lot and for not much kudos. It cost Joseph his dreams and reputation for a start. But also his peace and quiet. It disrupted his home and work. But Joseph is a saint because, like Mary, but in a very different context, he models discipleship. He models what it means to be a part of God’s work in the world. Joseph doesn’t carry the baby. But he carries the one who carries the baby. His job is not to get in the way; to act as a shield. And he does it.

Most of us will probably be called to play Joseph’s role in our discipleship at one point or another. It’s great to feel that we are destined to do something vital for the kingdom; that our life is in the centre, where it counts, cutting edge, main game. And please God that may be so from time to time. But there will be times when it won’t be like that. Times when God chooses to act through others; to press forward the kingdom in new and exciting ways, but elsewhere. Not where I am. Then the angel of the Lord appears and says, ‘God is doing a new thing here with Mary. You’re nearby. Don’t get in the way. Do what you can to protect the work from dangers that threaten it. That’s your brief’.

I can’t say when or if this is a situation you will face. We all have our own angels to deal with. But, if nowhere else, it will almost certainly come with age. Tradition has it the Joseph was much older than Mary at the time this was all going on. Perhaps he died shortly after and that’s the reason for his absence from the record. Be that as it may, the aging process tends to shift us all eventually from the centre of the action. New visions, new energy, new directions, new life emerge. But they spring from the womb of others. The temptation is to try to hold on. Stick to the game plan as we’ve known it. But the angel of the Lord comes. ‘Don’t get in the way. This is of God. Your job is one thing only, to shield it on its way.’

How do you tell if an angel of the Lord is speaking like that? How did Joseph know? Spotting a new action of God is never easy precisely because it is new. And we inevitably persist in looking at things with eyes patterned to the old ways. I know we need to be careful about bold claims that this or that new thing is ‘of God’ and therefore must be followed at whatever cost. All sorts of crackpot schemes have made an appeal like that and fooled good people into following a false trail. But I can’t help thinking it must have looked pretty unlikely to Joseph. Against everything he knew to be the ways of God. Can you imagine. ‘Ah yes, you’re an angel of God. I see. And what is it? Oh, Mary’s pregnant. That’s just terrific! Who did it? Ah, the Holy Spirit! Go on! And what am I supposed to do? Nothing. Get on with the wedding as planned. Yeah, well I’ve got news for you buddy…’ It would be understandable wouldn’t it? Nobody could blame him for taking it like that.

But he didn’t. Somehow (I not sure know how) but somehow Joseph heard what the angel was saying. And, God bless him, he did it. Against the grain, he did it. He’s a saint all right. And he blazed a trail in the discipleship of his Son Jesus that marks a vital road of faith in every age. Listen carefully when an angel of the Lord says, ‘God is about to do a new thing nearby you’. Don’t get in the way. And do what you can to protect it.

‘When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him …’

And so, at this Christmas time, here’s to Joseph, Patron Saint of Wednesday. But let us remember, we can’t get to Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, unless good old Wednesday holds firm.