Before Your Cradle - Before The Creche:
Honoring Joseph...Honoring the Joseph Within!

Psalm 80: 1-7, 17-19...Matthew 1:18-25

December 13, 2009      3rd Sunday of Advent

What do you really know about your family tree?  Can you name the generations that came before you?  Can you sum up your impression of any one of them in a simple sentence or two.
        Can’t?  Well, know this…even though you may not know the family stories of those who came before you, they are playing out in you right now.  Family attitudes…sometimes about very specific things like loyalty at all costs, prejudices, favorites/unfavorites, even divorce patterns and the rights/privileges of children…..family attitudes and choices flow through the generations subconsciously and are present even if not told out loud or even known.  They affect you and often shape you and will be repeated by you until they are brought up in your consciousness for what they are, why they are….how to live with them not through them.  Soul Work.  We see this at holidays especially…and maybe thinking of your holiday traditions (and your responses to them) may spark some aha! in you around this assertion I am making.
     And what do you know of your own birthing story?  Do you know the circumstances of your birth?  Do you know what was going on in your family at the time of your birth?  The mood of your mother or father, the strains and joys that were present?  They were born into you as you were born into them.
     Stories matter.  Knowing the stories, we can see more clearly what has been forming us and then more dearly make life choices.
     Jesus and you have this in common.  The stories of the generations before him helped define himself, too.  BUT, when those stories were not helpful to him in standing in his own light and life with integrity, he moved out from them with courage and lived a new truth in his world family.  Born through Mary and Joseph, he was born to the Holy Family….of humanity. 
     Perhaps this season as we reflect on the context of Jesus birth, you will reflect on the context of yours…and how you are still being shaped by it…and how you may hold these stories differently now and now begin to re-define yourself.  
     And maybe this process will help you make sense differently of some of the wisdom teachings of Jesus about family…for as a grown up, Jesus often talks of family in somewhat harsh sounding ways…mother against daughter, son against father, respect your parents, leave your family, leave the dead to the dead and follow me….what is he inviting us to know about ourselves and the power we have to reorder our lives…and how this may very well be connected directly to our families?
     And, I invite you…if you have children…to think down the generations as well as up.  For there is a legacy…one you are now defining….one you can refine…..
     Joseph:  And in today’s scripture….we hear the amazing story of Joseph…his opening to the mystery that is God with us in often unexpected ways!  Even with all the generations of expectations before him that defined his life, Joseph puts family aside and thinks for himself…beyond what was playing out in the moment to what could be in the future.
     I noticed he, like Mary, stayed rooted…didn’t panic…engaged what was going on rather than run from it. 

     Joseph considers…weighs the news from Mary…against the backdrop of his love for Mary… doesn’t over react…can you imagine that conversation…Mary to Joseph…and not reacting?  Instead, he does his own pondering, staying true to his feelings, putting aside options the culture, his family, and even his faith may have allowed.  He resolves…to resolve is to break up into separate constituent parts and reach a determination, a solution…a resolution….for Joseph one that honors his love, as best as he sees possible in those first moments of pondering.  And then what does he do?  He sleeps on it.  Doesn’t rush hastily into action.  He lets it settle within him.  Everything looks different in the morning, right?  There’s a reason for that!  Not to rush…ah, my soul waits!  And in this sleep, he receives a dream, an opening, with an angel whose invitation is grounded in a stories he knew from his faith…guess knowing something of the stories of the generations of our faith can help us!  
      We are more than the sum of our family stories and perceptions:  engaging what is, pondering, asking questions, not going ahead of the moment or of God, listening to others and self, weighing options and staying with what is true for you as you do, not reacting but responding…taking your time…letting your soul wait….and using your faith… helps!  It can’t hurt!!
     And we know there was nothing easy or glamorous about what happens next.....just precious.  It took all Joseph's disciplined, sensitive strength to make it possible for Jesus to be born....and survive!  It took courage.  Courage is not an absence of fear, but a willingness to keep on in spite of outer terror or the inner, dark night of the soul as hope permeates our being.  To be faith-full takes courage...in our unbelief.  This is what I've found to be true: Believing is about information gathering and assessing.  Faithfulness goes to the core of what we say we believe and acting on it.  Faithfulness is a process…a life-long process….an art of living.
     Mary and Joseph ponder, leave rational decision making behind and enter into an enlightened, emotional awareness that doesn’t center on fixing the situation.  All the planning, all the understanding in the world, can’t fix what’s wrong with their situation….or with yours!   Thinking won’t do it for them and neither will blaming or trying to understand or proving or justifying their situation.  It doesn’t work for us either!
     They have to go somewhere they’ve never been before…maybe you’ve been at this same intersection.  The situation requires something very different.  It requires them to blend their thinking with their feelings.  It requires them to listen to that still small voice within, to the angel’s voice.  And I have to imagine, it required them to listen to each other—thoughts, feelings, fears, beliefs, questions—to have real conversations.  How rarely these happen!  
     To really converse, you have to go quiet and let the other share.  To really converse, you have to go quiet and let God’s wisdom speak.  You have to slow down…wait.  Mary and Joseph not only believe in angels’ words, but in real and special ways, they come to believe in themselves and each other….believe in life…in the “more”.  So do we have to slow down, have faith, believe in ourselves and in life’s possibilities…not letting circumstances or families define us.
     And so what should have been by all standards a disaster of a way to start a new life together, becomes, in an amazing way, the most wondrous gift ever given a man and a woman….not just the gift of Jesus…but the gift  of deep love and trust in another…the gift of faith....hope in this day.  This gives me hope for my life.…out of the hardest of realities, family and economic realities….often comes the most treasured reality….if I can find my Joseph within me, if I have faith in God’s present to me, which is God’s presence with me!  There in that quiet that often feels awkward or empty…it is there God waits for me.
     For there to be quiet, time to do any thing new in your life, it means you have to stop talking and even stop thinking….turn off the radio, turn down the schedule, turn away from babble, turn aside from family.  It is not a simple or easy way to go in life.  In fact, you have to leave behind the usual plan for the usual day in order to open to a new thing happening. 
     Like Joseph, you must start living through what is and not what isn’t…with the support of a faith community.  They focus their attention on who is to be born and the possibilities that will be revealed to them.  They focus on each other and not the situation.  We would say…focus on the ministry and not on personalities, focus on what you want of your life and not on obstacles or fears, focus on what works not what doesn’t.  Life need not be limited by any thing other than your holy imagination.
     Even though for Mary and Joseph the way to new life is hard, full of bumps, no room in the inn even once they arrive…even though the hay was itchy, the animals were looking in on them, they experience peace—within themselves and for each other and through this babe in the manger.  They never could have conceived of on their own what was born of them that night and changed the world forever.

     Nurturing the Joseph within requires of you a desire…to get up off the couch of your life and begin to begin!   It requires you to walk the talk….paint a new picture for this day…or sculpt it…dance it…sing it….to open to new possibilities….and angels.
     Mary and Joseph….the first persons God approached to give birth to a new reality.  You’re next!

     We cannot conceive on our own either what will be born within us when we put fixing life and rational problem solving and control of situations aside long enough to open to our feelings and vulnerabilities, even our fears and our faith.  We cannot conceive what will be born in us as we let quiet lead us to a beginning belief.  God is with you if you will see, open….nurture the Joseph within you!