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Third Sunday in Advent
December 11, 2022 | 10:00 a.m.

From Generation to Generation: Joseph’s Family Cemetery

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Isaiah 35:1–10
Matthew 1:18–25

I am someone who never feels out of place at a cemetery. My sister tells me it is due to my job. She is not nearly so comfortable walking amongst the tombstones. But I always find cemeteries fascinating. I particularly like to walk around family plots and try to figure out who belongs with whom and see how they are all remembered.

For example, most of my father’s family is buried in a cemetery in Ardmore, Oklahoma, a small town not too far over the Texas–Oklahoma border. Simply by walking around the plot, you can tell quite a bit about them. You have my great-grandfather, a man I never knew, whose given name was Andrew but who was known as Papa. “Our Papa” is carved on his gravestone. Then there is the spot for my great-grandmother, Dovie, known as Nanny to me. Her gravestone simply reads “Our grandmother.” Next to her is the grave of her son, Odelle, who died as a young pilot, killed during World War II. Close to those plots, you have the graves for my grandmother, Dorothy, and my grandfather, Ivan. My father and I co-officiated their services. Their gravestones simply state “Our Mom” and “Our Dad.”

And if you walk around those plots and pay attention, you can accurately surmise a few things about my family tree. You can see that both Odelle and my Grandpa Ivan were military men who each served in a time of war. You can get a picture of the generations and the spans of their lives. But even more striking to me, you can tell just by the gravestone inscriptions themselves how important relationships are in my family. All their inscriptions describe them, first and foremost, by the place they held as a part of the Johnson clan: our mom, our dad, our grandmother, our grandfather.

But that is not all. You can also tell that my father’s family all lived rather clear-cut lives. There is nothing fancy about their gravestones, just as there was nothing fancy about their lives. They all married young, stopped their formal education in or with high school, and had children. Then they all worked a variety of blue-collar jobs until their bodies simply gave out, primarily from the demands of poverty. For the most part, they all did the best they knew how to do.

They were simply Papa, Nanny, Grandma Dorothy, and Grandpa Ivan. Simply by looking at their gravestones, we can make some assumptions about who they were and how they lived their lives. And then you can also make some assumptions about me and the way I live coming from that kind of family tree. For example, I, too, value my family relationships. But I have also learned firsthand about the importance of education and health care. Those are just two examples of lessons taught to me by my family tree.

Many scholars assume it was a similar motivation that fueled the Gospel writer of Matthew. That is why he begins his telling of the Christmas story with his own trip through the family plot of Joseph’s family. The first seventeen verses of his Gospel form a long and detailed description of who begat whom, a genealogy that goes all the way back to Father Abraham and travels through Joseph to Jesus. I thought about reading all of it for you. But then I talked to a preacher who did that one year. He said that his congregation’s eyes glazed over beginning in verse 7 and he never quite got them back. I did not want to take that chance. But as we focus on Joseph today, let us begin by walking around Matthew’s cemetery.

As with my family’s plot in Ardmore, Oklahoma, we can tell a lot about Jesus’ family by what is written on the gravestones as recorded in the genealogy. So for a bit, I invite you to engage your imagination and come with me to the very back of Matthew’s cemetery, the part nearest the fence. This is where we see the large headstone of the patriarch of this entire clan — Abraham. On his stone is etched “The father of Isaac, the father of Jacob.” Unfortunately it does not say “the husband of Sarah,” nor does it list Ishmael as another son. Like I said, you can tell a lot about families by what is said or unsaid on the gravestones.

And surrounding Abraham’s stone, in that same space near the fence, are stones for Jacob, Jacob’s son Judah, and Judah’s own sons Perez and Zerah. Now, we do have to note that on Zerah’s stone he is listed as “The son of Judah and Tamar.” You may or may not remember Tamar from Genesis 38, although Pastor Nancy is preaching her story at our 4:00 p.m. jazz service today, but let me just put it to you this way: You would expect to find the story of how Tamar got pregnant with Judah’s child in a limited release series on Netflix or on the front page of the New York Post. But I digress ...

As we keep walking along, we find some other idiosyncrasies — things that tell us a bit more about Joseph’s family tree and, therefore, about Joseph himself. Shockingly enough, in addition to the stone with Tamar’s name, we find three other tombstones on which the names of the mothers are etched alongside the names of the fathers. Now, we need to note that it is very strange to see the names of women even listed in a biblical cemetery.

As preacher Fred Craddock always put it, in those times women were primarily just “also” people. Like with the feeding of the 5000: “There were 5000 men present, and also women and children” (Fred Craddock, “God Is with Us,” The Cherry Log Sermons; Dr. Craddock helped open my eyes to the reason for the genealogy in Matthew and helped me to envision it as a cemetery). Also people. Therefore, the fact that women’s names are listed on the gravestones of Joseph’s family is very interesting indeed. Don’t you wonder what that means? What might that tell us about Joseph and, therefore, about Jesus—the baby whom Joseph took in as his own?

Yet just as surprising as it is to see the names of those mothers etched alongside the names of the fathers, it is even more startling when you consider the women’s own family trees. Only one of them was an Israelite — and she, Bathsheba, married a Gentile named Uriah! But Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth are all Gentiles, people outside of the Jewish lineage. This is a rather scandalous realization.

Just think about it: In Father Abraham’s cemetery, where we see gravestones that span forty-two generations of covenant people, we see the names of three women assumed to be outsiders to the covenant. Three women assumed to be outsiders to the family tree. And yet in Joseph’s family plot, all three of them are etched in stone as a valid part of the family. Again, we wonder what that means. What might that tell us about Joseph and, therefore, about Jesus? For by this point of our tour, it is obvious that Matthew takes us here to Joseph’s family plot at least in part hoping to prompt us into making some assumptions about Joseph’s family from the inscriptions on the gravestones.

Matthew wants to communicate some things about Joseph to us: perhaps the traits that could explain how Joseph was able to go against the grain when Mary finally told him what was happening in her womb with that baby. A baby who, when you get right down to it, jeopardized everything for Mary and Joseph. As we mentioned last week when we heard Mary’s story, at that time in history, engagement was not just a promise between two people. It was a legal contract between families. You could only break an engagement by going to the courts. Papers had been signed. Families had made decisions. And Joseph was engaged to Mary.

Yet after all those decisions had been made, a potential scandal erupted. Mary told Joseph she was pregnant. And I think it is fair to assume that as she tried to explain what had happened — the visit from Gabriel; her willingness to allow courage to be born alongside her fear as she said yes; how Gabriel spoke of the Holy Spirit overshadowing her — I think it is fair to assume that Joseph became too stunned to really listen or to respond. He must have been sick to his stomach trying to figure out what to do. He knew what one of the passages from the Bible told him about a proper response.  Deuteronomy 22: “She is to be taken out and stoned to death in front of the people.”

But thanks be to God, apparently Joseph was not a biblical literalist and wanted to consider other possibilities. Furthermore, Matthew explicitly lets us know that Joseph was a good man, a righteous man. That implies that he loved scripture and probably knew it backwards and forwards. He ordered his life by the laws of his tradition. And yet, perhaps thanks to the inscriptions on the gravestones in his family’s plot, Joseph had also come to know a few other things about God that seem to have impacted the decisions he made.

So get back into your imagination with me and let’s picture what might have happened after that painful conversation with Mary. Perhaps Joseph took his own journey to his family’s plot in the old cemetery as he prayed for guidance about what to do. And as he walked around, he saw those four women’s names on the tombstones. And their existence immediately reminded him of how God sometimes worked in ways that were completely unexpected, even scandalous.

And then let’s imagine that, after walking a while, Joseph finally sat down, maybe beside King David’s fancy gravestone in the middle of it all, so he might make his decision about the best course of action regarding Mary. And as he sat there, looking at David’s name, he decided that he loved the living God, a God full of merciful surprises, far too much to use any scripture as a weapon for harm against Mary. After all, as that particular tombstone of David reminded him, his entire family tree was full of people who never got what they deserved but, rather, people who were always recipients of grace upon grace.

Abraham and Hagar. Jacob and Esau. David and Bathsheba. All those stories contributed to who Joseph was as a man, a child of God. And all those stories, his family’s own lineage, made it just about impossible for Joseph to be legalistic in his faith. God had been way too gracious throughout his family’s history for Joseph not to respond to Mary that same way.

Thus, with all the gravestone inscriptions and family stories running through his mind, Joseph decided to simply dismiss Mary quietly. He decided to let her go in a way that would keep her safe from harm, in a way that would keep that baby safe from harm. And immediately after he made that decision, he went to sleep with a sense of peace about what he was going to do.

But then, just as he thought he had it all decided, God threw Joseph a holy curveball of his own. The angel came to him in a dream, just as the angel had done with so many of his ancestors. And the angel told him to not be afraid and followed that remark with the awkward truth about the baby Jesus and how he came to be created in Mary.

We are told that when Joseph woke up from the dream he quietly followed the holy instructions. He took Mary as his wife and decided to be the best father he could be to this holy child. He decided to live out of faith rather than be captured by the tethers and talons of fear. Perhaps he took his own kind of pause, a deep breath, and, like Mary, responded with a “Here I am,” a “Yes.” Now we might find it interesting to note that Matthew tells us that part of the story quickly and simply, taking only two verses to do it. To me, that implies that we should have expected Joseph to do such a thing. It implies that we ought not be surprised by his actions.

And I suppose that is true. We probably should not be surprised at Joseph’s response and his willingness to step out in faith into new territory. After all, look at whose graves make up his family plot. We see plenty of faithful scoundrels. Plenty of assumed outsiders. Plenty of human beings who made plenty of mistakes, but all who kept being forgiven and brought back in by the living God. A God who, in Joseph’s eyes, was defined by mercy and the capacity for surprise. A God who, in Joseph’s eyes, was characterized by a penchant for throwing holy curveballs and acting in ways that were totally unexpected but fully life-giving and salvific.

It really is amazing what all you can learn about a person by walking around in their family’s cemetery plot, isn’t it. Thank God for Joseph and his willingness to learn from God’s actions in his family tree. As we have preached before, if Mary is the first disciple, then Joseph certainly is the second one, for Joseph’s response of faith has affected thousands of generations since. And the size of his family plot has grown way beyond what he could have ever imagined. Even our names have a place reserved in it now.

Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church