So, another Advent season draws to a close amid the eager anticipation of what Christmas may bring. Christmas is coming; what may we expect this year? The whole Santa tradition that seems to define Christmas in our culture promises things new and shiny, technologically amazing and magical. Of course it also promises frantic shopping, strained bank accounts and family tensions. Woe to the gift giver who waited too late shop and the store is sold out of that very thing the child is expecting!

What are we waiting for? Most of us come to Christmas with some expectations. I remember one of the songs of the season I learned at my mother’s knee was “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas”. Not only is it a lively song; it also speaks of a kind of conspiracy between St. Nick and an exceptional child, especially exceptional because of the way she puts others ahead of herself. I’m not sure if she is the responsible oldest or the delightfully self-effacing baby of the clan as she sings the expectations of others before her own:

“Johnny wants a pair of skates;
Suzy wants a dolly;
Nellie wants a story book;
She thinks dolls are folly;
As for me, my little brain
Isn't very bright;
Choose for me, dear Santa Claus,
What you think is right.”

She knows well what the others want, what their hopes are, but she is reticent to express her own sugar plum dreams. Still, we know she is not without hope, no matter how well-hidden her hopes may be.

What do you, what do I, want for Christmas this year? What are our hopes and expectations and dreams? Is it something expensive in a small box? Is it something handmade by small hands? Is it healing of a broken relationship or longing for wholeness? Is it world peace? Is it harmony with God and the whole creation? Would it be enough just to recognize God with us?

“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts the joys of highest heaven.
No ear may hear Christ coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”
God with us, in word and deed.

Joseph had some seemingly simple expectations. He was going to marry a young girl of the village who would give him the sons he desired in order to carry on his name. He was a simple working man. He was a man of uncomplicated faith. His family had been devoted to the one true God for generations. A wife, a home, a family, some good friends, honest work, Sabbath prayers and he would be a satisfied man. So you can imagine his distress at finding his intended pregnant.

Now we know Matthew’s gospel is not the detailed account of a veteran reporter on the scene. He is writing to a specific audience with a primary agenda of showing them just how Jesus was the Messiah, the long-expected one. So, we are left to speculate about the details of his account of the birth of Jesus. For centuries people have assumed that Joseph was older, perhaps much older than Mary who may have been barely a teen aged girl. Though that may have been fairly customary for the time, there is no real evidence that Joseph wasn’t a young buck. Whatever his age, Matthew presents him as a righteous man. Righteousness is a key concept in the gospel of Matthew; it is important to present Joseph, the husband of the mother of the Messiah, as a righteous man. It is interesting that some concern for righteousness before God has infused all the Advent texts this year. The Matthean apocalypse that Andrea shared with us exhorts us to “be ready” for the Messiah will come at “an unexpected hour” (Matthew 24:36-44.) It is not difficult to infer that a big, big piece of being ready is living in righteousness, in making sure your house is in order and your relationships healthy and whole.

The Isaiah passage for that first Advent Sunday speaks of “many peoples who shall come and say, ‘Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’” Does that sound at all like righteousness, like right living and right relationship? The prophet goes on, “For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples…” The God who rules the universe will ensure that righteousness will be taught and will be lived in all the earth. And what will this righteousness look like? “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:3-4.)

Remember in Isaiah 11 how the shoot from Jesse’s stump, the Messiah, will be infused with the spirit of God, including a spirit of wisdom, of understanding, of counsel, of might, of knowledge, of awe before God? Not only will he judge with righteousness for the poor and the outcast, “righteousness will be the belt around his waist.” In the end, “the wolf shall live with the lamb…and a little child shall lead them…[and] they will not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord…” (Isaiah 11:1-10) and righteousness will reign. Or Isaiah 35, in which the “wilderness…shall be glad; [and] the desert shall rejoice and blossom;” in which weak hands will be strengthened, feeble knees made firm and fearful hearts made strong; in which “the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;…the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy”? Indeed this will happen when all the world comes to walk God’s Holy Way in righteousness.

This is the heavy legacy with which Matthew burdens poor Joseph when he calls him righteous. Yet, the simple day laborer from Nazareth does try to do the right thing, which for him in the moment is not to exercise the letter of the law, for it is within his rights to have Mary stoned to death for infidelity. But Joseph is not self righteous, he does not exact the letter of the law because he believes in his heart that it is not right. Righteousness for Joseph manifests as compassion for his young bride to be. It may be true, as Sachiko pointed in Bible study, that he doesn’t want any scandal to reflect badly on him, so he tries to wash his hands of the girl, giving her back to her family to figure out how to handle the situation. But Matthew’s words seem to carry Joseph’s pity for the young girl as he is “unwilling to expose her to public disgrace” and “plans to dismiss her quietly.”

Of course, this is the first Christmas, so Joseph is not really expecting anything special except to be free of this mess with Mary. The angel’s visit is a complete and unexpected surprise. You can imagine that another man might have wrestled with the angel over his instruction to marry Mary. Matthew’s only clue to Joseph’s character is this quality of righteousness. Perhaps in his life Joseph has made a point of keeping himself in right relationship with God so that when this most improbable word comes to him, he is prepared to accept it without fuss. Joseph is told that the child is a boy, who has been conceived by the Holy Spirit, that he should name the boy Jesus, and that he will save his people. I suppose most of us would find such a message difficult to take, especially on first hearing, but Joseph is ready, prepared to say “yes” and follow the angel’s instruction.

I like what Jim Hopkins says about Joseph in this morning’s words of preparation:
“ In a moment when he thought he was clear in his own mind what needed to be done, in a time when there was likely no lack of others giving him advice, Joseph was able to listen for the voice of God. He got quiet, quiet enough that God could meet him in a dream. He listened for God. He was willing to change directions… Able to differentiate between knowledge and truth, he was able to move forward in accord with the will of God. Indeed, good things come to those who slow down and listen, good things come to those who practice discernment, good things come to those who nap before they act.”

On the other end of the spectrum we have Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth, which we will read tomorrow night. Here it is Mary who is visited by the angel. It is she who is presented as the righteous one, the maiden without blemish, into whose womb God will pour holy seed. Whether or not you literally believe these stories of immaculate conception and virgin birth, we can still believe in the faithful and righteous living of both Joseph and Mary. That is, we can be open to the notion of God with us, perhaps in ways less magical, but surely in ways mysterious that draw us into righteousness, into right relationship with God, the kind of relationship that allows hope to be fulfilled, dreams to become reality, expectations to be met, and life to be transformed.

As Barbara Brown Taylor tells us, Mary is both an “immature and frightened girl” and the “mother of the Son of God,” the one who is transformed in her experience of God with us to “singing revolution, singing the Lord’s own tumult. She was not like us. She WAS like us. When we allow God to be born in us there is no telling, no telling at all what will come out” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Mixed Blessings.)

The promised gift of Advent is God with us, moving in us and through us to bring the whole creation into right order, right relationship. Advent promises the rightness of hope, of peace, of joy and, most of all, of love in our own lives and in all the earth. As Christmas fast approaches, Johnny may want a pair of skates or a new video game or a bigger stock portfolio, Suzy may still want a dolly, especially the latest Barbie or maybe diamonds or a Maserati; that very serious Nell may still want books and paid tuition to Stanford and her own high tech start up. As for me, though my brain is still fairly agile, the better part of wisdom may be for me to turn beyond jolly old St. Nicholas, good as he may be, to God and to pray that in her wisdom God may come very near this year, that God may indeed be with me, and may surprise me totally with what she thinks is best. Amen.