We Can Choose A Better Way

Betrayal. Heartbreak. Infidelity. Embarrassment. In the story of Christmas?

Last week we talked about when the angel encountered Mary and how God met her in her fear. This week we continue in the story in looking at what happened when Mary told Joseph she was pregnant. Not just pregnant but pregnant with the long-awaited Messiah, the savior of the world.

That would be like gentlemen if your wife had come up to you during your engagement and said she was pregnant with Elvis. Would you have believed her?

Of course not! Adam Hamilton in his book on Joseph says he encounters a lot of people who don’t believe in the virgin birth and tells them, “you’re not alone. Joseph didn’t believe it at first either”(Hamilton).

Virgin births weren’t exactly a common occurence. All Joseph could make out was that Mary had cheated on her before the wedding. He was heartbroken. They had been betrothed to one another. Let’s look a little more at Jewish wedding customs to understand why this was so important.

In Jewish culture at the time, marriages were set from an early age. The groom would pay a fee to the father of the bride which would secure the betrothal. This was called the mohar and usually amounted to the price of a one-bedroom house- no small fee. In addition, the groom would give the bride a sum of money similar to how brides in the U.S. receive wedding rings. This sum was called the mattan. In addition to this, the groom would make vows to the bride with at least two witnesses and prepare a marriage contract called a ketubah. This contract protects the bride and guarantees that she will keep the money in case of divorce or death. This was all part of the betrothal process, that lasted anywhere from 1-2 years. Even though they weren’t living together yet, they were still considered husband and wife.

But there is no special protection for infidelity. This nullifies the contract. The money would all have to be returned. What was Joseph to do?

He could of course call it quits, calling the marriage off and divorcing Mary. Except there were no private divorces during this time. No “irreconcilable differences.” Everything had to have witnesses and a reason.

Mary’s pregnancy would eventually start to show. Word would spread. If he divorced her, people would assume she had cheated on him and she would be scorned, like Hester in The Scarlet Letter. If they practiced the punishment that fit the crime in Deuteronomy’s law, stoning would have been the result. But even without this, Mary would have endured great public shame and her chances of ever remarrying would have been slim.

But it says Joseph was a righteous man. A just man. A man of the law. This is the first time we are given a glimpse of his character. Even in his heartbreak, his shame, his embarrassment, he didn’t want Mary to endure public shame. So he planned to divorce her quietly.

We aren’t sure how exactly he would have done this. Maybe he would say he changed his mind, taking the blame upon himself. Maybe he would have even let her keep the money.

Joseph could have gotten even and would have been within his rights to do so. When faced with betrayal, we want revenge. We want others to feel the same pain we do. We want to be the first to cast the stone, to hit back.

But before the dream, before the angel’s proclamation, Joseph had chosen to be merciful. Joseph had chosen a different path. Yet this wasn’t the only path.

In a dream the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and once again gave a message to not fear, to take Mary as his wife that her child was indeed of the Holy Spirit and would be named Jesus, to save people from their sins. All of this is to fulfill what the prophet Isaiah spoke of.

God was calling Joseph to a better way, a new standard. Matt Woodley says this is none other than the standard of God’s own heart which is “risky, shocking, vulnerable love.” It is this standard that Joseph accepted, the standard that stood with Mary through the stigma and the trials, that kept the covenant of husband and the took on the new role of father to adopted son. This is the better way, the way that chose not to throw stones, but to block them.

Bryan Stevenson reveals this better way, this way of loving mercy, beautifully in his life through the work of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, AL. On a recent podcast with Kate Bowler, Bryan was sharing a story of being constantly in court in Louisiana, an area that at the time had one of the highest rates of child sentencing. And so he was constantly in court. During this time he was representing two people who had been in Angola prison for 50 years. Bryan said there was this one woman who was always there in court, just watching him. Every day she was there.

After the court finally granted relief, everyone was applauding. Bryan was waiting on the steps outside for a few hours and there was that woman and she called him over.

He said “she told me her story about how her son had been murdered and she had come to the court a lot to be a part of these proceedings, to demand justice. And when these young people were finally convicted of this crime, she didn’t feel vindication and justice. She felt just overwhelmed because she saw their mothers sitting in the courtroom crying. And she said she just felt compelled to go over to them and put her arm around them. And she said, for the last I don’t know how many years. I come to the courtroom and I look for people who are just suffering, whose hearts have been broken because they’ve lost somebody or because they’re about to lose somebody who’s going off to prison.”

Then this woman looked at Bryan and said “I know what you are. You are a stone catcher like me.”

And she began to talk about the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. All of those around her with their stones in hand. Bryan says “And what’s powerful for me about that story is that it required a certain amount of consciousness for those who condemn to recognize that they were not without sin and put down their stones, and that we’ve gotten to a point in our contemporary struggle where we have made our identity and our religiosity and our our self righteousness so much a part of our identity that we don’t have that consciousness. We throw the stones anyway, even though Jesus is still saying Let Him, who was without sin cast the first stone. And I just think that that means that some of us can’t just shake our heads and be outraged by that. Some of us actually have to position ourselves in front of the condemned, in front of those who would be the objects of this. And we have to catch those stones, and I want to catch the stones that are thrown at my clients. I want to catch the stones that are thrown at children. I’m going to catch the stones thrown at people who are suffering from trauma and addiction and abuse. And I want to catch them because I don’t want them to be battered and beaten and destroyed... I also want to catch them to give those who cast the stones an opportunity for one more chance. To hear what we are supposed to hear to be called to what we’re supposed to be called to, which is not condemnation and judgment, but to justice and mercy.”

There is a better way. The way that the angel announces. The way of mercy and of fierce love. The way of the Son of God. The way of the stone catcher. Maybe it is time to empty our pockets of stones and to catch some instead, to drop our badges of judgment and hand out mercy and love like we are made of the stuff. To stand in the gap and proclaim Emmanuel, God with us. We cannot proclaim God with us when we are against everyone else.

We cannot build a church upon a foundation of stones that we hurl at others. The foundation and rock of the Savior is built upon a proclamation of peace and good will to men, a savior that doesn’t save us from the sins of all the “others” in our lives but from our sins. From our pride. From our gossip. From our unforgiveness. From our hardened hearts. Jesus comes to save us from ourselves.

It is time for the church to drop her stones and to be a herald of hope, peace, joy, and love. This is the better way.