Several years ago, friends of ours were married. Their joy and their love was overflowing. You could hardly be around them because they could hardly talk of anything else but their love for each other and the mysterious way God had brought them together.
It was no surprise that soon after marriage, they began looking forward to having and raising children. They were a little older and they knew that if they wanted children, they would have to come soon. It was a natural desire and a perfoctly normal byproduct of their great love. After onths and months of trying to get pregnant; after months and months of testing and then in vitro fertilization, they came to realize that they could not parent their own bilogical children.
This was a very difficult thing for them. Some of you know what that is like because you have been there. But they were undaunted. They wanted children and would stop at no expense or sacrifice to have children. They began the paper work and the long process of adoption.
One and one half years ago, they got word that the birth mother of the child they were to adopt was ready to give birth. They flew to that city and waited. A beautiful daughter was born and they brought her home to live with them in a nursery that they had prepared in just the same way as they would had they been the parents giving birth. Their daughter would have all the love; all the affection and all the priveleges of any child who might have been born to them. These parents are as happy and fulfilled as any parents might be. And they are good parents. This is now their daughter.
And yet in one sense, there will always be the haunting reality that there are other parents as well. Parents who conceived this girl in their own image - with their chromosomes, their genetic codes, and their personality traits .
Walter Wanegrin is an author. He and his wife have adopted numerous children. One of their daughters was born t an African American father and an Anglo mother. Last year, he wrote and article for Christianity Today in which he describes his identification with Joseph who was to adopt Mary's boy child - a child whose father was God.
He says: Thanne and I have raised children born to us as well as children adopted and we've expereinced the difference. In order to train up an adopted child one must 'learn their language.' One must never assume a complete knowledge of the child except as watchfulness and love reveal her. The adoptive parent learbs that methods of training must obey a greater source thab flesh and natural consequence."
It is an awesome love that takes another's child as one's own and raises it. It seems to me all who do stand in the shadow of the quiet and righteous carpenter from Nazareth who took God's son into his own home to raise as his own son.
Imagine Joseph's dilemna. Here he was, a young man with a whole lifetime ahead. Filled with the expectations of youth and the deep love of a young woman named Mary, he had so much to look forward to.
And yet things began to change after the beginnings of their courtship and their betrothal. Mary had begun acting strangely. Her moods were different. Her shape was beginning to change. She had rather strange cravings and she often did not want to see him or talk to him in the morning because she was often nauseous.
It soon became apparent that young, sweet, innocent Mary was pregnant. Joseph knew it wasn't his child. Mary must have been involved with another man. The law stated that under such circumstances it was permissable for him to divorce her, leave her to her shame and go on with his his life.
Joseph was a righteous man. He had every right as he followed the Jewish law to do so. And yet he till loved Mary so much. He didn;t want to expose her to such shame and disgrace and so he had determined that he would divorce her quietly.
The angel of the Lord appeard to him though and radically altered his thinking and his life. To my thinking, the message of the angel was not all that comforting to a man in Joseph's sandals. Being told that your fiance's child has been concieved of by supernatural and holy means by the Holy Spirit might very well have been a harder thing to accept than if Mary had been and adultress.
Yeah! Right Lord! As though anyone is going to believe this story. This excuse ranks way above "the dog ate my homework" type of excuse.
Can you imagine him trying to explain it. Oh, it's all right mom and dad, Rabbi, it wasn't me. "Who was it then? What is his name? You better stay away from that girl. She is no good. She is trouble." No, that's all right too. It wasn't another man, it was God. The Holy Spirit did it."
Joseph, go to your room and don't speak to us until you are ready to tell the truth."
But that was the truth and Joseph determind to do what the Angel had said regardless of what anyone else thought. And so he proceeded with the engagement.
Joseph was a man of faith and obedience. Not just to the law. But to God. He is the saint of all parents who are all called to train up their children in the way they should go - whether thay are adoptive or biological.
This morning, would you consider the awesomess of Joseph's task. It has overwhelming implications for him as well as for us.
He was not only accountable as a parent to his family and to his culture and to the prevailing law. He was directly accountable to God.
Joseph was unique in this. And yet, perhaps he was not. Are not all parents accountable to God for the way in which they raise their children. For all children are a sacred trust given to us by God to raise and care for and nurture in the faith.
When we observe baptism, we observe that the children we have brought before the Lord are as much his as they are ours. Our obligation to raise them in the faith is a most sacred trust for which Godh olds us all accountable.
Like Joseph, we dare not leave them over to fend for themselves but to be obedient and do "what the Lord commanded".
All parents need wisdom in raising children. Under the best of circumstances. But remember whose father Joseph had become. The challenges he would face were to be unique.
But Joseph loved God and was righteous. By loving God properly, he loved Jesus properly.
Parents, perhaps the greatest thing you can do is to love and follow God. Books on parenting are good. Seminars and support groups are good as well. But no amount of human insight or wisdom can compare to that which God can give you if you determine to be faithful and obedient to God.
That is the greatest gift, the highest legacy, that you can leave your children or grandchildren or great grandchildren. Love and obey God.
He didn't divorc her. He didn't leave her to public shame or disgrace. In fact he did just the opposite even though the law permitted him to do so.
He took Mary as his wife. He honored her by not having any physical union with her until the child was born. He believed her and he believed God.
I believe that the second greatest legacy that can be passed on to children and children's children is the honor of one person for their spouse.
Parens you know how difficult it is to discipline if your spouse does not honor you but cuts you down and reverses you. It takes a united front. IT takes two people who spend their lives building each other up and honoring each other.
Joseph and Mary were in it together and he honored her.
In the traditions that we have set up around Christmas, we perhaps have lost the reality and earthiness of what really was going on.
One church published their announcement of the upcoming Christmas pageant by saying that all characters would be played by members of the Sunday School department except for the baby Jesus who will be played by a 40 watt light bulb."
The Christmas story is not just about a glowing holiness in a manger. It is about real life. Tough choices. Determined love. Flesh and blood.
God entrusted Joseph with the sacred task of parenting God alongside Mary. What an awesome mystery.
God entrusts us with the sacred task of raising children as well. Just like Joseph, we will one day release them to the world and to their careers and to families of their own. We will release them back to God. But in the mean time we are called to accountability to God, to love God, and to love our spouses.
Today, we celebrate a sacrament that is born of the painful death and suffering of that same baby Jesus. When the angel announced this all to Joseph, only a clue of this end was grasped.
But Joseph parented God, then released him so that he could accopmlish that for which God had brought him into the world.