Slogans: A Sermon for 4 Advent

The Episcopal Church is like any other church in that we do certain things really well, and certain things…not so much.  So when you choose to attend or join an Episcopal Church, you must do so knowing that you are taking the good with the bad.  After all, no church, no matter how hard we try - can be all things to all people. 

One thing that the Episcopal Church is good at … is slogans.  Now I am glad to say that this isn’t the only thing that we are good at, thanks be to God.  But we do have a knack for thinking up clever slogans. The slogan with which most of us are familiar is “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You.”  And I find it ironic that while this is perhaps our most well-known slogan, it is the one that I think many of our parishes struggle to live up to the most.  The critique of many Episcopal Churches is that as beautiful as our buildings, liturgy, and music are, we oftentimes get accused of being a little stiff, cold, and even country-clubbish.  As it turns out, some Episcopalians aren’t as welcoming as our slogan says that we are.  But rather than change the slogan to more accurately reflect our shortcomings, I’m all for keeping the slogan and trying our best to live up to it.

There is one slogan that I have come across recently that rubs me the wrong way:  “The Episcopal Church: You Don’t Have to Leave Your Brain At The Door.”  

Keep in mind that this is not an official slogan from the national church, but rather, one that has been adopted by some individual parishes. 

The parishes that use this slogan are practicing a sort of targeted evangelism towards folks who want to be challenged intellectually, or folks who, for some reason or another, normally don’t associate church with deep thinking.  And it is true that there are a growing number of people who have either left church or never even gone to one because they have been led to believe that one can’t be a devout Christian and be in conversation with science; or they have been told that doubt is something that needs to be fixed; or they have been taught that the Christian scriptures and doctrines should only be taken at their literal, face value.  And more and more people these days are simply not willing to assent to leaving their brains at the door, so to speak.  They’d just assume stay at home and read the paper with their coffee and bagel. 

So I get it.  I get why some Episcopal Churches have chosen to reach out to people who are searching for meaning in their lives, but who don’t find meaning in simplistic theology and shallow thinking.  But is “You Don’t Have To Leave Your Brains At The Door” the best we can do?  Is that all that we have to say about ourselves…that we Episcopalians carry our brains with us wherever we go – even to church? 

For those of us who are here today - brains intact – what do we do with our gospel reading for the day?  How do we reconcile the news that Joseph received from an unnamed angel in his dream with what we know about how babies are made?  But thankfully for y’all, I am not interested in defending or re-interpreting the doctrine of the virgin birth this morning.  What I am interested in is how Joseph handled the news that was presented to him in today’s lesson.  On the night that the angel visited him in his dream, did Joseph leave his brain at the bedroom door before he went to bed?  Is that what allowed him to respond the way that he did?  Did Joseph’s ability to embrace rather than resist the unthinkable news delivered to him by the angel in his dream save Jesus and Mary’s life?

If Joseph had ignored the angel in his dream and continued with his original plan, the text tells us that he would have dismissed Mary quietly, so as to avoid a public disgrace.  If Joseph had chosen to quietly end his engagement to Mary, what would become of her - a single, pregnant teenager in first-century Palestine?  Would she still have been stoned to death for getting pregnant out of wedlock, even if Joseph and his family didn’t call for it?  After all, she had broken the law – a crime punishable by death.  If she had avoided execution, would her family have taken her in and cared for her and Jesus after he was born? 

Thankfully, these questions are curious “what ifs”, because in Matthew’s narrative of salvation history, Joseph listened to and believed the angel in his dream, even though it didn’t make a bit of sense.  Even though it was scientifically impossible.  Even though Joseph wouldn’t be the biological father of his wife’s child. 

Matthew’s version of the birth of Jesus is far less sentimental and much more “this is how it happened” than Luke’s.  Luke has always been a sentimental favorite, because in his version, we get a lot more of Mary, who quite frankly, is on the surface a lot more interesting than Joseph.  In Luke, we get the heart-warming visit of Mary to her pregnant cousin Elizabeth, and the lovely poetry of Mary’s song - the Magnificat.  In Luke, we get the nativity scene: baby Jesus lying in a manger, wrapped in swaddling cloths, surrounded by farm animals.  Just think, it weren’t for Luke, we wouldn’t have the Hail Mary pass in football, and our Christmas pageants and nativity scenes would be a lot less interesting without the livestock.

And while it cost him some style points, Matthew chose not to focus on Mary like Luke did.  But if we follow Matthew’s lead and allow Joseph to be the protagonist of the infancy narrative, while we may not have our hearts warmed in the same way, our hearts can still be warmed, because, as a matter of fact, Joseph was a man of the heart as much as he was a man of the head.  That’s right, Joseph left his brain at the door… thanks be to God!  And perhaps there are times that we could take a cue from Joseph and learn how to do the same.

You see, after the dream upon which salvation history stood, against what many would say is better judgment, Joseph listened to the unremarkable, unnamed angel and did two things: he married Mary, and he named their son Jesus.  This would have been considered scandalous, because he married a woman who was pregnant with someone else’s child; and not only did he agree to raise the child, he named the child Jesus, which means savior, or deliverer.  Imagine what the neighbors must have thought.

And what if it was this rather non-descript Joseph who taught his adopted son Jesus what it was like to follow your heart as much as your mind?  What if it was Joseph’s loving acceptance of the pregnant Mary that inspired Jesus later on in his life to accept the sinners and tax collectors that he encountered?  Once Jesus was old enough to understand how Joseph responded to the dream that night, don’t you think Jesus realized that his very life had depended on Joseph’s heart rather than Joseph’s mind?  How could Jesus, the beneficiary of such a faith, courage, and integrity be anything but a messiah who acted the same way?  When Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman at the well, or when he felt the tug on his garment from the woman who was bleeding, or when he was confronted by the demon-possessed Canaanite woman, is it possible that in these women, Jesus saw a glimpse of his own pregnant, teenage mother, whose life hung in the balance between law and grace?  Is it possible that the grace that Jesus showed them might have been something he learned from his earthly father Joseph early in life?  I wonder if one of the lessons Joseph taught Jesus was to listen to your heart, even if it doesn’t make a bit of sense.  It saved Mary’s life.  It saved Jesus’ life.  And it can save ours too. 

Slogans can be fun and they can be useful.  So let’s welcome people like we really mean it. And I don’t care if we leave our minds at the door or not. For some of us, that might be a good thing. For others, maybe not so good. But what we can learn from Joseph is that sometimes our brains need to be checked at the door. Or, if we just have to bring our brains in to church with us, as our collect for the day says, our conscience needs to be purified. Only then can we be free to receive the Good News that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. The Good News of the Advent season is not only that Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. The Good News is also that Christ was born. The Good News is that God is with us! Against all odds, Joseph believed. As the mystery of the incarnation draws near, let us follow the example of Joseph, and believe the unbelievable.  Amen.