Sermon: Carpenter's Choice

Rev. Dr. Dee Eisenhauer

Texts: Isaiah 7:1-10; Matthew 1:18-25

Date: December 23, 2007

            The first drops of liquid to fall on the gleaming table were not what Joseph had hoped they would be, wine sloshing out of the cup of celebration after a toast given for the bride and groom, or the juices of the roast lamb prepared for the wedding feast.  Not even water from the well sponged on to clean up before the happy day.  No, the first drops of liquid to fall on the new table were none of these things.  They were Joseph’s tears, falling so fast and so scorching Joseph thought it a wonder they did not burn through the wood like acid.

            His Mary was with child.  His Mary, betrothed to him these many months.  His Mary, who had always seemed to him so pure.  She had promised herself to him as the arrangements had been made for their marriage by their parents.  She had looked at him with her clear brown eyes and promised to be his.  There was no hint of deception in her.  She hadn’t been like some of the other girls in their village, giggling and flirting with all the young men.  She had seemed more serious minded, more devoted.  She never missed the Sabbath prayers at the synagogue.  Joseph used to watch her pray out of the corner of his eye while she knelt with the other women. She would get this look on her face as if she were talking with a friend when she said the prayers; it was one of the things Joseph liked about her.

            How could she have deceived him by lying with another man?  Was she so carried away by lust that she couldn’t wait the last few weeks until their wedding?  It didn’t sound like her, but she was, after all, a woman.  Joseph’s uncle had always told Joseph as he grew up that you could never trust a woman; she always carried in her soul the sin of Eve, the temptress.  Joseph’s uncle had been irate about his wife who ran off with a tall, dark and handsome trader that had come through their village many years before.  Joseph usually took his uncle’s ravings about women with a grain of salt, but maybe he had been right.  Maybe no woman was to be trusted.

            Now Joseph’s anger flared up and dried his tears.  He jumped to his feet and shoved the table over.  He had worked long and hard on that table; it was to be a wedding gift for Mary, his betrothed, when they moved to their own home and started their life together.  Now he couldn’t stand the sight of it.  He kicked viciously at one of the legs, which snapped off.  He picked it up and slammed it on the table as it lay on its side.  That felt good!  Wham!  Take that, Woman!  Take that, Mary!  Mary, your name means “Bitter,” now you’ve made me bitter with your betrayal!  He hit the table again and again until the table leg was flying apart in splinters.

            For a moment or two he imagined striking Mary with the table leg that had become a club in his calloused hands.  For just a moment he thought it might be as satisfying as whacking at this table was now.  But then he imagined the fright and pain in her eyes as she was struck.  He imagined her arm broken with the force of his blow, her head bleeding as she collapsed in a heap.  And immediately he dropped what was left of the table leg.  It wouldn’t be right.  It didn’t matter how angry or hurt he was.  One human being shouldn’t do harm to another, especially when the stronger one attacked the weaker. 

            He knew in that moment, too, that he couldn’t call for the punishment allowed by the law for a woman caught in adultery.  The villagers could gather to stone her for having sex with a man who was not her husband.  The penalty for fornication was clearly spelled out in Deuteronomy; if you believed in the Torah, God was on the side of those who stoned the sinners.  But Joseph had never participated in such a punishment.  He had never thought it was right to kill another person in God’s name, even if the proof of the sin was right there and there was no doubt about what the law said.   

            Some of the other men thought he was a coward because he did not join in when people in the community were stoned or whipped.  His cousins teased him about being faint at the sight of blood.  His Hebrew teacher, who knew the law backward and forward, always participated in carrying out the Elders’ judgment and made it clear to Joseph that he should, too, if he wanted to be a truly righteous man.  The teacher certainly was considered righteous by the majority of the community, as he carefully kept each rule and regulation of their religion.  But Joseph did not like the glittering look in his teacher’s eye as he carried out what was judged to be God’s vengeance.  There was righteous, and then there was right.  Joseph had concluded long ago that he would rather do what he thought was right than be considered righteous by the other villagers.

            What was the right thing to do as far as Mary was concerned?  Joseph sat down heavily and put his aching head in his hands as he thought about it.  He anticipated what his mother would say, and his father, and his neighbors.  He imagined the gossip at the well as the women gathered to fetch the water for the day.  Finally, he decided, the less said the better.  I’ll just send my father to tell her father the marriage is off.  Let everyone look at Mary’s growing belly and draw their own conclusions.  As for me, I’ll just shut her out of my life.

His eye fell on the now three-legged table lying on its side near him.  He reached out with his foot and gave it a shove.  It tipped over with a resounding thump, landing with legs in the air.  The table top hitting the floor sounded like a door slamming.  The table top was about the same size as a door.  Maybe, Joseph thought, he’d make a new door for his house out of the table top.  It was good, solid wood and the old door was a little warped and drafty anyway.  It would remind him of what he was shutting out whenever he went in and out.  An image of slamming the door on Mary should she ever come up to his doorstep flitted through his mind.  Slamming what was meant to be a gift for her against her seemed like just the thing to do.   

Joseph leapt up.  He grabbed one of his tools and neatly knocked the other three legs off.  Then he picked up the table top and wrestled it over to the threshold to see if it would come near fitting.  As he reached with his foot to fling open the front door he saw the mezuzah, right where it had always been.  He had touched it a thousand times coming in and out of that door, calling to mind the Shema that was written on a tiny scroll rolled up within, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” 

At that moment he had a notion to knock that mezuzah off the door frame when he installed his new shutting-out door.  What had all these years of being a pious Jew gotten him?  Nothing, that’s what.  Bubkes.  He had been brought up in a religious household, circumcised on the 8th day as the law required, learned Hebrew with the other boys.  He had been a regular at the synagogue, had made his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, paid his tithes out of his meager living, kept a kosher table.  He had always tried to be charitable, sharing his bread with the poor beggars when they came around.  He tried to be a good neighbor, prayed regularly, honored the Sabbath.    He had kept his hands off Mary even after they were betrothed, waiting until the proper time to consummate their relationship. 

You’d think that with all the effort he’d put into doing the right thing that he might have been rewarded by God for his constant faithfulness.  Instead, he was about to become the object of derision in his community as everyone found out about Mary’s illegitimate pregnancy.  He who had looked forward to his wedding was now facing long years of loneliness.  This is the way God treats his friends?  Couldn’t God have stopped Mary before she got into this fix?  Could the Almighty Lord not have sent an angel to her to intervene, if not for her sake, then for Joseph’s?

Maybe this new door is going to shut out more than Mary, Joseph thought.  Maybe I’ll shut out that useless fantasy of a God who loves us that I’ve had all these years as well.  God—if there is a God—is the one who slammed the door in my face first just as I was about to cross into a happy family.  Well, it can work both ways.  That door can just stay shut and locked.  I’m through with this God who either doesn’t care or who mocks me by playing with my life like a puppet on a string!   Hey, God!  Are you there?  Are you listening?  My name’s Joseph, not Job!

Joseph hurled the table top away; it banged into the wall and fell on to the floor, breaking into several pieces as it landed.  Joseph looked at them through furious tears.  That’s my life, he thought, broken.  Thanks a lot, God.  Aaah, who am I talking to?  Empty space.   He turned, intending to rip the mezuzah off the door frame.  But as he grabbed at it his grandmother’s face appeared in his mind’s eye.  Her eyes, which he remembered so clearly, flashed a warning to him even as she looked at him with compassion.  That mezuzah had been on her door frame before it had come to his house after her death.  He didn’t have the heart to tear it down.  Maybe tomorrow. 

Completely spent, Joseph left the broken table where it lay and stumbled to his bed.  He had a restless night.  Even though he was exhausted, his dark thoughts kept him awake for much of the long night.  The sky was beginning to grow light when he finally fell into a deep sleep.

When he awoke he sat straight up, gasping, his heart pounding.  The hair was standing up on the back of his neck.  But it wasn’t exactly fear he was feeling—more like utter amazement.  He could swear he had been visited by an angel of the Lord in his dreams.  The angel had told him that he should not be afraid to take Mary as his wife, that the baby was from the Holy Spirit, that this son should be named Jesus, which means “He will save.”  The angel told him that this Jesus was to save his people from their sins.  As the angel faded away it was singing with almost unbearable sweetness another name, over and over: Emmanuel, Emmanuel, Emmanuel. 

Was it real?  It had seemed more real than anything he had ever experienced fully awake.  His namesake in the Torah, Joseph, had gotten messages through dreams.  God had saved a lot of people through that Joseph’s dreams.  If there was a Joseph, and not just a pretty story.  If there was a God, and not just a massive, durable delusion. 

So the question was, was Joseph losing his mind or finding his soul?

His head was spinning.  He went out to the other room and practically tripped over the busted table on the floor.  Pieces of the life he had thought he was going to have: nice Jewish girl marries nice Jewish boy, they have some kids, eat thousands of family dinners at the table Dad made with his own hands, make a living, celebrate the Holy Days, steer clear of the Romans,  have some grandkids—just be a regular Joe and Mary.  Well, that plan’s obviously kaput. 

Looking at the wood scattered on the floor, Joseph was seized with an urge to make something new.  He hardly knew what he was doing; as if he were in another dream, his hands seemed almost to be working on their own.  He used the larger chunks of the table that were left and pieced together what looked like a long rectangular box about three and half feet long and two feet wide.  That finished, he wondered briefly what it was for and then was compelled by some strange energy to start carving a curve.  All the while the angel’s otherworldly tune was repeating itself in his head, “Emmanuel, Emmanuel, Emmanuel…”  He knew he had heard that name before but he couldn’t quite put his finger on its meaning.  It danced around at the edge of his consciousness until he finished a long, smiling curve of wood.

Two things came to him at once: The translation of the name Emmanuel—“God is with us.”  And the realization that what he was making in his dreamy feverishness was a cradle. 

Now the force that had compelled him stopped.  The dreamer awoke.  He had never been so fully awake.  Joseph felt as though he were standing at a crossroad.  There was nothing to stop him from breaking this cradle as he had the table before it, nothing to prevent him from burning the wood scraps and the notions of God and family he had harbored along with them.  He could use one of the table legs remaining to bolt the door of his house and his heart forever.  He glimpsed in a moment of clarity who he might become should he walk down that road.  He could see himself becoming, like his uncle, a conventional cynic; a bitter, realistic man.  Perhaps he would even become righteous in the mold of his teacher, organizing his life by following rules.  The disillusionment he was feeling now would be the last because he would be through with illusions. 

There was something terribly appealing in this vision, this version of himself.  There was safety and predictability, the respect of his neighbors who would certainly understand and sympathize with him.  This road was straight and obvious. 

Another road veered off into shadow in his mind’s eye.  He could take the broken pieces of his life and make room for something brand new.  He could name this baby as his son and thereby give the child a place in the world to do what he was sent to do.  This meant more than any old Joe charitably adopting a child of shady origin.  Joseph knew that such an act would not leave him unchanged.  To do this thing was to re-make his own life with a space for God’s saving work to dwell and grow.  It was to trust the dream God gave him as an invitation to take part in God’s scheme of salvation. To trust that there was a God, that there was salvation.   No telling into which new wilderness this God of his ancestors might lead. 

Big leap for a regular Joe.

Joseph stood at that crossroad a long, long time.  There was silence in the house.  But in his soul, the song of the angel grew in strength.  The song became in the imagination of his heart more than music—it was food and drink and a light for his path.  It was a shield, it was a fragrant breeze luring him forward, it was a bridge over turbulent waters.  As the song of the angel wove vitality into his soul, the carpenter set to work and prayer.  When he was finished, the cradle was inscribed with the lyric of the angel’s song: EMMANUEL, God is with us.  Joseph set the cradle to rocking and went out to find Mary, reverently touching Grandmother’s mezuzah on his way out the door.