Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
21^st of December 2025

Matthew 1:18-25

I want to start today by talking about the antisemitic attack on people celebrating the first night of Chanukah at Bondi a week ago. Experts say that what gunmen who carry out such crimes want is notoriety. They want fame; they want to be remembered. So, in the same way that we do not say the name of the Australian who committed the Christchurch massacre in 2019, I will not say the names of the Bondi gunmen, or refer to any warped justification they might have claimed. As Dr Glynn Greensmith of Curtin University said this week, “When you shoot a 10-year-old girl in a civil society, you forfeit the right to be heard. I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter [why you say you did this]. I don’t care what you have to say.”

Instead, let us name and remember Syrian refugee Ahmed al Ahmed, who was injured while taking a gun from one of the attackers. He has become a hero not only in Australia, but in his hometown of Nayrab in Syria’s Idlib province. Let us name and remember Reuven Morrison, who was murdered after throwing bricks at one of the gunmen. Let us name and remember Boris and Sofia Gurman, who were murdered after confronting one of the gunmen when he arrived at Bondi with guns and an Islamic State flag. Let us name and remember Probationary Constable Jack Hibbert, who has lost sight in one of his eyes after being shot twice, but who continued to help others while injured. Chanukah reminds us that light shines most brightly in the deepest darkness, and the two criminals were outnumbered last Sunday by many heroes.

Terrorists wish to create terror. We defeat them by refusing to be afraid. On Monday night, I attended a Chanukah event at Federation Square with other Uniting Church ministers, and I was so glad that Victoria Police had offered the Jewish community support to continue holding it, rather than advising them to cancel it. Terrorists also wish to divide us. We defeat them by staying united. The weirdest of all the responses to this terrorism was the attempt by Islamophobes to claim that Ahmed al Ahmed was not a Muslim immigrant, but an Australian IT worker called ‘Edward Crabtree’. The response to antisemitic hate needs to be more commitment to the wonderful multicultural and multifaith diversity of Australia, not less.

Now we turn from the intermingled darkness and light of what happened at Bondi to the intermingled darkness and light of Matthew’s version of the Nativity. We hear this story less often than Luke’s version, maybe because it is a darker and more dangerous tale than Luke’s story of a manger turned into a cradle and angels greeting shepherds. The so-called ‘king’ Herod broods over Matthew’s telling, although he does not appear in today’s reading; we know that as Matthew’s story continues the incredibly foolish wise men will alert Herod to the birth of his rival, leading to the massacre of all the baby boys in Bethlehem and Joseph’s flight with the child and his mother to safety in a foreign land. In Matthew’s Nativity, unlike in Luke’s, the Messiah becomes a refugee.

Light shines most brightly in the deepest darkness, and throughout Matthew’s tale of a paranoid ruler, a massacre, and exile, the care of Joseph for Mary and her baby gleams. In the seventeenth century, Italian Baroque painter Guido Reni (4 November 1575 – 18 August 1642) painted a series of three works titled ‘Saint Joseph with the Christ Child,’ which are now held in St Petersburg, Milan, and Houston. They show Joseph as an old man, because of the belief in the Catholic Church that Mary was ever-virgin and that Jesus’ brothers, referred to in the gospels, were his stepbrothers from Joseph’s unrecorded first marriage. But ignore Joseph’s age and look at his gentleness and care. Theologian Jane Williams writes: ‘Reni’s painting shows the great tenderness and strength of Joseph as he cradles the child; the baby is completely at home in his arms, playing with his beard. Nothing Joseph has done has ever made the baby afraid of him; there is such love and playfulness between the two.’[1]

This gentle, strong man is the Joseph of the nativity story of Matthew. Matthew tells us that ‘Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit’. As we know, at that time, engagement was the equivalent of marriage. As far as Joseph is concerned, his betrothed has committed adultery. He is a righteous man, a man who obeys the law, and the law does not allow the husbands of unfaithful wives to forgive them. The penalty in the Deuteronomic legal code for women who were not virgins at marriage was stoning. (Deuteronomy 22:21) Actual stoning was unlikely to be happening in first-century Judea, but at the very least Joseph would have been expected to divorce Mary. I know this story extremely well, but it only just occurred to me this year that such a divorce would have had economic connotations beyond Mary being unlikely to find another husband. Some sort of dowry would have exchanged hands; a bride price would have been paid. With a public divorce, Joseph would have been able to reclaim his money so he could afford to marry again.

As a righteous man, Joseph is prepared to do what the law demands, but to do it quietly rather than publicly disgracing Mary. By dismissing her quietly, Joseph would have forfeited his dowry, but he obviously does not think recovering his money is worth shaming Mary. By refusing to publicly clear his name, Joseph might have shared in the scorn directed at Mary for the broken engagement. But Joseph is willing to endure this.

Suddenly, God intervenes! God’s angel addresses Joseph in a dream, encouraging him not to be afraid to take Mary to be his wife. The angel goes on to prophesy the birth of a son, the name he is to be given, and the role he is to play. Joseph follows the instructions. He goes through with the second stage of the marriage. He takes Mary home. He refrains from intercourse until the son is born. He gives the baby the name Jesus, and by giving him his name, Joseph acknowledges the baby as his son, making him legally part of the house and family of David. It is because of Joseph that later in his life Jesus will be called ‘the carpenter’s son’. (Matthew 13:55)

One of the heaviest burdens we humans place on ourselves is the need to be right and to be seen to be right. We feel uncomfortable when someone challenges our opinion. We feel defensive when someone reveals to us that we have done something wrong. We fear that saying or doing something wrong means that we are wrong; that we are less intelligent, less moral, less credible than we have believed ourselves to be. This is why mistakes are not simply mistakes; they are threats to our sense of self. So, we deny that we have made a mistake; we justify ourselves; we refuse to apologise. Rather than acknowledging that we have hurt another person, we convince ourselves that our behaviour was justified. It is as though we are still children telling our parents that ‘she started it!’

Joseph is not only Jesus’ protective father figure, I believe he is also the unofficial patron saint of not needing to be right or to be seen to be right. Joseph is willing to share any disgrace that Mary might receive for being unexpectedly pregnant. He at first plans to dismiss her quietly, taking on some of the blame for the broken engagement. Then he does what the angel tells him; he takes Mary as his wife, knowing that she is pregnant with someone else’s child, risking the horror of his community if the situation is found out. How likely would the people who live around Mary and Joseph be to believe that the child conceived in Mary is from the Holy Spirit? By becoming this child’s stepfather, Joseph joins Mary in everything she risks in saying ‘yes’ to God.

As an adult, Jesus told his disciples that there would be times when ‘people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account’. Joseph is willing to be reviled and persecuted and have evil uttered against him falsely for the sake of Mary’s baby. Admittedly it is somewhat easier to be seen to be wrong if we are convinced that we are truly doing right, that the evil uttered against us is uttered falsely. But Joseph must wonder whether he is doing the right thing. The angel only speaks to him in a dream, maybe his dream is simply wishful thinking. Maybe by doing right by Mary, he is doing wrong by his community and by the law.  Joseph lives with these doubts and fears. He accepts the possibility that what he is doing might be wrong or might, even if right, lead to disgrace and rejection. He shows us that we can survive doing wrong or being misunderstood. We do not need to always be right or have our correctness acknowledged.

And, as we know, in this case what seemed to be disgraceful, a situation completely unacceptable to the society in which it happened, turned out to be God intervening in the world. Joseph’s willingness to share Mary’s potential disgrace means that Mary is protected as she gives birth to Jesus, and Jesus is protected from Herod’s fury. Christmas is created by God’s Spirit doing a new thing. It also happens because of the openness of Mary and Joseph to all that scandalous newness, and because of their willingness to be seen to be wrong in the eyes of their community for the sake of God. Let us follow their example. Amen.

[1] Jane Williams, The Art of Christmas: Meditations on the birth of Jesus (London: SPCK, 2021), p. 30.