Advent 4
Devotional
Water From the Well
Lectionary Devotional For Cycle A
Object:
... do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
-- Matthew 1:20
This is a story told from the perspective of the privileged because Joseph and Mary lived in a clearly patriarchal world. For Mary to be betrothed to Joseph meant she was bound like property to him, and that betrothal could only be dissolved if Joseph gave Mary a writ of divorce and not vice versa. When Mary was found to be with child, Joseph would have been well within his rights to have her stoned to death. Matthew suggested that from the perspective of the privileged, "doing right" must be seen as a communal rather than an individual act. "Her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly." It was because Joseph paused to consider the effect of his "doing right" on Mary, whom he had every reason to believe had wronged him, that he was open to God's revealing how the same events looked from the divine perspective. An angel asked him to recognize that the very action that seemed to have violated his "rights" might well contain birth pangs of the word of God. As will be true in the climax of the gospel, it was a woman who was able to bear the authentic message of God's word to a society of privileged men who were blinded by their positions. In both cases, their names were Mary, which in Hebrew is Miriam who was the sister of Moses. Joseph, by identifying with Mary rather than his "rights" contributed to the fulfillment of God's purposes.
-- Matthew 1:20
This is a story told from the perspective of the privileged because Joseph and Mary lived in a clearly patriarchal world. For Mary to be betrothed to Joseph meant she was bound like property to him, and that betrothal could only be dissolved if Joseph gave Mary a writ of divorce and not vice versa. When Mary was found to be with child, Joseph would have been well within his rights to have her stoned to death. Matthew suggested that from the perspective of the privileged, "doing right" must be seen as a communal rather than an individual act. "Her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly." It was because Joseph paused to consider the effect of his "doing right" on Mary, whom he had every reason to believe had wronged him, that he was open to God's revealing how the same events looked from the divine perspective. An angel asked him to recognize that the very action that seemed to have violated his "rights" might well contain birth pangs of the word of God. As will be true in the climax of the gospel, it was a woman who was able to bear the authentic message of God's word to a society of privileged men who were blinded by their positions. In both cases, their names were Mary, which in Hebrew is Miriam who was the sister of Moses. Joseph, by identifying with Mary rather than his "rights" contributed to the fulfillment of God's purposes.
