Connecting – Mary & Joseph

Matthew 1: 18 – 25

Luke 1: 26 – 38

December 7, 2025

Advent II

Imagine Mary in her small, simple home. A clay floor, probably a dugout cave – Nazareth was a no-account town filled with the poorest of the poor. Perhaps a low wooden table, a woven mat rolled in the corner.

Mary is hardly a princess. Not wealthy. Not politically or tribally connected. Mary is just an ordinary teenage girl in an unnoticed village.

Then suddenly - without warning - the eternal God steps into her little room through the voice of an angel. “Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you.” And Mary is troubled, not triumphant. She doesn’t glow with confidence. She trembles with confusion – what she hears is far beyond her adolescent imagination.

The angel lays out God’s plan - a child, a kingdom, a miracle forming in her womb - and Mary realizes that obedience will cost her reputation, her security, her future, and possibly her life. She could be stoned to death on her father’s front steps for her participation in God’s plan.

God doesn’t choose her because she’s fearless; God chooses her because she’s faithful. Her response to the unimaginable plan announced by Gabriel becomes one of the greatest declarations in Scripture: “Be it unto me according to Your word.”

Mary teaches us that the people God uses the most are those willing to say “yes” before they understand how it will all work out.

Hold the picture in your mind’s eye and move with me across the bluffs of upper Nazareth to the home of another young inhabitant of this hick town.

Picture Joseph in his workshop. The smell of sawdust fills the air. Tools are neatly hung on the wall. A half–finished table rests on sawhorses. Wood is stacked, ready to be finished and used in future projects.

This is the world he understands - this is Joseph’s world. A world of plans, measured lines, smooth edges, and predictable angles. If something breaks, you fix it. If something’s crooked, you straighten it.

Life makes sense in the hands of a carpenter. But outside that workshop, life suddenly doesn’t make sense anymore.

Mary - sweet, faithful Mary - comes to him trembling, eyes filled with both fear and faith,

and she tells him the impossible; the culturally impossible, she tells Joseph of a reality that seems so very, very, unreal.

Mary speaks in whispers about a message from God. A child conceived by the Holy Spirit.

A calling she didn’t choose, but she accepted.

Joseph’s hands can fix broken wood, but they can’t fix this. He doesn’t slam the door. He doesn’t shout. He wrestles. He paces. He prays. He lays awake in the dark trying to reconcile love and righteousness.

Eventually, just as God did with Mary, God will give him clarity, but not until the moment Joseph reaches the end of himself. And just when Joseph’s ready to walk away quietly—just when Joseph is ready to do the culturally accepted thing - an angel enters the darkness of his confusion with a message: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid…”

Sometimes God speaks clearest when we are most convinced that everything is falling apart.

The stories of Joseph and Mary are stories of connection. The stories of Joseph and Mary are stories of the implications, or the consequences of faithful connection. The stories of Joseph and Mary are the stories of plans – lovingly and faithfully made, and then lovingly and faithfully abandoned. The stories of Mary and Joseph are, many times, our stories today.

As we talked about last week – this wait for the Messiah had been long and arduous. The chosen people – the nation of Israel had split, and the leadership of both the northern and southern kingdoms had been typically horrendous and unfaithful.

Starting in the 8th century BCE, the northern kingdom falls to the Assyrians. A few hundred years later the southern kingdom falls and now God’s people find themselves in exile, in Babylon, far from a destroyed Jerusalem and its holy Temple.

Under a generally benevolent Persian king, the Jews return to Jerusalem – rebuilding its walls and reconstructing the Temple only to have it all taken once again through the marauding Greek forces of Alexander the Great in 332. Egyptian Greeks, Syrian based Greeks – they all take their turns at occupying the Promised Land until the Romans come and claim the land – and its resources – for the glory of Rome.

Through it all, the Jewish people waited; waited for their promised Messiah. This was no wishful thinking. This was no wish whispered as they blew out candles; this was no dreamy wish that was simply based in the desires of the ones making the wish.

No, the waiting of the Israelites was a confidence, an expectancy, a certainty - a conviction - that just as God had been demonstrably faithful in their historic past, this same God would be just as faithful in their messianic future.

And after 1,000 years of confidently waiting; after a thousand years pf prophets, conquests, exile, return and foreign rule; after all of this anticipation – surely God was ready to do a big and spectacular thing. Right?

Surely God was going to bring about a messianic process that all would recognize, that all would celebrate, that all would rejoice over as God’s Messiah returns and makes things right.

By the first century, Jerusalem is a town of significance and consequence. Surely the Messiah will come from there. Or maybe the Messiah will arise out of one of the capital Roman cities like Caesarea Maritima, Sepphoris, or Caesarea Philippi. Maybe the Messiah will come out of the wilderness from beyond the Jordan – an area long associated with the mysterious and powerful presence of God.

But no. None of what we might have expected. God comes to backwater Nazareth, to ordinary people of extraordinary faith, who are connected to one another – and to God – in such a way that when God’s messianic plan is unveiled to these two all they can say is, “let it be with me according to your word.”

Mary surrenders and obeys, taking on all of the scorn and ridicule that will come to this unwed other. Joseph learns of the child’s identity and mission and is immediately and faithfully obedient. He plays his part.

Such is their connection to one another, their love for one another and for God that God’s plans begin to unfold.

The power of connection, the realization of their messianic hope, the peace that came to both of them in the face of the storms that were brewing around them is a testimony to the faith, hope, and peace that comes when we are connected to God and to one another. When human understanding fails, it is those faithful connections to God that allow us to move obediently forward especially when that path is not what we expected.

Friends, obedient faith does not require all of our ducks in a row, all of the implications identified and clarified, all of the consequences known and acceptable. Sometimes, obedient faith simply requires hearts connected to God and ready to say, “Just show me the first step. I will trust you for the second and beyond.”

Connected hearts. Faithful hearts. Obedient hearts. With them God can – AND HAS – changed the world. Amen.