Death and Life: Faith (Sermon for the Feast of St. Joseph: March 19, 2025)

Watch the sermon here. Listen to the sermon here.

Texts:   Psalm 127

            2 Samuel 7:4–16

Romans 4:13-18

Matthew 2:13–15, 19–23

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text that serves as the foundation for our sermon this evening are these words of Saint Paul to the Romans: “The promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith” (Romans 4:13).

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus,

As we look at this theme this midweek, this Lenten season, of death and life, we reflect on how the life of a Christian is always one of death and life. We come now this evening to faith. Having looked at fasting and the fall into sin, we now come to faith. And we have one of the greatest examples of faith in the Bible—St. Joseph, the Guardian of our Lord. There is a lot that happens in Joseph's life in the couple of chapters where he is actually character who appears. There’s a lot that happens in Joseph’s life demonstrates how crucial faith is to our life as Christians. Today, in our readings, we learn that through faith, we die to our own desires and live according to God's holy will.

Let us pray: Almighty God our Heavenly Father, Your servant Joseph showed great faith in doing what You commanded of him and taking care of Your Son as He grew, first in the womb of His mother, and then as He grew in this flesh as your servant. Joseph protected Him and cared for Him throughout His life. May the words of my mouth and meditations of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer, that we may always have such faith that we always are willing to do what You command of us no matter whether it aligns with our own will. It is through Your Son's name we pray. Amen.

Much like in any congregation, much like in any city, much like in any person's life, the Bible has a lot of stubborn people. The Bible has a lot of people who want things done their way that they think they know is best, and well, they’re going make sure it happens that way. Sometimes that stubbornness comes from good, holy desires. And other times, not as much. David certainly had good and holy desires when he wanted to build a temple for the Lord. God had come back to his people. They had been under the oppression of the Philistines. Saul's reign had been good at parts, but God had abandoned Saul. But now, the Ark of the Covenant, the Mercy Seat where God sat, had come back to Jerusalem, signifying God's blessing of David's reign. David had already had his palace built and yet where the Ark of the Covenant dwelt, it was still inside a tent, inside the city. That didn't seem right to David. And so David set forth to build a temple, to build a building to house the Ark of the Covenant, a place where sacrifices to God could be made. This was a good and holy desire.

Elsewhere in scripture, we read plenty of stories of people who were stubborn, who thought their own will was best, who thought their own desires were best, and it didn't work out so well for them. This last week in confirmation class, we were learning about how Moses, in his stubbornness, when God told him to speak to the rock to bring forth water, stubbornly struck it instead. And yes, God poured forth water, but there was also punishment that came along with that. Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land because of his own disobedience.

We all have our own sinful wills. We all have our own wants, our own desires that we think are best. We all have our own ways that we think everything should be done and people either need to fall in line behind us or just get out of our way so that we can get it done. We're also this way with God sometimes. “God, I'm going to tell You what I need and I'm going to tell You how You should fix it for me. I'm going to tell You what I think You should do. Not trusting you to do what's best, but thinking I know best. And so you're going to do it my way.” I've been there, I know we all have. Our own sinful will, our own sinful desires that we inherited from the first Adam, override what holy desires we might have. They override the good desires in us, and we try to stubbornly go our own way. And what happens when we do? Usually nothing good. Or if something good happens, there's also consequences. The water in the desert was good. The punishment for disobeying God, not so much. Because we are children of Adam, we have a lack of faith, a lack of willingness to trust God, to trust that he is going to take care of things, to trust that he is going to provide. We have this lack of faith that leads us deep sin, deeper down the path of unholiness. Deeper down the path of death.

And on our own, apart from God, we can't get off that. On our own apart from God, we are just going to keep on stubbornly trying to do things our own way, no matter the consequences. We're going to keep stubbornly fighting, thinking we know best. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Black Knight keeps trying to fight even though limb after limb gets cut off and eventually he's just a torso and a head laying on the ground. Yet somehow he thinks he can still keep fighting. That's us apart from faith.

The opposite example of that is Joseph. When you look in Holy Scripture, Joseph only appears in really three chapters of the Bible, Matthew 1-2, and Luke 2. Yet, when we look at Joseph, we see this great testament of faith. To give you the story here, the angels appear to Mary telling her she's going to be pregnant. Mary says, okay, let it be done for me according to your will. Gabriel gave her the sign that her cousin Elizabeth was pregnant, the one who was called barren, she's six months pregnant. Mary, after the angel leaves, immediately she runs down to see Elizabeth. She stays down there three months to make sure that the baby in Elizabeth's womb is a boy. And then she heads back home. And she gets back home, she's three months pregnant, and well, three months pregnant, you're starting to show a little bit. And Joseph thinks, while she's been gone, she's done something improper. So he decides to just divorce her quietly. He doesn’t want to put her to shame. He’s just going to divorce her quietly, let her go on her own way. And yet, in a dream, the angel of the Lord comes to him and tells him to not be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because that which is conceived in her is from God. And what's Joseph do? He accepts it. He takes Mary as his wife. Joseph takes his wife with him down to Bethlehem to be registered for the census. And there in his cousin's household, she gives birth to the baby Jesus. And the shepherds come and go. Mary and Joseph present the infant Jesus in the temple. Simeon takes the baby in his arms. Anna's talking about the baby Jesus. At some point later, wise men from the east come and give them these gifts and then the wise men head back and Herod finds out the wise men haven't come and told them where the baby Jesus is and so he sets out to kill all of the infants two years and younger. And in a dream, Joseph is told to fly to Egypt. That would be like, I think around here I was informed in Sunday morning Bible school, that'd be like from around here being told to fly to like Kentucky or California, someplace that's kind of the backwater armpit of the United States. Egypt was part of the Roman Empire, it wasn't a foreign country. But if you remember Exodus, Jews did not have a good history with Egypt. An angel comes and tells Joseph to go to Egypt and does Joseph protest? No. He wakes up in the middle of the night he wakes up and he takes them right away to Egypt. They're down in Egypt, some time has passed, Herod dies. An angel comes again to him in a dream in the middle of the night, tells him that it’s okay, go back to Israel. Again, it's like he wakes up immediately and in the middle of the night takes Jesus back up. And he takes them to Galilee to Nazareth to grow up. The only other time we hear of Joseph as a person who is alive is when Jesus is 12 and they go to the temple. And Joseph and Mary head back, Jesus stays in the temple. They don't recognize that he's gone. Finally, three days later, they find Jesus. Mary speaks, but again, Joseph is almost just as passive. just in faith accepts everything. Joseph had a great faith which trusted in God no matter what God told him to do.

Even greater faith was Joseph's son. Not on of his biological sons, but the Son he raised, Jesus, who even more so trusted in his heavenly Father's will, who trusted as He suffered and bore your sins, as He bore my sins on the cross, as He suffered and died for you and for me, so that you and I would never have to face eternal death. As He suffered and died for you and me, and on the third day was raised again, never to die again, a sign of the eternal life that is ours in Christ Jesus.

So now, as ones for whom God has done everything, we can be like St. Joseph. We can follow God, trusting in His holy will for us. We can die to our own selfish sinful desires. We can die to our own selfish sinful plans, our own stubbornness. We can follow God. We can walk in His footsteps. We can follow His will because we know that His will is best for us. Do we always understand why God might will something, why God might allow something to happen? No. Joseph maybe did not fully understand everything that God was telling him to do. But he still trusted. He still trusted and obeyed. So likewise, by faith, we can trust and obey God. What does scripture say about faith? It says that faith is what saves. Faith brings us to salvation. St. Paul writes in Ephesians, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Faith saves.

So my dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, continue to walk in faith. Continue to follow Saint Joseph's example, obeying God, following His will, believing that He knows what is best for us. Because He does. He has promised to you that he will never leave you nor forsake you. He has promised to you that He is taking care of you today and every day into life everlasting. Believe in Him. Have faith in Him. This is not your own doing. This is the gift of God, not a result of work so that no one may boast. Amen.

May the peace of God who surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.