Christmas Heroes - Mary and Joseph

As we continue to look at the Heroes of the Christmas story, let’s go back and remember the definition of a hero. A hero is an ordinary person who discovers they have been called by God to help bring salvation to the world. Isaiah’s part in bringing salvation to the world was to hold out hope for the people of Israel that one day the Messiah would come, and Isaiah worked for that day knowing it may never come in his lifetime. Elizabeth helped to bring salvation to the world by understanding her place in God’s plan. She wasn’t the main character and her son was not going to be the Messiah. Elizabeth’s role in God’s plan was to support Mary and encourage her, and her son was going to be the prophet God would use to prepare people for salvation and John the Baptist would do this by directing people to Jesus. Today the heroes we are going to look at Mary and Joseph and perhaps more than anyone else in the Christmas story they are real heroes because they were the ordinary people who were called and chosen by God to literally bring salvation into the world because they were the ones God used to bring us Jesus.

As we think about being heroes today, there are valuable lessons we can learn from Mary and Joseph. Think about Mary, she not only surrendered herself to God’s will, but she trusted God to do this amazing work in her life. She trusted in God’s love for her and she trusted that God would use her to bring life and salvation to the world. If we are going to be heroes today then the first thing we need to understand is that God loves us and that God wants to use us. Maybe the work of salvation God wants to accomplish isn’t in the people around us, maybe it’s in our own heart and life. On some level, Mary had to accept God’s love for herself before anything else could happen. Mary had to be willing to receive God’s love before she could step out and trust God to do anything else in her life and the same is true for us. God can’t use us to bring light and hope and salvation to the world, God can’t do a great work in our lives until we allow God to do a great work in our heart. Do we trust that God loves us and that God wants to fill us and use us for some great things?

I want to invite you to read Luke 1:30 over and over again this week, but we need to make one change, replace the name of Mary with your name, so it would read like this, Do not be afraid, Andy, for you have found favor with God. We need to say this over and over again to ourselves because it’s true. We, each one of us, have found favor with God. God loves us and the first work of salvation that God wants to do is in each and every one of us. God wants to offer us forgiveness and grace. God wants us to know that he loves us. Can we trust God to love us? Can we trust that God forgives us? Are we willing to let go of our sin and let go of our failures and the shame that goes along with it all and experience the freedom and life that comes with God’s grace and God’s favor? Nothing can happen in our lives until we are willing to trust that God does loves us, but once we get that settled– the doors are opened for God to do so much more. Once we accept God’s love we will be able to share that love in ways that we never thought or imagined. Once we allow God to work in our own hearts we will find him working in our lives in ways that can and will change the world around us. In Philippians 4:13 it says, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength and we can. We can do all things when we trust that God loves us. We become heroes who help bring God’s salvation to the world we first trust understand and trust that God brings salvation to us because we have found favor with him.

Mary has so much to teach us about being a hero, but we can’t forget about Joseph. Too often Joseph is overlooked because he just stands silently in the background. There are no recorded words of Joseph anywhere in the Bible? He never speaks, and yet his courage and his willingness to say yes to God are just as important as Mary’s obedience because without Joseph, God’s whole plan falls apart. Let’s go back to Matthew 1:18-19

At this point, the only 2 things Joseph knows for sure is that Mary is pregnant, and he is not the father. While Mary has told him that the child is God’s and a work of the Holy Spirit, you have to imagine that Joseph maybe had some doubts about this. But we learn about the character of Joseph here because while he could have saved his own name and reputation and publicly divorced Mary on the grounds of adultery, he doesn’t, it says he planed to dismiss her quietly (1:19). That decision not only spared Mary public humiliation, it spared her life and the life of her child. The punishment for adultery was death, so when it says that Joseph wasn’t willing to expose her to public disgrace, it’s an act of mercy that saves Mary’s life.

But it even goes deeper than that because Joseph’s actions were saying to his family, friends and the community in which he lived that he was taking some of the responsibility for the situation himself. Joseph was not only willing to give up his legal rights for justice and revenge, he was also willing to let go of his good name and reputation to honor and care for Mary. That in and of itself is a act of great character, but here’s the thing, God wanted and needed Joseph to go one step farther and actually take Mary as his wife and be the earthly father of Jesus. Matt. 1:20-21

So not only did God choose Mary, but God was choosing Joseph as well, and God chose Joseph because he was a man of courage and character and that was the kind of man God wanted to help guide and shape the life of his son. Now what always gets me about this story is that while Mary knows that the child she carries is from God, Joseph had to take it on faith. The bible says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen. Joseph couldn’t know for certain that the child Mary carried was from God, he had to take it on faith. Heroes are those who are willing to step out in faith and do what God calls us to do even if it doesn’t always make sense to us or to the people around us.

One of the wonderful things about my time in Lewisburg was that I got to know some amazing Bucknell students and through the years we could see their faith and trust in God grow, but we also watched them wrestle with what it really meant when they said yes to God. Like Joseph it meant that many of them had to make some choices that the people around them didn’t understand. For one young man, saying yes to God meant having to say no to a very worldly lifestyle. For his first few years of college he was very involved in a fraternity and all the partying that goes along with fraternity life and so when he said yes to Jesus it meant he began to change many of his activities and behaviors and his fraternity brothers just didn’t understand. Sometimes saying yes to God means we have to take a stand that causes our friends to question us or even look down on us. There are many decisions we make as followers of Jesus that people may question. Why would we take our vacation time to go on a mission trip? Why would we give up a night of partying to go to Bible Study? Why do we give our money to the church? Why do we choose to reconcile relationships when others might tell us to move on? Why do we choose to forgive when others might tell us to seek justice or revenge? And yet when we do give, and when we do forgive we become heroes who offer salvation and life to the world around us. We saw that once again this week in San Diego.

When a fighter jet lost power and crashed into Dong Yun Yoon’s home it killed his wife, his two daughters and his mother-in-law. And yet when he spoke to the press surrounded by his pastor and church family, he said, I don't want the pilot to suffer from this accident. I know he's one of our treasures for the country. And I don't blame him. I don't have any hard feelings. I know he did everything he could. When we chose to forgive when we could seek revenge – we help bring salvation to the world. When we have the faith to follow God’s will even when others may not understand, then like Joseph we are the heroes who offer the world the light and life of God. Are we willing step out in faith and with courage and character follow God’s will even if those around us don’t understand? And even if it doesn’t always make sense to us?

Trusting God to work within us and having the faith to step out in the world and do the right thing are not always easy, so there is one more lesson we need to learn about being a hero from Mary and Joseph. When Mary and Joseph said yes to God, they weren’t alone –they had each other. While both Mary and Joseph responded to God in their silence of their own heart, when they surrendered themselves to God, they weren’t standing alone, they were standing together. When we surrender ourselves to God, we will not be alone, not only will God be with us, but God will provide others who will stand with us and God will provide people to support and encourage us.

Now this means 2 things, first it means that as we seek to grow and develop our faith we need to seek out others. We were not meant to live a life of faith on our own, we need the help and support of God’s people. Notice that Mary not only had Joseph, but she had the support and encouragement of Elizabeth. God didn’t allow her to carry the burden alone – he provided people to offer love and support. God provides us with love and support to help us in our faith so we need to seek out those relationships and work to build up a network of friends and mentors and teachers who can help us along.

The second thing we need to understand is that there are going to be times when other people will need us to be there for them. This is often the part of being the church that we overlook. Too often we only think about coming to church or joining a small group or bible study because of what we will get out of it instead of what we can give to it. Just as we need others to support us and love us and help us along in life, there are people who need our love and support and we have to be willing to offer it. Joseph’s job in God’s plan of salvation was to support Mary, and he did it every step of the way. He didn’t divorce her publicly or quietly, he took her as his wife, he travelled with her to Bethlehem, he then travelled with Mary and Jesus to Egypt to keep them safe. Sometimes God calls us to be part of his plan because he is going to use us to help others find life and salvation and so we need to be willing to step up to the plate and be there for others.

Being a hero first and foremost means trusting that God loves us and it trusts that God is at work in our lives. Being a hero like Mary and Joseph means stepping out in faith to do the right thing even when it may not make sense. And being a hero means we understand how we not only need the support and encouragement of others, but we need to offer that support and love as well. Are we willing, like Mary and Joseph, to say Yes to God? Are we willing to be the heroes the world needs today?