“Then Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as the angel had bidden him,

and took unto him his wife.”

(Matthew 1:18-25)

“When a soldier on sentry duty hears footsteps approaching in the dark, he shouts: ‘Who goes there?’ This picture of a soldier on guard at night reflects our situation with God,” suggests Helmut Thielicke, the popular preacher of post-war Germany.

“For in the midst of the enveloping night, in the darkness of this hopeless struggle of nations, in the shadow of our personal predicament and fears, again and again we hear a footstep; someone is passing by in all the thunder and rain.

“We do not know who it is. Is he an enemy or a friend, a power of fate or a father? That’s why we cry out: ‘Who’s there?’ We cry out into the night, in prayer as it were: ‘Who are you; who is passing by out there?’” (Our Heavenly Father — Helmut Thielicke — Harper Brothers. 1960)

“Who’s there?” cries the young person struggling with the problem of what to do with his life. “Who’s there?” sobs the young widow whose husband has been snatched from her side and whose castles in the air have become suddenly cold ashes. “Who’s there?” in numb defiance asks the husband of the woman whose case has been diagnosed as cancer as he stands with his children about her bed. “Who’s there?” cries the family struggling with an insoluble problem of sin and shame and disgrace. “Who’s there?” asked the elderly couple at Arlington the other night when they said their prayers in faith and lay down to sleep only to be awakened by two hoodlums shooting their way into their darkened house. “Who’s there?” asks every sincere thinker as he wrestles with the mysteries and riddles of life.

Each one of us cries out in the darkness of our lives, “Who goes there?” for we feel we will be missing the central thing of life unless finally we discover who it is passing by the sentry box of our lives.

But if we find ourselves asking this question, not only because of the scary sounds we hear in the sleepless darkness, but also because of our confrontation by the word of God; if we are informed not only by the bumps and bruises life’s hard knocks have walloped us, but are informed also by Holy Scripture, we begin dimly to discern that whoever else may be near our sentry box there is always One there who is calling to us. He was there before we were put at our post of duty. Before we were startled and began to call out “Who’s there,” He already was calling to us. Perhaps it was His call, but faintly heard, like a wind-stirred leaf, which first startled us and drew our quick challenge: “Who goes there?”

But His word to us is not: “Who goes there?” Rather, He is gently calling us by name and inviting us to the new, strange, glorious duty He has for us. As Samuel was called in the house of Eli: “Samuel, Samuel,” and to whom the lad finally responded: “Speak Lord, for Thy servant heareth;” as Paul was called on the Damascus Road: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” and to whom Paul said: “Who art thou Lord, and what wilt thou have me to do?” As Joseph was called in his troubled sleep: “Joseph, fear not to take Mary as thy wife,” so someone is calling us, even before we called from our sentry box: “Who goes there?” And that One is gently calling us by name and telling us through the darkness what to do.

Let us look carefully at this man, Joseph, at his sentry box, for he has a remarkable significance for us. Here is a man confronted with a shocking, scandalous situation. He discovers that the girl to whom he is engaged is pregnant. He had believed in the ideal of the Jewish home.  He had given himself in hope and faith to this beautiful girl. Now his hopes are blasted. He is shamed and disgraced.

What shall he do? Being a religious man, a just and good man, he turns to the religious teachings of his church for guidance. The Mosaic Law governing such cases is clear. Two courses of approved legal action are open to him. Either he can expose his fiancée’s unfaithfulness by bringing her to court and so be released from his promise to marry, or the law permits that he may handle the whole business privately by giving her a paper in the presence of two witnesses annulling their relationship.

Being not only a just and moral man, but also a mercifully kind man, Joseph has about made up his mind to follow the latter course. It was legal, it would save her embarrassment, and at the same time extricate him from the scandalous situation in which he found himself, and restore him to respectable society.

But in that dark night of his blackened love and blasted hopes, Joseph hears one calling his name, and telling him not to fear to take Mary his betrothed to be his wife, for she was with child by the Holy Spirit.

No doubt this perplexed Joseph greatly. He was not only a moral and religious man who would obey his moral code, he was not only a merciful man who would do the kind and merciful thing, but he was also a man of faith who would try to obey the word of his God calling out to him in the darkness of any night.

But can we imagine any man’s faith being tested more rigorously than Joseph’s faith was tested? Here is a man asked to disregard the canons of respectability, to outrage public opinion, to transgress social custom, and to found his home upon the shadow of suspicion, because God had purposed through this unprecedented series of events to work out a tremendous blessing for all the world? Talk about faith! Only a man of amazing faith, implicit trust and blind obedience would hazard such a thing.

The Roman Catholic Church makes of the Virgin Mary their supreme saint. Should not Protestants who emphasize “salvation by faith” put Joseph on a high pedestal for his superlative faith?

And yet that is the road God is forever calling men and women to take as the Lord of the Universe would blaze new trails of the Kingdom into the beyond ahead of us. For God always sits in judgment upon what has been our social ethic and moral code and religious rite and popular custom. Always the status quo is a poor imperfection of the ideal that lies ahead. Always there is someone calling through the darkness of our human sin and shame and disappointment. And the men and women of faith are hearing that voice. And now and then there arises someone with such superlative courage and overwhelming faith that he gives such strict obedience to the unprecedented command that, through his faith and obedience, God is able to bring great salvation to His world.

Furthermore, the record hints, though it is not positively stated, that it was through Joseph, through this act of faith and his life based upon it, that Jesus began to grasp the great truths about his Heavenly Father, which he later probed in his own spiritual experience, found to be rock-bottom, eternally-extended realities of the spiritual world and then he gave them to us all.

Certainly Joseph was the only earthly father the child Jesus ever knew. Could it be that Joseph’s sincere acceptance of Jesus in the father-son relationship made that relationship so dear to Him that He would later teach His disciples when they prayed to say: “Our Father, which art in heaven,” and to set all His teachings about time and eternity in the framework of a father’s affection, so that work, for Him and all of us, was doing the Father’s will and being about the Father’s business; and repentance is just coming to ourselves in the far country and returning to the waiting Father; and death is only going into another room in the Father’s house; and that last great day of reckoning when we shall come before our Judge will be suddenly to discover that He has turned out to be our Father.

Where did Jesus begin to learn the depths and meaning of a Heavenly Father’s love, a love that can’t and won’t be stopped by any legal structure, any social stigma, any unusual family arrangement, but holds and holds and holds? Certainly kind, trusting, faithful Joseph was no stumbling block to the growing lad in this regard.

Joseph was just the kind of a man God needed in the miracle of the incarnation, not only that the mother of the Redeemer might have the protection and care of a good man, but that the Savior himself might have in His childhood an earthly Father who would be a channel of communication to feed His mind and His faith in the knowledge of His Heavenly Father.

Thomas Wolfe summed up the meaning of all he wrote in these words: “The deepest search in life, it has seemed to me, the thing that in one way or another was central to all living, was man’s search for a father, not merely the father of his flesh, not merely the lost father of his youth, but the image of a strength and wisdom external to his need and superior to his hunger, to which the belief and power of his own life could be united.”

At your sentry box do you hear strange noises and frightening sounds? Do you cry through the darkness: “Who’s there?” Is it that one who in the shadows is calling you by name and even in the dark night and the desperate situation, keeps saying: “Be not afraid, it is your Father. Underneath are the everlasting arms.” Is He calling you to a bizarre duty, to courageous opposition to custom? Is He calling you to incarnate anew His love in a difficult, but close family relationship that another of His chosen children through you may learn the depths of the Heavenly Father’s love?

 

PASTORAL PRAYER

O God, for the day of whose power the world has watched and waited through the years, we thank Thee for all prophetic spirits who have seen the promise of the better day, and by faith have served it. We thank Thee for stouthearted men and women, who in days of discouragement have still believed in thy goodness and in thy desire to lead thy people from darkness into light. We thank Thee for all who when the night was dark about them have watched for the morning, and trusted in the coming dawn. We thank Thee for men of faith who in the dim centuries dared believe in the coming of One who should bear man’s burdens and redeem them from their sins, and reveal to them the light of thy spirit. For their vision of a Redeemer, and for Thy response to their desires, we give Thee thanks, and pray for like faith in this our day.

God of truth and love, we acknowledge before Thee our deep need of a new birth of Christ’s spirit in our midst. We confess our own share in the selfishness which rules our human life; in the prejudices and suspicions which divide men; in the timidity which holds back good causes; and in the indifference which suffers evil to go unchecked. We confess our broken vows of loyalty to Christ; our obedience to the powers of evil which He hates; our want of faith in the way of love along which He leads. Send His spirit with a new appeal to our hearts this day. May we hear again His gracious invitation to follow Him. Over the tumult of our world may His voice ring clear and true, speaking the word of peace and reconciliation with Thee, His father and ours.