Sermon Dec 8 2024 Joseph                    Rev. Betsy Hogan
Quick – what’s your favourite Christmas carol? Such an embarrassment of riches we have to choose from. Our favourite to hear, our favourite to sing, from the pomp and majesty of Big Organ Joy to the World, to the folk tunes with their peppy little dance beats, to the quietest whispery rocking chair rhythms of the lullabyes and cradle songs.

Silent Night. Or Good King Wenceslas. I Saw Three Ships and Hark the Herald. Something for everyone, our Christmas musical heritage provides, and of course it does. It’s been slowly accumulating since even before medieval times.

Which happens to be, roughly mid-1400s, when MY favourite Christmas carol first popped up. In a cycle of what were then called “mystery plays” – basically dramatizations of Bible stories and biblical narratives which were immensely popular and written to do my actual favourite thing.

Which is to lift those stories out of their ancient context as actual living Word, and drop them somewhere new. Into the here, into the now, into the familiar. Because they’re always going to speak afresh.

It’s why I’m always going to love, notwithstanding its problematic provenance, the sheer creative FACT of what we usually call the Huron Carol. ‘Twas in the Moon of Wintertime. Because I’m never going to forget the actual revelation of first hearing it as a child and realizing… you could do that. 

You could lift the story and all its pieces OUT of Bethlehem of Nazareth, and camels and deserts and sheep with their shepherds, and drop it into the blistering cold of a forest in winter – and it’d LIVE.

But I digress. In medieval times, when the twelve days of Christmas needed filling up with festivities, there were ‘mystery plays’ that were made and played by travelling troupes of actors and singers and musicians –

And in one of these arose my favourite carol. Which is the Cherry Tree Carol. Which I like to think of as the annunciation to Joseph. And he was not best pleased. 

In the Bible story, of course, we don’t actually HEAR that annunciation to Joseph – that initial “announcement”, which is all annunciation means, that initial “announcement” that Mary – his betrothed, with whom he’s not been -- is pregnant…

Because in the Bible story, when we first meet Joseph in the passage that Margaret read for us earlier, that annunciation has already happened. Joseph already knows. 

We’re not told HOW he knows, how he found out, who told him, how that went – we’re only told that he already knows. And in our passage, when the angel appears to him, it’s essentially now to do damage control.

And very effectively! Because Joseph -- unlike Mary who really has no choice, she’ll fall pregnant, it will happen, let it be with me, according to thy word – Joseph actually gets a chance to choose obedience. 

He could have condemned Mary publicly, he’s resolved instead to “put her away quietly”, but when the angel turns up to ensure that won’t happen, don’t be afraid, take Mary as your wife -- Joseph listens, and Joseph obeys. 

I kind of love the subversion of that. So many centuries of so much cultural content of Gentle Mary, meek and mild. Mary, revered for her humility. Mary, revered for her obedience –

When actually the example of gentle and faithful and grounded selfless obedience that we’re offered in this story is in Joseph. It’s kind of a beautiful thing.

But I digress. In the Cherry Tree Carol, the medieval mystery play audiences of fifteenth century England were treated to an imagining of the dramatic moment itself.

The annunciation to Joseph. Undertaken not by an angel but by Mary herself. In a moment – to put it mildly – of really quite ludicrous casualness.

Because there they are, the two of them, engaged to be married, strolling through an orchard, so deep and so green… when Mary asks Joseph if he can gather her some cherries. Like, she suddenly has a hankering, could he gather her some cherries? just pluck some off the branches? would he mind?… because she’s pregnant.

And there it is. That’s the annunciation to Joseph. Just tucked in there quietly. Oh, by the way.

Which, Joseph is not best pleased. As medieval mystery playwrights clearly knew quite well, the vulnerability that Mary didn’t ask for and would never have chosen and it’s just how it is, let it be, fingers crossed – it’s real.

We’re not treated, in our Bible story, to how Joseph first reacted in the moment he found out. We know that his considered response was mercy – NOT the public condemnation or worse he’d have been granted at that time, but just a quiet dissolving of their engagement. 

And that does speak well of his character. He’s clearly not the sort of person who needs to hurt to show he can. His inclination, however circumscribed by the essential norms of his context, is obviously toward kindness, or at least away from active harm.

But I think it does him, and us too, a disservice not to grant him at least a little anger to have to climb down from. Because if all Joseph is, is a plaster saint, then his decision to show mercy becomes essentially meaningless. 

Mary’s vulnerability in this situation is real, and Joseph’s birthright power to exploit that out of reactive anger and humiliation is equally so. So it matters for him to have to talk himself down. It matters that what obviously ultimately grounds him is a sense that honour isn’t something that’s possessed but it’s something that’s shown. In how much we honour, value, uphold the well-being of other people.

So it might be ridiculous to overstate any essential epic glory in resolving “to put Mary away quietly,” but what we ARE shown in Joseph in the biblical narrative is still kind of gloriously subversive. Because what we know has to be behind it is Joseph choosing showing his strength not in unleashing his anger, but in calming it into mercy. It’s is kind of spectacular.

But I digress. In the Cherry Tree Carol, we ARE treated to that explosive first moment. And explosive it is.

Because Joseph flew in anger, is how the carol puts it. In anger flew he. Not his finest moment, perhaps, but to be fair – he’s only just heard…

But really not his finest moment, in fact. Because yes, he’s only just heard, and sure, Mary’s sort of tossed it into the conversation with almost ludicrous casualness – 

But Joseph’s first reaction as imagined in the carol, honestly? It’s unbelievably petty. Understandable? Sure. We’ve all said things reactively in the heat of the moment that maybe weren’t our best work, but Joseph flew in anger, in anger flew he, and “You know what?” he says to Mary, “Let the father of the baby, gather cherries for thee.”

And ouch. A comeback so perfect that if the whole thing hadn’t been made up by a medieval mystery playwright, it’d be hard not to be suspicious that Joseph only thought it up later, and WISHED he’d said it.

But ya. It was petty, he was angry, he spit it out, and he meant it. There’s the anger, there’s the cruelty, there’s Mary’s vulnerability and his power to exploit it, all laid out in an ugly inescapable mess.

But not so fast. Because “Up spoke Baby Jesus,” the carol goes on, “from in Mary’s womb.” It’s not just the Bible story that’s subversive. You want the father of the baby, Joseph, gathering for Mary those cherries? Then feast your eyes on some trinitarian complexity, as Up speaks Baby Jesus to the swirl of Godness still OUTSIDE Mary’s womb…

With “bend down the highest branches” till they touch Mary’s hand. “Oh look,” she says to Joseph, “I have cherries by command.” 

Don’t even try to keep up. Everything about the Christmas story is subversive. We encircle it in long-held traditions, we lean into its comfort and its warmth and those familiar favourite carols – and we get to. These things matter. They give our lives shape and story and meaning.

But everything about the Christmas story is subversive. All of it overturns what IS with what could be and what should be. Thanks be to God, who wants us to digress. Amen.