What do you make of today’s gospel? It is a beautiful story – but does it make sense to you? I’ll be honest: sometimes it does not make sense to me. It feels too easy. Too clean. Too simple. Mary is a virgin, engaged to Joseph, and she’s pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Joseph plans to dismiss her quietly. An angel appears in a dream and tells him not to be afraid. Jospeh wakes up, does what the angel says, and Jesus is born.
That’s it.
No arguments. No tears. No fear. No confusion. No anger. No struggle. No words at all from Mary and Joseph.
Who lives in that kind of world? Because I don’t. And I suspect you don’t either.
My doubts about this gospel are not about God. I believe in the Spirit’s creative power. I believe God speaks through dreams and messengers. And I am not troubled by Mary’s virginity – I understand it as a theological truth pointing to God’s initiative. What troubles me is that the story feels sanitized. It reads like a Hallmark version of something that must have been painfully messy.
Where is Mary the frightened young woman? Where is Jospeh with his broken heart? Where are the questions, the misunderstanding, the shame, the fear?
So, let’s read between the lines. What if the story really went like this?
Joseph comes home and discovers Mary is pregnant. His heart breaks. He does not understand. He is angry, confused, ashamed. He asks, “Mary, what have you done?” She insists she is innocent but cannot explain how this happened. People talk. Rumors spread. Nothing make sense. It’s a mess!
Joseph does not know who to believe or what to do. And so, overwhelmed, he plans to dismiss her quietly. That version sounds more real to me. Because I’ve known that kind of messiness in my life. Haven’t you? Messiness in relationships, Messiness in faith. Messiness in trying to trust God when nothing adds up.
Matthew gives us the theological truth. But maybe he leaves out the mess because we already know it too well. Because if we are honest, we do the same thing: we edit our own stories, we sanitize our lives, we quietly dismiss what is painful, confusing, or shameful.
Joseph wakes up, and the gospel says, “He did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.” That one sentence carries enormous weight. Joseph chooses trust over certainty. He chooses presence over escape. He chooses to stay.
And because Joseph stays, Jesus is born into that household, into that imperfect situation, into that complicated family.
Matthew tells us that Jesus will be called Emmanuel – God with us. Not God with us once everything is figured out. Not God with us once life is clean and orderly. But God with us right in the middle of confusion, risk, and unfinished stories.
Advent is a season of preparation, but the preparation God desires is not perfection. It is honesty. It is naming the mess instead of hiding it. It is choosing not to dismiss our lives quietly, but to stay present and trust that God is already there. Because if Jesus is not born into the messiness of our lives, then what difference does his birth really make?
I suspect you are here today for the same reason I am. Life is not always clean. Faith is not always simple. And sometimes our best efforts still leave us with a mess. What if Emmanuel – God with us – begins right there? It did for Mary and Joseph. Why not for us?