Protect the Weak in Superhero Fashion

Matthew 1:18-25 

Whether superheroes or every day people, our families, for better or worse, end up having an incredible impact on us throughout our lives. A wise person once said, “You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family.” Especially at Christmas, we become even more aware of that fact, as we find ourselves at family gatherings with people that we’re not even sure we like that much. Nevertheless, it seems to be an inescapable law of the universe: whether we like it or not, our families profoundly shape the course of our lives. It was true for the Fantastic Four. It’s true for you and me. And believe it or not, it was true for God’s own Son. Let’s see how.

Matthew begins his version of the Christmas story in the 18th verse of the 1st chapter of his gospel. [Read Matt. 1:18–25.] Having read the opening salvo of the Christmas story through Matthew’s eyes, let us recall that so often, when we look at the Christmas story, we do so from whose vantage point? Of course, from the perspective of Mary. It’s natural since the celebration of Christmas is about the birth of a baby and, to say the least, the mother plays a significant role in that process. However, of the two Gospel writers who tell us the Christmas story, Matthew is not the one who tries to do so through Mary’s eyes. After all, he is a Jewish male writing to a Jewish audience.

No, writing from Mary’s perspective was apparently Luke’s job. For when Matthew’s  counterpart, the good doctor, set out to write his gospel, he always seemed to take the part of the lowly and overlooked. That’s why we see parables found only in his gospel like “The Good Samaritan” and “The Prodigal Son.” And that’s why Luke writes his Christmas Story from Mary’s viewpoint. After all, that’s Luke’s modus operandi: defending the outcast! But doesn’t Matthew do the same thing when he tells the Christmas story from Joseph’s viewpoint? Seeing the Christmas story through the eyes of Joseph is not a lens we often look through when viewing the Christmas story. Yet, through Joseph’s perspective, we get a whole different vantage point, a window into the holy life of God’s designated earthly example for His Son of a godly family man.

As Matthew opens the shutter of his camera lens for us, we get the sense that all is not well in Paradise. As was the Jewish custom of those times, when a man and woman were pledged to be married, two stages were involved. First, the kiddushin (“betrothal”), and then the huppah (“marriage ceremony”). The marriage was almost always arranged by the families of the bride and groom, often without consulting them. As a part of the arrangement, a contract was drawn up and sealed by payment of the mohar, the dowry or bride price, which was paid by the groom or his family to the bride’s father. The contract was considered binding as soon as it was made, and the man and woman were considered legally married, even though the marriage ceremony (or huppah) and its consummation often did not take place until as much as a year later. Not only were there absolutely no sexual relations during a Jewish betrothal period, but it was a more binding relationship than our modern engagement process, for it could be broken only by divorce. This is evidenced by the fact that Matthew uses the terms husband for Joseph in verse 19, and wife for Mary in verse 24 even before they are married. That’s how deep the concept of Jewish betrothal ran.

But a proverbial fly had fallen into the ointment. Young Mary (probably some years younger than Joseph) had become pregnant. And as Matthew reports, this was “before they came together.” The only logical conclusion for Joseph to come to was that someone else had been with Mary. And because she was already considered his wife, it was apparent that adultery had been committed. As a result, Joseph’s recourse under the Jewish law was clear. According to Deuteronomy 22:23–24, he had every right to have her taken to the gate of the town and stoned to death. For the text says, “You shall purge the evil from among you.” And no one would have blamed Joseph one bit if he chose to do that very thing. It was the Law.

But Matthew goes on to tell us that because Joseph “was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.” In using the term righteous, Matthew is revealing one of the few things we know about Joseph. To the Jew, righteousness meant being zealous in keeping the Law. But if Joseph was such a man, it would also seem pretty cut and dry as to what his course of action should be. As an ardent follower of the Law, Joseph would certainly have Mary stoned.

But this is not what he did. For, as the entirety of God’s word makes clear, the real heart of the law is hesed, or mercy. Joseph was a righteous man in the truest sense of the word. He did the things that were written on God’s heart, and understood (as Christ would later explain) that the Law was made for the man, not the man for the Law. The true intent of the Law was loving God with all your heart, and showing love to your neighbors by treating them as you would treat yourself. That meant Joseph chose to do the honorable thing. Instead of seeking revenge out of anger, he would quietly seek to divorce Mary, thus allowing her to secretly be taken away where she could have the baby without the public disgrace that certainly would follow in their own hometown.

Friends, even before an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in the next verse, we see in this man the reason why God chose him to be His own Son’s earthly role model. Joseph was a “righteous dude!” Of that, there is no doubt. The angel’s subsequent coming only allowed Joseph to know the truth of his betrothed’s delicate condition, that what had been conceived in her was from the Holy Spirit. And so with heroic measure, Joseph chivalrously obeyed what God had commanded and without hesitation took young Mary as his bride. He could have told the angel to “bug off” and protected his reputation instead. For in the months ahead, I’m sure more than a few tongues wagged as the older women of the town watched Mary’s womb grow and did the math in their heads. Nonetheless, Joseph did not waffle under the pressure. He defended the weak in heroic fashion!

Much of what I am about to surmise, I cannot prove. Nevertheless, I think at least part of the reason Jesus turned out the way He did as a man had to do with the example he had in His earthly father, Joseph. We know that Joseph would take Mary to Bethlehem because of a Roman census and there the infant wonder child would be born in the best place Joseph could find, the ancient equivalent of a barn. We know that at some point soon after, because of the Wise Men’s warning concerning Herod’s evil intentions, Joseph would have to leave everything he had known, including his respectable life as a tradesman, and flee with his family like a fugitive to the far-off land of Egypt. There they would remain for some time until Herod died. Once Joseph and his little family arrived back in Nazareth under much scrutiny and he set up shop, his righteous example spoke louder than words to a young impressionable boy whose eyes followed his father’s every move. Did God know what he was doing when he chose Joseph as Jesus’ earthly father? You bet He did!

What is also intriguing about the first chapter of Matthew’s gospel is what precedes the Christmas story: Emmanuel’s own genealogy. I know that if I were to read all 42 generations most of you would get glazed-eyes, so I won’t! I only ask that you notice one part of the history: the twelfth name of the 42! Boaz, father of Obed (verse 5). Do any of you recall who Boaz was and what he did? In the book of Ruth, Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi, left the land of Moab after both of their husbands died and made their way back to Naomi’s kinfolk, who lived in Bethlehem. You may recall that even though Ruth was a foreigner from a despised people, the Moabites, and had no one to provide for her,  a certain man by the name of Boaz showed her mercy in her helpless condition and became her “kinsman-redeemer” and husband.

According to Old Testament Law, a “kinsman-redeemer” was responsible for protecting the interests of needy members of the extended family, whether providing an heir for a brother who had died, redeeming land that a poor relative had sold outside the family, redeeming a relative who had been sold into slavery, or avenging the murder of a relative.

You can read for yourself the story of Boaz’s noble and heroic actions in the book of Ruth. There you will be inspired by one who was a heroic kinsmen to Joseph—and thus to Jesus. Boaz, like Joseph consistently modeled protecting the weak in heroic fashion. God chose His Son’s earthly family, and He made sure to include those kinds of godly examples who would guide His son toward one day becoming our Kinsman-Redeemer, dying upon a Roman cross to pay the price for our redemption that we ourselves could not.

Friends, when Jesus’ own brother James, who himself had to have been greatly impacted

by the example of his earthly father Joseph, wanted to tell us what real faith looked like when it was lived out in a tangible way, he said: “True religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: To look after orphans and widows in their distress” (Jam. 1:27). Do you think he came by such wisdom in a vacuum? Or could it be that by his father’s earthly example, he came to see that such a lifestyle was at the heart of godly faith.

Dear ones, in no way do I desire to deify or glorify Joseph beyond what should be his rightful place. No, his is simply an oft-overlooked perspective. Can we overestimate the part such an example played in Jesus’ ministry, just as it would in any of our own lives? If we over-spiritualize Jesus’ childhood, and say that all of his learning happened directly from the Holy Spirit to the exclusion of Joseph’s influence, we not only diminish the validity of the doctrine of the incarnation—that Jesus was fully human as well as fully man—but we it also devalue Joseph’s righteous example ordained by God.

Even in the world of superheroes we see the incredible influence childhood has on one’s life. A few years ago, DC Comics came out with a special edition of high quality comics that essentially traced the origins of such luminaries in their stable of superheroes as Superman, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, and Batman. To understand the origins of each superhero is to understand the essence of who they are and what they have become. As we did previously with Superman, in the coming weeks we will see how this truth plays out in other heroes’ lives, but for now let’s look at the origins of Batman.

In the Batman special edition entitled “War On Crime,” the novel-like comic opens by depicting the tragic underpinnings of a childhood oath made the night his parents were murdered outside of a theater in a dark alley. It reads: “I am Batman, a grim soul fighting a relentless war on crime… To prepare myself for the battle, I develop my mind, mastering science and criminology. I push myself to the limits of human endurance, training my body to physical perfection. All the while driven by the pain of my worst memory—the night a criminal stepped from the shadows and tore my world apart. In a heartbeat I had lost the two most important people in my life. It was this loss that changed me forever… The night a grief-stricken eight-year-old boy made a solemn oath he would never forget. And since that day, part of me has always been bound to the place they buried my parents and to the memories there of innocent people destroyed by crime.”

Obviously, it goes without saying that Batman’s alter ego, Bruce Wayne, was profoundly impacted by his childhood. In fact, so much so, that it directed the rest of his life toward the purpose of protecting the weak as a superhero. The true-to-life example makes me wonder, though, about those vital life-shaping moments in Jesus’ upbringing. They may not have included the tragic death of his parents at the hands of a criminal. But I’ll bet the enduring example of his daddy, faithfully protecting him and his mother during some defenseless times, would forever change him. How do I know that? Again, I cannot prove it. But, I wonder if, on that day recorded in John 8 when Jesus came face to face with an adulterous woman that the Pharisees brought to him to stone, whether he didn’t reflect back upon the memory of his dad and draw strength from his heroic example. I wonder whether, as he wrote something with his finger in the sand, his mind pictured the time his father made the loving decision to not have his mother stoned while the growing seed of His wondrous presence grew within her. And I wonder if such a thought continually abode with Him as he sought to protect the weak in heroic fashion.

One of my own heroes of the faith was saved by reading how Jesus protected the adulterous woman of John 8 in such heroic fashion. Since I was a 16-year-old teenager, some 25 years ago, I have been deeply impacted by this individual. He was a Messianic Jew by the name of Art Katz. Art tells of his conversion to Christ from a life of jaded agnosticism in his autobiography, Ben Israel: Odyssey of a Modern Jew. He traveled the world in search of truth and one day, while on a Greek ship en route to Corinth with nothing else to do, he pulled out a New Testament given to him by a friend before he embarked. Out of boredom he began to read and before he knew it became enthralled with the central figure of the Gospels—a man named Jesus. In Him, he found a kindred spirit as He clashed with the religious authorities. In fact, He seemed always able to confound those who contested Him. And so, as Katz read on, slowly this Jesus became a sort of newfound Hero to him.

He tells of his conversion as follows, “When I came to the episode of a woman taken in adultery in John 8, my pulse quickened as I lived the drama. Here I found a clear-cut case of dispensing justice. The law said that the woman must be stoned. Yet Jesus had been teaching forgiveness. . . . Jesus was trapped. I sensed the relish of those who stood around Him, having ambushed Him into an unanswerable predicament. What could He say? I closed the book, not wanting to see my newfound Hero destroyed. His manliness. His keenness of mind. His courage. His deep insight into life. His compassion and love for the downtrodden.

“All was to be demolished, it seemed, by a group of self-righteous religionists who had plotted this scheme to get rid of Him because He was threatening their Pharisaic codes of justice and righteousness. My heart actually palpitated, and sweat oozed from the palms of my hands as I fancied the men surrounding Him, their eyes ablaze with hatred and envy, spittle running from their mouths as they gloated over his quandry . . . What would I say in Jesus’ place? I searched my mind, exhausting my resources of logic and reason and finally conceded there was no answer. Fully expecting the worst, I reopened the book and read on. I found Jesus bending over, poking His finger in the dirt. . . . Then He looked up, His eyes meeting the eyes of His adversaries. I could see their contorted faces against His quiet control . . . His expression—pure and resolute.

“‘Let him without sin cast the first stone,’ I gasped. A sword had been plunged deep into my being. It was numbing, shocking, yet thrilling because the answer was so utterly perfect. It defied cerebral examination. It cut across every major issue I had anguished upon in my life. Truth. Justice. Righteousness. Integrity. I knew that what I had read transcended human knowledge. It had to be Divine. In one instant those words leaped off the page and engraved themselves upon my heart. When the shock waves subsided, I sat dumbfounded, realizing that I knew God was and is. . . . Not a God of our own making. Not a God far away. Not a God who can be contained in the parchments and scrolls of the Ark. Not a God who can be boxed in by institutional religion. But a God who lives. . . .”

Friends, the simple truth of the Gospels that Art Katz discovered that day, as have many

others before and since, is the fact that the God of all the universe loved us weak, defenseless creatures enough to put on flesh and draw near to us, beginning with His birth which we celebrate at Christmas. And in becoming one of us, He lived a fully human life, having to have His diapers changed, and having to learn how to walk and talk, as well as learning from the example of a righteous earthly father. God knew what He was doing after all. For Joseph’s Son would then love you and me enough to live such a heroic life Himself that He might show us, in the flesh, the way God desires for us to live. And as if that wasn’t enough, He then became our Kinsman-Redeemer, thus paying an eternal debt that we ourselves could not. And, in so doing, this Hero for all time protected us, the weak, in superhero fashion.

In retrospect, in thankfulness for this Gift too wonderful for words, and in honor of His heroic example, we owe Him nothing less than to seek to live such a life ourselves. For do we not ourselves, at times, grow rather pharisaical? Do we not at times view the poor as deserving of their lowly status because, we reason, “They are not willing to help themselves”? Or do we view those with AIDS or unwed, pregnant teenager as deserving of their condition because, we reason, “They brought it on themselves”? What if Joseph had taken that line of reasoning with his betrothed? If so, what might have happened? As Jesus was able to say in a similar situation, “Let him without sin, cast the first stone.” Friends, let me urge you during this season of God’s great mercy called Christmas to seek to find practical ways that you might protect the weak in superhero fashion.

Then, at least once before Christmas, go out of your way to do them! Step out of your comfort zone! Reach out and touch the weak! After all, like Jesus, you and I do come from a spiritual lineage which includes a long line of heroic kinsmen. Will you continue the line? Then first discover your true Hero. Follow in the footsteps of a Hero truly worth following, the Amazing Emmanuel. Stop casting stones and start touching lives. Be a hero to someone in need today.