Bible
Study: Isaiah 23, 5 to 8. And Matthew 1, 18 to 24.
The central
character of our Gospel passage this morning is Joseph. God had selected him
out of all the men that lived at that time to be the foster father of Jesus. He
was chosen to be the one responsible for the moral formation of the new born
king of Israel. And he never knew the great task ahead of him, all he was
thinking was how he would marry a young virgin to whom he had been betrothed.
He must have
had dreams of how he would raise up his own kids and build his family being a successful
carpenter. To his greatest surprise, he soon learnt that his beautiful virgin
was pregnant and this was totally unacceptable to him. Even our Gospel passage
today described Joseph as a JUST MAN. Here comes a man of justice, a man who
believed in fairness and equity, a man who would not hurt anybody deliberately,
a man who believed that nobody has a right to hurt him since he has not done anyone
harm.
His own
kind of justice was not vindictive however. He did not believe in public disgrace
as some people do. This was his greatest quality. When he saw Mary was already
pregnant, he resolved to send her away quietly so as not to put her to shame. This
is something we need to learn from him. We call ourselves Christians, yet 90%
of the time, we go about discussing the evils that others have done. We take
pleasure in gossiping about other people, thereby destroying their name and making
a caricature of them. We love to see people publicly disgraced. At times, we
even take part in mob action wherein jungle justice is applied without prior
investigation.
Dear friends,
Joseph’s desire to act justly without publicly putting Mary to shame is a clear
example of Justice mixed with Mercy. And honestly, Justice without Mercy is
equal to WICKEDNESS. No matter what somebody has done, he or she deserves some
degree of mercy without there are certain things that words alone cannot
explain. There are things that people do but they are not completely
responsible for. How else do we explain a lady’s pregnancy who claims she has
not been sleeping around? There is no rational explanation for this. In the
same way, there are at times, people do certain things that deserve the full
wrath of punishment yet they themselves do not seem to understand why they fell
victim to such. Justice always requires mercy.
In the
end, God commanded Joseph to go ahead and marry Mary, then he was told in a
dream that this was no ordinary pregnancy, that this child is the long awaited
Messiah. Note that it wasn’t difficult for Joseph to believe because he already
had a merciful heart towards Mary. If he was of the type of people who believed
in jungle justice, the moment he came around and saw Mary pregnant, he would
immediately blow the trumpet and call the town together, drag her to the public
square and stone her for putting him to shame.
At times,
we have to be very patient with people. At times we need to be merciful like
the father even when people are clearly in the wrong. If this is all this
jubilee year of mercy achieves in us, then we have achieved a lot.
Let us
Pray:
Lord
Jesus, help me to be merciful towards people even when I am aware of their faults
and give eyes that see beyond the surface when people do things I don’t like. Amen.
Good morning.
Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you.
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