Let the words my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.

Amen.

So for those of you who know me, you might know that St.

Joseph is an important saint in my life.

I first knew of him, as most do, as simply the adopted father of Jesus.

Hardly mentioned, hardly thought about.

He helps Mary, and then he helps Mary and Jesus in their travels, and then quietly disappears from the gospel story.

Later in ministry in the jail and on the streets, I came to know him as St.

Joseph, terror of demons.

And finally, in the last few years of my work at Christ Our Anchor, I’ve come to know him as St.

Joseph, the worker.

In my walk with Christ, St.

Joseph has been inescapable, it would seem.

I set out, I’m sad to admit, saint shopping.

I wanted a cool saint to be my patron, maybe some sort of obscure German saint or a saint with a really cool story or maybe killing a dragon or some really cool miracle, a bishop martyr who stood up to the Romans or something like that.

But those are not the qualities God needed me to reflect on.

From becoming a husband to fatherhood to encountering the demonic realm to management to thinking about work, God has sent St.

Joseph across my path numerous times.

His solid, quiet witness has strengthened me through some rough times and has pointed me to the Christ child who fights our battles.

And these days, I’m not even sure if I would consider St.

Joseph my patron saint because to me, he’s much more than that.

He’s more of a friend or an older brother who I look up to and try to emulate.

He’s on my socks I wear every Sunday.

He’s on my bookmarks and his pictures are all over my office and he prays for me continually.

So it is an understatement to say that I was excited when I saw what the gospel reading for this week was.

It was St.

Joseph, my guy, and I could talk about him for hours and hours and hours.

But thankfully for you, I don’t plan on standing here for hours.

The church and our bishop call those who stand in this pulpit to proclaim the word made flesh.

And that is what I intend to do today.

Though, I will say, if you do want a longer and deeper conversation about St.

Joseph, do join me for a drink sometime because I would very much love to talk for hours about St.

Joseph.

This Thursday in a Bible study I lead, I had a bit of a Father Michael raw and unfiltered moment.

It was, as is often the case this time of year for me, the topic of secular Christmas.

And in my unfiltered moment, I railed against the secular world profaning the symbols of the church for the purpose of commerce.

And I complained about the feasting and advent without pausing to wonder why God became man is so amazing.

Without a thought about what we’re being saved from and saved for.

Feasting while we await the Savior’s birth, but promptly stopping the celebration at the exact moment of his arrival.

Ignoring Christ when he’s arrived and starts making demands upon our lives.

Ignoring the Baptist call to awake and see reality by plastering over it with festive paper.

And today’s reading honestly presents us with a similar problem.

It speaks of the birth of Christ, and it would be so easy to skip today and move right along to Christmas.

We could talk about the prophecies Jesus fulfills.

We could talk about his prophetic names.

We could talk about the sweet little baby, and all of that is true, and all of that is great.

But all of that is also Christmas, which is not until Thursday.

And today is the fourth Sunday of Advent, and the church in her wisdom has more for us to learn.

We are still in the tension of not yet Christmas.

We are still preparing for the feast, working towards a fuller understanding of the intensity with which we should soon be feasting.

And St.

Joseph is the perfect saint for such a season.

We don’t know much about him.

He’s there at the beginning of the Gospels and then quietly disappears.

We don’t know when he died.

We don’t have many stories about him.

We only know of him through the results we see of his work as a father, husband, and carpenter.

Joseph is silent but present throughout the life and ministry of Jesus.

And the church’s representations of St.

Joseph fit perfectly with this pattern.

In our pictures of him in stained glass and icons and paintings, he’s always standing confidently with his carpenter’s square and his belt and his staff and his hand.

And oftentimes he’s stabbing or trampling on a demon.

And all the while in his other arm, he is holding the Christ child.

And in these pictures, his eyes are always fixed upon Jesus, not the demons or anything else going on around him.

And in all the pictures, Jesus' hand is raised in power and blessing.

It is clear in these images that it is not the staff of Joseph that defeats the demons, but the power of Christ working through it.

Jesus is why St.

Joseph is confident.

Jesus is why St.

Joseph is silent.

Joseph has nothing to say but look to him.

And I think it’s the fact that there are no real stories about Joseph that make him such a powerful witness of the faith.

You see, he’s the terror of demons, not because of powerful stories in the Gospels about Joseph battling dark forces with Jesus.

That’s not in Scripture.

No, he’s the terror of demons because of what we read in today’s Gospel reading.

When called upon to do a hard thing, Joseph said yes and quietly went about what was needed of him.

He trusted and obeyed God.

He did hard things and he didn’t complain about it.

He’s a worker and he’s the terror of all dark things because of this quiet confidence and faith.

In our focus on the miracle of the virgin birth, of the power of Mary’s yes, we often overlook the reality of what everyone else was seeing.

Mary is showing up to her rehearsal dinner visibly pregnant.

We look at the story through our eyes and say, oh, how nice and kind and wonderful of Joseph to trust God.

We seem to think that those around them in that time had our modern Christian way of thinking.

You know, how nice of that Joseph boy to forgive Mary and take the child as his own.

But in reality, the people were thinking the child was Joseph’s.

Like he’d messed up presumably as much as Mary.

He wasn’t just bravely obeying God.

He wasn’t just making a bold public examples of what others would interpret as forgiveness.

No, Joseph was bringing shame upon himself as well.

He was willingly allowing others to think ill of him.

In a small village as a working carpenter in a shame-based culture, Joseph willingly and quietly took the risk of great shame.

He trusted God that if he lost clients because of what they thought of him, that he would be provided more.

He trusted God that this crazy thing that happened to Mary was true.

He trusted God with the worries and complexities of one, raising a child that wasn’t his own, and two, having that child be the Messiah.

Marital stress and career troubles and fatherhood in a really tricky situation.

And Joseph faced all of this.

The angel told him, do not fear.

So Joseph did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.

That is the quiet, confident faith in God that Joseph points us towards.

And I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve been put in near paralysis with just a fraction of these life challenges.

I just recently went through a work thing, and for months it was all I talked to God about and many of you about.

And it wasn’t even really that big of a deal.

I wasn’t at risk of being fired.

I wasn’t potentially losing work.

I wasn’t worried about not being able to provide for my family.

I had a small little thing, and it was rough.

But Joseph faced a total life catastrophe, marriage, children, career, money, all of that.

And he just said, yes, Lord, thy will be done.

In Advent, I think we are called to sit with the reality of the world.

Death, sin, evil, and corruption surround us.

God declares to us that he hates these things.

He judges them, and he promises that he intends to burn away the pain and evil and to refine us into beautiful, pure, shining gold.

He promises this, but not yet.

For reasons we do not yet understand, it is still not time.

He came as a man, defeated sin and death on the cross, and rose the third day.

But then he founded his church and told us to wait for part two.

And so we’re left with two options.

We can do as the world and pretend that everything’s fine, plaster over the darkness with inexpensive aluminum and artificial lights and all the rest.

We can feast and try to forget.

And I totally get that, because to reflect on the reality of creation as she now stands is a frightful thing.

To look at death and destruction, hunger, fear, and all the rest is horrible.

But that is not what Advent calls us to.

That is not what St.

Joseph stands before us to show us towards.

The thing, back to the images the churches makes of Joseph, is that he stands confidently among demons, fire, and the horribleness of the fallen world.

And his face shows no fear, and he’s not running, and he’s not sweating.

He is standing, holding Christ, and looking towards him alone.

He simply trusts in God, quiet, confidently, without show.

And so St.

Joseph is an example to us of what solid faith can be.

It’s not miracles, it’s not bold statements, it’s not heroics.

It’s simply trusting in God and quietly doing what he calls you to do.

Joseph took Mary as his wife.

He trusted God with his career and his client list