Dove Sermons

Sermon Based on Matthew 1:18-25

Most of the stories we tell at Christmas are designed to be gentle.

Soft lighting. Familiar lines. A predictable story arc that ends with a baby, a song, and a sense that everything is going to be okay. We like our Christmas narratives to reassure us, to settle us, to confirm that God shows up in ways that feel safe and sentimental.

The Gospel of Matthew does not cooperate with that impulse.

Matthew opens Christmas with tension. With law and consequence. With a man staring down the collapse of the future he thought he had secured. Before there is wonder, there is risk. Before there is joy, there is a decision that could cost someone their standing, their reputation, their sense of what righteousness even means.

Matthew’s birth story doesn’t begin in a stable. It begins in a crisis.

Which may be exactly why this story belongs to a congregation like ours, gathered not as holiday visitors but as people committed to walking together through the long, ordinary, complicated life of faith. Matthew tells this story not to create nostalgia, but to shape disciples—people who will have to decide what faithfulness looks like when God moves in ways we did not anticipate.

So before angels sing and names are given, Matthew invites us to sit with a question that still feels uncomfortably current

What do you do when doing the “right thing” no longer seems as clear as it once did—and God seems to be asking something else entirely?

That question isn’t answered in theory. It’s answered in the life of a man named Joseph.

Joseph’s Christmas

Matthew’s Christmas story belongs to Joseph. Which already makes it strange.

Joseph usually stands off to the side in our telling of the story. Necessary, but quiet. A background character. But, in Matthew, he’s the main lens. This is what Christmas looks like from the vantage point of a man who thought he knew how his life was going to go.

Joseph is engaged to Mary. And engagement in that culture wasn’t casual. It was legally binding. The first stage of marriage. Breaking it required divorce.

And before they live together, before the ceremony, before the future unfolds the way it’s supposed to, Mary is found to be pregnant.

Matthew tells us plainly: Joseph doesn’t know it’s by the Holy Spirit.

All he knows is that something has gone terribly wrong.

The law gives him options. Public accusation. Shame. Severe punishment. But Matthew tells us Joseph is righteous. And righteousness, at least at first, looks like mercy.

So he decides to dismiss her quietly.

That phrase matters.

Joseph is trying to do the right thing without destroying another person. He’s trying to hold justice and compassion together. He’s trying to obey the law while minimizing harm. He’s trying to walk away with integrity intact.

And then God interrupts him.

An angel comes to Joseph in a dream. And the angel says, in essence:
Your understanding is incomplete. This situation is stranger, deeper, and holier than you know.

“Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. What is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”

Which means Joseph now has a choice.

He can cling to the righteousness he understands…
or step into a righteousness that will cost him reputation, certainty, and control.

And Joseph does something remarkable.

He obeys.

No argument. No recorded words. No bargaining with God.
He wakes up—and he does exactly what he’s told.

Righteousness Reimagined

This is the first time Matthew uses the word righteousness in his Gospel. And it won’t be the last.

From here forward, righteousness will be redefined again and again—not as rigid rule-keeping, but as responsive faithfulness to what God is doing now, even when it disrupts what we thought God would do.

Joseph thought righteousness meant ending the relationship quietly.
God reveals that righteousness now means staying.

Joseph thought righteousness meant minimizing damage.
God reveals that righteousness now means absorbing it.

Joseph becomes the first person in Matthew’s Gospel to learn that God’s mercy often moves faster than our categories of justice.

And that’s uncomfortable.

Because Joseph risks becoming the very thing the law was designed to prevent: a man complicit in scandal. A man whose story doesn’t add up. A man whose obedience looks like failure from the outside.

Matthew is already teaching us something essential about discipleship:
Following God may require us to be misunderstood.

Adoption and Belonging

The angel gives Joseph one concrete instruction:
“You are to name him Jesus.”

In that culture, naming wasn’t simply symbolic, it was legal. It was adoption. It was lineage. It was identity.

By naming the child, Joseph claims him.

This is how Matthew solves the theological puzzle: How can Jesus be Son of God and Son of David? Through adoption.

Joseph isn’t Jesus’ biological father. But he is his real father. He gives Jesus a name, a place in the family, a place in the story. Through Joseph, Jesus is woven into the line of David—not by blood, but by faithfulness.

Which is fitting.

Because Matthew will go on to show us a Messiah who gathers people not by purity or pedigree, but by grace. Blind beggars. Foreign women. Broken families. Sinners and saints stitched together into something new.

The new creation doesn’t begin with perfect origins.
It begins with chosen belonging.

What’s in a Name?

The angel says, “You are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Jesus—Yeshua—“The Lord saves.”

This wasn’t a rare name. Parents gave it to their children as a prayer. As a hope. As a protest against empire and exile and loss.

But Matthew sharpens the meaning: from their sins.

He’s speaking from Israel’s own story—where sin isn’t just individual failure, but communal brokenness. Systems bent out of shape. Leaders who exploit. People who forget who they are.

To be saved from sin is to be restored to right relationship—with God, with neighbor, with creation.

Which is why Matthew immediately adds another name.

“Look! A virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel.”

God with us.

Not God above us.
Not God waiting at the end of history.
God with us—inside the mess, the ambiguity, the fear, the unfinished plans.

Matthew borrows this line from Isaiah as a lens through which to see.

In Isaiah’s day, the nation was facing invasion. Anxiety was thick. Political alliances were crumbling. And the prophet said: A child will be born. God is still with you.

That child could be a sign of deliverance, or judgment, depending on how the people responded.

Matthew is doing the same thing here.

Jesus’ presence forces a choice. God’s nearness is never neutral. Emmanuel comforts—but Emmanuel also disrupts.

God With Us—Whether We’re Ready or Not

We tend to use “God with us” as a comfort phrase. And it is that.

But in Matthew, it’s also a claim about transformation.

God with us means the old age is passing.
God with us means the world is being remade.
God with us means things won’t stay the same.

The Spirit who hovered over the waters in Genesis now stirs life in Mary’s womb. This is creation language again. God is doing something new—not by escaping the world, but by entering it more deeply than ever.

And notice where God chooses to enter.

Not a palace.
Not a temple.
A household crisis.
A marriage on the brink.
A decision that could go either way.

The incarnation happens in the ordinary terrain of human life.

Which means we don’t have to look for God only in dramatic moments. Sometimes God shows up in decisions we’d rather not have to make. In conversations we hoped to avoid. In responsibilities we didn’t choose.

Joseph didn’t ask for this calling.
Mary didn’t campaign for this role.
And yet—this is where God’s new creation begins.

A Community Shaped by the Spirit

Matthew also wants us to notice the Spirit.

The same Spirit who animates Jesus’ birth will animate Jesus’ baptism.
The same Spirit who leads Jesus into the wilderness will sustain the disciples when they face resistance.
The same Spirit at work here will later be promised to the church.

Which means this story isn’t just about what happened then.
It’s about how God continues to work now.

The Spirit has a habit of showing up in places we wouldn’t expect.
In people we underestimate. In movements that don’t look impressive at first glance.

If God can begin the renewal of creation in an unmarried peasant woman and a confused carpenter, then perhaps God can work through communities like ours—imperfect, learning, often unsure.

The Courage to Stay

Joseph could have walked away.

No one would have blamed him.
The law allowed it.
Common sense supported it.
Self-preservation demanded it.

But Joseph stays.

He stays with Mary.
He stays with the child.
He stays with a story that doesn’t make him look good.

That might be the most important word for a church like ours in this season. Stay.

Stay present when things get complicated.
Stay faithful when obedience costs more than expected.
Stay open when God disrupts our plans.

Advent is not just about waiting—it’s about readiness. And readiness doesn’t necessarily mean having answers. It means being willing to act when God speaks, even if we don’t fully understand what’s unfolding.

Joseph didn’t get a roadmap. He got a next step. And he took it.

Creation Continues

Matthew’s Gospel begins with a holy creation, and it ends with a promise.

Jesus will tell his disciples, “Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Emmanuel at the beginning.
Emmanuel at the end.

God with us in birth. God with us in death. God with us in resurrection.
God with us in the long, ordinary work of discipleship.

Which means Christmas isn’t just something we remember. It’s something we live into.

The new creation has already begun. The Spirit is already at work. God is already with us.

The question Advent leaves us with is the same one Joseph faced:

When God moves in ways we didn’t expect, will we quietly step away…
or will we stay, name the child, and trust that God is doing something new right in the middle of our lives?

Amen.

Sermon By: Rev. Dave Wasson