December 21, 2025

Friends, as I mentioned at the beginning of Advent, I am entering my fifth year with you all. And so, inevitably, there are some stories and some illustrations that get repeated. But, frankly, some stories bear repeating. So it is with the convent of the Sisters of Nazareth in, you guessed it, of all places, Nazareth, Israel.

The convent is within minutes of two of the most important Christian sites in the whole of the Holy Land. The first is the grandiose Roman Catholic Basilica of the Annunciation that sits atop the cave home associated with Anna and Joachim, the parents of Mary, and which embraces the tradition that Mary was at home when the angel Gabriel visited her. The other is the Greek Orthodox, or as we would say Eastern Orthodox, Church of St. Gabriel, also often referred to as the Church of the Annunciation, that sits atop the ancient yet still flowing community well in Nazareth, which, not surprisingly, embraces the tradition that Mary was at the well drawing water when Gabriel visited her. You've probably seen images of both of these depictions at one time or another in your life.

But the Sisters of Nazareth convent, nestled among these two points, embedded as it is in the ancient terra sancta of first-century Nazareth, has its own profound story of importance and Indiana Jones level of intrigue. When the sisters bought the property in the 1880s, the property was nothing more than a craggy slope of rocks and pasture land. And they were told by everyone in the community, though, that they were buying the house and tomb of the righteous man. This was very strange because houses and tombs do not go together in Middle Eastern culture. There just wasn't anything there.

But the abbess was intrigued. And the long story short is that in the 140 years since, the sisters, partnering with archaeologists, have in fact discovered an ancient site of veneration that is incredibly a first-century Jewish home with a Jewish rock-cut tomb in the side and lower half of the dwelling. The thing that maximizes the truly incomprehensible reality of this knowledge is that the dig also determined that there had been a Byzantine chapel and then a Crusader-era chapel, but that all of it, everything, had been destroyed by a fire and covered in a rockfall during the 13th century, the 1200s. This means that truly the most likely explanation is that an oral tradition about this location and its significance was preserved by the people of Nazareth for at least 900 years.

And who is this righteous man? The Greek adjective here is dikaios. And it's a word that outside of Luke's gospel appears nowhere else in the gospel tradition except in this passage in Matthew in reference to Joseph. And even accounting for Luke's usage, which refers to Joseph but then also uses the same term to refer to Jesus, the only man anywhere near Nazareth to be described as righteous other than Jesus is Joseph himself.

What is this righteousness about? One way of thinking about it is the context of first-century Nazareth. It was in Galilee, Galilee being this multicultural crossroads of commerce and transit, a place that had influences and people from all around the world. But it was a law-abiding Jewish enclave. The material culture of the place that archaeologists have been able to uncover and determine is that they were rigidly connected to Judea in a time and place in which items of significance came from all over the world. They, in their material artifacts, in their possessions, remained intimately connected to Judea. It would be like only ever buying things explicitly from Maryland in a culture and in a context where we have goods that exist around us from all over the world.

It's so very interesting that we have this complexity of a house and a tomb together, which seems a clear violation of such law-abiding practices. That something more, no matter who we associate this house with, something more is going on than meets the eye. Something more than what was standard in that culture meets the eye. But what do we know of Joseph's righteousness? What can we tell from what the author of St. Matthew's Gospel tells us about Joseph? He was righteous and he was good. And I don't want to say that those two things cannot be the same. But I think there's an important element of his righteousness that is fundamentally his goodness.

As we hear in the narrative, being a good, law-abiding observer of Jewish custom, he is looking for his out—his reasonable, appropriate, correct out in this betrothal to Mary. She has violated the betrothal agreement, and he is looking to dismiss her. But very likely, that wellspring of compassion and love that is within Joseph is compelling him to do it quietly, do it in a way that doesn't maximize her alienation from the community, that minimizes the difficulty that she might face. He's trying to do the right thing on all sides.

And then he has this visitation from God in a dream, who tells him to fear not, to continue the betrothal, to take her as his wife, that all will be made right. You know, I was struck this year in reading this passage and preparing for this Sunday because of the new Bible study that we have inaugurated. We read through Genesis these past two weeks. And the latter quarter of Genesis, the entire last 10 to 12 chapters, is just about the story of the Old Testament Joseph. And there are so many parallels between these two Josephs.

Joseph of the patriarchal age, Joseph the son of Jacob, is the only one of the patriarchs in the whole of the Genesis text who is not clearly, at some level, problematic. He hasn't done something kind of underhanded or a little bit sketchy. Now, as a couple of people in the Bible study pointed out, he does seem maybe to not have the best of tact. Being the younger brother telling his brothers, "Hey, guess what? I had this dream that I'm going to lord over you at one point"—not exactly the best thing to tell your older siblings. But he never does anything explicitly immoral or underhanded. He's a man of righteousness, but a righteousness that exudes compassion and love.

We hear later on in the story, and Joseph too, in the patriarchal age, has three dreams. Just like Joseph, Jesus' father, has three dreams. Joseph has his dream. He then interprets the dreams for the baker and the cupbearer. And then he finally interprets the dream for Pharaoh. Hallmarks, moments of impact in his life. But even after he interprets this dream for the cupbearer, the cupbearer forgets him, leaves him languishing in prison. And we're never given any indication that Joseph is angry or resentful about that, that he seeks retribution for having been left behind. He trusts and abides in God's time, and God's time restores him, and not only restores him, but puts him in a place of great influence and power. And when his brothers then come to him, he, in the long arc of the story, receives them in love, supports them as they transition from Canaan into Egypt.

But he's a man. He's a man through his righteousness, through his goodness, through his love and compassion, who does the work of the kingdom in the world around him. And does it unassumingly. Does it without arrogance. Does it without pomp and circumstance. And yet, too, at the end of the day, what is the account of Joseph, but that he goes on to his ancestors? Because if we look just previously in the section of Matthew chapter 1 from our gospel today, the line to Jesus runs through Judah. Joseph is not the progenitor of the generations. Joseph just lives his life, cares for his brothers, is the man who shows up when the need is greatest, and then goes on to his eternal reward.

And Joseph, the father of Jesus, the earthly father of Jesus, similarly, on three occasions, hears the voice of God in dreams. And unlike Zechariah, who laughs at the birth of his son John, who can't believe the work that God is doing in his life, Joseph accepts it. He accepts this commitment to Mary. He accepts the call into Egypt. And he accepts the return when things are safe. And then he disappears. He is the man of righteousness who in that righteous goodness leads a life of service, of love, of compassion.

And friends, today as we enter into these final moments of our Advent journey, so many of us in the great course of our lives will likely experience similar fates. We will be those people loved and beloved by this community, remembered in our own families. As the great Orthodox liturgy talks about having a memory eternal. But in the larger arc of our human story, many of us will journey our specific lives, our specific paths, our specific walks with God in ways that won't have these cosmic impacts. But our lives of quiet commitment, quiet and loving service, careful and conscientious righteousness.

We hear our invitation today in our collect to be those people of committed and quiet service: "Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son, Jesus Christ, at his coming may find in us a mansion prepared for himself, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever." That our lives are not shaped by removal, not shaped by simply being people of goodwill without any other impact in the world around us. We are called to act always in the proclamation and the living out—the embodiment—of the good news. But in that, we are not called to be obsessed with that impact. Not called to be people of great and grandiose visions for ourselves, but often those people of quiet, compassionate, loving righteousness.

In our best, we are people humbly and mercifully committed to the work that God is calling us to do. So today, as we encounter the story of Joseph, as we prepare to enter this time of welcoming God's incarnate into the world anew, may we work on that purity of conscience so that we can be the humble servants of God like our great forebearer, St. Joseph, and be those people of righteousness—a righteousness that is a good and loving righteousness. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.