Joseph's Surprise And The Courage To Trust

A wedding plan shatters, a dream interrupts, and a quiet man chooses trust over reputation. We walk with Joseph through the shock of Mary’s pregnancy and the sober mercy of his first response, then pause at the turning point where a nighttime message names the child Emmanuel—God with us. It’s a short passage with long shadows, inviting us to consider how we respond when our own plans collapse and grace arrives uninvited.

We unpack the three-plan arc—A: marry, B: dismiss quietly, C: obey the angel’s call—and why Matthew highlights Joseph as the bridge to Israel’s promises. From there, we shift to the present tense of faith. Instead of angels, most of us encounter God through signs that look ordinary: acts of kindness that protect dignity, justice that repairs what’s broken, comfort that stays with pain, and peace that steadies anxious rooms. The challenge isn’t seeing these moments; it’s refusing the subtle diversions that keep us from acting. “I’m not wired like that.” “It’s not the right time.” “It costs too much.” We name those scripts and offer a better one.

Our guide is Joseph’s simple pattern: see, trust, respond. We offer practical ways to train your eyes during Advent—naming a daily act of kindness, taking one concrete step toward justice, offering comfort to a specific person, making peace by going first. We’re honest about cost and risk, because following the way of Christ can unsettle routines and budgets. Yet the core promise holds: the journey may be difficult, but it is always blessed by presence. Emmanuel doesn’t erase the valley; it keeps us company through it, turning ordinary courage into holy ground.

If you’re longing for a quieter heart and a braver life, this message will meet you there with hope, challenge, and a clear next step. Listen, share with someone who needs courage, and if it resonates, subscribe and leave a review—what faithful step will you take today?

Transcript

Do You Like Surprises

Pastor Darren 0:00

So I'm curious doing sort of an informal poll in this uh season of gift getting and gift uh giving? I'm wondering how people feel about surprises. How many of you like a really good surprise at Christmas? Right? How many of you can give or take a surprise at Christmas? How many of you just really don't like to be surprised? Don't you? I just saw the tech guys, I saw Paul's hand go up and don't give me a surprise. You know, in in in uh in my house, my wife and my daughter really like the surprises, right? They're gonna work over, you know, bending over backwards to make sure nobody knows. I mean, they purposefully don't tell me or my son that certain things are happening because we just have sort of a blind spot. We'll just start talking about it. Not to reveal the surprise, but just because it's in our brain and needs to get out. I don't know if anybody else lives lives in in that uh in that world. But yeah, they get all fussy about making sure everything is wrapped and it's hidden, right? So that surprise is is kept authentic. And I'm over there going, all right, here's what I want to get you, but I don't want to get you the wrong thing. Blink once if you want this. Blink twice if you don't, and then I'll surprise you at Christmas, right? And anybody in that boat, or is that just me? Right? I I you know I hate getting the thing, and then it's all the work, and maybe it's even a big thing with a little bit of money, and I'm like, I want to make sure it's the right thing. That's kind of how I uh kind of how I operate. You know who uh who really doesn't like surprises? The leader or the project manager of anything. Those people do not like surprises. We hate surprises like that. You know who likes to surprise me? Vinnya in the church office. Right? The boiler's broken, you're not gonna have heat for three Sundays. Surprise. No, surprises, right? But that's what Joseph gets, right? He gets this big surprise. And we know who he is. He's the earthly father to Jesus, presumably the man who raised him. We don't have very many stories about Jesus being raised. Uh, but it's one of the interesting things about Joseph is that we don't know a whole lot about him. In our four Gospels, right? The the stories of Jesus, the Gospels, Mark doesn't mention him. In fact, Mark doesn't even have the birth story. Mark gets started when the ministry gets started with the baptism, right? And then John, John only mentions him two times and kind of lightly, just a throwback to, you know, Jesus' father. Luke doesn't do much more than that either. Just reminds us that he had a father and his name is Joseph. Matthew is really where we learn most of what we know about Joseph. And what you just heard is kind of it. That's who Joseph is. Right? And Matthew, it's important to him. He's the guy who wrote the gospel that had the value for connecting to the older faith. Right? And Joseph was the connection to that life, that bloodline that went through David all the way back to the forefathers. So Joseph's important to Matthew because that connection is important to Matthew. But pretty much what we learn about Joseph can be summed up pretty quickly. He set to marry Mary, probably as much as a financial agreement as anything else, right? As a lot of marriages were arranged back then, and it was an arrangement that relied a lot on what was being transacted and what who was going to take care of who and what values were going to be enhanced by that particular marriage. But then she becomes pregnant by the Holy Spirit, right? And what uh we learn is that he's going to dismiss her because, as far as the world outside understands, the Holy Spirit isn't making babies, and Mary just showed up pregnant, and it was a bad thing back then, because that would suggest that she'd been unfaithful, and not only unfaithful, but unfaithful before she was even going to get married, on her way to getting married. So he was going to dismiss her quietly. But then the angel of the Lord comes and lets Joseph know who exactly this is that is coming and who's behind all of this, who is Jesus' divine father. And at that point, uh Jesus, uh Joseph wakes, he agrees to marry, uh to marry Mary. They go with uh to Bethlehem for the birth, and that's pretty much it. That's Joseph's thing in a nutshell. It's kind of interesting that you feel like you got a pretty important role in the movie, and yet that's your little blip in the whole story. I guess I figure, you know, when you're when your other dad is God, you know, when you're just the second dad, you're gonna get second billing. You know, that's just how it's gonna you're gonna move into a support role and not necessarily a starring role anymore. But what we do know is Joseph gets this big surprise. And it's a surprise that's way worse than the boiler going out. It's a surprise that his betrothed is pregnant before they are getting married. Our United Methodist Materials, they develop materials for us to help us get started and thinking about sermons on Sundays, and uh they lay it out pretty good. They lay this whole dilemma out pretty good. Joseph has a plan A, they're gonna get married, and then plan A gets all messed up with that pregnancy. So then plan B, he will dismiss her quietly, which actually is a kind move on Joseph's part in those days and times. He was um, well, it was open to him to actually punish her, and some would say it's even mandated that she be punished for this crime of lack of fidelity. So his dismissing her quietly would have been a kind thing in that context. So then we move to a plan C, right? And uh um that kind of gets set up by the angel visiting Joseph and letting Joseph know who exactly is on his way. Jesus Emmanuel, which means God with us. Jesus is going to be here. He will be the embodiment of God's presence here with us. And he will save us from our sins. Right? Save us from our sins. I know that's a big phrase and it feels really heavy. For many people, that's just a different way of saying we know a God of grace. We know a God of forgiveness, we know a God of love. We're not gonna be defined by the sins that we do, or at least only by those sins. We're gonna be grounded in grace and forgiveness. This is what Jesus is going to mean. This is what Jesus is gonna bring to humanity. And so when Joseph hears that, he gets back into this plan C, which is really plan A, to marry Mary, and they head off to Bethlehem. To me, the point of the story for us, or at least the message that we might pull today, is that Joseph sees the signs of God's presence. In this case, he gets he gets a dream where an angel appears to him, right, in this dream and actually tells him what God wants him to hear. It's a sign for him that points to God's presence, points to God's uh uh omniscience and omnipotence. And then he does maybe the most important thing Joseph responds with faith, with trust. The angel came to him, he didn't have to do what the angel said, he didn't have to trust something that happened while he was asleep, but he did. He recognized God's presence and he responded in faith. It sounds pretty simple and straightforward, but how good are we at doing that same thing? We get signs too, don't we? We get signs of God's presence in our world. They may not come as angels in our dreams, but they come. If we're talking about evidence of the presence of God in the world, for us Christians, we recognize that presence when we see kindness, when we see justice, when we see comfort, when we see peace. For we Christians, that's largely how we experience God. Is when those those the the those uh entities, those feelings, those experiences become real. That's how we know God's presence. We know it because it feels like kindness, it feels like justice, it feels like comfort and peace. Maybe the bigger question, the challenging question, especially here at Advent, the final Sunday before the big day, the final Sunday before the big day is how good are we at responding to that evidence with faith? Are we even looking for that presence? Have we trained our eyes to be able to see when it happens in the world around us? Have we trained our eyes to look for that evidence, that inspiration, that God is here and God is living and breathing through God's world and the people in God's world? Are we vigilant about looking out for that? Finding the strength that comes from that. I find that even when we have God's presence made evident right in front of us, we can even kind of divert ourselves from it. We might see acts of faith right in front of us. And what are some of the things that we say to divert ourselves from actually responding in faith to that presence? Here's one right here. Wow. She really has a kind heart for others. I wish I had that. Why can't you have that? Why can't you respond in kindness as well? God's given that capacity to you. But you hear that diversion that we do? Oh, I'm just not built like that. That's not what the gift that God gave me. Presence, inspiration, hope diverted. Here's another one. I know it's the right thing to do. But A, B, C, D. Have we been there? We know it's the right thing to do, but there's all kinds of good reasons not to do it. We see the presence of God, that evidence that's supposed to shape our faith, that's supposed to inspire us not only to live a life of abundance in our own selves, but to be able to share that life and be the blessing to others. And yet, we've got this reason and that reason. And you know, Christian, you know, sometimes it's hard. Sometimes, even as bodies of faith, institution, groups of people, it gets even easier to say things like, well, we just can't afford to follow Christ here. The rest of the world's doing it this way, and if we do the Christ way, there could be dangers. Way, way too risky. Presence, inspiration, hope, peace, divert. Turned away from. This is where the weight of the story of Joseph, at least to me, needs to be acknowledged. God doesn't promise to us an easy journey. In fact, it's often not an easy journey. Being Christian, living a life of abundance, living a life that we share what's been given to us. But what God does promise is Emmanuel. God is with us. The journey might be difficult, but it will always be blessed. Blessed with God's presence. As we approach Christmas morning, a time where we acknowledge and we celebrate that we know a loving God, and that that God loved us enough to send his son to be with us that we might know how much God loves us. I think in that season, the invitation to us is to sharpen our capacity to see God's presence, to see God's presence, to discern God's presence among us, and then to respond in faithfulness, to trust that we can live into that presence and live into those, into that, those entities, those feelings, those experiences that God has given us to experience. We talk a lot about how we want to be changed by our faith. We want to be transformed. We come to church looking for something. How much of it is just having that heart at peace, having that different attitude about the way the world works. We want to be transformed, and we want to be transformed every year at Christmas in a way that brings us peace, that brings us a self-esteem, that brings us an inspiration to be part of making our world a better place. Well, for Joseph, that journey started with seeing the signs of God's presence and responding in faith. Go and do likewise. Amen.