She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus.

It was Joseph’s job, given to him by an angel, to name his son to call him Jesus.

And it is one of the few things, that we know of, that Joseph did.

Joseph is the forgotten man of Christmas, indeed he is the forgotten man of the Bible for that matter.

In Luke’s Gospel Joseph shows up as a chauffeur as he transports Mary to Bethlehem and then seems to stand silently in the background until Jesus is 11 years old. Then, in the only non-birth story we have of Jesus life for the first 30 years, Joseph and Mary are guilty of leaving their 11-year-old son behind when they return home from a holiday visit to Jerusalem.

And by the time Jesus, the adult, shows up in scripture there is no Joseph. Nothing is said, but it is probably safe to assume that he was dead by that time.

So if we want to learn anything about Joseph, the birth stories from Matthew are the only places to look.

And it is not a different story, but a different emphasis that we find in Matthew. Joseph heard the angels, the clear messengers of God, who told him to not be afraid of the future, to stand by Mary and to call their son Jesus, the one who saves from sin. Rational thought and religious traditions would have suggested that there was little reason to believe that this would turn into a story with a happy ending. Indeed I am sure that 33 years later there were those in Nazareth and Bethlehem who heard of Jesus’ death and shook their heads and said “What did you expect? From a beginning like that you could have bet that Jesus would end up a failure, a dead criminal.”

But Joseph heard and saw something different than anyone else heard or saw and he did what he was told, regardless of what others thought and knew he should do.

He put aside his fear and he became a husband and a father and an icon, for us today, of what it means to live with hope.

Hope is a word that we mess up a lot, we claim to hope that there is no traffic when we have to travel or we say that we hope that the Giants, or the Bears, win today, but those things aren’t hopes, they are wishes and there is such a difference. Hope is an anchor that keeps us from being dislodged by the storms and tides of life, Hope is a certainty that we may not know what the future holds but we know who holds the future, Hope is what God provides us with for the daily living and planning of our lives.

Hope is the assurance that all that has been promised will be fulfilled, in God’s time, on God’s schedule. It is the ultimate security that allows us to work toward the fulfillment of God’s promises whether or not we see progress, whether or not we are – even in our lifetimes – successful.

A. J. Muste was a graduate of New Brunswick Theological Seminary who went on to become a leader in the great labor movements and the great peace movements of the early and mid 20th century, working tirelessly to bring God’s promises of justice to the poor and to bring God’s promises of swords and spears being used as plowshares and pruning hooks into being.

One day, when he was at Ban the Bomb rally, he was asked if he really thought that he could change the world by these rallies and protests. He looked at the questioner in astonishment, “You misunderstand me,” he said “I’m not trying to change the world, I’m trying to make sure that the world doesn’t change me.”

You see, Muste knew that he could live by hope, he knew that God will bring justice to the poor, he knew that God will take those tools of death and turn them into tools of prosperity, he knew that he was on the winning side of history, when it is finally written. And he lived by what he knew and he knew God.

So he lived by hope.

As did Israel in the days of Isaiah.

He fearlessly condemned the government and the religious leaders, there was no sense of “separation of Church and state” and the idea of keeping politics out of the pulpit is clearly non-Biblical, for their greed, for the bribery that was rampant, for the abuse of children who had no one to stand up for them.

He said, in essence, all of this, government and religion, is going to come crashing down around you.

But he also said that God’s plan will still emerge from the rubble and ruin and that Jerusalem would again become the place where God taught his ways and people walked in his path and there would come a day when nations would lower their swords and war would be a forgotten art.

That’s living with hope.

Knowing that your own dreams may not come true, but God’s will.

One of the things that we do with our children is to tell them that they can be anything that they want to be.

But we don’t get that quite right, do we?

You don’t have to be a parent for too long before your heart breaks as you child fails in an attempt to be what they want to be, perhaps they are the victims of playground bullying or exclusion, or maybe they just run into the realities of what their gifts are in life, if their gifts are not academic a career in law or medicine will not be theirs, no matter how much they wanted it. If merely wanting something was all that life demanded I would be regaling you with stories about my stellar career as the All Star Centerfielder for the Mets.

No, what we need to tell our children and tell ourselves, as promotions pass us by and years begin to limit our options, we need to say that we can be anything that God wants us to be.

And as we discern and pursue the things that God wants us to be, individually and as a Church, we find the pieces falling into place and when we don’t, things crumble or crash around us.

We need to live by hope, knowing with a certainty that God has plans and desires for us and that the purpose of life is to find and fulfill those plans and desires.

And let me give you a hint on where to look.

And it’s in Luke and Matthew and it’s all around us for the next month.

God’s plans and desires for us are found in our relationships with each other here and with those in our homes, neighborhoods and workplaces.

God’s plan for Joseph was to be a father.

And once he got over his fear, and more than a few fathers – self-included – have known and still know some fear of fatherhood, but once Joseph got over that he was able to live with hope, live knowing that he wouldn’t understand all that was happening, but that God was using him and Mary to bring salvation to a sin-sick world.

And that was enough, more than enough for Joseph.

Once we get over our fears then we discover the roles and relationships that God has created us for, then we can live with hope, knowing that when we botch it up, as parents or children, kin or friends, when we botch it up God will still prevail.

And what kind of job did Joseph do as a father?

Well, I know I said that we don’t have much written about Joseph, but we do have this: when Jesus attempted to put into words what God was like and what our relationship to God is meant to be like, the word that he chose was “Father”.

I will let others argue today over issues like God’s gender and all of those semantic hair-splittings, I only know this, if Joseph was not a good father the Lord’s prayer would start differently than it does.

As we begin this Advent season, don’t rush to the end, sit still and study the darkness, study the shadows of your life, study the mysteries and the challenges and opportunities, study the relationships God has given you and then look again at your priorities and ambitions and see if you are living by hope or if the world has changed you from what God created you to be.

And if the world has changed you, use these weeks to change that, use these weeks, in the lights and music and shopping and baking and all of the preparing to listen to discover what it is that God is calling you to do and to be.

Joseph did and that made all the difference in his life and in ours.

She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus.