Advent - Joseph and the Divine Invitation

Summary

In this podcast episode, Bishop DeDe and Adam explore the themes of faith, particularly focusing on St. Joseph's role in the nativity story. They discuss the importance of compassion, the nature of obedience, the significance of adoption, and the courage required to embrace difficult calls in life. The conversation emphasizes the transformative power of love and the invitation to participate in God's work.


Takeaways

• Joseph's compassion prepares his heart for Jesus.
• Obedience should be seen as an invitation to holy living.
• Adoption reflects God's love and inclusivity.
• We can reclaim obedience as empowering rather than coercive.
• Joseph's story invites us to respond with grace in betrayal.
• Faith calls us to embrace difficult challenges with courage.
• Love transcends biological connections in adoption.
• God invites us to be active participants in our faith.
• Compassion is a powerful response to wrongdoing.
• The resurrection symbolizes hope beyond our struggles.

Chapters

00:00 Preparing for the Incarnation: The Role of St. Joseph
09:00 The Nature of Obedience and Its Reclamation
18:04 The Significance of Adoption in Faith
26:54 Embracing Difficult Calls: Courage in Faith

AI Disclosure: To support our staff in their limited time, many of our episode summaries are first generated by AI and then edited by the Communications Director to accurately reflect and preview our podcast episodes.

Transcript

Bishop DeDe (00:02.185)
Hey friends, great to see you and welcome to the podcast. We're speaking of faith today as we are on this podcast every time. My name is Bishop DeDe Duncan-Probe. I'm the Episcopal Bishop of Central New York. Joining me is Mr. Adam Eichelberger. He is our Director of Communications. And our conversation today in this Advent season, we're continuing to talk about preparing our hearts for the coming.

of the incarnation of God, of Jesus, of the Christ child. And today we're going to talk about and focus in a bit on St. Joseph. We often talk about Mary in this time, which is very important and essential. And we're going to talk about Joseph a bit today. I'm looking at Matthew chapter one. I'm going to start at verse 18 and talk a little bit about what's happening here. And then from that, that we might speak of our faith.

So let us begin hearing the gospel of Matthew. Now the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

But just when he had resolved to do this, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the

had been spoken by the Lord through the prophets. Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means God is with us. When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took her as his wife, but did not have marital relations with her until she had born a son and he named him Jesus.

Bishop DeDe (02:23.881)
the gospel of the Lord. Now there's a couple of things to sort of set the stage with this. First, we are in the book of Matthew. And in the book of Matthew, one of the sort of importances here are all about relationships and in parentage and lineage. So this is the gospel that begins with so and so, begat so and so, begat so and so. Or in your translation, so and so is the father, so and so was the father, so and so.

Adam Eichelberger (02:48.066)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (02:53.641)
There's a real focus in this gospel on fatherhood, on what it means that Abba, God, Father. And here in this passage, we definitely see that. You'll notice that there's not an angel speaking to Mary. You in this gospel don't have a focus on Mary as the God bearer. just, know, Mary is found to be with child that trips over a rock. I'm not really sure how that works, how you just sort of discover it.

But she is found to be with child and it's claimed here very clearly from the Holy Spirit. There's no doubt in this. What we often do with these scriptures is we sort of conflate Luke and Matthew and suggest that the angel has come to Mary and we're catching up a different part of the story in the Gospel of Matthew. That's a good thing to do. It also is important to sort of step back.

and recognize that each gospel has been written out of a place by people out of a sense of the part of the story to be told. So here we're talking and focusing on Joseph and Joseph's relationship with Jesus. Another piece to focus in on is that she is, you know, that it says here,

Mary being engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, the marital rites of the time and the way that engagement and marriage happened, they are betrothed, but not yet officially married. And in this time, she's found to be with child. And so Joseph, it says a lot about his character here, doesn't want to expose her to disgrace, so he's gonna quietly dismiss her. And.

I don't know about you and your life, but our tendency, think, with Joseph is to deify him a little bit too much. And then I think we miss out on the richness and the faithfulness of this man in this text. So Joseph finds out that his fiance is pregnant and he knows he's not the father, but he does not want to disgrace her.

Bishop DeDe (05:10.013)
He responds with integrity, with love, with compassion, with real maturity that sometimes I think we all might be challenged to demonstrate when someone has betrayed our trust and where it seems like we may be faltering. So in our own faith, when we're speaking of faith, one of the first things in this passage I think that jumps out is how do we speak about those moments when we have been wronged or feel we have been wronged?

and what our next response might be. For Joseph, he responds with compassion for Mary. He wants to let her go from this, but quietly set it aside, not disgrace her. Often what we seek and what we hear is about vengeance and revenge or a hardness of heart. But this compassion, so right away this Advent season, in preparing our hearts for Jesus,

Joseph is preparing his heart for Jesus through compassion really if you want to sort of make that connection and so we have that invitation also and Then here he so he's made up his mind. He's gonna choose the noble right path He's gonna do the compassionate right thing by Mary and anyone probably listening would say How could you ask any more than this man than that that he's compassionate that he's going to be kind and considerate

and isn't that our highest mark. But then God comes to Joseph in a dream and says, no, not quite. What about you adopting this child, raising him with integrity and that same compassion and grace that you see that in this child, this is what God is doing. What if you were to receive what God is doing? Which is really something I think we...

can wrestle with in this passage, this sense of God calling us and surprising us. In the same way that Mary was surprised by the angel changing and uprooting her whole life, here God once again is uprooting and changing Joseph's life. That he's not just taking a wife, but he also is being called and chosen by God to take on the fatherhood, the adoption of the Son of God.

Bishop DeDe (07:32.031)
to be part of the narrative and to be an active player of the narrative. Joseph isn't just a silent figure off to the side. Joseph is an active part or participant in God's call and like Mary, and I think just like Mary, has a dream and says yes to God. So we have Mary's holy yes and we have Joseph's holy yes, both coming together as part of this

narrative of the nativity of the birth of Jesus. So for you and for me listener, where is our holy yes to God and how might this exemplar that Joseph is be an exemplar for how we speak of faith, how we live our lives? I think there's so much richness here in seeing the reality of this situation for Joseph that he is choosing the better path to have compassion.

He has a dream and then he chooses the even better path to say yes to God, to receive God's incarnation and to with Mary be part of this incarnational narrative. Now I've talked for quite a while and there's a lot in what I've said. I've skimmed over lot too. We only have a certain amount of time. I think I could talk about this passage, Adam, for like a couple of days, but because there's so much richness in it, but

What are you, what, as you consider this, what sort of comes to your mind or what questions might, you know, about what I've said that you have.

Adam Eichelberger (09:09.006)
So one of the first things that kind of pops up in my mind, one of the questions that I know that I have when I look at this narrative of the coming of Jesus into the world and in putting it in comparison with the story that we talked about last week when it talks about Mary. I know I've talked about this with folks. It seems like this connected thread in between both of these narratives is obedience. And I'm going to say that I feel like that's kind of a scary word.

Bishop DeDe (09:24.915)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (09:34.762)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (09:39.222)
I think that especially there are times in scripture where that word obedience gets weaponized a little bit towards certain folks. But the question I wanted to ask you, Bishop, is this, how can we embrace the idea of obedience while also at the same time kind of changing the narrative around that word? Because like I said, there's some negative connotations with that word obedience. So how can we embrace obedience?

Bishop DeDe (09:39.348)
No.

Bishop DeDe (09:47.135)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (10:01.554)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely.

Bishop DeDe (10:09.673)
Well, and that is such a good question because it's easy to read into these narratives coerciveness that Mary is confronted with an angel so she has to say yes or Joseph is in the situation. So now that he's had a dream, he has to say yes. And obedience can, like you say, be weaponized or become coercive and really corruptive. I think the way obedience plays out best in our lives though is when we're invited.

to submit ourselves to a higher ideal or better living? What is our best self? So when we speak of faith, most often those of us who are engaged in living our life or in seeking God or praying or having a faithful life, we're seeking a betterment of our lives.

And so obedience is to subject ourselves to something, is to be obedient to something, but not as a victim, not as corruptive, but really as invitation to holy living, that we are obedience to something that calls out our better self. In this passage with Joseph, he's obedient to God's call in this dream, which allows him to become part of a transcendent narrative.

He's obedient and it transforms his life in good ways. Not he's obedient and therefore he loses power, but actually he's obedient and he becomes part of God's empowerment. And so I think the way we can reclaim the idea of obedient is that it's not about giving up power necessarily, but about responding to an invitation and allowing ourselves to conform to that invitation.

And it's, I know it's a little bit, you know, wordplay in a way, but I think we know the difference when we are obedient to something that empowers us. And when we subject ourselves in ways that disempower, devalue, or are meant to degrade our inner being. Joseph is fulfilling his best self in being obedient to God. How might we fulfill our best self?

Bishop DeDe (12:27.561)
by responding to God's invitation and being obedient as well.

Adam Eichelberger (12:32.526)
I really liked that. That's something I never really considered before, because like I said, like there's so many negative connotations and like it's again, it's changing that narrative around the idea of obedience. go ahead. Yeah.

Bishop DeDe (12:37.321)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (12:41.287)
Mm-hmm, right. Yeah, I think as humans, know, we're always, we kind of have this lens we're always looking through of temporality, of power and dominion. you know, the, you know, we have all these negative narratives we've grown up with. Greed is good, revenge is sweet. You know, the one who loves most is the weakest. You know, we have all of these sort of, we've, you know, made negative what are, can be positives. I'm not talking about greed or revenge.

But we tend to see it in these finite, limited terms where God's expansiveness is calling us and inviting us to broader living. And it's very important, but go ahead.

Adam Eichelberger (13:10.021)
You

Adam Eichelberger (13:25.292)
like that. No. So here's another question as I heard you talking about this story, this narrative with Joseph, something came up in me that I had never really considered before. And that is the, and I feel bad because I always consider this whole narrative from the perspective of Mary. And I think a little bit of that is my, my Roman Catholic upbringing. And so I always kind of consider Mary and all this. And when I consider Joseph and all this, you brought up this idea.

Bishop DeDe (13:45.631)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (13:55.732)
of almost like a feeling like a betrayal that Joseph is feeling in this moment. So my question is this, what are some ways that we can try and respond with maturity and maybe we'll even say with grace in these times where we feel like our trust has been betrayed?

Bishop DeDe (13:58.121)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (14:14.681)
Absolutely, because here, you know, and I want to make a real clear distinction, because even as you say it, I realize I need to be very clear. Joseph feels betrayed because he doesn't know something. You know, he feels betrayed because he hears, she's pregnant. They're saying it's, you know, God. OK, God causes. So Joseph doesn't know until he has the dream. But even before he has the dream, his character is demonstrated he's going to.

Adam Eichelberger (14:33.612)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (14:43.455)
quietly let her go so she's not humiliated. He responds not fire to fire, but he responds forgiveness to fire as it were. For our situations when we have been betrayed, and at times it's not because we don't know enough, it's because we've really been betrayed. We have this opportunity, and again, I love the idea of invitation because with an invitation you can say yes.

and a real invitation you can say no. And so we have these moments, and I think to your point about obedience, obedience becomes corrupted when we don't have the option of opting out, of saying no. I'm not, I don't want to do that. I don't feel I can do that, that it's not right for me. An invitation can be a yes or a no.

A coercive invitation is you have to say yes. A coercive obedience is you have to say yes. But God is inviting us to be full participants. And so our yes is only as good as our ability to say no. So in this, Joseph is able to say, I'm going to put Mary away from me. I'm not going to receive her. He can have the dream and say, you know, I can't follow. I'm going to say no to that. I believe God receives our nos pretty well.

because God is always calling us to new days. And when we say no to one thing, another door opens up and God's constantly calling us. But back to your question about when we are betrayed and how we can be mature is to really embrace and engage that God's bigger than the betrayal, that the course of our lives is in God's hands and God is calling us to things that heal and redeem and transform us.

So when we have been betrayed, to feel the grief and the sadness, but then to act in our best selves, because that is healing to us. We can always choose hate and retaliation and these things, but when we engage in that, it hurts us because it isn't how we want to be. So when we've been betrayed, they, what is it? How would I like to respond to this?

Bishop DeDe (17:07.687)
And to step back and recognize we actually have agency to say yes or to say no and make a choice that is affirming of ourselves. And the right choice may be this betrayal means I need to not be in this relationship and I need to step back for my own wellbeing. The maturity might be this betrayal means that I need to talk with a counselor or I need to take a minute or I need to look at how I'm dealing with these things.

Adam Eichelberger (17:11.63)
Hmm.

Bishop DeDe (17:37.503)
But I think getting back to it again, this invitation, God invites Mary, invites Joseph. You can read these passages and think there's coercedness here, but I don't hear that. I hear God saying, I wanna do a new thing with you, and I'd like for you to say yes to me. I'd like to do this with you. I'm inviting you to be part of something. And we are no different from Joseph and Mary than that.

We may not give birth to Jesus and to the savior of the world, but we're called to be Christ bearers, to bear Jesus to this world. And we may not be called to be the father of God's son, but we're called to be caregivers for ourselves and others and to see that invitation.

Adam Eichelberger (18:08.29)
Right.

Adam Eichelberger (18:27.286)
I really like that. There's a lot of really good nuggets in there that I had not considered when taking a look at this story. One of the last ones that I have for you, and then we have two questions that came in to us from our friends who listen. So we're to get to those in just a second. The last one in this one, I think is it's really important for me. And I think, Bishop, after you hear this, you'll understand why I'm asking it and maybe why it may be important to you. You talked about Joseph's call to be

Bishop DeDe (18:40.936)
Okay, great.

Adam Eichelberger (18:55.394)
to adopt Jesus into his home. Can you talk about the significance of adoption in scripture and the intersection of adoption in our own lives and in our own walks of faith? And for those of you who may be listening or watching who don't know this, and I've shared this with the bishop and a lot of people who know me know I'm an adopted person. So I have parents. I also know my biological parents. And so this theme of adoption,

Bishop DeDe (18:57.363)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (19:16.245)
Yeah.

Adam Eichelberger (19:23.246)
this mentioning of adoption is actually really kind of significant to me. So Bishop, was just hoping you could share for me and maybe for anyone else watching and listening to the significance of adoption.

Bishop DeDe (19:31.541)
Well, and I really, and you know, it's you and I have this shared, because I've adopted a child, my husband and I have an adopted child, and we have biological children. This relationship, relationship, relationship that we, God, you know, being adopted into, being brought into and fully part of, that all of us together are adopted.

in some way or another. We often kind of segregate or make adoption about this one situation. But when we're talking about our relationship with all of humanity, our being brought in as part of and intrinsically welcomed as God's beloved, it is very powerful. And I think for persons who have been adopted like you or my daughter,

or people who have adopted like my husband and I and others. We have an understanding that others may not have, which is that love is love is love. And, you know, of my three children, I say it often, and we joke about it in my family. The child that's most like me in my family is my adopted daughter, who's not biologically related to me. And yet we share.

a lot of similarities in person. I think it's, there's something so transformative and miraculous and gifted in understanding the blessedness of adoption that we are not limited to finite realities but to a more expansive reality. And for you, being loved by your parents.

being cared for by your birth parents as you've gotten to know them later in life, you know, all of us in whatever relationship we find ourselves, that we are ultimately valued by God and our value is our belovedness as beings. I may be kind of gone too expansive, but I think there's such power in this and to see in this story, in the very fundamental aspect of our faith,

Bishop DeDe (21:50.321)
as Christians is the holiness and desirability of adoption. We see adoption later in the epistles with Paul when Paul talks about us having been adopted by God as followers of Jesus and all and that we are adopted by the divinity of God. And I sometimes think we should look at that more because I'm not sure that we keep being too human about it.

we are blessed to be and God is at work in that being with all of us. And so we are part of a narrative that's expansive and specific. Is that two? Did I go too far? Kind of got going on like, you know, metaphysics. anyway, but I, it's just, you know, I find it fascinating. We talk so much about like genes and, you know, biological reality.

Adam Eichelberger (22:35.522)
No, that's absolutely great.

Bishop DeDe (22:50.377)
But there is something so extraordinary about the belovedness of God in each person and all of us being loved by this God that we are God's child, first and foremost.

Adam Eichelberger (23:04.174)
Absolutely. All right, so two questions that we have from two of our friends who let us know. So this one actually comes from one of our listeners who is a father and they were wanting to ask you, how can those of us who are fathers live out that calling like Joseph?

Bishop DeDe (23:07.059)
Hmm?

Bishop DeDe (23:24.405)
Wow, and I wanna say right off, I don't actually, I'm not an expert on anything, from my point of view, by loving and embracing, and especially perhaps loving and embracing across the chasm of the pain part. In relationships, we blow it, we get annoyed with each other, we have challenges, we have difficulties.

Adam Eichelberger (23:31.15)
Hahaha

Bishop DeDe (23:53.897)
But I think good fathers, first and foremost, are seeking to love and nurture their child, to allow their child to become their full blessedness. In this, Joseph naming Jesus Jesus because he's been instructed to by the, in the dream, and then helping Jesus become a person of integrity to parent Jesus, to live his full and complete life. Good fathers, good mothers, good parenting.

regardless of gender, is about offering the child the safety, the support, the nurture, the guidance, the patience, and the forgiveness to be able to grow into their full selves and discover the fullness of who they are in healthy and whole ways. And in doing so, I think parenting is a living expression of loving our neighbors, ourself.

In loving and parenting our children, we reparent and love ourselves. If we've had a difficult childhood and we're loving and patient with our child, we discover in our own souls a loving and forgiving parent we may never have experienced in the physical world, but that heals and redeems our deepest souls. So as we talk about and speak about faith, that reciprocity of loving and being loved, of offering healing and being healed.

of forgiving and being forgiven is powerful. And as fathers, I think fathers have such a unique and blessed role to walk with their children and be a model of what it is to be a man. There's so much toxic masculinity that's corrupted and continues to corrupt. Real men don't cry or whatever the false toxic narrative may be.

Adam Eichelberger (25:39.054)
Mm.

Bishop DeDe (25:47.901)
to be an exemplar not only to your own children, but the children that are watching what a man is, what is a man of integrity look like? And it is a profound calling and responsibility, but really an honor and blessing.

Adam Eichelberger (26:08.674)
And it's so good too, because all of those things that you mentioned are so universally applicable to all of us, you know, and I think that sometimes we take these principles and we can say like, these are obviously things that a father or a man should do, but they're things that all of us can embrace. Absolutely. And it's great because it gives us, just in my thought process and in my own life, it gives me new perspective.

Bishop DeDe (26:13.939)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (26:26.588)
Exactly.

Bishop DeDe (26:37.064)
Right.

Adam Eichelberger (26:37.324)
that I, it's really easy for me at times to kind of, I mean, not easy, it's always a struggle, it's always a work, but it's easier maybe for me in my own lived experience to put on those things that you're talking about. But then it also invites me to be mindful of the way that Mary operates as a mother and as a woman and that those principles that she exemplifies for us that you've talked about in our previous episode are things that I also am invited to put on. And again, it goes back to that

Bishop DeDe (26:43.029)
Yeah.

Bishop DeDe (26:54.867)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (27:07.146)
widening sense of reality that God is inviting us into and I really I really really love that so Lastly our last question from a listener is this and they were Talking about I asked about like, know, like how do like when you think about Joseph? What do you think about and they keyed in on what you had keyed in on earlier, which is about doing difficult things And so she asks How can we do? difficult things

Bishop DeDe (27:09.501)
Mm-hmm.

Bishop DeDe (27:13.599)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Eichelberger (27:35.832)
when we feel called by God to do so.

Bishop DeDe (27:42.163)
Wow, well, each, you know, listener, each of you probably automatically is like, when I'm faced with something that's difficult to do, I fill in the blank what your habit is. I think first and foremost is offering it to God. And I think we are invited by God to say, I'm not really thrilled with this because we have the exemplar of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

saying to God at the right before the passion, if it be your will, let this cup pass for me. That to me and all of the canon of scripture may be this moment of humanity in Jesus that really heals all of us. Because if Jesus is saying to God, look, can't we do anything but this, then that gives us permission to look at God and say, look, can't we do anything but this? I'm not keen on this. I don't want.

to do this, this scares me, this is challenging, this, I'm afraid of this, or whatever the feeling may be, to offer that to God and then to allow ourselves to step through that fear. Because on the other side of that fear, on the other side of that resistance we may be feeling within ourselves, is an opportunity to be blessed. We talk all the time about, you know,

you know, God bless us or may God bless and keep us, may God bless you, may God. We're kind of big on we love to be blessed by God. But we often and I think hardly ever realize that to be blessed by God means to step out onto a plane where God's blessings happen, which is beyond our comfort zone. It's on the other side of that fear for Joseph, for Mary and especially again, our exemplar of Jesus on the other side of that.

if it be your will, let this cup pass through me, the crucifixion, the pain, the torture, the death, the time in the tomb, and then the resurrection. That resurrection is always coming. And yes, there may be painful, crucifying, torturous, tomb-like moments in our lives, but our faith compels us that the resurrection is. It will come to us. It is happening in us. It is part of the journey.

Adam Eichelberger (29:44.61)
Hmm.

Bishop DeDe (30:04.743)
And so to be compassionate with ourselves, to be tender, but I think to have the courage to know that the same God who, you know, calls Mary, calls Joseph, the same God incarnate in Jesus that offers salvation for the world in resurrection, that God is at work in you. So we can have courage to do the hard thing because we know in whom we've believed and our trust is not in

situation, situational ethics, our trust is in God. loving our neighbors always the right way. Forgiveness is always going to heal. There are times we cannot forgive something, so we offer it to God and let God forgive it in God's own economy. There's ways that we always give it to God and say, Lord, I'm not enough for this.

I'm a man of unclean lips, as the prophet would say, and cleanse me that I may be made new and be part of what you're doing.

Adam Eichelberger (31:13.078)
So good. Thank you, Bishop, for those. And thank you for those of you who have joined us and continue to join us and for submitting questions. Bishop, what are your closing thoughts for us as we wrap?

Bishop DeDe (31:27.289)
my goodness, well, we have talked a lot. This is one of our longer podcasts because there's so much in this to talk about. My prayer for all of us is that we will, in this Advent season, open our hearts to what God is doing. That we'll have the courage to listen with ears attuned to what God is calling us to do. And that we'll have the courage to follow where God leads. So know that you're loved. May you be blessed and be a blessing.

and may Emmanuel God with you, God with all of us be present in your life. Until next time, take good care and I look forward to speaking with you soon.