Joseph, the regular guy hero of the Christmas story

Advent 4 at St. Paul's

Fr. Cathie Caimano and St. Paul's Salisbury, NC

Dec 22, 2025

Read Fr. Cathie’s sermon transcript below…

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The Greening of the Church

St. Paul’s gathered to decorate the sanctuary for Christmas after the Advent 4 service.

Senior Warden Jerry Taylor hosted the St. Paul’s Christmas party on Saturday night, December 20:

Fr. Cathie Caimano’s sermon (as it was written. It was delivered with a lot of help from the kids, which took it in other theological directions…).

Joseph is the great unsung hero of the whole story of the birth of the Messiah.

While Mary is the ‘highly favored one,’ as the angel refers to her in Luke’s Gospel, and she appears throughout the Gospel stories - including at the foot of the cross - Joseph is only ever heard of a couple more times in Scripture, and he is largely forgotten except for this one moment.

In fact, St. Joseph’s feast day is in March, of all things, and I found precious little in terms of his biography

as Joseph the Carpenter, he is considered the patron saint of the working man,

his spiritual biography reads in part, and

the little that is told of him is a testimony to the trust in God ... and gives an example of a loving husband and father.

In other words, Joseph was a fine man, as far as we know, but no one really remembers him at all.

And maybe that’s the point.

While Mary gets a great deal of adoration, she also has to be bear the burden for eternity of a very exacting standard of femininity - a virgin and a mother. She is so often seen as above and beyond us, pure and holy and good.

But Joseph is just a regular guy – so regular that he gets no particulars, so normal that he fades into the background.

So real that he could be one of us.

And like us, in his life he is presented with situations that don’t have easy answers.

No angel comes to explain everything to him – except in a dream, and how reliable are our dreams? No one tells him how it will all turn out, and what role he is to play.

Instead, he is faced with a wrenching, painful decision that requires him, at best, to sacrifice his own good name and standing for a woman who, as far as he can tell in the moment, has wronged him.

Like any one of us, the best that he can do is to try and remember his own values, to do the right thing even though he is hurting.

Like any one of us, it is not even immediate clear what that right thing is.

Like any one of us, he just has to gather the threads of what is before him and make the rest of his decision on faith.

And this, I think, is part of the miracle of God becoming human.

Not just BORN human, through his human mother, Mary. But raised human, by this regular guy Joseph.

I think this shows incredible trust on the part of God, incredible love for us, and belief that human love and care, even confused and conflicted human love and care, must not be such a bad environment for the Savior of the world to grow up in.

And that miracles, as amazing and outrageous as they can sometimes be, are also sometimes just the outcome of having our heart in the place, even if we aren’t really sure what that place is.

We really don’t have much biographical info about Joseph.

We don’t really know if he was a good father or a skilled carpenter or a successful man. All we know is that he was willing to trust in God, in his belief in God, no matter how strange and sketchy the information from God seemed to be.

That he was willing to put himself at risk, to go the extra mile for someone he loved.

And in this, beyond his wildest imagination, he made a decision that allowed God to be born to us, for us, as one of us.

Christmas is not quite here, but I think the reason we read the story of Jesus’ birth on the fourth Sunday of Advent is to remind us that sometimes the small, last minute decisions are the very best kind.

Joseph’s change of heart made room for Emmanuel – God with us.

And in these last few days of preparation, as we round the corner towards the best news we will ever get, I think it is the perfect time to remember and honor the small acts of faith made by ordinary people, and the profound effect this has on the coming of the kingdom of God.

How sometimes, our greatest gifts from God come not with fanfare and certainty, but in our dark and troubled moments, in our strangest, most puzzling dreams.

Sometimes the greatest rewards come from believing despite the evidence, going ahead despite not being sure, even risking being lost in all the drama of the rest of the story.