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I’ll step out on a limb here and admit that I wanted to give this sermon the title “Man Up” but instead I decided to call it, “Love Is Faithfulness”. “Man Up” in the last few years has apparently changed in meaning from the way I originally heard it. As a phrase, it originated years ago in the sports world, I think, as a way of saying put a team together and step out on the field. When I first heard it getting used, it was in the context of telling young, deadbeat, toxic men to step up and take responsibility for their lives which they had made a mess of. But now, apparently the phrase has been taken over by the toxic masculinity camp to encourage particularly white men to recover their John Wayne-Caveman masculinity defined by domination that looks like “I did it my way”. So, I chose not to go with that and use words I think are more fitting to what it is to be a man and not only a man but also a woman, and indeed what it is to be truly and fully human – “Love is Faithfulness”.
Now before anybody gets their knickers in a twist, yes, I do realize I’m about to start talking about what it is to be a man on the Sunday when, traditionally, it is the voice of Mary that we should be hearing as she sings her “Magnificat”, a song about God’s great upheaval of the oppressive “way things are” through her son Jesus, the Son of God. I should be preaching on the God-given right of women to have a voice and the God-given right of women to lead not only in the Church but in society as whole and especially in the family.
No, I don’t mean to take away Mary’s voice and her Magnificat but there’s a song that seems to be getting a resurgence these days. It goes: “Boy the way Glenn Miller played songs that made the Hit Parade. Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days. And you knew who you were then. Girls were girls and men were men. Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again. Didn’t need no welfare state. Everybody pulled their weight. Gee, my old LaSalle ran great. Those were the days.”
I’m sure you remember that as the theme to the television show “All in the Family.” Its lyrics point us back to the good ole days of the 1930’s and there are some sexist and other not so good societal undertones to it. Herbert Hoover was president during the Great Depression and he apparently thought that people picking themselves up by their bootstraps and tariffs would cure it. The tariffs and the ensuing trade war made the depression worse and longer lasting for the whole world. In the show you had Archie Bunker, the toxic, racist, bigoted, 9-5 factory working, old school man. Standing beside him was his unquestioning ever-faithful wife Edith, a stereo-typed housewife whom he affectionately called “Dingbat” and whom he truly loved as best as he could. They had a daughter Gloria who for a “Little Goil” she was a very liberated, out-spoken, feisty woman. Gloria was married to Michael Stivic, a man of Polish descent whom Archie called “Meathead” along with some other ethnic slurs. Their family dynamic was a tug and pull between old and new and conservative and liberal values.
The character Mike (played by Rob Reiner who was tragically murdered this week) was meant by the writers to give North America a new definition of what it is to be a man. He was emotionally sensitive and talked about his feelings and tried to bring awareness to the pink elephants in the room. He treated Gloria as an equal. He even let her be the primary bread-winner. He was an atheist pacifist who protested for the rights of others, all the while being typecast as a whiney academic who was debatably emasculated.
All in the Family was iconic and was instrumental in the change that was coming about in North American culture due to the Civil Rights and Feminist movements. But it left a bit of a hole when it came to a definition of what it is to be a man. Yes, men like Archie Bunker had to and still have to go but the new definition of what it is to be a man put forth by Michael was lacking. Foremost in my opinion, it lacked faith which I define as a primary fidelity to God which shapes the rest of life. This left the keys to the kingdom of the Old Man upstairs in the hands of the likes of Archie Bunker. Societally, this has held true as misogyny, racism, and disdain for immigrants seems to keep such a firm death grip in conservative and nationalist forms of Christianity, particularly in this nebulous thing known as Evangelicalism. In my opinion, the writers of All in the Family would have all but nailed it if they would have had Michael going to a female clergyperson seeking support and prayer. It would have been especially great if she were The Vicar of Dibley, but that would be asking too much.
40 very odd years later in the wake of All in the Family, I think a generic definition of what your typical guy is like was said very well by a Mexican man named Hector in an article from the Guardian about five years ago in a series of articles called The State of Men. He said: “I can cook, clean, buy tampons for my wife or daughter, wear pink, cut down a tree, split logs, fix my own car and can always make time to listen to my wife or children when they need me. I am a man that embraces the qualities that both sexes contribute to a relationship. By not conforming to the gender paradigm imposed on us as children, I’ve been able to enjoy life in a more open and fulfilling fashion.” Notice, there’s no mention of faith.
There was a book written in 2011 by David Murrow that attempted to answer the question of why men are largely absent from the church. Its catchy title was “Why Men Hate Going to Church.” Murrow said it’s because the church is too feminine. His solution was simply to make the church more masculine, but his definition of masculine was a bit stereo-typically old school. Personally, I don’t think he hit the nail on the head as to why men don’t come to church and I think with the current near-extinct state of the church, the point is probably moot.
So, what is it to be a man? Joseph might give us a clue or two. We meet Joseph here in the context of having to deal with a difficult real-life situation where it appears that his wife-to-be has been unfaithful, the evidence of which was she was pregnant. Joseph was probably into his 30’s and Mary at most 15 and yes, we don’t like the sound of that. The marriage was probably arranged. They lived in Nazareth which archeology tells us was probably a very conservative, Jewish small town with somewhere between 500 and 2,500 people. Joseph was a faithful, practising Jew who worked with his hands who was looking forward to being a husband and a father. But then, Mary was suddenly found to be with child, his hopes were dashed.
In a town the size of Nazareth it would have been difficult for that to be handled discreetly. He had some options. A “real” man could have acted all offended at such an assault on his honour and publicly spurned her and she would likely have been stoned for her infidelity. But Joseph didn’t go that route. It seems he was aware that infidelity didn’t play a role in the pregnancy. If she had been raped, it would have been cruel for him to make a scene over it. So, he decided to handle it as quietly as possible; simply call off the engagement and Mary goes to live with a distant relative for a while. He could also have just said the baby was his and they had gotten prematurely involved, but there would always be whispers and I think Joseph was fearful of the gossip.
Well, with the decision made, he laid down to sleep and has one fantastic dream that changes everything. Mary’s baby truly was an act of God. This child was “the One” who would save God’s people and apparently God was calling him to be the father. Faithful Joseph, without conditions, put fear aside and went ahead and married Mary, and raised the child as his own. Upon hearing in a dream that King Herod (boo, hiss) wanted to kill the baby, he took his family and fled to Egypt where they lived as “illegal immigrants” until Herod died and they were able to return to Nazareth.
Joseph was loyal to God before anything else and that flowed into the type of husband and father that he was. Joseph chose to love and to show compassionate understanding in difficult circumstances. His character shone through unconditional loyalty, through faith, faithfulness. He knew that with God’s help he need not fear come what may. He found honour and love in protecting Mary and her reputation amidst her very vulnerable state and in taking responsibility for a child that was not his own.
Joseph did what God asked him to do and there he discovered that love is faithfulness, unconditional faithfulness. What is it to be a man? I think it is to do what God asks us to do: love by showing unconditional faithfulness. Finally, since I can’t say “man up”, I will say real men take up their crosses and follow Jesus. Amen.
