Mennonite Weekly Review

By all appearances, Mary and Joseph are about as commonplace as you can get — a young woman and a craftsman, both of little consequence among the populace of a fallen kingdom long trampled beneath the treads of greater political and military powers.

Carmen Andres, of Woodbridge, Va., is a former editor of Christian Leader, the magazine of the U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren
 Churches.

But in their ordinary lives, Mary and Joseph take for granted that God is who he says and can do what he says. And as they act on that, these two commoners defy tradition, religious society and political powers. And with them, God changes the world.

It begins with bold action

For ordinary folk, Mary and Joseph’s actions are bold. Mary, on the eve of her marriage, lets God conceive in her the Messiah. In The Real Mary, Scot McKnight points out that few will believe her. She’ll be labeled an adulteress. She’ll be ostracized at best, stoned at worst. But she has confidence in what God will do — for her and his people.

Joseph is “a righteous man” (Matt. 1:19), among those whom McKnight in Jesus Creed says “studies, learns and observes the Torah scrupulously… . In Joseph’s world, there are no reputations more desirable.” So, when Joseph finds out about Mary, he sets about to do the “right” thing.

But God lets him in on what’s going on. Mary carries within her a most extraordinary, unbelievable thing: Emmanuel, God-with-us (23) who “will save his people from their sins” (21). Joseph — defying tradition and common sense (and, McKnight suggests, likely losing that desirable reputation) — takes Mary as his wife.

Amazingly, God-with-us enters the world in the most ordinary way (2:1). But the powers are threatened even then. The stakes rise from reputation to life itself. But again, God lets Joseph in on what’s going on (13). And Joseph listens, taking his wife and the child to Egypt, escaping Herod’s fear-laden fury (14). After Herod dies, God again guides Joseph and settles them in the backwater Nazareth (19-23).

And from that disreputable town will come Jesus, who saves and invites us into God’s kingdom life and community.

The kingdom in the ordinary

This part of the story gives us great insight into the nature of God’s kingdom, one that manifests itself in the “network of persons who have yielded their hearts and relationships to the reign of God,” as Donald Kraybill puts it in The Upside Down Kingdom.

God has an affinity for the ordinary. Jesus’ common entrance into the world and commonplace parents portend his teachings that God’s kingdom is accessible to the most ordinary — even disreputable — people (for example, Matt 5:1-11, 21:32). And this kingdom manifests itself in our everyday, ordinary life. In The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard encourages us to accept “ordinary existence as the place where we are to experience and find the reign of God-with-us as actual reality.”

Joseph and Mary seem to embrace this kind of life. As they go about their ordinary, everyday lives, they live as if the world works the way God says. They trust that God is who he says and act out of trust in what God can and is doing — not only for themselves but those around them. Their relationship and the world itself change because of this day-to-day trust of God.

That is how kingdom life works. God is all about rescue and deliverance. He’s about restoring and redeeming a broken world and his creations. As we ordinary folk trust in what God is doing for us and the world, we are empowered to join in God’s kingdom here-and-now.