Rule Followers (4th Advent A)
- Guillermo Arboleda
- Dec 21, 2025
- 5 min read
A sermon by the Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda, written for and delivered at All Saints' Episcopal Church, Tybee Island, GA, on Sunday, December 21, 2025, the 4th Sunday of Advent (Year A).
Primary Bible Reading(s)
Matthew 1:18-25 (NRSVue)
18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah[j] took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. 20 But just when he had resolved to do this, an 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. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 “Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” 24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife 25 but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son,[k] and he named him Jesus.
Rule Followers
By the Rev. Guillermo A. Arboleda
19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly.
Are you a rules follower? This might not shock any of you, but I often am. The first thing I do when I open a gadget or appliance or piece of furniture is to flip through the instruction manual. I’m kind of hopeless at fixing things or putting things together without detailed instructions, preferably with pictures. I tend to be really precise with things like the rubrics (rules) in the Book of Common Prayer. I enjoy things like the Diocesan Convention because I like the diocesan constitution and how it guides and shapes our common life.
But there is always a temptation to confuse following the rules with doing the right thing. Following rules, procedures, and rubrics is not a substitute for the wisdom to know the difference between right and wrong. A lot of situations in life are more complicated than rules and laws account for. So, we need to listen to God and prioritize loving people in order to make righteous choices.
Joseph was faced with a real moral conundrum. He was engaged to Mary, and they hadn’t begun their married life together yet. But she was suddenly pregnant “from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:18). Because many Bible stories are full of miracles, we sometimes think the people in the Bible expected miracles left and right. But they weren’t much different from you and me. They lived ordinary lives and never expected to see extraordinary divine intervention. Everyone over a certain age understood then, as they do now, how women got pregnant… and it wasn’t primarily “from the Holy Spirit.” A man had to be involved, and if Joseph knew that he wasn’t that man, there could only be one another explanation.
There are many laws and regulations in the Bible, most of them in the first five books of the Old Testament. They were intended to govern the common life of the ancient Israelite people. And they mention common reasons for people to enter into conflict with one another. One of them is marital unfaithfulness or deceit. Deuteronomy 22:20-21 explains what to do if a man discovers that his new wife was not a virgin before their marriage. That part of the Law tells people to punish that young woman by stoning her to death!
If that seems harsh to you, you are not alone. Joseph agrees with us. Joseph would certainly have been familiar with this tradition. But by the New Testament times, centuries after the Old Testament Law was written, it seems like public stoning was rarely, if ever practiced. According to this text, there was still some kind of public shaming ritual. They would have gathered together people from the village of Nazareth as part of a public divorce proceeding. All of that would have been customary and legal.
But Matthew tells us that Joseph does not want to do any of that. He does not want to shame her. He does not want to expose her. He does not want to revel in whatever sin he thinks she committed. He doesn’t want to ruin her life. He has compassion for Mary, even though he thinks that she betrayed him. And for that, Matthew calls Joseph a “righteous man” (1:19). Joseph was righteous because he didn’t want to follow cruel rules. He broke the rules and that was the right thing to do. He pushed back against social conventions, and so he found God’s deeper righteousness. He ironically followed God more closely by going against the letter of the Law.
Of course, we know how the rest of the story goes. The angel of the Lord came to Joseph in a dream and confirmed the story that Mary told him. She really was pregnant from the Holy Spirit and not another man. She was faithful to him, and he should be faithful to her in marriage. They stayed together and named that child Jesus as a sign that he would be the Savior of the world. The name “Jesus” means “the LORD God saves”.
What we might not have considered is the price that Joseph paid for doing the right thing by Mary and by God. It’s safe to say that rumors about Jesus’ parentage followed him for his whole life. Mary’s pregnancy was already a bit of a scandal by the time the angel of the Lord spoke to Joseph in his dream. So, he did the right thing by standing by her, but others looked down on his decision. They thought he was a fool who believed a girl’s lie about a virgin birth. Or they thought he was an unrighteous deviant without honor who didn’t care that his wife had been unfaithful. Either way, Joseph’s reputation and social standing took a hit because he listened to God and did the right thing.
None of us will likely ever face the same situation Joseph did. But each of us sometimes faces a decision between following the rules or customs and showing love and compassion. Those things come into conflict more often than we’d like. Eventually, we will all have to choose between going with the flow and taking an unpopular stand. When do you feel peer pressure to act one way that deep down you know isn’t right? My prayer for us this week is that God gives us the strength of conviction to follow through on what is right, no matter the social consequences. Amen.
Bibliography
Davis, D. Mark. “Call Him Jesus. No, Emmanuel. Oh, Okay, Jesus.” Left Behind and Loving It. Blog. Published 14 December 2025. Accessed 19 December 2025. https://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2013/12/call-him-jesus-no-emmanuel-oh-okay-jesus.html.
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