FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT – DECEMBER 21, 2025
ADVENT 2025
Fourth Sunday of Advent
December 21, 2025
What Does it Mean to Be Righteous?
Chris Schelin
(Chris Schelin is the Dean of Students at Starr King School for the Ministry in Oakland. At Lakeshore, he is better known as Emma and Isaac’s dad)
Matthew 1:18-25 (NRSVUE)
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 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, and he named him Jesus.
The combined portrait of the gospels’ birth stories presents Mary and Joseph as a model Jewish couple in 1st century Palestine. Joseph, we are told in Matthew 1, is a righteous man, which means that he seeks the will of God in all things. We must imagine him assuming the same about Mary until, in a sharp blow to the gut, he learns that she is pregnant with a child that is not his. Reeling from the news, he weighs his options as the future he had expected shatters into a million pieces.
A righteous man follows the law. Strictly speaking, the Torah’s penalty for adultery was death. Early Jewish rabbis often counseled more moderate punishments. In occupied Palestine, this was a necessity because the Romans held the exclusive right to execute criminals. The typical sentence was therefore an act of public shaming in which the offended male divorced his wife or fiancée in front of the community.
But Matthew 1:19 says that Joseph was a “righteous man” AND that he was “unwilling to expose her to public disgrace.” He chose the path of compassion over apparent justice and retribution that had divine sanction. This near-contradiction has often spurred translators to add the word “yet” to the verse: Joseph was a righteous man, YET he sought to break the engagement behind the scenes.
However, Joseph’s choice is in line with how Matthew interprets the place of the Old Testament laws in light of Jesus. In his telling, Jesus emphasizes that his purpose is not to abolish the Torah but fulfill it (Matt. 5:17). This fulfillment is not a matter of restating the law but going deeper. He tells his disciples that their righteousness must exceed that of the law’s biggest champions – the Pharisees and the scribes (5:20). The rest of the Sermon of the Mount provides example after example. The law says do not murder, but Jesus says do not feed your anger. The law says an eye for an eye, but Jesus says don’t strike back. In Matthew 9, Jesus tells the Pharisees that God values showing mercy over performing sacrifices.
True righteousness is not being a stickler for the rules but living wisely and prayerfully in the present. It practices patience, seeks understanding, extends forgiveness, and chooses compassion. We can contrast this with the ways some with authority wield the force of law today. For them, law is a tool to exclude and dehumanize. Step across the line and you will be judged and punished as fiercely as possible.
Like Joseph, may we be righteous in discerning the Spirit’s leadings here and now. Perhaps we will even find an angel waiting for us in our dreams…